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| "And that's how Equestria was... destroyed." |
S7E15: "Triple Threat"
19 Aug 2017
My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 7.2
Thoughts: IMDb ratings are to be treated with caution, but this episode gets a score 0.6 points lower than "Fame and Misfortune". Although fewer people truly dislike it, I'm not sure many people adore it either. Like a large chunk of the second half of S7, it's not an episode that forces remembrance. Thorax doesn't help: the reformed changelings just aren't that interesting, with the occasional exception such as his spiel to Spike about "renegades" (foreshadowing "To Change a Changeling"). Ember is a good deal more fun and certainly has the best of the humour and dialogue, though Starlight has a nice supporting role. The third act feels a little flabby, but it does the job. So does the obvious plot convenience of the Cutie Map summoning Spike in the first place, for that matter. Plus a little Derpy spot. I'll stick with the three-star rating I gave this first time round.
Choice quote: Ember: "I had no idea it was polite to decorate your walls in your friends' favourite foods!"
New rating: ★★★
Next
time, it's "Campfire Tales", in which we'll meet the Pillars for the first time in the show itself.¹ I've never been an enormous fan of either them or this episode, giving it only two stars in 2017. As ever, let's see how it goes.
¹ They debuted in the "Legends of Magic" IDW comic subseries.
Honestly, I forget this one even exists. My mind just slides from "Fame and Misfortune" to "Campfire Tales".
ReplyDeleteOnly thing I remember when I do focus on it is the talk between Ember and Thorax, which strikes me as the least contrived thing in the episode. Compared to the wacky sitcom shenanigans prior (why should changelings hate dragons again?), it felt like the most grounded and understandable part. I don't really care much for Thorax as a character (Ember I was sold on from Day One), but that time he came close.
So yeah, just a forgettable "well, that happened" episode from where I'm standing.
I wonder whether you'd feel differently about this one if the previous episode hadn't been one you disliked so much. For me, "Campfire Tales" is the more forgettable of the two, though in truth the next ep that really sticks in my mind is "A Health of Information", and I think we all know part of why that is! :D
Delete"I wonder whether you'd feel differently about this one if the previous episode hadn't been one you disliked so much."
Delete...no. No, I think it's perfectly forgettable on its own merits (or lack of the same). I mean, I despise "Feeling Pinkie Keen", and it doesn't alter my opinion of "Sonic Rainboom" an inch, to pick one blatantly obvious example.
I really don't get what you were going for here?
No particular agenda, I promise! Simply wondering whether the sour taste provoked by the last episode had lingered enough to make you feel "I'm not sure I really care about this series right now" for a little while, at least when viewing it first time in 2017. I've occasionally felt that way in similar circumstances, though not really for this series. But your answer kills that idea, and that's fine. Thanks.
DeleteS'alright. I thought you were implying some kind of bleed-over effect, or something.
DeleteThat said, I think a good chunk of my apathy for this episode is a direct result of my dislike towards how the changelings were redeemed and Thorax feeling like a weak character, so it had a handicap where I'm concerned. Plus, I just think "Gauntlet of Fire" spoiled me to the point that I think a Spike ep like this doesn't cut it anymore.
Next episode is more interesting to me specifically, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it...
the reformed changelings just aren't that interesting
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh, how have I never heard anyone say this before let alone thought it myself?! It explains so much about the later seasons!
This is one of those episodes that's almost fantastic, but bobbles just enough that it's... Well, apparently fairly forgettable if this post is anything to go by. c_c
But this is the one where Ember can't tell Twilight and Starlight apart, right? That gag alone has to make it memorable! And if it isn't, well, that just reinforces your point!
One lesson I've learned from fanfiction:
DeleteReformed changelings ARE interesting; the show just MAKES them uninteresting.
@Present Perfect: I did mention the "can't tell them apart" gag in my 2017 review, so yes it amused me. Didn't have room in this shorter format, though.
Delete@Anonymous: The lesson I've learnt is that a sufficiently clever writer can make pretty much anything interesting. :)
Yeah, that gag? Five stars! The rest of the episode... three is good.
DeleteThe Season Three episode "Spike at Your Service" is often regarded as a painful one to sit through, largely off the cringe of Spike being a klutz in serving Applejack. In actuality (as I noted when the episode was covered in My Little Repeats here three years ago :P), that comprises only five minutes of the episode, and he's freakishly competent for the rest. "Triple Treat" is like if Spike was actually that much of a klutz-y cringe for as much of the episode as people say about SAYS (how's that for an acronym?).
