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| Derpy finally making a clear (if very brief) S3 appearance was a huge deal at the time |
Written by M. A. Larson
26 Feb 2013
My original rating: 9/10 (=★★★★★)
IMDb score: 8.1
The one with Spike dancing Gangnam Style
Thoughts: And here we are at last! When this finale first aired, we still didn't know whether there'd ever be another episode of Friendship is Magic, though we were all relieved to finally see the end of the fandom's miserable months-long Twilicorn Wars. Few people were unspoiled as to Alicorn Twilight's imminence by this time, so the biggest surprise was the full-on musical nature of the episode. The songs are mostly excellent, and "A True, True Friend" may be my favourite FiM song of them all – it has a wonderful message, and that "PINKIE!" is pure joyous delight. That aspect, at least, was an unambiguous triumph. The actual story? Interesting but very, very compressed. This desperately needed 44 minutes rather than 22, especially for the cutie mark stuff, but Larson did a surprisingly good job with so little time to play with. Twilight saying a spell "to see what it did" was pretty stupid, but seeing Celestia bowing to her was quite a moment – although the actual "alicorn reveal" moment has inevitably lost some of its impact now. Nicole Oliver's lovely singing was the focus at the time, though! I know some have mixed feelings about "MMC" because of what it led to later in the show's run. But I'm judging it here on its own merits, and I enjoyed my rewatch a great deal. The rushed pace niggles a little more than it used to, so I'm nudging it down from its original five-star rating to a (high) four. It's still well up there, though.
Choice quote: Twilight: "Is there a book about being a princess I should read?"
New rating: ★★★★
And that's all for Season 3! I'll be rewatching S4 in due course, but before that (in the first half of January, I hope) there'll be a look back at S3 as I saw it this time around, including the ever-popular(?) star chart.
"The one with Spike dancing Gangnam Style"
ReplyDeleteWhat.
This is something I'd completely forgotten; when does it happen?
As for the episode itself, I'd say this review is fair. This is one of my favourite episodes *to watch*, mainly because of the songs, but that's a very different thing to describing it as one of the best episodes. I do think it's a good episode, but I can see the flaws in it too.
It's not entirely unambiguous, but watch him in the scene at Fluttershy's cottage during "What My Cutie Mark is Telling Me." Spike is wearing that false moustache and glasses and prancing up and down in a way that at the time was definitely linked with Gangnam Style.
DeleteJust want to emphasize ahead of time that this is all my opinion. If you like this episode, I'm not crusading to stop you. But god, I've been wanting to say this for a long time, because I deep down do not get the love this episode inspires.
ReplyDeleteThere are lots of things I don't like about this episode on multiple levels (the flurry of songs I find lacklustre and annoying), so I'll get straight to the main problem:
As presented, Twilight's ascension is premature and irresponsible.
Ignoring the lore-breaking around reciting poetry to cast spells now, and how magic can override cutie marks suddenly, and how cutie marks are no longer the effects of an epiphany but actively forcing a wearer to live a particular lifestyle (these do not help the episode in any way), Twilight in the first half of the episode is, as far as I'm concerned, little better than in "Lesson Zero" and "It's About Time".
The fact is that she screws over all five of her friends here. Either she wipes the memories of all involved, or else we're supposed to believe Ponyville citizens - including the Main Six - really are stupid enough to not question these sweeping changes, given that no one ever steps in to stop Sweet Apple Acres' degradation or can apparently function without Pinkie's cheer. And if so, then fuck the ubermensch implications of this "only the Main Six matter" approach.
The fact that she does this by accident, in a set up where Celestia is giving her this stuff without the appropriate warnings or safeguards, I consider irresponsible. It's the sort of thing I'll ding Starlight for further down the road, so Twilight sure as hell isn't getting a pass for it.
Then, once Twilight has given up and just as suddenly reaffirmed her commitment to solving her own problem so fast that both changes give me whiplash (it's not even pacing issues: Twilight barely learns she caused a problem before giving up, something that would not be acceptable even if it had been spaced out), she effectively gets promoted for it.
No, seriously: when you get down to it, Twilight was given access to a great power, and spends the first half of this episode fucking over at least five others and then putting out her own fire. This is the equivalent of a firefighter clumsily causing a building to burn down, and then enacting a daring rescue and putting out the flames. All very nice, but she started the fire in the first place. She doesn't get a promotion for that, yet the second half of the episode refuses to dwell on the implications of handing a fuck-up more power.
Speaking of which: someone tell me what Star Swirl's spell even does.
DeleteBecause the only tangible effects I can see are that it teleports Twilight to an ethereal otherworld, from which she is guided by Celestia back to the land of the living, whereupon she gains wings. The spell doesn't help anyone, doesn't perform a great service, doesn't solve a major societal problem. The only tangible consequence is that it nets Twilight some wings.
So the spell that got Twilight her ascension is the spell that, when you get down to it, got her her ascension.
