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| On the day of rockening, it's who dares wins |
S5E20: "Hearthbreakers"
My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 7.9
Thoughts: The debuts of Limestone and Marble Pie, not to mention the untouchable (kind of) Holder's Boulder. It's very much a Christmas episode, despite going out in October. The story is quite simple, and in some ways Applejack's faux pas in trying to push her traditions on the Pies might sit better earlier in her FiM career. Still, there's a good deal of warmth here, and even if MarbleMac was brought to quite a harsh end down the line, it's a cute quiet pairing here. (Why a few fans found it uncomfortable beats me. They're about fourth cousins at closest.) It's a really pretty decent episode for Pinkie Pie, which rarely hurts an ep, and Maud's friendship with Apple Bloom is nice. Actually that's something I wish we'd seen a but more of over the series. One or two nice bits of round-the-edges world-building, and this is another episode with custom end credits music. I wish that aspect hadn't been dropped later in the show's run. "Hearthbreakers" isn't a spectacular episode by any means, but the characters are appealing (yes, even you, Limestone) and I think it does what a festive ep needs to. I'm comfortable letting it keep its three-star rating.
Choice quote: Maud: "We have rock soup."
New rating: ★★★
Next
up is "Scare Master", which I think has aged reasonably well. Of course, I reserve the right to change my opinion entirely once the rewatch article goes up!
| assy's "Everypony loves royalty!" |
S5E14: "Canterlot Boutique"
My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 7.9
Thoughts: After the first of FiM's
irritating mid-season hiatuses, we did at least have the stalwart Amy
Keating Rogers in the writing saddle for the show's return. It's a good
episode, too, albeit perhaps the least of the run from "Amending Fences"
to "Rarity Investigates!" We see Rarity in her fashion designing mode
more centrally than since "Suited for Success", and personally I prefer
Canterlot as the big target for her than Manehattan as happened later in
the series. Sassy Saddles (voiced by Kelly Sheridan, incidentally) is a
decent sidekick, albeit not one with enough sass to be truly
memorable. A hint of a troubled past career ("another failed boutique"?)
but she was neither unpleasant enough to be a "love to hate" pony or
sympathetic enough for the redemption to really click. I still don't
like the very last joke, which is a bit too close to "let's make fun of
the weird-looking pony" for comfort, though it wasn't AKR's fault. A
couple of the other shop customers were fun, though, especially the
gothy Moonlight Raven. One small criticism of Rarity: the customer who
complained her Princess Dress wasn't what she ordered was correct,
yet she was portrayed almost as the bad guy for saying so. Still,
overall the episode's core plot of "creative job made into a chore" was
fine and appropriate. It was executed pretty well, there's a nice song by Jona Lewie and even though it's not an outstandingly memorable episode it is good. I think it's perfectly worthy of a very solid three. No change to this ep's star rating!
Choice quote: Rarity to Twilight: "In every poll Sassy Saddles took, you were the most popular princess!"
New rating: ★★★★★
Next
up is another Rarity-centric episode, "Rarity Investigates!" – it's
widely seen as an excellent ep. Certainly in 2015 I agreed with that
consensus. I hope I shall have at least as much fun with it this time
around!
It's not the distance of relation that's the issue, it's the fact that Pinkie Pie spends the entire episode (plus, y'know, Pinkie Apple Pie) shouting "WE'RE COUSINS! WE'RE RELATED!" so it kind of draws attention to it. It may not legally be incest, but it still feels gross.
ReplyDeleteAnd then you get to that one episode down the line and Marble's just like, "All I wanted was to bang my cousin!" I'm glad they gave Big Mac another love interest, but this one never should have happened to begin with. :| Anyway, Maud and Apple Bloom being friends is great and Limestone is the best. 5/7 it was okay
I don't want to get too serious in a My Little Pony blog, but it has struck me that the majority of the people I've noticed get uncomfortable about this are American. Our own Queen and her late husband were both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria. Talking of, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were first cousins. At that point, yeah, I start to get a bit queasy. But MarbleMac? Allowing for Pinkie being Pinkie? Nah. I really, really don't.
DeleteThat's not good either D:
DeleteThis assumes you interpret it as romantic in the first place. Which, you know, 90% of the fandom will do with ANY character interaction, no matter how innocuous.
DeleteI would really like to know how "two characters blushing and not making eye contact when they're around each other" followed by "one character gets a girlfriend, which makes the other character sad" can be interpreted as anything other than romantic attraction.
Delete"two characters blushing and not making eye contact when they're around each other"
DeleteWell, let me think... Shyness. Embarrassment. Difficulties talking. Can't imagine how that could canonically apply to these two, of course.
"one character gets a girlfriend, which makes the other character sad"
Written by an entirely different writer, several seasons later and after major staff turnover, during a phase in the show's history when their approach to continuity was basically flushed down the toilet in any case, and the one romantic pairing they settle on was a crackship out of nowhere. I could go on.
