It's taken me around four months to get through S3, but here we are at last! It's been an interesting experience, though, with some things being just as I'd expected but also a few surprises along the way. My mean star rating for this season worked out at 2.92, not terrible but nevertheless significantly lower than the 3.38 that both the first two seasons managed.
Past the cut, you'll find my star ratings breakdown as well as some slightly more detailed ramblings.
First, here's how I rated S3's 13 episodes:
★★★★★
Sleepless in Ponyville
★★★★
Magical Mystery Cure
★★★
The Crystal Empire, part 1
The Crystal Empire, part 2
Too Many Pinkie Pies
Wonderbolts Academy
Apple Family Reunion
Keep Calm and Flutter On
Just For Sidekicks
★★
One Bad Apple
Magic Duel
Spike At Your Service
Games Ponies Play
★
none
As happened with S2, I found a fair number of three-star episodes in S3. Bearing in mind that a purely "meh, okay I suppose" rating would be two stars, that means I enjoyed S3 fairly well for the most part. I think that's probably a fair reflection of my feelings; the season often doesn't fare that well in people's memories, and I might well have been the same without the rewatch, but I think it's a little better than its overall reputation might suggest.
Memories of this season may perhaps be tarnished not through any fault of its own, but because some of us remember the seemingly interminable, miserable arguing from the moment that picture of Twilight with wings was first spotted in the wild. While some people still prefer unicorn Twilight, very few now go to the lengths that some did back then, with more than one fandom ragequit seen during the season's run.
On a happier note, this was the first season I could fully watch as it came out, and with little in the way of leaking and odd scheduling back then the community largely experienced each episode at roughly the same time. There's really only one classic in S3 for me, and that's "Sleepless in Ponyville" – admittedly it's not perfect, but I think it's close enough for it to deserve its five-star rating.
I'm not going to bother with writer ratings from here on in. There aren't enough episodes this time around, and from S4 onwards the number of multiple credits starts to get confusing. What I will say is that Corey Powell had a stellar debut with "Sleepless in Ponyville" but never reached those heights again, and that this was the only season of the first five with no writing input from Amy Keating Rogers.
If you go with my division of Friendship is Magic into three ages, S3 marks the end of the first of them. Twilight's ascension inevitably changes the dynamics of the show, even within the Mane Six; and early S4 will see our first sighting of the name Josh Haber, a harbinger of all that he would eventually bring. One unquestionable advance is the increasingly ambitious animation: I remember the lighting effects in "The Crystal Empire" were heavily discussed at the time of that premiere's release.
It'll be a little while now before I get to S4, since I intend that my next rewatch will be of the original Equestria Girls film. That too changed the franchise's world in its way, so I suppose this is the end of an era in more ways than one. For better or for worse, G4 MLP would never be the same again after this.
Please take it as read that this is just my opinion. I don't intend to browbeat anybody into agreeing with me. But I think it's fair to say I did not have a good time with a lot of this, so be warned before you read any further.
ReplyDeleteRight...
Looking back, I still conclude Season Three was a multi-car pile-up of a bad season. Too many of its episodes have fundamental problems, questionable elements, and terrible execution. Yet in the broader context of the series, it's far from being the worst season.
One notable trend was in continuity shake-ups. Princess Twilight is an obvious example, but there's also Discord's (and in the long run, Trixie's) reformation, Scootaloo officially gaining Rainbow Dash as a sister, Rainbow Dash finally applying for the Wonderbolts, and the introduction of the Crystal Empire and the Equestria Games. For better or worse, Season Three was the first of the transition seasons, from the James Wootton directorial era to Jim Miller's for Season Four.
I don't think most of this is inherently bad (apart from the reformations, I'm on board for the canon shakeups), but the execution left a lot to be desired. Too often, episodes felt compelled to rush to a conclusion or were ill-equipped to deal with the scope of their changes in the first place: Princess Twilight and Discord, for example, really needed Season Four to do some damage control. Even great episodes, like Scootaloo's and Rainbow Dash's, could've done with some tightening come the finish. And the introduction of the Crystal Empire is one of those big shakeups that doesn't really matter in the long run.