The rest of the Main Six are given the biggest disservice in this episode. Not content with being fucked over in the first half, they in the second half use their shared friendship with Twilight to power this "Because I Say So" spell that gets Twilight the big upgrade, while they - who can also claim to have learned and even taught so much about friendship - get nothing.
And then they bow to Twilight. And then the episode is one big celebration about how Twilight "created a new magic" (which, remember, achieves nothing tangible apart from giving her alicornhood, something that has not only been done before, but which has benefited no one but herself), and shoves it down our throats that this is destiny, which means any actual effort Twilight made does not matter.
Look, there are ways to make Princess Twilight work. One would be to emphasize the responsibility that comes with the role, to justify why she gets it and no one else does, capitalizing on what Twilight as a competent and skilled pony brings to the table. Another would be to downplay the status aspects so that she can still conceivably be on par with the rest of the Main Six: equals, not superior-inferior. A third would be to tie her ascension to a tangible social good or service, a responsibility, which at the very least means NOT showing Twilight making massive mistakes. And a fourth would be to not drown the episode in relentless positivity and at least point out the downsides fairly, something that in the current incarnation will have to wait until Season Four.
If it isn't clear yet, I hate this episode. It's a tie between this and "Keep Calm and Flutter On" for most hated Season Three episode: that one had a stillborn premise and managed to make it worse. Yet this one had a premise that could have worked, and instead not only made all the wrong decisions, but made the idea actively repellent to me, in a way that not only confirmed my worst suspicions but exceeded them.
As a result, I simply cannot like this episode. And the worst part is that, being a status quo shakeup, it has to be acknowledged further down the road, which means the taste sticks. Give credit to Season Four for greater damage control, but the frank matter is that damage control was needed in the first place.
So my apologies, Loganberry, but this is perhaps our biggest disagreement yet.
And that's not getting into the hoard of minor details that annoy me, like the misinterpretation of Rainbow's cutie mark, and the fact that no one Ponyville citizen does anything but complain when faced with a unicorn controlling the weather.
DeleteAnd now it can be told... my little note in E12's endnote about how not everyone around here liked this was written with you in mind! Not only you, since as you'll see from Pascoite's comment today he isn't a big fan either -- but I think among regular or semi-regular commenters here, you are probably the one who dislikes this episode the most.
DeleteWhich is fine. No apologies needed. I'm still not rowing back on that positive rating, though! :P
I for one thought it was a cop out to have Twilight become an alicorn, for a bunch of reasons, so I'm biased against it to begin with. For one, it's already shown that non-alicorns have been rulers in many cases before, so it shouldn't have been necessary. And then the assertion that it was caused by her "creating new magic," which would have every magical researcher also becoming an alicorn. She only finished one of Star Swirl's spells, and we're to believe he never finished any himself? (I actually tackle the why of this in a story.) It's unclear to me whether Twilight remembers what cutie marks her friends are supposed to have or she just notices they're obviously unhappy and tries to treat the symptoms. If the former, why did nobody else remember? They've been fixtures in town for a long time. Not even their own families noticed something was wrong?
ReplyDeleteYes, a lot of this could have ben fixed with a longer running time, but there's a difference between glossing over an explanation in the interest of time and not even attempting one.
Some of the little touches were nice, still. Everyone rejoicing in Pinkie being made right by shouting her name. (But what pressure on someone to shoulder the entire town's morale like that! Good thing she's up to it. Fluttershy certainly wasn't.) The barely perceptible hitch in Celestia's voice when introducing Twilight during the ceremony.
I'd give it 3 stars, maybe even tempted toward 4, strictly for the on-screen stuff: the art, the action, the emotion. But it's pretty bad for what implications it makes about the larger world, and that'd drag it back down to a 2 for me. Just a personal taste thing, but the songs were all very middle of the road for me as well.
Oh boy. This one.
ReplyDeleteI've cooled on this episode a bit since I reviewed it back in May, largely in the area of the songs sinking somewhat for me. "Celestia's Ballad" and "I've Got To Find A Way" are the only ones I still really, really adore, while with "What My Cutie Mark Is Telling Me" (most viewed FiM clip on YouTube that's still up - from the official MLP channel), and "A True, True Friend", I now find them nice and fun, but not the top-tier efforts many once said they were. My takes on the others haven't changed - "Morning in Ponyville" and "Life in Equestria" remain fine Intro and Outro songs, while "Behold Princess Twilight Sparkle" is still the episode's only truly weak one. But with me having cooled noticeably on two songs that are key pillars of the episode, it's made it much harder for me to overlook many of the other issues I previously had.
There are some issues with this episode that have been justifiably flung at it basically since it premiered - it needing to be a two-parter for the runtime being chief among them - though a hefty chunk of the issues come from changes made after the script was locked and M.A. Larson had signed off on it (something that's virtually never happened in other episodes - its unclear who dictated these changes, and who wrote them). These weren't all bad - the reason Daniel Ingram is credited for the lyrics as well as Larson on most songs, and solo on some, is because they were substantially altered (as well as one flashback song right before "A True, True Friend" being scrapped altogether).
