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| "I go through all this just to get retconned? Sheesh" |
Written by Cindy Morrow
4 Feb 2012
My original rating: N/A
IMDB score: 8.8
The one with Pony Battleship.
Thoughts: The first Daring Do episode, and still quite possibly the best. Regardless of how you feel about the "A. K. Yearling" stuff that comes in later in the series, the Daring sections of this episode make a wonderful adventure in their own right. Here (as Daring's design demonstrates) it's clearly Rainbow Dash putting herself in the adventurer's horseshoes. I've never liked Ahuizotl's S9 retcon, but here he appears as I feel he should appear, a love-to-hate villain; mind you, it's strange now to see him without Caballeron! By S2 standards these sections are visually sumptuous, too, and we even get fantastic little touches like imperfections in the "film" and bleed at the edges of the "cinema screen". And the score is very good indeed. The adventure bits are interspersed with plenty of excellent character moments (hey, this is a Cindy Morrow episode) and provide us with the most likeable Rainbow Dash performance in a long time. It's all set up with Dash breaking her wing – at the time a clichéd fanfic setup, but used nicely here, and a reminder that Equestrian magic doesn't do easy healing. The hospital scenes aren't all quite so good, and the night-time slipper raid stuff is really a bit absurd. I'm also not entirely comfortable with Screw Loose and have always been surprised her appearance didn't create much controversy – we're only two episodes on from Derpygate, after all. These quibbles aside, though, "Read It and Weep" is a great episode and one I hugely enjoyed rewatching. Plenty of humour, too – we even find out next season that Rainbow really does snore like that! A four-star rating here, and a pretty high four at that. Indiana Pones indeed.
Choice quote: Pinkie Pie: "I'd say it was more of a fracas than a ruckus."
New rating: ★★★★
Next up is "Hearts and Hooves Day", an episode I wasn't at all a big fan of at first, but one which has gradually grown on me over the years.
Easily one my favourite episodes of season two, Dash is ridiculous adorable in this one. If I do have to nitpick it's the fact that RD broke into a hospital and did not get punished for it, and it wouldn't be the last time she broke the law either.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'll probably have something to say about that when we get to "Tanks for the Memories"... :P
DeletePart of me wishes the Daring Do segments had more of a purpose than just Indiana Jones referencing and (admittedly still fun) action scenes.
ReplyDeleteA lot goes unexplained, mostly of the "why" category (such as why Daring Do wants the Sapphire Stone/Statue, and why the world is saved once Ahuizotl no longer has it).
Still, it's a welcome stylistic change of pace and introduced an action hero character for all our fanficking needs, so no harm done.
Also like how Rainbow takes cues from the action scenes when she later steals the book. Personal favourite is either the bridge scene, or the bit with the doctors acting like big cats - one even does a swiping motion! It's just so absurd and funny.
Also, if I had to speculate, I think the Screw Loose thing attracts less controversy simply because A) she didn't have a season and a half of fandom affection behind her, B) it's harder to interpret her particular gag as a dig at mental disorders specifically (she's generically "insane"), and C) she's just a blink-and-you'll-miss-it silly gag late in the episode, whereas Derpy was front-and-centre for at least a minute early on.
I tend to enjoy this episode in a similar way to how you enjoy "SSCS6K" -- I don't worry too much about the lack of detail, I just have a great time.
DeleteYou're probably right about Screw Loose. Even so.
I've honestly never been a huge fan of this episode. I always felt the "Reading is good!" message was outdated, not to mention superfluous when we've got an entire audience POV character who loves doing it. To get to a point where "reading is okay if you're jock", we first have to make reading seem not okay if you're a jock, and that's just counterproductive.
ReplyDeleteGiven how the storyline shaped out, I honestly wish we'd never had this episode to begin with. :(
I don't. Mind you, I don't dislike all the other DD episodes. For me they're all over the place in terms of enjoyment. "Stranger Than Fan Fiction" is probably the only other one I really have a ball with, though, and that's partly Patton Oswalt's doing.
DeleteHonestly, the "Daring Do is real?" reveal was as great as it was heartbreaking, but that and at least one other Daring episode were really fun. It just seems like they got worse as the show went on... But, well, everything did, Daring just happened to appear in one of the worst S9 episodes. So maybe I'm being a bit harsh.
DeleteEven the S9 one isn't entirely bad for me. Fluttershy adventures in a hat. :P I'm not sure what I'd vote for as the worst Daring Do episode, though "Daring Done?" is probably down there.
