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| Some fans' worst nightmare comes true |
My original rating: ★★★★
IMDb score: 7.6
Thoughts: A fairly controversial episode, albeit one more liked than not at the time and an entertaining one until you start to question it. Starlight's in a starring post-reformation role, though "reformation" is slightly questionable given that she spends chunks of this ep mind-controlling her friends. Right at the start it's established that Glimmy is ridiculously powerful – that never did get explained. But let's face it, enslaving your friends and forcing them to do stuff is not okay however you slice it. The "magic hangover" scene near the end is amusing, though I'm slightly surprised Hasbro okayed it, but Spike's "I had no idea we had spiders in the castle" is too stupid for words. Fortunately he has some nice "Told you!" moments to make up for that. But still, mind control. What matters in this episode for me is that Starlight does face consequences. Twilight is (for her) quite angry, Dash correctly points out that you "don't cast spells on your friends!" and GlimGlam herself has to work to help make things right. That said, I no longer feel I can support my four-star rating from 2016. It's too patchy for that and the mind control is too iffy. Three is what it gets now.
Choice quote: Twilight: "Maybe there is such a thing as too much studying."
New rating: ★★★
Next
time, it's Equestria Girls' final feature film, Legend of Everfree. If you're interested in joining me for that ride, you'll be very welcome!
I can appreciate a lot of the intent behind this episode. Starlight slipping back to her standby of iffy magic when confronted with problems she doesn't know how to solve is a sound idea, especially at it leans her back towards her original, much better incarnation. What amounts to a Sorcerer's Apprentice plot should work for her. And there are details and moments to like: in a small but notable role, Spike being more sturdy and trying to direct Starlight the right way early on is a very nice touch and there's nothing to say against his role in the episode.
ReplyDeleteSome of the things the Mane 5 get up to in their hypnotised state are neat, from the rapid visuals of Pinkie's baking to AJ's derailing film/literature/history quotes (lame, yes, but amusingly so, as a one-off) to Fluttershy covered with bugs (and there are others, like the looping fountain in the last scene and the multi-location magic training at the start). And another room in the castle in Starlight's bedroom, I like that (with kites there already – depending on whether that was a storyboard detail or only in animation, that might have been deliberate foreshadowing of the script of "Rock Solid Friendship"). And the voice actors do nail their mind-controlled delivery. In a different context, or a different show, probably, it would be charmingly creepy.
…And, I'm spent, that's all the nice things I have to say about this episode.
It is basically a much, much worse "Lesson Zero", a connection I'm startled it took me this long to make (especially as most folks I know who hate this episode dislike that one, or are at least much cooler on it than the consensus). Hay, that episode even used the music from Sorcerer's Apprentice (or a soundalike, claims the MLP wiki, though I can't tell the difference) for Twilight's opening resolving getting interrupted by Spike. Putting a pin in how completely objectionable the mind rape here is, and that the show, while chastising Starlight more than most episodes, is still utterly incapable of doing more then a light slap on the wrist, this would be a dull episode even if Starlight used a different spell that had no such moral objections.
It's very mechanically paced and structured, telegraphing the beats rather robotically, and not coming up with much to actually do beside the plot. Even the opening third, before the episode-killing decision descends, is full of enough things to rub the wrong way (infinite power magic, contradictory Latin names for spells relative to past English names, tics in Starlight's characterisation, no not-plot chemistry between her and any of the Mane 5), that it just elicits a shrug. The middle third of the Mane 5 under mind control, for all it has some amusing moments, mostly just shuffles from bit to bit perfunctorily. And this is one of those episode where the fallout and reconciliation is given a whole third, and it just drags.
As would become evident going forward, all these writing slips, and especially the mechanical structure, the shift from overstuffed, rushed parts to understaffed, draggy segments, and ignoring the dark implications, are commonplace in Michael Vogel's scripts. How lifeless this all is, relative to the absolute surplus of hilarious things in "Lesson Zero" (and a much less objectionable use of magic of Crazy Twi's part there), speaks volumes. Even if one hates that episode, between all the funny stuff happening there, plus Twilight needing to be pushed to the edge to generate a doll-obsession spell, whereas Starlight needed barely any push to use mind control… ah, I'm getting ahead of myself. But it does speak to how Vogel and Haber aren't inflicting a tenth of that episode's legitimate charm onto a conceptually similar scenario.
