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| I wonder whether any fan made use of that globe's design |
S7E01: "Celestial Advice"
My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 7.8
Thoughts: It's been way too long, hasn't it? Friendship is Magic returns! Well, sort of. Season Seven, uniquely, did not begin with a two-parter, so this first episode stands alone. This first part of S7 had the "Lady Writers" team of Joanna Lewis and Kristine Songco overseeing things, and this opener was also written by them. It's quite good fun, though not without its irritations. It's one of the first episodes to give Celestia plenty of screen time, Spike gets a bit of attention – and a fun touch of snark – and the bookending Pinkie moments are fun. Discord is a tad irritating, but then he's very much trying to be in-story, and in any case Twilight is (still) just too easy to tip into (fairly mild, here) freakout mode. Pacing isn't particularly great, though: the episode starts a bit too slowly and ends a bit too quickly, while the bit where Twilight ponders futures for Starlight goes on rather too long. A shame, as Glimmy's undecided future could have packed quite an emotional punch. I mean, the ep is quite pleasant and quite fun. Doesn't really feel like a season-opener, though. It can keep its three, I guess.
Choice quote: Celestia: "There is no wrong way to fantasise."
New rating: ★★★
Next up, broadcast on the same day even though a separate episode, was "All Bottled Up". I don't remember much about that one beyond Trixie being in it.
It really does not feel like a season opener, which was always my biggest criticism, even beyond the fact that I never really liked it. :| It's the gates of Hell, abandon all hope and all that.
ReplyDeleteGates of Hell? Those don't really open for me until next season. ;)
DeleteIronic that they do spend the next season finale trying to open the gates of Hell.
DeleteHah! :D
Delete"It's been way too long, hasn't it?"
ReplyDeleteYou ain't kidding. I don't think I've seen a gap this big in your scheduling before. Ha, was the His Dark Materials trilogy stealing your time away so thoroughly? XD
Season Seven. Hoo boy, Season Seven. O.O
I thought it was OK-ish the first time I scraped some of its episodes together for a watch, and some of the eps are good, with one or two absolute gems. Some of the weaker eps manage to touch upon something interesting or at least fanfic-ready. So I can't call it a complete drop in standards.
Still, (for me) not much holds up well on a revisit, and I have a LOT of problems even with the middle rank, something unheard-of for prior seasons. Continuity, for one thing, starts to crumble something fierce despite the tossed-in references (heck, there's a big one in this very episode). And there are hardly any episodes I outright like, with PLENTY of others that lose out due to major flaws scuppering elements that did work.
So for the sake of fairness, you probably won't see me around all that often from this point on: "If you can't say anything nice..." and all that. Generally, I really don't like the direction the show went in after Season Six, which was the last time I had a majority favourable approach to a season.
As for today's exhibit? Eh.
Apart from the spotlight-stealing of Starlight, which has such an irritating "Where's Poochie?" vibe in my mind, it's honestly pretty forgettable. Instead of accomplishing anything, it just sits around musing to itself.
More specifically, the Celestia focus is too little, too late (we're in Season Seven and only NOW getting some intel?). Her flashback establishes things that are either unsurprising, irrelevant, or outright contradicted by canon (including that big continuity error I mentioned: no WAY were the other five friends before meeting Twilight, and DannyJ skewered that one in his review). The Starlight imagine spots are amusing in the moment (admittedly because of the bad endings: sadly, my soul is not above a little schadenfreude).
And... honestly, Season Six's finale doesn't seem any bigger of a deal compared with prior season finales, so I'm not sure why it's only NOW we're getting this kind of retrospective reflection in the followup season, instead of a brand new adventure to start off strong. Yes, the changeling reformation was a dramatic turning point, but that's not even really the focus here, and Discord and Trixie are so much side detail. So it just comes across as more of Haber-era's Starlight oversaturation.
On that note, one thing I will sport is that I'd have preferred to see more of the changeling transition. Changelings are still interesting, right? Similar to how "The Hearth's Warming Club" showed Ocellus' family traditions in such an endearing way. If you're going to reform an entire formerly-villainous species, DO something with it, you know? (Plus, their misinterpretations of pony culture are adorable). Even given my dislike of the decision to reform them, that could have worked for me.
Regardless, overall this feels like a misjudged opening shot. I'm waiting for the Flurry Heart ep, or the Scootaloo ep, and even then I don't think I'll actually be all that enthusiastic till "Honest Apple" and "Discordant Harmony".
"no WAY were the other five friends before meeting Twilight, and DannyJ skewered that one in his review"
DeleteI mean no way were they ALL friends, as the flashback shows.
"Season Six's finale doesn't seem any bigger of a deal compared with prior season finales, so I'm not sure why it's only NOW we're getting this kind of retrospective reflection in the followup season"
DeleteI suppose you could make the argument Season Four's premiere did just that for Season Three's finale, though with the caveat that it ALSO mixed in a new adventure of its own.
Ha, was the His Dark Materials trilogy stealing your time away so thoroughly? XD
DeleteI wish! Sadly some of it's had to do with fallout from the car crash in Scotland. (Nothing really bad, but a hay of a lot of checkups and busyness and so on and so forth.) I am going to get back to HDM before too much longer, though. I enjoyed doing book one, so I'm not stopping there!
no WAY were the other five friends before meeting Twilight
Yeah, agreed. I don't let things like that bother me too much by late-era FiM, but it's irritating as it wouldn't have taken much work to do better.
