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| "Didn't I already do this five seasons ago?" |
13 Aug 2016
My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 6.1
Thoughts: Another episode that was generally rather poorly received by the fandom, and frankly I was surprised to look back and discover that I'd awarded it three stars in its day. This was the only episode ever written by F. M. DeMarco, though they had done some Littlest Pet Shop work before. Maybe it's that inexperience that explains Rarity's repeated and uncharacteristic use of "Dash" for Rainbow. More to the point, it's also much more a S2 or so episode than an S6 one; Rainbow's character feels regressed. (So does Fluttershy's timidity.) A few of her pranks are amusing, such as the one she pulls on Pinkie – and the cookie one isn't the worst, really – but the brick in Mr Cake's burger is plain vicious. That's a prank for Bugs Bunny to pull on his enemies, not for Rainbow Dash to pull on a sympathetic MLP side character. The ep's pacing is rather rough, Dash isn't strong enough to lift a huge rock, and there's one of FiM's thankfully extremely rare fart jokes. On the plus side, the moral itself is fair enough, I liked Harry and the Filly Guides, and the score is atmospheric, with custom closing credits music returning. Best character this time is probably Pinkie Pie, who is significantly more sympathetic than Rainbow. This isn't a dreadful episode, and I think it's better than the last one. But it's being bumped down to an upper two. It just has too many little problems to get more.
Choice quote: Rarity: "They're probably all in a cookie coma right now."
New rating: ★★
Next
time, I'll be rewatching "The Times They Are a Changeling" – which brought us the first appearance of Thorax. Most see this as a step up again, and I'm expecting to do so too, though I didn't love the ep first time round.
I was just impressed they finally did a zombie thing. :)
ReplyDeleteI *wish* this felt like S2 episode.
ReplyDeleteOn initial watching it was about this point that I lost a lot of confidence in the series. One or two duff episodes here and there I can forgive (hello there "Owl's Well That Ends Well" or "Baby Cakes") as long as there's good episodes around them. And I was willing to give the odd misstep early
in Season 6 a pass, especially since the new script editor was clearly still finding his feet. But this episode coming immediately after "Cart Before the Ponies" and in a series where the only really standout episodes had been successful through high concept premises, made me start to doubt how capable the team were of getting the bread and butter aspects of the series right. In a nutshell, even though I continued watching, it was about here I stopped being *excited* for new episodes.
"it was about here I stopped being *excited* for new episodes."
DeleteNo idea how many people would agree with me, but I think Season Six in general was a pretty wobbly drop after Season Five. Not completely bad, but definitely a point where a lot of people would agree with you.
Definitely a point where I think a lot of people would agree with you.
DeleteFor what it's worth, I've never disliked "The Mysterious Mare Do Well" nearly as much as most folks. Not an episode I'm ever eager to revisit, and it's got some weird anomalies with how Ponyville and the character normally operate. So I guess I should be more receptive to this, very much just a weaker version of that episode, then most.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's… eh? I'll give in credit in that it's not as bad as I remember, but the good points are still largely overwhelmed or at least muted. The early stretch is particularly dire, as that's why Dash is at her most insufferable; outside of a few choice moments from Fluttershy and her friends, there's hardly anything prior to Dash's elaborate pranks getting into full swing (the cake, moving AJ's bed, etc.) that elicited a positive reaction. And it's not even just that Dash is regressed, it's that it's all so one-note and just "because" (compare and contrast to the pranking in "Griffon the Brush Off"). In particular, the meeting in the castle I was thinking "what's with the dialogue here? There's far more fun ways to express the same points, never mind Dash just rebuffing any accusations in ways she ever did, not even in Season 1".
Thereafter, the episode suffers more in my mind from being padded then anything – the TV-Y zombie stuff is amusing at first, but it really feels like they couldn't come up with much more and just repeated a lot of the same notes in the back half. Same goes for stating the moral in a long-winded way (that's another thing people miss when they say this should have been a Season 2 episode – the dialogue would have still missed the flair more common back then). Mostly, a lot of this episode, once you get past Dash's characterisation, feels on autopilot, and while good grace notes pop up every so often and almost threaten to get me engaged, there's not nearly enough of them. I think it's telling that despite the movie genre parody (something that people pinpoint as a key thing they remember about, say, "Rarity Investigates!), people tend to largely forget this one exists. Whether that's preferable or not to "The Cart Before the Ponies", which would have totally worked without its one key characterisation decision for the sisters, ad is remembered primarily for that debacle, is up for debate.
Also, the ponies' desaturated coat colours just flip when they drop the act in front of Dash with no explanation.
Reading this comment, I realize that the reason I never had much of a problem with this episode is that well before it aired, I had already written Rainbow Dash off as a terrible pony, and so her behavior wasn't really anything out of the ordinary as far as I was concerned.
