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| "I thought you said our show had easy songs!" |
9 Apr 2016
My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 7.0
Thoughts: Time for a CMC episode. In fact, one where the Mane Six aren't a factor at all – as in, bar the opening credits they don't have a single second of screen time. Dave Polsky was by this point the only remaining writer who'd penned episodes in season 1. Here, he gives us a pretty solid outing. Okay, the pacing isn't quite spot on, with Tender Taps taking a bit too long to get where he does. The Bulk Biceps segment isn't quite as funny as it thinks it is, either. But the underlying story about how friends don't have to do everything together is a fine one, and there's also an element of how growing up can change how friendships work without destroying them. A fairly good song as well – not a classic, but moderately affecting. Finally, any episode with both Singin' in the Rain and Snoopy nods is going to make me pleased. For the fourth time running, I'm awarding three stars, and this time it wasn't an especially difficult decision. Maybe the first part of S6 wasn't quite as poor as I'd earlier remembered it to be.
Choice quote: Apple Bloom (in horror): "The Cutie Mark Crusaders don't have any reason to exist!"
New rating: ★★★
Next time, it'll be "Gauntlet of Fire", considered by many the first really good Spike episode. I hope I still like it as much as I did six years ago!
Hm, I've always been in two minds over this one, and that's because the episode feels like two different ones put together. One of those two is a bore, the other one is where the ep gets good for me.
ReplyDeleteThe first one is, basically, Three Fillies In Search Of A Plot. It's about the CMCs acknowledging the fact that they've got their marks now and are wondering where to go next, whilst reiterating a few points we already know (Scootaloo likes scooting, Sweetie Belle's good at singing, Apple Bloom's got existential uncertainty, etc.). Also, it gets a nice enough song, though nothing memorably interesting.
To be honest, even given your good point about the thematic relevance of friends going their separate ways whilst still remaining true to each other... I find this first half utterly tedious. It feels more like a struggle in the writer's room and a confession that no, they really didn't have any plans for these three, and since prior season eps like "The Show Stoppers", "Twilight Time", and "Bloom and Gloom" already hinted at far more interesting directions than the reductive one we ended up with, the fact that even the writers seem to have nothing really new to offer is grim confirmation, where I'm standing. Couple that with an Apple Bloom mental breakdown that turned out to be a complete anticlimax, and I'm left wondering why I bothered watching.
The fact is that they're STILL obsessed over cutie marks (but with a new coat of paint), and that turns their ongoing arc into something less life-cycle oriented and more "stretched-to-breaking-point" gimmick. It just convinces me all the more that the selection of their cutie marks in "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" was a very, very bad idea, and that they should have gone the traditional route of, well, giving them less cutie-mark-centric cutie marks and just have them finally grow up naturally, or at least naturally as prior canon episodes have indicated so far.
Ah, but the second half of the ep is where the action is. Finally, Apple Bloom stumbles across someone with an actual concrete conflict, and the unexpected interest in dancing, followed by - gasp! - an actual friendly rapport with one of the students is roughly the point where I wake up and start smiling. Tender Taps and Apple Bloom are, basically, SOOOOO CUTE together! I love his simple but effective stage fright, and the fact that his resolution hinges on Apple Bloom solving her own problems in the meantime and even adopting them as part of her strategy to coax him into strutting his stuff.
That is the kind of thing I come to pony to appreciate. It's sweet and simple and focuses on character dynamics and rapport whilst even having a bit of soft realism in there (the fact that Apple Bloom both knows she's terrible and even uses that fact, without visibly improving onscreen, is a nice touch). Yeah, the mere existence of a ballet-esque dance troupe in Ponyville feels a bit off, but I'm not too hung up on more "modernizing" elements creeping in.
It's stakes with actual payoff, and I love it, especially the implication that Apple Bloom and Tender Taps will keep dancing in the future (admittedly, a sequel hook that never went anywhere, but still). Apple Bloom playing the (self-deprecating) mentor figure to someone else is the only point in this ep when I felt like the child characters were truly growing up.
So, on balance? The first half I'd probably put low down, to one-star territory (though unlike you, I liked the Bulk Biceps cameo; his repeatedly smashing through the floor was a simple but effective OTT gag), whereas the second half leaps right back into three-stars territory. So, averaging out... probably a mid-two-stars? I dunno. I thought it was a real mixed bag, this one.
It takes a lot for me to go to one-star territory. "What Abuot Discord?" level disaster. So for me I'd probably say the first half was mid-two, the second half was very easy three. As such, perhaps slightly in the lower half of threes overall but not right on the line.
DeleteThis time around, I actually watched the episode in advance of this blog, just to be able to better chime in to the proceedings. So I have pretty fresh thoughts.
ReplyDeleteThough not the most original thoughts, and frankly, not all that different from Impossible Numbers above. I'm not as hard on that first half, but it is still a very, VERY transparent attempt to try and find something, anything to continue with the CMC in the wake of them getting their marks. With every batch of transparent dialogue from the CMC on what they should do next, you can feel the flop sweat on the writers' part. This wouldn't be a good direction to take with the CMC in any case, but that the script feels very 1st draft syndrome, where it's still mechanically figuring itself out, does it no favours. It's either tedious or offensive from the reduction, and while there are grace notes (I like the song fine, and the Bulk Biceps cameo works grand – you don't seem to like him much, I gather), I return to my earlier flop sweat point. Even the act breaks know this, given how strained and out-of-nowhere the first one is.
Oh, as regards the thematic point of friends going their separate ways while remaining true to one another? There's a kernel of something here, and it makes sense for Apple Bloom to be the most into both sticking together, the most affected by the split, and the most still thinking about Cutie Marks. Right from "Call of the Cutie", she was always obsessed over them a little more than the other two, and that was mostly kept up through the seasons. But the fact that this is only a thread for as long as the song, and dismissed in a schticky mental breakdown fakeout within the same episode, makes it awfully deflating – it only works for the duration of the song, and that's it (though contrary to most folk, I find Michelle Creber's talented enough that she can make it beautiful even whilst locked to Apple Bloom's voice).
[A small headache for timeline aficionados – Apple Bloom says at the episode's start that this is their first meeting since they got their Cutie Marks, meaning this has to happen within, at most, a week of "Crusaders of the Lost Mark". Easily done, given Starlight's absent from this, of course.]
The introduction of Tender Taps does pick the episode up quite a bit, and I don't have much to add to Impossible Numbers (the little touched of characterisation for both him and Apple Bloom here are dynamite), except I'm maybe a little less enthusiastic about it; it hurts that this good material has to pause for the mental breakdown scene). More low ★★★. Though as I'm not as harsh on the weaker material, it balances out to about a mid-to-high ★★. Still, there are solid CMC episode to come in the next two seasons – they're just mostly more about them as individuals or outside of the CMC unit ("Marks and Recreation" excepted, the one successful spin on the CMCs new destinies).
Ultimately, an episode this mixed and inconsistent tends to be what springs to mind when I think of Season Six: straining to do things with characters and new status quo changes and such, and sometimes succeeding in minor ways, but somewhat more often just flopping about. Still, on the back of a decent showing last week and quite the gangbuster coming next week, I'm hoping that average can rise a little over this season's rewatch.
Yeah, to go with ★★ as well. One or two good bits in a lot of weak sauce.
ReplyDeleteI've just always felt like this one was utterly unmemorable. I've probably seen it two or three times, and I still never retain any more than "it's the one with Tender Taps."
ReplyDeleteI went in expecting to bump this down to a two, as my memories were fairly meh. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, even the first half where not much actually happened.
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