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S6E01: "The Crystalling, part 1"
My original rating: ★★★ (for the whole two-parter)
IMDb score: 7.1
Thoughts: Surprise rewatch post! Here we are in mid-2016, by which time people were just starting to wonder not only how much longer FiM had to run, but how much longer it should run. "The Crystalling, part 1" isn't the most popular season premiere, partly because it features the never very fandom-popular Flurry Heart. I didn't find her a particularly appealing pony in my original review, and I still don't now – especially since I now know there would never be much done with her character. Mind you, they never did much with the Crystaller lore either. Maybe a good job considering how trivially easy it seems to be (for an alicorn, anyway) to smash the Crystal Empire's most vital artefact! Then there's Best Babysitter Sunburst. I liked him more as time went on, but he doesn't do all that much here. Oh well, at least it gives us the more interesting subplot of the newly reformed Starlight being anxious about meeting him again. Also, Sunburst asking Glimmy what she's been up to all this time amused me greatly. Frazzled Shining Armor is predictable and a bit dull at times, but he does the job. As befits a Crystal Empire ep, too, we see Spike get a pretty reasonable run-out.¹ At half-time, even with the slightly weird fairgroundy closing credits music, this opener seemed like it still had a bit of work to do if it wanted to be seen as a classic. Three stars still, but only just.
¹ Even if he does use "millennia" as a singular, grrr
Choice quote: Starlight: "This castle looked a lot smaller from the outside."
New rating: ★★★
Next time, it'll be "The Crystalling, part 2". I know, extraordinary ain't it?
Ah, so the Season 6 rewatch begins! I suppose, as you'd stated before, the month and change since My Little Repeats: Season 5 ended was justification enough for fast-tracking this now.
ReplyDeleteAs I'd mentioned before, I won't be continuing my detailed Production Changes notes that summarise an episode's writing and animatic process. Mostly for my own sanity, though the fact of this era marking a sharp decline is also the case. And I mean that more for the evidence that Hasbro, relative to the prior two seasons, mostly left Josh Haber and Michael Vogel alone (they had a Movie to obsess over, after all), except for shooting down things they tried to sneak past (like Haber having Starlight lead a new Mane 6). So less massive development curveballs. The following four seasons, plus assorted social media comments, make it clear how little the duo (and later Nicole Dubuc) cared about the show's quality in quite the same way as those who came before. So looking through most of these scripts would be a largely fruitless exercise in "the issues were there from the start and the staff never considered them an issue" for most episodes. Which is all kinds of boring. Also, while the average script length remains about the same (29-30 pages), there are a higher number of lower-page outliers, so somewhat less animatic cuts (in Season 7, they get massively trimmed to almost all 26 pages, meaning virtually no cuts were needed, and sometimes slower pacing to pad the episode out). I might give the unused episodes at look at some point, like with Season 5.
I don't know if I'll even watch the season alongside My Little Repeats this time. I will eventually, to form a definitive opinion on each episode, ditto with Season 7. Who knows if that'll happen while this is ongoing. So for this episode, and plenty to come, I have only vague memories to go off of. What I say here will apply to both parts, generally.
This isn't, like, horrible or anything, but I think calling it the weakest two-parter to this point is pretty accurate (though both Magical Mystery Cure and The Cutie Re-Mark - Part 2 would win out on individual episodes). Cramming in so many characters who only get a few lines each certainly contributes to this being overstuffed and empty all at once, though that's homespun next to Shadow Play ahead. Mostly, this cannot help but feel like a rather weaksauce and poorly-written external conflict, with minimal connection to the character focus elsewhere. And lo and behold, Princess Twilight Sparkle, the only prior two-parter without a villain, was the previous weakest one. Mm, writing large-scale stories without a character antagonist doesn't seem to be within the abilities of this show's writers.
Flurry Heart herself is emblematic of another odd quirk late in the show's run: a toy plug gimmick inserted by Hasbro fiat, but at a time where they and their toy division were losing interest in the show, and thus not only was relatively little merch made, but the show runners were rarely forced to use the character again (amazingly, Pippsqueak was actually created for a similar reason). And given the story limitations with a baby, the writers rarely did use her, though honestly compels me to note that A Flurry of Emotions is the strongest of the early Season 7 episodes, depending on where one places the cutoff.
Oh, for a character created literally last-minute to patch holes in the prior season finale, Sunburst is pretty awesome, I won't lie (if, yes, more later then here), and there's something resembling consistent characterisation for him too. Meanwhile, this is actually one of Spike's strongest outings in ages, as he has actual authority and backbone in supervising Starlight (well, mostly), and given his treatment over the years, let's not dismiss that.
I'll save my thoughts on Starlight and for next time. Makes more sense, after we've 'concluded' her 'story' here.
Agree that not only was the premise kind of underwhelming, but the execution was as well. I probably have seen this more than once, but I'm not positive I ever did, nor do I have any urge to watch it again. I did like Starlight's anxiety, and it was the one positive thing to me. Flurry Heart was an oddity, in tat she seemed to be more of a merchandising move, but then they never did anything with that either, and she only ever had a major role one more time. Plus the "superpowered baby" plot ws as generic as those things go. I might put it at two stars, but you weren't much above that.
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