Quite apart from the squandered opportunities, though, this season has been pretty bad with its own standalones too. Pinkie's pool clone problems were solved in the most asinine way possible, Babs Seed ended up exemplifying the worst moral traits of the show, Trixie didn't need to be a bad guy in the first place (she was, at least in concept, fine as just a jackass braggart), and while Spike being mistreated by the writers is hardly new, it will be a looooooong time before we get our "Gauntlet of Fire" for him. Plus, if we can't have further Crystal Empire worldbuilding, can we at least NOT have an idiot plot involving the Main Six and a games inspector identified by her suitcase?
In the end, only about six episodes emerge as good in my eyes. This can't just be put down to having fewer episodes overall: Seasons One, Two, Four, and Five were twice as long but by ratio much, much stronger. Split each of those four seasons in half to make eight semi-seasons of thirteen episodes, and you still don't get the massive drop seen here. This is very much a weak season however you slice it.
As for episode ratings, I don't use firm numbers, so in broad terms:
ReplyDelete"Apple Family Reunion" and "Sleepless in Ponyville" are the cream of the crop, with "Wonderbolts Academy" and "Just for Sidekicks" not far behind. "The Crystal Empire" two-parter is also pretty entertaining. That's it for the good stuff, but fair's fair, it really is good stuff that would sit comfortably alongside any season's.
Next, "Too Many Pinkie Pies", "Spike at Your Service", and "Games Ponies Play" are mostly watchable, but let down by some serious writing flaws (badly thought-out endings, unconvincing elements/execution, character idiocy to make the plot work).
Further down are some really bad ones. "One Bad Apple" and "Magic Duel" are practically offensive in some respects (Babs Seeds' and Trixie's culpabilities are simply downplayed or excused, the mess of moral self-contradiction/double standards in the former, the bizarrely hostile treatment of Fluttershy in the latter). They have a few good touches here and there (the way Twilight outsmarts Trixie has always been one of my favourite endings, and there are at least good intentions behind the anti-bully moral), but nowhere near enough to save them.
And then there are "Keep Calm and Flutter On" and "Magical Mystery Cure", which are not only shockingly irresponsible and rushed episodes, but ones where the fallout has to be acknowledged further down the road. What makes these two especially painful is that some episodes down the road do demonstrate the potential in their canon shakeups, but never consistently enough to fully wash out the bad taste.
Overall, I don't think any one thing sunk Season Three. Compared with the thirteen-episode halves of the seasons around it, it mostly just comes across as unluckily bad overall. There might be some backstage staff reshuffling that coincides with it. Either way, it's definitely the weakest single patch of the first half of the show, and compared to what will come along further down the road, it's hardly the most heinous.
A weak season, but with enough good episodes that a sizeable chunk of it can be salvaged.
During the earlier parts of 2020, I tossed around the controversial opinion that I found it to be not the least of Seasons 1-5, placing it ahead of Season 5. Now, I still haven't critically rewatched Season 5, and I fully expect all the problems I have there will remain. But, having let time settle the last seven months, I feel I have to return to consensus and slot Season 3 into 5th place. While I wouldn't go as far as Perfect Present's "weird garbage" take, or Impossible Numbers' "half of this is bad enough that I say NO" take, almost every episode this season has a severe problem, or a "yes, BUT" that, even if one's thoughts are positive, makes itself known. Of course, it's not some episode's faults that the problems come from not expanding on aspects sufficiently down the line, like the Crystal Empire Lore or Discord's return - but we still tend to associate them with the episode that brought those things into the mix. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteSeason 3 was chaotic behind the scenes. With Faust gone and with Season 1 just having finished airing, Hasbro knew they had something truly special, and thus started the show's overt commercialisation. Meghan McCarthy was struggling as the new Showrunner (probably the main reason she only wrote "The Crystal Empire"), mostly with the time crunch, not helped by also being Story Editor, whereas previously Faust had cartooning professional Rob Renzetti there (probably still one of the less celebrated show staff, proportional to his contribution).