Seriously, I know this might be hard to believe, but not everything has to degenerate into shipping. I thought it was a straightforwardly sweet platonic depiction as presented, whatever canon retcon and a predictable fandom tried to pull later on.
For all that I am often eager to defend Nick Confalone – he frequently wrote some of the best episode of the S6-9 slump, and given it got saddled with specials and shorts that prevented any buildup of narrative momentum, he did a reasonably job with EqG too – his FiM writing career didn’t start off on the best note. We all know “Party Pooped” is a uniquely frustrating episode (though I can see how someone could enjoy the Yaks there, where they’re just a joke and their “worldbuilding” isn’t meant to be taken seriously), but I was surprised, on the rewatch, to find this episode somewhat frustrating to watch too.
ReplyDeleteIt’s a pity, because there’s a lot that’s great about it. Just about everything with the Pie family is a treat. Maud proves, once again, how funny she is in a supporting role. The one-note jokes of Marble as Fluttershy 2.0 and Amish Parents could wear thin pretty quick, but the episode wisely keeps them restrained from overindulging. And then there’s Limestone – no, I don’t go nuts about her the way many do, but it’s easy to see why she was quite the hit with a lot of people. Only in a supporting episode of FiM could you have such a grouch that doesn’t have to get reformed by the end, but instead remains grumpy but does show a softer side at the margins (and for the record, her scene in “The Maud Couple” is just about the only worthwhile thing in that episode – guess what else Nick Confalone wrote?). Every single interaction Pinkie has with Limestone is a jewel, you really get a sense of how they would have interacted growing up.
And I would be remiss to not mention Apple Bloom’s relationship with Maud, some of the worldbuilding (I’m even willing to forgive the “Hearth’s Warming Eve” recap, because it adds info and is in a cute stick figure pop-up artstyle, though it would have been even cuter had it been done in live-action, rather than being faked in Flash). Plus, quite a few of the jokes – Granny Smith wanting another husband was a bit I’d totally forgotten. Big Mac and Marble Pie being a thing? Eh, no reaction here, it’s just a one-off joke. Nick Confalone stated he wanted to imbue this episode with the feeling of the first two seasons, and while it’s a bit too elaborate for that to really fly, it is somewhat present in the “why not?” approach to much of the jokes and writing. Also, this is a reasonably good rendition of Pinkie. Any episode with that nineteen-hooves gag would have to be.
And yet, the hammered-in nature of the overall story (the first act alone is very transparent in how it’s setting up the pieces), and how it requires Applejack to just not get how the Pie family traditions are important to them and it doesn’t matter if they’re different (okay, a little of that’s on Pinkie for not explaining anything, but AJ’s still blind as a rock here), make large chunks of it quite insufferable. It might fly better if this all felt better-constructed or that there was a concrete point being said, but the episode’s oddly unfocused in what this conflict means beyond “rock farm family traditions that could only fly in a cartoon”. Not saying there aren’t ways to reconcile this – I found a fascinating discussion by GapJaxie on it being a rich family spending the holidays with a poor family is so insightful – yet even I can’t buy any of that being in the episode itself, and even if it were, it doesn’t reduce the cringe factor. And the overt focus on Applejack & Pinkie means the others Apples often don’t chime in even when it feels they would for this script. Especially for Granny, who should know to call Applejack out on how she's behaving here.
I wouldn’t want to overstate how poor that aspect is – this is still leagues better than “Party Pooped” – but it did knock this episode down a few more pegs than I’d have guessed. A solid episode all around, but one it’s better to stick with the select highlights over a full rewatch.
and for the record, her scene in “The Maud Couple” is just about the only worthwhile thing in that episode – guess what else Nick Confalone wrote?
DeleteWow, hit that nail on the head! :)
Amazing to think that the Apples would be the rich family in this instance. <.< Perhaps it's just a relative comparison. No pun intended.
"Hearthbreakers" – Production Changes
ReplyDeletePREMISE
Yet another one-paragraph pitch from Meghan McCarthy (can you tell she was busy this season?), and this carries two interesting differences. One is the Apples sharing their traditions and the Pies finding them equally weird, but the big one is Apple Bloom and Marble being the focused characters, hitting it off due to their shared experiences of being baby sisters, and being the ones to bring the families together despite their different traditions.
OUTLINE
Most of this outline is already a perfect match in scene-specific details and prototype dialogue. Like many outlines, it has an extra opening scene before the one we got, of AJ/Pinkie walking through town saying what they love about the holidays before they meet and say it's spending it with family. And the ending scene is totally different: in place of the shared meal and bonding back in the Pie household, we get AJ/Pinkie retelling what happened to Twilight/Spike and how they have a new shared tradition (getting a "now THAT's a weird tradition" reaction, all while Spike is gutted at having no presents to open since they did so yesterday, something Twilight comforts him about as she does every year. This last scene sticks around until the polish script, somehow.
