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| Aw, those slippers... and Dash has Tank slippers, too |
S5E05: "Tanks for the Memories"
My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 8.3
Thoughts: It's nice, and fairly unusual by this stage in the series, to see a significant amount of an episode's plot rely on the way ponies control the weather in (most of) Equestria. Good to see an old-school writer handle it, too: this was the last of Cindy Morrow's 11 episodes. (She also wrote "Winter Wrap Up", so she can handle snow just fine!) It also felt a little old-fashioned – again in a nice way – to have the educational snippets about how hibernation works. What's best, though, is that Morrow manages to take Rainbow through the five stages of grief without the episode ever once mentioning death. Fluttershy's handling of Dash later on isn't liked by all fans, but I think it shows that where Rainbow is concerned, and especially by now, 'Shy can have plenty of self-confidence. "I'll Fly" remains a song I like although I still don't adore it, while the whole "Who's on First?" homage is great fun. You can argue that Rainbow's character is regressed a bit for this ep, especially as she suffers no real consequences for her Weather Factory sabotage, something you'd think would be an absolute no-no in Equestria. Oh, and Caramel and we got some Sassaflash too. An established non-married couple is rare in FiM, but I've always liked those two. Overall, then? Enjoyable, but not without flaws that hold it back from real greatness. Three stars last time, three stars this time.
Choice quote: Twilight: "Winter is coming."
New rating: ★★★
Next up is "Appleoosa's Most Wanted", which wasn't that popular at the time but which may gain a bit now we know what happened to the CMC later in S5...
Heh, my resolve to cherry-pick the most interesting parts for these from now on, as much as can fit in a single comment – I'm cheating already, going with a comment-and-a-half here. This episode has so few changes, and mostly uneventful ones, that it's not worth the effort to pick a small handful of uneventful things from the pile to axe.
ReplyDeleteEither way, this is still a quick read! [Spoiler alert: the next two episodes return to the usual 2-3 comments required to get everything across]
PREMISE
Actually two versions, the first of which was proposed as a musical episode with six songs. Easy to see why this wasn't used, the songs largely fall into bland "singing what we'd normally speak" territory. Otherwise, idea and rough plot is the same, just that when Dash has her idea to to stop winter, Twilight convinces her to not, as Pony life (yes that’s what is written) depends on the changing of the seasons.
OUTLINE
The first outline gives more direct spotlight to the winter lore. Instead of a song, we see the Mane 5 reacting to the aftermath of Dash undoing their winter changes (the snow the Apples put around the trees has melted into puddles, Rarity’s winter accessories have been swapped for autumn ones, Pinkie’s winter gingerbread house has been stamped into dust, and the food storage for Fluttershy’s animal friends is gone). The episode's second half deviates massively, with the others stopping Dash from fleeing to a warmer climate for the winter so Tank won't hibernate. After they catch her and explain why winter is needed (except for Pinkie, who had gone into drill sergeant mode after her treats were ruined earlier and skates by having finished restoring winter around the town), Dash relents, letting Tank off to hibernate. Thus, Act III has the others trying to cheer Dash up with a song about accepting life's changes, using themselves as examples for how they've managed. Dash picks up by the next day, helping them prepare for winter.
Easy to see why a different outline matching the episode super-close was issued 11 days later – Dash's actions play out more selfishly, the Top Gun-type air chase is rudderless, and Act III is twiddling its thumbs with lacklustre "cheer up a depressed friend material". Scaling back the lore callbacks was probably done to make the episode more focused.
SCRIPT
Uneventful changes, with the 1st draft being quite close already. 2.5 pages got shaved off along the way, through a mixture of small trims and axing a montage of Dash getting second opinions from the Mane 5 and others after Spike (a baby gurgles, Granny Smith snores, Angel laughs, and Spike slams the door in her face the 2nd time). The 1st draft has Dash's scene with Fluttershy early on split to put the 2nd half with Twilight too at her castle, but it is identical to the word, just with shared lines. Smart condensing.
One of my favourite cuts comes from here – early on, Dash wonders to Fluttershy whether perhaps Tank needs more kale in his breakfast. Fluttershy: "Kale IS very rich in vitamins K & C, beta carotene & calcium, a great source of indole-2-carbinol…but no" – she would know that kind of info! Similarly, the consoling scene in Dash's room had Twilight explain she used a cloud-walking spell, with Pinkie wearing the butterfly wings this time. Understandably, too specific a callback for Hasbro.
After that, the other drafts just make small dialogue tweaks.
[animatic changes & final thoughts below]
Forgot to title the above comment, silly me.
Delete"Tanks for the Memories" – Production Changes
[continued from above]
ANIMATIC & OTHER CHANGES
With a final script of only 26.4 pages, very little was cut. The only notable cuts include:
* When Rainbow tells Pinkie to go hibernate herself somewhere far away if she thinks it’s so cool, Pinkie muses on how far - can’t be too far or she’ll get tired and fall asleep on the way there, defeating the purpose. Later, when Dash leaves the others, Applejack muses that somepony woke up on the wrong side of the cloud this morning.
