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| Green Lan—er, Rarity's little moments in this are always worth watching |
S4E06: "Power Ponies"
Written by Meghan McCarthy, Charlotte Fullerton and Betsy McGowen
21 Dec 2013
My original rating: 6.5/10 (=★★★)
IMDb score: 7.5
Thoughts: The only ep with Betsy McGowen as a writer, albeit sharing the spotlight with two regulars. I wasn't a huge fan of this first time around, and I still fret that it's not especially Pony. At this point, before "Rarity Takes Manehattan", Maretropolis was the first really modern city setting we'd ever seen the ponies in, and it felt odd. After all, Equestria didn't have cities like that (or so we thought) so a comic with them in was more science fiction than superhero fantasy. Still, I quite enjoy the characters and their superpowers. Everyone talks about Flutterhulk Saddle Rager, but I actually find her "You hurt a firefly, therefore I will destroy you" bit rather irritating, given she didn't get angry when her close friends were being threatened with death ("You shall live just long enough..."). On which note, I do have a soft spot for the amusingly over-the-top Mane-iac, actually. I don't much care for the more recent dark'n'brooding superheroes (or indeed supervillains) and this 1960s-style stuff is much more to my personal taste. Poor Spike/Humdrum, though: he just can't catch a break in this show sometimes – until, of course, he's inspired by Twilight pointing out how much the Mane Six trust him to come through and he ends up saving the day. So, quite an entertaining episode, yes – but it doesn't always feel much like a My Little Pony episode. And that, in the end, means it can't do better than the moderate three-star rating I gave it the first time around.
Choice quote: Rarity: "We're breaking for tea and biscuits!" Oh, excellent. Custard creams, I hope!
New rating: ★★★
Next up is "Bats!" Apparently this is not an episode that the whole fandom regards terribly fondly, but I have a soft spot for it. At least, I had. Whether I still do, we shall find out.
I literally just rewatched this one last night, and already the specifics are fading from memory fast (before yesterday, many of the plot details in my head were faint). What does that tell you about the episode's memorability?
ReplyDeleteIt's a little sad and frustrating, because an episode with this concept shouldn't be this plain and indifferent. Certainly, pacing doesn't help it - that long overdrawn prologue of 5 minutes to set up the story at the castle, coupled with the one-by-one introduction to the Mane 6's new superpowers, gives very little time thereafter for a story that's involving or has that many steps to it. So it's heavily truncated, both in the incident (it's amazing how little actually happens in this episode) and in the amount of individual fun moments given to each of the Mane 6 - Fluttershy gets two moments showing she's not angry get before Flutterhulk at the end, and Pinkie, other then being the first with their shown superpower, only sporadically contributes to the action thereafter, and never in a way that actually matters. Even C-plots that are appreciated, like Twilight slowly mastering her ice powers, get the bare minimum of screen time, and thus don't really land with any punch.
[I did, however, mainly use Zap, Rainbow Dash's alter-ego, as one of my main characters in the Pocket Ponies mobile game. A fact I put in square brackets here, because it has no effect on the review but I have no shame about making sure you all see it regardless]
What's more worrying is how… transparent, the writing and storyboarding is. An episode that's supposed to be this fun should not have dialogue and visual staging this plain and indifferent. Okay, it's mostly the writing, but the boarding and staging isn't good enough to pick up the slack. Mostly I'm talking about how repeatedly the episode hammers in Spike's story with plain, straightforward dialogue, which just makes for a decidedly undercooked "Under-appreciated Spike" story (and also with a few lapses - I'm not altogether sure, given some past episodes, that the Mane 6 would be that unaware of his desire to be helpful in the opening).
And there are some minor irritating bits too - I'll see your observations about Fluttershy only getting mad when she did, and raise it with the hand-waved explanation of how they got sucked into the comic book in the first place - even the episode doesn't seem to believe in it. A store knowingly selling enchanted comic books? Geez, just make it so it was some ancient relic they found in the castle that sucked them in!
That said, it would be wrong to deny this episode does have parts that work. The superhero action is largely amusing, if rarely rousing, and the more colourful 1960's tone is a breath of fresh air in these over gritty superhero days (on that note, I recently watched Kid Cosmic - it's a must-see everyone, check it out). Rarity easily gets all the best moments, though - clearly the board artist just broke loose with her Green Lantern powers. Mane-iac remains fun to watch, even if one can feel her bursting to break into for delicious hammy territory then the script provides. And I think the high-tech city setting is fine - the problem comes from the show getting caught between this alternate setting and tone, and that of Equestria and the Mane 7, and never quite reconciling the difference.
[For this reason, I actually prefer the 2014 Annual Comic that has an actual Power Ponies story - the comics are aimed just older enough that it can fully embrace the alternate, more hard-edged tone. Plus, it benefits greatly from not having the actual Mane 7, and the Batman and Powerpuff Girls-esque villains are a hoot.]
A sadly indifferent and altogether forgettable episode that has its pacing and focus all over the place, in the end.In many ways, a precursor to the writing and boarding treatment many an episode in Seasons 6 & 7 would receive.