ReplyDeleteIt falls into that odd territory of being rather underwritten and diluted, like a lot of Season Seven episodes, so the memories of the specifics of the cringe do fade quite easily, leaving mostly just a vague sensation of "Spike regressed". But that doesn't change that, for the two-thirds of the episode of Spike making bad decisions or screwing up Because Plot (curious we never get any further reasoning for him having invited Thorax on the same day, isn't it), it's just frustrating. I've often being a defender of Spike episodes, but coming after "Gauntlet of Fire", I can't muster up any defence for this.
I am probably overreacting to what is just another stock sitcom plot our leads are given idiot balls for and shoved through, and there are worse ones. Even now, I mostly don't think this episode is worth getting heated up over, but it just frustrated me so much while watching it again.
It's really a waste of potential given how interesting the dynamic of Thorax and Ember was: by having a natural dragon as opposed to a pony-raised one, the show had a buyable out to one character not just responding to his generic niceness with the same without violating what it's allowed to do under Hasbro's watch. Possibly there was pressure or assumption from the Story Editors or up above that the show couldn't yet make two minor characters the focal leads, but surely there would have been a way to have them together even with Spike as the lead. Because really, why they assumed these two wouldn't get on is mind-boggling, enough so that the episode even makes a (ineffectual) joke about it.
Like many others, I'll agree this was the closest Thorax ever came to working for me. Granted, it's by playing him up as ineffectual and a meek loser, making it all the more baffling he's a king at all, but it makes him endearing. On top of a few cute dorky moments, it's the same vibe one might get from Fluttershy (and wouldn't you know it, next season, Ocellus starts off as a limp fusion of Twilight and Fluttershy before that just kind of putters out – it's never as direct as Thorax was here with that direction).
And yeah, Ember was pretty fun here, and her being unable to tell Twilight and her expo apart was too good.
I'll save more thoughts on reformed changelings for "To Change A Changeling", but: I've felt they've been uninteresting and a waste as the show used them since pretty much the moment I first binged it six-plus years ago, even before I discovered the wealth of pre-reformation fanfiction on them and the comparable dearth of post-reformation stuff. Now, there IS fanfic that does make the reformed changelings interesting, but I think how rather uncommon it is period, interesting or not, shows most writers don't bother trying (even now, fics jumping back in time or going AU to use them as they once were as a more common fanfic retcon than most).
I don't seem to have commented on the Spike At Your Service MLR post for some reason, so I just want to say that it has some of my all time favourite Pony gags in it - Rainbow's self insert novel, Rarity eating the pie and her damsel in distress training, Applejack's inexplicable attempt to appear as said damsel ("uh, how's this? HOOOOooooo!" - "Absolutely horrendous") and the bit where she physically puts her head in the fake wolf mouth made me laugh ridiculously hard (plus the fridge brilliance that, of course, Applejack would be godawful at deception.) Sorry I'm commenting several years late on a completely different episode but I give that one a pass too :)
DeleteJust a forgettable episode, and to its detriment, it's also made me forget what Derpy's role was. Ember was the only consistently good thing here.
ReplyDeleteAs long as there was no attacking against the fandom out of sheer pettiness and spite (in fairness, that's not a very high bar to clear), I'd sooner come back to Spike being overly paranoid for the second and thirds of an episode over the Mane Six being treated like garbage in the exact same timeframe.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, Triple Threat is still one of the weaker episodes of season seven, but it is salvaged a little by the friendship Thorax and Ember develop in act three. Still not the biggest fan of the Changeling King, but it is at least a step in the right direction for his character. It's just a shame that after this season, he was more or less forgotten about by the writers and only turns up when all the creature races are involved (see School Daze, his most significant role in season eight, for context).
There are the makings of a great episode here! C'mon! Three different races get together and complain about those ponies! It could have been both hilarious and a lesson on how different cultures perceive one another. Maybe that's what they were going for? Sure missed the mark, if so.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, I don't know anybody who doesn't like Ember confusing Twi and Glimglam.
Aw, I love Ember and Thorax in this one - I think Spike is a bit of a poorly written void at the centre of this, but the dynamic between those two is golden, with them both being prepared to go full big sister/brother to protect Spike from perceived threats, and then The Talk about assertiveness and responsibilities which is genuinely natural and believable (shipping or not!) Plus as others have said, the running joke about Ember not being able to tell Twilight and Starlight apart, and the proud "see me trying" look on her face when she smears the cake on the wall! Yes, I liked this one overall. (PS sorry about the formatting of this, my phone is being weird and I can't make paragraph breaks or see what I'm writing)
ReplyDelete