The musical changes are appreciated - looking at the original script, the newer lyrics/songs are all improvements - but they're not worth the tradeoff, which includes the absolute nonsense about the spell being an unfinished one of Star Swirl's, shameless lore dumped in without any thought given to it (Impossible Numbers, you may also appreciate hearing that Twilight originally cast the spell normally - the poetry thing probably came from some ghostwriter that didn't do their research). Originally it was Twilight rewriting an ancient spell that gave her wings, and there was no scene of the Mane 6 using their elements on her to send her to some plane - after "A True, True Friend", the book glowed, attracting their attention, the spell literally rewrote itself on the page, and then beamed Twilight and gave her wings. Still not explained much, but at least it didn't open up unanswered questions about Star Swirl.
Other then Rainbow Dash's destiny being mistakingly written as being weather, something Larson has admitted was his oversight, virtually all the small "are you for real?" irksome thing in this episode occurred at the hands of this executive/ghostwriter. They're not the main problems - those are conceptual - but they do notably weigh it down.
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[Continued from above]
DeleteStill, most of the issues Pascoite and Impossible Numbers cite, I either agree with, or can't actively disagree with. Due to how little time Meghan McCarthy and co. were given to retool the pre-alicorn version of this episode (which was basically everything up to "A True, True Friend" given proper breathing space, with an epilogue looking to what's next - that would have fit in 21 minutes), it's not a surprise, but still disappointing, that it's totally fumbles justifing Twilight's growth enough to make her an alicorn. Even making it clearer it was to do with everything over the past three seasons would have helped (the original script again did a little better here, with all the throwbacks and flashbacks, and many one-time characters given reappearances at the coronation). I too have felt any of the logical angles Impossible Numbers mentions of approaching Twilight being a princess could have worked, and would have been better then the non-explanation her. Sure, some of them might have been too realistic and not fantastical enough for Hasbro's liking, but not all of them, and that's never stopped complex issues in FiM before. And while the damage control in Season 4 is generally solid, before the bottom fell out in Season 5 onwards, that it was needed in the first place…
Heck, Pascoite and Impossible Numbers even bring up things I hadn't considered before, like how Twilight could have become a princess but not an alicorn, given we've already had non-alicorn royalty (Blueblood, Platinum) and more to come. Of course, Hasbro wanted a new toy design, which that didn't allow for.
Similar to Pascoite's take, and much like "Keep Calm and Flutter On", this episode is solid and enjoyable in a vacuum, and even if the songs have slipped somewhat in my mind, they're still good. But unlike that episode, this one has plenty problems even beyond its effect on the show, lore and characters, both looking back and moving forward.
It's still enjoyable and watchable, don't get me wrong. But only when watching it can I just enjoy it without thinking about how it irreversibly changed the show, and not for the better, and how it set a precedent for many future occasions of both world lore and character consistency/growth being shown the door to facilitate whatever new plot was being cooked up.
Two personal notes: I continue to find considerable fault in how Twilight's body was stretched just enough in leg and neck height to notice, but not beyond that - it reads as the staff trying to strike a middle ground between showing her change, but not wanting to change her body beyond the wings for fear of angering viewers. So on top of her looking less cute and adorable in a small but pervasive way, it reeks as cowardly, failing to fully satisfy either group. I don't doubt I'm not alone in wishing she kept her original Flash model, just with alicorn wings.
My other personal note: it wasn't until "The Last Problem" came along and was a complete train-wreck ending to the show that I fully understood the reactions many had back in the months leading up to this episode, and to the episode itself. Obviously coming into the show in 2017, Princess Twilight was the default for me, even if I quickly grew to prefer Unicorn Twilight. That said, that even now "The Last Problem" continued to be let off the hook or quietly forgotten given the treatment this one got… years of seasonal rot sure did drop people's expected standards from the show, huh?
It's a shame the valid arguments against Twilight's ascension got buried under the tsunami of frothing misogyny at the time. I'm sure this episode was written as an end to the series, and subsequent writers had to scramble to make the dynamic work when someone at Hasbro asked, "Why are we letting the golden goose die of old age?"
ReplyDeleteGiven the parameters he had to work within, I think Larson did a terrific job. He either knew or researched enough about medieval courts to include the Behold Princess Twilight "song", which got most people's knickers in a twist because they didn't understand it wasn't a song, but a fanfare... and perfectly appropriate in tone for the scene.
Really, Larson doesn't get enough credit for bringing a gem out of a dung heap of poor forethought and planning. As GaPJaxie says, "It's fanfiction all the way down." And with this series there's the improvisational "Yes, and..." hobbles of having to incorporate, or at least acknowledge whatever idiocy that sub-par writers had jammed into the show previously.
Considering the handicaps it was working against, I'd still give this episode 5/5.