Otherwise, it's mostly just little differences. There's a few remnants of the Marble/Apple Bloom plot line, mostly in them getting the shared crying moment, with Apple Bloom hearing the origin of a tradition (chipping the dolls from Holder's Boulder to mark settling the farm here) that changes AJ's mind. AJ gets her family to help renovate the farm overnight, the Pies politely eat and praise the butter the Apples brought before going back to their rock soup, and the flag game is feats of strength which Pinkie wins this year. Limestone also is barely mentioned or developed at this stage.
SCRIPT
The great majority of the dialogue matches already! The 1st draft does have a few scenes that are different, most notably the Apples and Pies searching for a rock. Igneous' tale of how her met Cloudy is here at a Rock Con dressed up as a rock (yes, seriously), Maud likes to prank Apple Bloom that her Cutie Mark has vanished (yes, seriously), and Marble gets talkative around Big Mac, as him not speaking relaxes her (her "Mmm-hmm" thing wasn't yet established). Granny still recites a different tradition (here the rock soup thing, basically an accident the Pies decided to keep up). The name of the town (Rockville) is also name-dropped at one point. Also, the packing up/fixing the farm scenes after the act break are swapped in order, the Apples at the station rather than upstairs.
Usual steps for the rest: Draft #2 changes most small dialogue but holds on to a few of the bigger changes, the Polish draft eliminates the few different leftovers (and scraps the ending scene in Ponyville for a more appropriate one on the Pie farm), and the last drafts make or or two tiny tweaks.
[animatic-stage changes and final thoughts below]
[continued from above]
DeleteANIMATIC-STAGE CHANGES
Despite a 29.9-page length, not too many cuts with this one.
* Granny wasn’t sleeping on the train ride – she was awake, and requested an overtly sweet treat from the cart pony. To which Apple Bloom told her to slow down, and Granny said she had a sweet tooth, spitting out her dentures and grinning, revealing one remaining blue tooth in her mouth. Maybe this was axed due to not fitting her mouth in prior episodes, or being somewhat disgusting.
* When settling in upstairs, AJ had pads of butter in her suitcase, saying the Pies’ taste buds are in for the royal treatment with their homemade apple butter. Before they enter the kitchen, Applejack starts to say she brought it for the rolls, but stops on seeing the rock soup. Later, she offers it, but Maud says it would overpower the rock’s flavour. This was the buildup for what Limestone serves at the episode’s end, hot rolls with apple butter – in the final cut, it lacks context.
* When Pinkie makes Limestone the judge of the flag contest, Limestone retorts that it’s obvious, as she’s the only one who does anything around here. In the same scene, each Pie gets brief “we know what we’re doing” dialogue with the Apple they’re paired with as the hunt begins.
* When Holder’s Boulder rolls off, Pinkie reveals she found some presents that were hidden – now smashed under the boulder.
* The end suggested an Iris Out joke where Pinkie would poke her head through and say “Happy Hearth’s Warming, everypony” to the audience. Perhaps this was cut once they had a Season 5 release schedule and knew this episode wouldn’t be airing anywhere close to Christmas.
Notable board additions/changes:
* The scene at the train station before Maud arrives was originally on the train before it arrived.
* In the script, when the Apples return, they show up pushing the boulder when the camera pulls back. The animatic removed this detail.
* Some visual details – Pinkie going down the chimney, Spike standing on Twilight to get a book, Granny snoring on the train, Pinkie’s nineteen hooves, Limestone death glare to Apple Bloom – were board additions, although most were in the script.
* Andrea Libman occasionally makes small but meaningful changes to how Pinkie delivers things. A good example here is changing the line “I’m picturing it, and I love it!” to “Picturing it… Loving it…!” So Pinkie. She also improvised what she says when straining to push the boulder.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
While the Premise certainly indicates quite a different episode (I'd guess an Apple Bloom/Marble Pie episode wasn't used once they decided they had enough Apple Bloom-centric episodes this season), this has to be one of the least-changed episodes from the outline onwards. I do think that's mostly a reflection on Meghan being busy with other things. Namely, that the monstrosity that was the writing of "The Cutie Re-Mark" had started to rear its head by now.
Certainly, some of the weirder moments or those that wouldn't fly (Rock Con? Maud pranking Apple Bloom?) got wisely changed as this progressed, and many of the board additions were great, as always. But the script's massive issue of it requiring Applejack to be insufferable and thick was baked-in from the start, and the odd over-focus on her and Pinkie to the exclusion of much of the rest of the cast was always a presence too. Were it not for that Premise, this would be the most uneventful script production this season.
This episode was nicer for the little touches around the edges than the main feature. I did really like Apple Bloom and Maud hitting it off, and I loved the way all the Pies just kind of humored Limestone's shout of "I'm in charge!" in a way that suggests they're used to it.
ReplyDelete