DeleteI agree with Mike Cartoon Karma on this one, especially regarding the early stretch. This is not character "regression": this is just plain getting the character wrong. The "Griffon the Brush-Off" episode had Rainbow easily back down from pranking Fluttershy with a squirtle, simply because Pinkie asked her not to; no way S1 Rainbow is pulling a horror scene prank on her and then callously dismissing it even against a full-friends intervention. Just no. To say nothing of her going full jackass on everyone else.
ReplyDelete(Heck, why focus just on Rainbow? I disagree with you re: Pinkie's depiction, Logan: she feels off this episode too, being too willing to take Rainbow's side despite all the nonsense she pulls. Again, just compare with "Griffon the Brush-Off", when she definitely had limits and some compassionate concern towards victims like Spike and Fluttershy, rather than here where she's blatantly on Rainbow's side and only goes against her behaviour with peer-pressured reluctance).
It's yet another sign of the staff changes that mark the second half of the show, wherein the writing and editorial/directorial teams are dominated by people who were barely present in the first half of the TV series (most of them stepped aside during Season Five). Their lack of awareness for continuity, character development, and other show elements becomes more and more apparent as the series goes on. Hence Rainbow coming off as more abrasive - even antisocial - than usual.
Get past that dire starter, and...
What I originally wanted to say was that the zombie followup is where the episode gets good, using a clever means of invoking traditional zombie tropes without breaking the show's child-friendly setting, as PresentPerfect points out. And it's certainly the entertaining part of the episode, including a fun game of "spot the pop culture reference!" (For instance: it's no coincidence the climax occurs in a boarded-up barn, reminiscent of the house siege in the original Night of the Living Dead).
But then again, I'm mindful of Mike's point that it just doesn't stick the same way "Rarity Investigates!" did. On reflection, I think part of it is because the genre mix-up comes across as more random than clever. There, the film noir celebrity setup turned out to be tailor-made for someone like Rarity, an act of genius fusion between a glamorous character and a genre derived from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Meanwhile, athletic Rainbow Dash and zombie horror and jackass pranks collectively don't have nearly the same alchemical power.
I guess the other reason it doesn't seem to stick as much in my mind is because of the weaker presentation. Sure, it hits the right zombie horror genre notes, but apart from the cookie fixation angle, there doesn't seem to be much to get excited about. Defusing the whole zombie outbreak as an elaborate prank doesn't help: at least when the one-off antagonist Wind Rider came and went, he was a genuine threat and had an impact on the plot, instead of turning out to be a diversion and an overelaborate second group intervention.
Basically, I strongly want to like this one just for the novel use of the zombie genre approach, because using the horrific hunger-inducing special cookie as the source of the plague is a fantastically creative idea. But virtually nothing else attracts my interest: characters feel way off, the zombie stuff is competing with its trivial framing device, any sympathy for either side is thin on the ground (seriously, the townsponies still feel like they're jumping to an extreme), and the moral boils down to the primitive "don't be an inconsiderate jerk". Even small stuff bugs me: the CMCs being in the Filly Scouts feels like a detail that comes out of nowhere and is thrown in just for the heck of it.
As for the inevitable "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" comparison: I'm more inclined towards that one.
DeleteSure, this time the ponies talk to Rainbow first before pulling their stunt, but this stunt feels way more mean-spirited than the attempts to cover for Rainbow's increasing carelessness in heroism, so it evens out there. Plus, I think Rainbow's surprisingly detailed emotional arc over the S2 episode feels more natural than her Scare-'Em-Straight callousness here.
And while this is more personal bias than objective observation, I'm not bothered by technological anachronisms (most obviously the first appearance of the Ponyville dam) or the weird accident-a-day approach. Heck, the latter could work as a long-term montage, and I find it feels more consistent with the general show approach of "weird stuff keeps happening in/around Ponyville" presentation of the rest of the series than the townsfolk deciding to traumatize someone to get their point across.
It might just be my early-seasons bias talking, but: point goes to "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" on this one.
I don't really have much to comment on about The Cart Before the Ponies that hasn't been said already, so I've decided to skip that. 28 Pranks Later, however...!
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what I was thinking when I first gave the episode a 3/10, because this episode is absolutely abhorrent. Basically, nopony is in the right here. Rainbow Dash practically forgets what she'd been told about Fluttershy in Griffon the Brush Off (which, frankly, wasn't a great episode to begin with, even by season one standards; sorry), and everypony else is just as bad for getting back at her for her pranks. Seriously, what if she'd accidentally killed someone?
I get that they wanted to fix one problem with The Mysterious Mare Do Well, but, in a clever(?) dose of irony, it ended up making 28 Pranks Later look worse as a result. If Gauntlet of Fire was a rewrite done right, this is a rewrite done wrong. Horribly wrong. And that makes it the worst episode of season six for me.