* On top of the song lyrics not being a total match (half of them are, the rest are not), it goes on a decent bit longer too, if one applies the speed of the matching lyrics to the whole thing.
* As well as by seeing more clouds getting towed in, Dash also overhears Pinkie and Fluttershy talking about Cloudsdale having enough water this year, giving her the idea. Smart cut, Dash would know her weather enough to get the idea just from the clouds being towed.
* At the end of Dash’s crying scene, she’s about to get a third wind when Twilight cuts her off by reminding her Tank needs this.
Additions or changes include:
* The sabotage sequence has a few differing visual beats, the most notable being adding Tank drifting off and nearly getting bladed.
* The final pull-out shot showing everypony having winter fun was a storyboard addition (as was Pinkie’s snow angel, among others).
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Pretty good stuff! This episode would probably not have been a good musical, and the revised plot from the original outline makes for a much better episode both structurally and in character. It does mean there's precious little else to reflect on - even the few animatic cuts are unremarkable because they're so sensible. Though I think that kale gag would have been neat – imagine it delivered like Fluttershy's freaky sewing knowledge back in "Suited for Success".
Still, it is a good thing when the process works so smoothly - clearly, everybody involved knew what they wanted with this episode. As the final hurrah from another of the old guard, good show from Cindy Morrow.
[I'll be back later today with my take on the actual episode.]
Heh, your "short" takes are still longer than everyone else put together. ;)
Delete(Not a complaint!)
"Understandably, too specific a callback for Hasbro."
DeleteWhat does that say about their return in a certain notorious S9 episode, I wonder.
What does that say about their return in a certain notorious S9 episode, I wonder.
DeleteI should clarify that the context of the lore callback regarding the wings and the cloud walking spell, in that earlier draft, was written in a very stop-the-momentum-to-do-exposition way, and one that aggressively announces itself as calling back to an episode the viewer might now have seen (at least, the kids who are the target audience might not have, given it aired 4 years prior). These kind of things actually appear in early scripts quite a bit, and tend to get excised as it get smoothed over with each subsequent draft.
As for the question… I'd say it says two things. Firstly, that by Season 9, Hasbro wasn't micromanaging the show nearly as obsessively, their focus being on the forthcoming generation (after the 2017 movie, they accelerated the end of G4). Not that they needed to, what with Mike Vogel, Nicole Dubuc and Josh Haber downstairs doing that for them on the writing end.
Secondly, I'd say it shows that the writing staff were well aware they had an absolute stinker of a script, and lazily incorporated the wings (and invented a horn suppressor) to "appease" the fans – later this would reach its apex by the out-of-nowhere reference to Tirek's father from the comics in the two-parter, never mind that the show, especially by then, frequently contradicted the comics, and even most Bronies wouldn't get that reference.
As for the wings/horn thing, they did not realise that by doing so, and allowing a unicorn to out-fly a pegasus, and another to out-kick an earth pony, they just made more of a joke out of differences between the ponies. Earth ponies especially – they don't even have physical strength in their corner any more. All on top of further highlighting how poorly conceived buckyball is as a game.
…And all of that probably doesn't even crack the top ten of mistakes made in that episode!
…See, this is why I don't like to talk about the last few years of the show. It does none of us any favours.
At the risk of making things worse, which episode is this? Clearly, my encyclopedic knowledge of the show doesn't care enough about S9 to figure it out. :B
DeleteAt the risk of making things worse, which episode is this? Clearly, my encyclopedic knowledge of the show doesn't care enough about S9 to figure it out. :B
DeleteThat would be "2, 4, 6, Greaaat", buddy. As much as I despite some episodes that season more, it may well be the most objectively bad of the lot.
And I wish I could forget as much as you did about it to have not recognised what episode Anonymous above was referring to! That would have been the dream.
At least all this produced an amusing typo above in "buckyball". I'll take it.
Just to be irritating: if the cut bit of the script says "indole-2-carbinole" then someone hasn't done their research properly. It's indole-3-carbinole that's found at significant concentrations in kale and similar vegetables. :P
DeleteJust to be irritating: if the cut bit of the script says "indole-2-carbinole" then someone hasn't done their research properly.
DeleteWhen I saw this, I double-checked. It was "indole-3-carbinole". I must have transcribed that part incorrectly somewhere along the line. Heh… Shows how little I know about such things!
Hah-HAAAAAH what a terrible goddamn episode, you are correct. Now I remember it. :')
DeleteI rarely think back on this with fondness, but for every part of it I dislike (the godawful crying scene, Rainbow committing domestic terrorism), there's at least something equal to love (the song, the clever allegory, the one-two punch of Pinkie walking through Rainbow's bedroom wall followed by "Applejack cries on the inside!")
ReplyDeleteCurse you for making an episode I cannot thoroughly hate, Cindy Morrow! >:V
I like the sensitive way they tried to tackle the topic, but I could just never get past how thoroughly destructive Dash is allowed to be with zero consequences. It's not an episode I've cared to go back and watch again. I'm not even sure I saw it more than once.
ReplyDelete