S8E19: "Road to Friendship"
This is what I mean about the visuals. So many little details for a short scene.
My original rating: ★★★★
IMDb score: 7.9
Thoughts: With Pinkie's yovidaphone disaster behind us, here's a far more fondly remembered episode, and perhaps one of my favourites from Josh Haber's. Yes, it's StarTrix time! Well, not officially, but even Cadance in an admittedly slightly disconnected early scene openly notes Starlight and Trixie's chemistry together. They really are great together, even when they're bickering for days on end about carrots and juice. I enjoyed the snarkiness of their grumbling. The song is wonderful, and it's nice to see something inspired by a classic musical – reminiscent of the Sondheim homages of the early seasons. We now know "nine [seasons] at least" was indeed foreshadowing! Hoo'far was okay as a guest character, but his not being named in the episode seems bizarre: he's even "that pony from Saddle Arabia" after StarTrix have known him for ages. The pacing didn't quite keep up the snappiness that this kind of plot demands. Buuuuut I still had a lot of fun. Was some of that because I'd come off a short run of poor episodes? Well, yes. I won't deny that. Still, it both looked and sounded superb – all the little details in the inns we saw for only a second each, for example. We didn't see Saddle Arabia (the new animation would have been too expensive, according to Jim Miller) but still. Objectively "Road to Friendship" is probably a high three, but the happiness of really enjoying an episode again pushes it over the line. It can keep its four.
Choice quote: Trixie: "The Great and Powerful Trixie doesn't chant."
New rating:★★★★
That's a bit more like it! If anything this ep has become more popular as the years have passed, perhaps partly since it's one of the last examples in FiM of the successful cementing of a team-up. Of course Starlight and Trixie had worked together before, but this was the ep that truly underlined how good their chemistry was. Anyway, next up is "The Washouts", which being a Scootaloo-heavy episode I naturally liked last time – although not without reservations.
It doesn't take a lot to improve upon Yakity Sax, does it?
ReplyDeleteRoad to Friendship is one's not my most favorite from Josh Haber, but it's still a decent watch, and the moral is a useful one for kids to learn. Not a whole lot else to say, really.
oh wow, I had completely forgotten this episode too :O but yes, it was really good! anything for ship fuel! :D
ReplyDeleteyeah it's a great one, this :) Sheridan / Barr pwn
ReplyDeleteAll I really ask from an MLP episode is that I have fun while watching it, and this one really delivers.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was fine enough, but I remember very little about it. I tend to like Starlight episodes anyway and enjoyed her hanging out with Trixie, and yet this one barely sticks in my head aside from the cute meme picture of Trixie that went around everywhere. I don't remember disliking it, so it's probably fine in my book, but I'd have to watch it again to refresh my memory. Like a lot of the last 2 seasons, I haven't watched it since it first aired.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I'd totally forgotten this one goes back through the new location and ensemble of extras created for "Daring Done?" last season, and as one with a weakness for pulpy desert-set locales with ethnic costuming in my media, I appreciated it once again. And hey, it's attached to an episode that doesn't have a garbage script this time!
ReplyDeleteLike a lot of late-season episodes that get very fondly remembered due to being quality in a sea of not-that, returning to this did reveal it to be not great. On the other hand, it doesn't really make any outright mistakes either. Mostly, there's a fair shake of the small-but-common niggles that trail even the good late-show episodes. The Season Seven lopsided pacing, for one, can affect even a good episode: an overextended first act results in most of the beats that generate friction between the two coming out inorganically (Starlight buying street food, the first such one, just happens without even a prior plant to either hunger or Starlight taking the lead on her own for such things), which does ultimately mean the script falls on the side of the breakup happened largely Because Script. Not egregiously so, but it did make the episode more inorganic. Especially with the wagon selling, which both didn't have enough of Trixie stating its importance to her and also makes Starlight look positively arsehole-y. As usual, possibly a quicker first act (the opening scene and having Cadance present do set up the stage act we'll see later and the chant motif, but there are quicker ways to do that then this) may have made time for this.
Rest is never less than sufficient, and considering every other StarTrix episode of a conflict between them follows the same pattern, it's such a breath of fresh air to not have it be making Trixie to be an insufferable butt and Starlight holding it in until she bursts. And from Josh Haber too! There's decent-if-sometimes rote dialogue and jokes, a valuable nuanced moral, and a pretty darn fun song, with classical musical homages again to boot. Going by entertainment value, while this still subscribes to the late-season dilution unless they sacrifice character to do so, it doesn't descend to boring in such.
A solid fine episode, on balance, but I completely concede that it does shine strongly next to its brethren.