[continued below – yep, this needs two comments]
[continued from above]
DeleteBut let's get back to Starlight. Even with the terrible Season 5 finale, and her personality now basically having to be invented as they go, off of a crappy reformation (see, viewers, this is why designing character personalities that can serve multiple episode plots and allow for good interplay is crucial! Lauren Faust did that from day 1), the broadstrokes idea here is workable. And I am charmed somewhat by Starlight in other roles before and after this. But besides the mind rape thing, the show simply does not ever really call Starlight out for her lack of empathy.
Stay with me on this. No matter what problem she's tackling, she cannot see things from other's views, and thus, time and time again, she makes terrible decisions. And in the aftermath, other ponies focus on what she did wrong, but never why, and thus she keeps doing them. All it would take is a few words from Twilight: "how would you feel if someone did that to you?". Boom, the rest writes itself, even within the confides of a TV-Y show, especially for FiM, and especially with the right timing, vocal delivery, pauses and facial expressions, which this show nailed time and time again. But nope, The Creator's Pet syndrome is that strong that Haber and Vogel don't even register this as being an issue, which says a lot about how sure they are about this material and this character, to be this blind. By the time she does show actual empathy consistently, it's Season 8 and the writing's gone off the deep end in too many others areas for it to matter.
And then… there's the mind rape thing. There are ways to make it work. Even in a TV-Y show. Even as the protagonist doing it, as unbelievable as it sounds. This is not it. All it does is further double down on Starlight 100% being a mentally dangerous, unstable personality who needs to be locked up for everypony's safety, including her own. Were I a parent, I would be a hundred times more concerned about the toxic, terrible takeaway to children that mind rape is okay and can be easily apologised for over all the imitable violence and bad language that censors always throw a fit about keeping out of cartoons.
I dunno, maybe if they'd had Starlight ostracised off of this until she earned their forgiveness in the Season 6 finale, this might have been workable. As it is, it's emblematic of very nearly everything wrong with the writing of the show at this time, and prophetic of many of the bad things to come – it's only a step from from "mind rape is okay!" to "locking up children is hell in acceptable!", after all.
Oh, and the chillax line? Yep, middle-aged writer trying to be cool and hip with the kids, alright.
[I scanned through the production documents out of curiosity, to see when and where the episode went off the deep end. The Premise didn't have mind control exactly, but Starlight was still casting spells on the Mane 5 that did such things as making her their best friend, of liking her more, or forgetting her past; off that failure, Twilight made her use no magic at all the next time, resulting in Starlight going through the day like a toddler until she asked for the Mane 5's help, and this focus gets her over her fears of friendship lessons. So, not as bad, but still very bad.
The outline is very close to the final episode, just with Spike present rather than with Twilight (though it has a fun Sorcerer's Apprentice visual of Starlight magicking brooms and such to life to assist Zombie Dash in setting up a chilling zone). I agree with his removal, him trying and failing to get her back on track got well worn in "The Crystalling". And the outline keeps the "no magic the next day" element in the final third, as did the first draft. But otherwise, the quick locking of this plot shows what happens when your Story Editor and writer are this unmotivated to do quality work and have Creator's Pet syndrome for this character.]
Okay, having been hammered over the head repeatedly with "I hate the mind control, like really hate it" for over 1,300 words, I think I get the point. You don't like this. You really don't like this. There's not much that I can say in response to a comment like yours, is there? So I won't. I hope you have a better time with the next episode (or the film if you're watching that), of course.
DeleteMind you, I am glad we never had "chillaxing" ever again!
DeleteGhost Mike: Specifically does his best to avoid just going on and on about the mind control aspect making this episode terrible, so he approaches it from a point of first highlighting everything that does work, and then focusing on other issues with the episode, namely Michael Vogel's slack, mechanical writing. And he only gives two paragraphs lasting not even 200 words to the mind control aspect (though, granted, over 400 if you count all of the Production Changes paragraphs as being on that topic too). All told, spends over a half-hour to construct a comment that will come across as insightful, fair and collected, and not a rant.
DeleteLogan, after reading Ghost Mike's comment: "Yeah, I can't really response to a 1,300 word rant on the mind control aspect here."
Well then. Evidently I have not yet mastered making my negative responses to media not coming across as rants, even when I devote concentrated effort to that goal.