DeleteI liked this one, but I agree with PP that it had a mixed message. Plus with the book series being that popular, it's not like stealing the hospital's copy was her only option. She couldn't check it out from the local library, i.e., Twilight's home while remaining anonymous, but couldn't she check one out from the Cloudsdale library? They probably wouldn't know her there. She wasn't that famous yet, and she doesn't work there. Or go to a bookstore just before closing time so she'd be the only one there. Just seems like she had better options, though of course she's not one to think things through very well. It was kind of cute how she got hurt, and the cartoony x-ray of the bones in her wings, plus the adventure scenes were fun, but the frame ended up dragging for me, and the last couple scenes were just kind of dumb. Having a hospital on the outskirts of town was another harbinger of them editing Ponyville as needed to suit the plots of individual episodes.
ReplyDeleteRainbow's book conundrum did at least prove Pony Amazon didn't exist, I guess!
DeleteI can't argue with any of that, but as I said to IN, this is one of those episodes where I think, "Yeah, it's all a bit absurd -- but I love it anyway." Rather like Indiana Jones movies themselves, really...
DeleteColour me as another who's never been too impressed by this episode. It's OK, but I'm with PP and Pascoite in not being too keen on the message. The bit where all the Mane Six (except RD) profess they love reading was far too on the nose for this show. Couple that with a fairly thin novelty value from the action sequence pastiches and this episode is pretty low down in my Season 2 rankings.
ReplyDeleteFair enough. I won't say that sequence you pick out was a highlight, but in my case I loved the action sequences. I can see that without those it'd have much less of a positive impact.
DeleteI think Logan is right about the sheer amount of *joy* in this, both with the effort put into the Daring Do sequences, and Rainbow's antics. The "bored in hospital" segment is excellent and full of clever little touches, and I remember being distinctly impressed that the show went so far as to have Rainbow be seriously hurt in a crash, if admittedly offscreen.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I can't rate this as highly as Logan is that I find the Daring parts hard to square with the general tone of the show. In a world where magic exists - or more precisely, where magical heroes and villains exist - I found it difficult to work out how these stories sat in the universe, or to really understand Rainbow and Twilight's love for them (and while I'm thinking about it, I never really bought the idea of scholarly nerd Twilight still enjoying these stories as opposed to looking back fondly on them as an early reading experience.)
MLP is already an escapist fantasy, so it felt odd to be presented with an in universe escapist fantasy. Without buying into the Daring adventures on the same level as the ponies' own epic battles, the Daring sequences are very well made but ultimately thin pastiche (or, really, pastiche of pastiche, given the source material was itself harking back to a much earlier era of screen adventure), but then again I don't know if you could show less of it without diminishing Rainbow's enthralled escape...
I do like the reading moral - as a parent I've got first hand experience of the supposedly cliché "ugh, books are for eggheads" faux-bravado from my children's classmates, and anything that uses this medium to show how awesome another medium can be is OK by me.
This is the only episode which I feel was first retrospectively partly ruined by the sequel, and then successfully un-ruined by part 3, but we'll not get there for a while.
I never really bought the idea of scholarly nerd Twilight still enjoying these stories as opposed to looking back fondly on them as an early reading experience.
DeleteI think there's a personal angle on that aspect for me, in that I actually had a relative who was a scholarly nerd (if not quite as much of a shut-in as Twi was) who turned out to be a big fan of swashbuckling adventure stories.
For me this was that one Rainbow Dash episode I was hoping to see at the time and this was LONG before it turned out 'Daring Do' was actually a persona for author, A.K. Yearling, who's adventures inspired the books. In a way, there are some people who can relate with Rainbow Dash questioning the idea of 'reading' a book as if it makes them look like nerds (Though nowadays, I find that more humorous than insulting because... Come on, that's so 90s). Anyways, this episode makes me think of 'Reading Rainbow' in displaying the power of reading a book, putting yourself in as the character, exploring the world, fighting danger, and seeking for lost treasure, like playing a movie in your head with you in the starring role (In which case for this episode, quite 'literally' comparing Dash with Daring Do). After all, years ago before we had radio and or television, books were a way for humans to pass their time and this speaks from someone who prefers a 'real' book as opposed to 'Kindles' that everyone uses nowadays.
ReplyDeleteNow I can understand why some people don't go as far to name this a perfect episode. Some moments like the hospital sequences drag a bit, some to the point it's formulaic for lack of a better word. But then again, they do make for some decent YouTube memes we'd catch on our search. For me, it's the entire segment that happens in the book that makes this a worthwhile episode of the season. And sure enough, we'd be surprised when it turns out that 'Daring Do' and her exploits, especially against Ahizotl, are not as 'fictional' as we initially believed it to be (Though going a 'slight' ahead, that did leave a slight mixed reception from the fans). But overall, this was a fun episode that more than made up for previous episodes (Much less previous 'Rainbow Dash' episodes).