You really hit it on the head. "Sad and frustrating" definitely sums it up. As much as I love superheroes, if not for the marvelous performance of Tabitha as the Mane-iac, this would be a purely forgettable episode. The comic at least shows that the setting, taken on its own, has a lot of potential for awesomeness, but as an introduction, this really falls flat when it should have soared. There was very little it had to do well, but it couldn't even do that much right. :|
Delete@Mike I actually prefer the 2014 Annual Comic that has an actual Power Ponies story -- As do I. Without a doubt I would pick that above this episode. I believe it was Ben Bates' swansong as a Pony comic artist, and not at all a bad way for him to go out.
DeleteThis was pretty middle of the road for me. I didn't mind the technology gap, and most of the characters exploring their new powers were fun. But I agree that Fluttershy's was mostly annoying, this episode was finally where I was resigned to the writers never letting Spike win, and as much as Spike is into comics and Twilight is into magic, I couldn't fathom why both were completely caught off guard by the existence of this kind of comic. An that it would suck in unwilling participants, too. The pluses and minuses balanced each other out.
ReplyDeleteI was very curious to see the differences for this one during the writing process. The Premise seems identical to the, except for lacking the "castle cleaning" framing device, with Spike finding the comic in the Golden Oak library and the group getting sucked in when he wishes he could be part of the Power Ponies (Humdrum is also called Stomper through all the documents - this must have been changed right before recording). Of course, it is only a page.
ReplyDeleteThe Outline though… where do I start? The actual incident and specifics of the episode are almost totally different, but rarely in a way that actually affects the story. Here's the notable ones:
The episode starts right at the castle, with Spike being totally sure he’s an indispensable part of the group, and stumbling across a wishing well room in the castle as he reads the comic. His wish for the others to sees him as he sees himself, and how he really is, sucks them into the comic.
There's more meta jokes, with the ponies trying and failing to physically escape the comic until Twilight concludes they need to reach the end to leave, alongside Spike realising he is Stomper earlier and pretending to be the group’s leader (with the Mane 6 taking his made-up name literally: “Professor… Um…”), and believing his porkie about a secret power that’s too dangerous to use.
After some narration by Spike of events as they happen, given he knows the comic, the group find Mane-iac, but some banter between her and Spike is enough to ‘alter’ the timeline so Spike can no longer predict what will happen. He fetches their secret weapon for Mane-iac, but it fails due to them not actually being the Power Ponies, and the Mane 6 are captured via jewels that shoot beams to immobilise the group. Act III is the same except in incidental details (The Mane 6 over classic villain traps like boiling oil, sharks, spikes, lava, crocs and a saw), with Spike, following a morale booster from the Mane 6, toppling a banner onto the jewels, freeing the group, and then disposing of the jewels during the battle. Fluttershy’s reason for snapping isn’t determined yet, and the genre awareness returns when “The End” appears in the corner and the group literally walk off the page. The Epilogue’s dialogue is slightly different in Spike being boastful of the group’s thanks until Twilight reminds him he got them into the comic. The group are ecstatic at the fun they had, with Fluttershy even wishing she could have another go - Twilight covers her mouth just in time. The episode ends on Spike gladly taking the small but important task of sealing off the wishing well room.
Since the final episode’s problems largely come from execution, it’s hard to say whether this would have been better. It’s certainly busier, and clearly would have needed compression to fit 22 mins (though condensing two Mane-iac fights into one certainly helps). All the extra superhero and comic book bits not in the final episode look fun, but might have been too much? That said, there’s enough promise here, and it's busier than the final episode. With some further tweaking, it could have produced a solid script. Then again, so could have the actual script, with less indifferent plotting and dialogue.
By the first script, everything above has been changed to be 95% as the final episode (clearly some people found the outline unsatisfactory). Lots of extra dialogue and incident throughout (the animatic notes between Hasbro and DHX state this one went really overlong), including a gem where Rarity notes Dash would have more to eat during break if she ate the food she 'packed', with Pinkie delivering an "Ooh, snap!". The only notable differences are Rarity smashing the weapon and going overboard, and a moral summary of Spike doing a comic rather than a journal entry back at the tree library that evening.
It's really hard to say whether the episode got better or worse during the process. But the broad concept and being caught between two tones and stories - that was present from day one.
The problem with this one, really, is the same as the problem I have with Daring Don't and even the Hanna-Barbera sequences in Castle Mane-ia - the more time and effort you spend on a parody/homage, the harder it becomes to distinguish it from the thing you're trying to ape. At a certain point you stop making an episode of Pony with lots of knowing winks to other media, and slip fully into actually making a mostly unexceptional example of that other media. In all three cases, there's fun to be had with the results, but I find it hard to shake the nagging feeling that if I wanted to watch a campy Saturday morning kids' action cartoon, or even a self aware pitch perfect genre parody, there are already umpteen examples to choose from that do a perfectly adequate job. The reason the Rarity parts of this pop so brightly is that they're the only real example of Pony bringing something new and actually parodic to the table, in that she really seems to enjoy the ridiculousness and artifice of this comic world.
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