Nearly enough premises were proposed for a full 26 episodes before Hasbro decided to cut the series off at 65, meaning many outlines went unused. They also decided that Twilight would become a Princess because Buy Our Toys, forcing a retooling of the pre-alicorn version of Magical Mystery Cure, where the first two-thirds composed the whole episode. They also started stomping down on weighty continuity for fear of Continuity Lockout - yes, 5 whole seasons before the Pillars never did anything after Shadow Play for this reason, this was already being felt, with the original plans for the Crystal Empire being Chrysalis’ former domain, and its citizens being her former underlings/minions/slaves - well, those plans were rejected.
[All the above points are 100% true, by the way. Would the changeling thing have been better, I don’t know, but with MLP's future now shaped for YouTube-sized kid bites, continuity's unlikely to expand any time soon. If I felt especially cynical, I might say Hasbro took advantage of the fact that Meghan McCarthy, having just got a big promotion, was less likely to fight their demands than Faust.]
With all that going on, small wonder the show mostly stuck to smaller slice-of-life episodes to get by, with everything changing around it. And smaller wonder still that time crunch meant episodes missed that extra polish to remove troubling elements, or that problematic premises got approved in the first place. I still enjoy Season 3, but it is a notably flawed version of itself. I think I had kept it above Season 5 because the problems there are largely embryonic to its root, while with Season 3 it's more of an episode-by-episode thing. But after reflection, most episodes have a problem that is severe, or one that, though worth defending, is understandable as to why it annoys many. But I'd still take this season over the last four, as if it needs stating.
DeleteAs for the individual episodes? Despite using numbers myself, I'll steer clear of them here, as my ratings of many episodes have changed slightly in the last 7+ months.
"Sleepless in Ponyville" is obviously best of the season, almost no one ever debates against that. I still find the two parts of "The Crystal Empire" to be really good, with a lot of the flaws people have with it coming from trying to slot it into the mould of "A Canterlot Wedding". Unlike other Season 3 episodes, the crystal empire being poorly served going forward can't be blamed at this premiere at all, as it handles itself as it should in isolation, whereas Discord's return and Twilight's ascension most assuredly do not. And "Wonderbolts Academy" rounds out the really good episodes from Season 3. Also "Just for Sidekicks", while plain and simple and unremarkable in some aspects, is a really solid comedy hijinks episode, as things go.
It starts getting rougher here. I honestly do think both "Too Many Pinkie Pies" and "Magic Duel" are good episodes, but I do acknowledge their commonly-found issues. I just don't find them episode-killing. "Spike At Your Service" is one I find good and solid, and not nearly the fandom write-off it is often claimed to be, and has a lot going for it, but yeah, that five-minute stretch of klutz Spike is dire. "Magical Mystery Cure" has dropped to 'good but very flawed' for me ever since my take on the songs dropped, and I would still in a heartbeat wish the episode and its changes to canon never happened. Ditto for "Keep Calm and Flutter On".
Rounding out the season for me is "Apple Family Reunion", where I simply don't care for the way Applejack is written once the reunion starts. Of all the episodes this season, it remains the one I am most unsure of my take, especially after Impossible Number's writeup on it. No such qualms about "Games Ponies Play", which is boring and uninteresting, and "One Bad Apple", which totally mucks up its message from the bullying either being too strong or too mild at every point.
As a closing statement for the season, and the show going forward: I've no issue with the show introducing continuity changes, status quo shake-ups, and elements that require more serialisation. But they need to have the right effort and approach, and cannot be done the same way as any ordinary standalone episode. Between Hasbro being tight on it, and the staff, especially Jim Miller, treating the show as just fun and silly times, its starts getting really rough in the seasons to come.
You know what? I'm just now getting a bunch of new post notifications from this blog, but I'm damn sure I've already read the comments. c.c wtf
ReplyDeleteI imagine it's just that Blogger is being Blogger. Just now I discovered that a button I've used for years has disappeared, forcing me to use an irritating workaround every time I want to schedule a Ponyfic Roundup. Oh well.
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