As for S7 in general? I'm fairly well disposed towards it until the Pillars turn up. My problem there is that I don't really care about them. Barring Meadowbrook in the Fluttershy episode, I could do without them entirely, really.
Plus your comment about "Discordant Harmony" reminded me that in mid-season I get to watch that, then "The Perfect Pear", and then... "Fame and Misfortune". As I've said before, I don't detest that last episode, but plenty of people do. I'm just hoping I'm obscure enough here not to get a bunch of drive-by flamewars going on! :P
Still, I'll keep going to the end of S9 now. I may be forging on alone by then, of course! :D
…Whoa, has it been three months? And yet, I haven't felt motivated to pre-emptively watch even a single Season Seven episode. Telling? Maybe. Pausing to rewatch this one would make my comment so late as to not be worth it, so I'm relying on memories somewhat here.
ReplyDeleteThis season feels like it has several different voices – the pushing of Starlight and co. settles here, with them appearing outside their focus episodes and her getting things beyond with her own arc. Yet otherwise, this feels like it's trying very hard to get back to early types of stories, and not just in obvious examples like "Honest Apple" and "Secrets and Pies" either. Then there's the Pillars, which comes out of nowhere in the show's back season, do almost nothing, and are abandoned thereafter.
There are ways to have all of these angles come together, but that doesn't happen, and instead it feels like three different seasons spliced together. Checking the Story Editor credits doesn't explain this either (Josh Haber isn't involved until the last nine episodes). I haven't looked into the production docs, except to notice the script lengths get shorter and basically fixed (which has its own effects I'll mention for future episodes), so possibly some answers lie in there. Here and now, no patterns present themselves.
More pressing, as IN noted, is that the execution just isn't there, with storylines that feel visibly laboured to assemble themselves, more than a few episodes on the topic of being unable to have things the way they were which feel like they're taking to the viewer to not think the same, more and more continuity flaunting moments alongside with just bad ideas, and many of them just being sleepy affairs.
As for this one? Opening with a single episode after five seasons of two-parters was always going to feel weird, but there were better ways to do it then by continuing the self-favouritism of the new crew in foregrounding Starlight further AND by choosing the two-parter they made as the one to get a wind-down conclusion episode. All the stranger given Josh Haber had no involvement – one has to assume he laid some plans before stepping out for a while, but no Story By credits, in a time where such efforts earned that, confuses the mater.
It's just such… odd things to focus on, from a conclusion to an arc of Starlight's that wasn't (whatever there was some "being a leader/trusting your instincts" boilerplate last time, there has been no focus on her being Twilight's student and her eventually finishing), to nothing for the changelings, to Discord and Trixie being side business. This really feels like a 3rd episode after a season opener, but even there it sets the scale so small it feels like an act of parody. Just lacking the energy of one. Even "The Crystalling", also a "where will Starlight go now?" continuation, had something bigger on its mind.
That said, I can be fair: for how misguided and strange this is, a lot of the incident works. The Lady Writers were always good at peppering their scripts with amusing side bits, and that applies here: they just needed someone else to guide them on a better skeleton. Discord's ribbing of Twilight is a bit long in the tooth by the end, but works till then. Moments from Celestia, Spike, Trixie, Pinkie and others amuse, as do the fantasies. If one is able to put aside what could and should have been, this episode is diverting enough, if a bit lethargic (I'll delve into this season-wide problem with "Forever Filly). And next to many of the "stop thinking, just have fun!" attempts in this generation and franchise's future, this is gold. So I do get you finding it fun enough.
But I think it's fair to say that, for most of us, the execution of these moments isn't nearly good enough to distract the mind from wandering to why this story, where hardly anything happens, and with these characters, and now. Not a truly bad episode – it's a good few leaps up over "The Crystalling", for starters – but a very confusing one.
I think this was about the point at which I finally decided that I was no longer going to treat FiM as the same show it had been five years before. Indeed, that does mean letting some things slide that are just sloppy if you look at them more carefully, but I've been happier that way. (Mind you, this doesn't mean the likes of "Non-Compete Clause" will get off lightly next season!)
DeleteI'm interested that both Impossible Numbers and you namechecked "Honest Apple" in your comments. IN really likes the episode, certainly by S7 standards. You weren't quite around in time to comment on my original review of that episode, so we'll see. :)
Hah, it's interesting the comment you made about the next episode, because it's the opposite for me. I remember that one well not that it was great just that it was at least memorable), but I had to get deep into your description of it before I remembered this one at all. Even then, only vaguely. I obviously didn't hate it or love it, so probably 2-3 stars for me.
ReplyDeleteI expect I'll remember episode two as soon as it starts. Actually, some of it is already coming back to me as I write this.
DeleteIt feels like forever since the last revisit!
ReplyDeleteI personally thought it was interesting to see a season start off with two standalones instead of a two-parter. Most would probably expect a season to start off with a bang, but I don't see anything wrong with starting with a whisper. I mean, didn't the show itself start off with a whisper before moving onto bigger things down the road?
That point aside, I thought it was a pretty good episode on is own when it first aired in 2017, and I still do to this day. Twilight and Celestia's relationship remains as strong as ever, and the lesson was a useful one for kids to learn. It's a nice little breather episode after the events of To Where and Back Again that sets the tone for most of Season 7.
Yeah, I do hope there won't be any gaps that long for the rest of the run!
DeleteYou make a good point, in that S7 did seem at times to me going for a "back to the roots" feel. I rather liked it at the time.