[This is not a jab at you, Logan, honest.]
Still, I will concur negative responses from the same body get tiring for all parties after a while, which is one of the main reasons I'll be sitting Seasons Eight and Nine out down the line. This era's fine, because there's still enough highlights and most are just mediocre, not bad, meaning I can tackle ones like this from the aspect of "okay, but what can I say about this that's different from most folk?" Late seasons, having to use that approach for the majority of episodes, I'd just be repeating myself, or others.
As for "Legend of Everfree", probably gonna sit out? Not gonna rewatch it right now, anyway, don't have the momentum or the interest, so if I do comment it'll be purely a memories-based one like with "Friendship Games". Never seen it enough to say more than "second-worst EqG movie film after the first", the common take. And, next episode… "P.P.O.V (Pony Point of View)"…? Setting aside the dumb resolution and awkward title, the hackneyed Rashomon plot does lead to quite the surplus of hilarious anecdotes, so regressive characterisation for half the Mane 6 turning on each other like that aside, I've yet to have a bad time watching it. So, I'm looking forward to it fine. Not nearly as much as "Top Bolt" soon after, but fine enough.
It's not that your comment was unfair (it wasn't) or unreasonable (ditto), it was more that it was very long for a comment -- about twice the length of your longest of your fic reviews last week. That meant that it felt like it was kind of: other stuff, complain about mind control, other stuff, complain about mind control, other stuff, oh yeah, complain about mind control again. I can only speak for myself, but for me a bit of "kill your darlings" on the comment would have given it more punch. I kind of wondered whether you were subconsciously feeling that yourself at "Stay with me on this."
DeleteTo be clear, I'm not going to ask you to squish your comments into spaces smaller than you want to. There is a limit to what's okay here -- if you started taking up four, five, eight, twenty comment boxes then yeah, I'd say, "Come on, that's overwhelming the space and crowding out everyone else." But I know your thing isn't a couple of quick sentences and I won't ask you to make it so. Just saying that it probably has less impact for me once you go beyond one full comment box.
Well, it has been a long while since I did a two-parter comment, basically since I packed in looking into script changes at the end of Season Five, except when the episode's maddening plot choices demand I see where it went wrong ("The Cart Before the Ponies" and this). As you point out, my Ponyfic reviews are succinct, so I can and do write that short frequently. Even though it's not an apples-to-apples comparison – those being spoiler-free reviews that have to be cryptic – it's noteworthy. And with my regular "my take" comments on My Little Repeats being confined to a single comment box, meaning sub-700 words, yeah, I do see what you mean, even as much as when writing it, everything felt necessary and I'd already done plenty of cutting and streamlining to the two-parter comment as it is.
DeleteIt also doesn't help that Blogger's plain and simple layout of the text makes it kind of blur together; anytime I wrote a Production Changes comment, it always read more dreary and dull posted here relative to the word doc I composed it in. Hay, even when I've ported stuff I've said here over to a Fimfic blog, it reads better there. Point being, I'm not surprised Blogger's layout made this overlong comment that might have read fine otherwise blur together. Not diverting the blame, simply saying Blogger's comment text formatting and layout heightened it.
All things considered, you're probably right. I often feel, with longer comments like this, that if a point isn't made it'll be lost to time. But since enough parties had dumped on the mind control, if I'd only acknowledged it as "yes, terrible, but these other aspects makes the episode dull and crushingly mediocre anyways", kept the material on Michael Vogel's writing, and jettisoned the paragraphs on the mind control and Starlight never getting directly called out for her terrible instincts, it might have fit in one comment, and been better for it. Given I've been deliberately avoiding needing an extra comment box for Season Six, yeah, probably right!
Though I will correct you on the "Stay with me on this" part; that was simply meant as a counterpoint to the raised point of Starlight never getting called out for her lack of empathy, something at which most readers would think "What you talking about, Ghost Mike? Starlight feels bad when she makes mistakes." or an equivalent, and thus dismiss the point before I'd ever started. It was a humorous, tension-diffusing lead-in to the difference between feeling bad and apologising and actually feeling empathy for someone else, something that, frankly, many adults can't distinguish betwee. Vogel and Haber evidently can't.
"Oh, and the chillax line? Yep, middle-aged writer trying to be cool and hip with the kids, alright."
