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| "Aww, I remember when CheeriMac was a thing, too." |
13 May 2017
My original rating: ★★
IMDb score: 7.5
Thoughts: I did not have a great experience with this episode in 2017, finding it tedious viewing at times. Now? Now I feel I was rather harsh on it. Sweetie Belle clearly does have a point that she's still being treated like a little filly when she's (more or less) a teenager, and Rarity is being somewhat dense about this. The ep isn't perfectly paced, with the parallel Zipporwhill plot having that pony being at least as slow to grasp the point as Rarity is. I'm also a bit iffy about the CMC: I get that they're best as a threesome, but surely AB and Scoot could have had more ideas even as a two. Still, Sweetie's attempt to be polite while not quite being able to cover up her boredom is actually fairly well portrayed. Maybe I was just in a grumpy mood six years ago. This episode is getting bumped up a star.
Choice quote: Chip Cutter: "When I look at my sandwich, it's like it's just asking me to turn it into a dragon."
New rating: ★★★
Next
up will be the 150th My Little Repeats, which will look at "Parental Glideance". An episode I really did enjoy a lot first time around and have watched again for fun since. I fully expect to have a good time with it again now.
as I recall this one, it's one of those episodes where I was quite entertained, but that doesn't necessarily make it good
ReplyDeleteit might just be a case of "we get the point already", which was kind of an issue with later-season eps
In his Season 7 blog, DannyJ summed this episode up as one where he remembered the major story beats, but not really any of the jokes, or the dialogue, or visuals: the fun bits that give an episode flavour. The episode isn’t lacking in those things (and as I’ve seen this more times than most Season Seven episodes, I remembered a decent chunk), but this is nonetheless a very fitting description. It’s a functional script, it doesn’t make any mistakes I could call “bad” (Rarity’s density to the problem and the notion of a dog outgrowing things like a human/pony are mistakes, but more those that dull the result), but despite having a good premise that is executed with a decent amount of nuance, it is pretty forgettable.
ReplyDeleteA lot of this, I am sure, comes down to the Fox Brothers’ writing, and while there’s nothing here overtly lethargic or laboured, the dialogue does lean towards being mechanical in getting the points across. Not helped by, as Present Perfect notes, some “we get the point already” syndrome – Sweetie Belle’s tired frustration and resignation is great at first, wonderfully not spelling it out for the target audience, but it’s played pretty much the exact same over and over to the point of spelling it out via showing. Otherwise, there’s a distinct lack of imagination in much of it, not least the attempts with the dog.
There’s one other element that drags this down. Even before I read its script, I had noticed how the visual pacing for this episode was rather slow, with lots of overheld reaction shots, visuals gags, and many more pauses between dialogue beyond what is typical. Reading it explained why – it’s a mere 23.5 pages, shorter even that the shorter Season 7 average of 25/6, meaning each page has to fill 53 seconds of screentime (45 would be a norm pre-Season 7, and maybe 48 this season). Perhaps due to the low-key slice of life nature, the board artists didn’t opt for extra wild gags or visuals as they often do, just those described in the script; thus, this episode instead shows what happens when you DON’T have an animatic a minute overlong that you shorten via tightening up the shot-by-shot pace. I’m not going to say everyone would notice, but being a different variation of the “too long” problem, it does make its presence felt. Many episodes this season have this, this is just the clearest example, present every handful of shots (the twenty-second opener of Sassy fretting? Barely a few lines in the script).
The episode is functional; Sweetie’s Belle’s plotline of being a quasi-teen and not the baby Rarity treasures her as is agreeable and relatable, another solid “CMCs are teens now” direction to Apple Bloom in “Brotherhooves Social”. And there is some good showing of Sweetie Belle taking after Rarity (they both produce the same "You are good" reaction for similar reasons). I like it okay, it’s fine and watchable (I’d be very surprised if this doesn’t crack the top half come ranking time), but it does show how most of the episodes trying to be like the show always was, subject matter excepted, are lacking some of the moment-to-moment spark it excelled at.
I'm with you on this. Sweetie Belle's situation is heartfelt from her perspective, but it gets drawn out awfully long, and Rarity is slow on the uptake. That's yet another character they get inconsistent about through the seasons, as to whether Rarity's insightful or dense. I especially think she ought to be good at interpersonal things, as long as her ego doesn't get in the way, since as I wrote her saying once, "Fashion is half psychology." I liked the idea of this more than the execution, and it's an unusual miss for a Rarity-centric piece. A low-end three seems about right.
ReplyDeleteWell, that was a fairly short one from you there. Not a criticism, just an observation.
ReplyDeleteAs for the episode, it's another that I'd call a Top 10 favorite for Season 7. The timing actually feels right in which Sweetie Belle has grown up since Season 1, but as she and Rarity aren't as close as Apple Bloom and Applejack (as well as Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash, despite not being blood related) are, Rarity still thinks of her as being younger than she actually is, and Sweetie Belle doesn't want to upset her big sister until she had no other choice.
I also don't mind the Zipporwhill subplot; it's nice to give the side characters their time in the spotlight. It did feel like at that point, they were showing just how big the world of Equestria really is.
If I did have one complaint, however, it's that they don't really show the CMC aging. Yes, they gained their cutie marks, but surely it wouldn't have hurt to have them grow a bit taller? (To be fair, that's also a problem with the Cake twins and the other foals.) And I heard something about Michelle's, Claire's and Maddy's voices being pitched so that they sounded younger. Just... why?
That issue aside, I still think Forever Filly is a great episode six years on.