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| "Remember those pancakes? Well, I've gone a whole lot better!" |
S8E24: "Father Knows Beast"
6 Oct 2018My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 5.6
The one with stone-skimming SmolderThoughts: Here's something that may surprise you: the text-based reviewers largely liked this episode on release. A major exception was DrakeyC, who despised it. My view was once middling – yep, I gave this three stars in 2018 – but has since moved towards his. I still don't hate all of it. Smolder is good value, for one; and the song is vaguely okay, if a long way from amazing. But I've become much more negative on Sludge himself. I originally saw him as a bit of a "lovable rogue" character, but not now. He's a one-dimensional, tedious slob. Zephyr Breeze had considerably more about him, and that's saying something. The script is dull. The Mane Six ask all the right questions about Sludge's story – then just... stop asking. Spike is absurdly gullible, then he deeply hurts Twilight and doesn't seem to mind – nah, not having that. There's a deeply tedious adult joke that isn't even consistent within this episode. It's all just so bloody superficial for such a potentially emotionally rich subject. To borrow a phrase I use in ponyfic reviews, this is a top-end one.
Choice quote: Spike: "You know how I get when I'm in the embroidery zone."
New rating: ★
The next episode is "School Raze, part 1". The S8 finale is one of the more divisive, with reactions running the gamut from delighted to seriously unimpressed. I liked it at the time, but S8's rewatch experience has often had me lowering my ratings from 2018. This one might as well, but as ever we shall see.
Yeah, this episode was plain annoying. The lesson was handled poorly, too many characters carry the idiot ball for too long, and I've never been interested in rewatching it.
ReplyDeleteYou know, it's interesting that you mentioned DrakeyC being the only one who hated it back in 2018. Was Father Knows Beast a bad episode the whole time, or is it the benefit of hindsight? Because my views, too, have soured on this episode since then.
ReplyDeleteSpike's parentage has been a big question since season one, so you'd think that, with one season to go, we'd get an answer regarding his origins, right? Nope! It turns out that it was all a lie just so Sludge could squat around the Castle of Friendship and win Spike's graces. You'd also think by this point that Spike wouldn't be so gullible; I could understand if it was during the early seasons, but this far in? It doesn't work!
Spike and Smolder's friendship is the only real bright spot of this whole disaster, but that's it. Not only do we get no answer regarding Spike's actual parentage, it makes the entire episode a pointless waste of time! Thanks a lot, Hasbro(!)