DeleteThat line made me realize that the Mane 6 always seemed like young adults to me, and Starlight (no matter who wrote her) always seemed middle-aged. Dunno the significance, but there it is.
This was the episode where I got to sit back and smugly proclaim, "Yep, I thought of that first," a couple of times. Starlight using the first polygonal shield spell, and Twilight using a snap point-defense one. Been there, done that. Of course, the possibility that changelings could be reformed by sharing love was yet to come. Coincidence? I'd like to think that the lizard people in the Hasbro Intelligence Agency have a file on me. ;)
"Don't cast spells on your friends" is such a lame consequence, though. I would have appreciated this episode far more had they specifically said 'mind control', nevermind actually going into detail why.
ReplyDeleteAnd since this comment is short and negative, I will share with you the dream I had last night. <.< Where my friends and I got really into Peppa Pig because "it's even more subversive than MLP:FiM!" We were hardcore watching episodes, trying to catch up, so we could go to a movie theater and see the next one as it aired. And when it did, it kind of spiralled off the deep end, there was violence and like, characters from other series coming into it. And while some of the younger audience were into it, most of the people were absolutely livid. Really crazy!
Mike's comment about "Lesson Zero" above is interesting, suggesting that people who dislike that also dislike this. So far, sample size three. You two who dislike both, and me who (broadly) likes both. Nobody yet who likes one and dislikes the other.
DeleteActually, I don't dislike "Lesson Zero", though I can see how the above would lead to that impression. My intended (and, I grant, not explicitly stated) takeaway was that virtual everyone's take on this episode would match that of "Lesson Zero" except be at least notably weaker. Be that yourself really liking LZ and liking this one fine, or PP hating it and really hating this. That has a lot of overlap with "what you think of one you broadly think of the other", of course, and often does mean in the same broad reaction territory, so I understand that reading.
DeleteThe discussion of it above was to highlight how, while the big issue for that episode and this one is the same, "Lesson Zero" has lots of mitigating factors.
* The morally objectionable mind-altering spell comes towards the episode's end after the main character had been putting up with a lot of self-inflicted stress, as opposed to at the end of the first act with only minimal such pressure.
* Twilight is shown feeling far worse about what she did then Starlight.
* The implication of Celestia's initial punishment before the Mane 5 burst in is stronger then Starlight's wrist-slap, and the moral takeaway of listening when your friends are worried about something is a valid one.
But the big one, is that episode is really, really funny, with Meghan McCarthy and the Season 2 comedy style at their peak (a style, incidentally, that helps Twilight's manic state and her spell feel more absurd and surreal then the muted, dull realism in a season like Season Six and an episode like "Every Little Thing She Does"). Whereas this, even taking that away, is only fitfully amusing, thus exposing the moral failings so, so much more.
Basically, there's far too much that works about "Lesson Zero" episode for me to dismiss it over Twilight's spell, showing that while many FiM episodes are done in by such things, it's not a be-all end-all. I can't commit to liking it for sure yet (wait till I get to my Season Two re-rewatch down the line!), but I can't dislike it either.
@Logan: I'm no help, I'm afraid, because I like both, with the slight exception of Starlight's superpowered magic coming out of nowhere.
DeleteSome people may have liked Every Little Thing She Does when it first came out, but this is one of those episodes that I disliked outright, and if anything, it's gotten worse over time.
ReplyDeleteIgnoring the obvious comparisons to Lesson Zero (which did this storyline much better), this episode feels like it came too late in the season regarding Starlight's character. What if it had aired before No Second Prances, showing her interact with the Mane Six before moving onto making friends with other ponyfolk in Ponyville? It wouldn't fix the issue with Twilight's portrayal in NSP, but it would've made better sense to give her trust issues with Starlight.
Other than that, this episode is just not interesting (then again, it was written by Michael Vogel, so I didn't know what else to expect) and is one of the most disposable in the show's history. Starlight deserved better than this...
I didn't mind this one so much. It didn't make a strong impression on me either way, but I do like Starlight a lot, and one of the things I like most about her is that even in this world of smiles and friendship, she seems like she's never that far from relapsing into evil, which this episode plays to well. Not one I'd make a point of watching again, but I thought it was average when it came out. Three stars sounds about right.
ReplyDelete