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| We only see it once the danger is over, but swamp fever's final stage is real Nightmare Fuel stuff for MLP |
S7E20: "A Health of Information"
23 Sep 2017
My original rating: ★★★★
IMDb score: 8.0
Thoughts: Two Zecora appearances in a row! More to the point, though, this was and remains my favourite Pillars episode and one of my favourite Fluttershy starring roles from late Friendship is Magic. It's credited to Sammie Crowley and Whitney Wetta, making their second and last appearances after the okay-ish "A Flurry of Emotions". This one is better. For one, the stakes are very high indeed: swamp fever's progression is about as close as FiM gets to explicitly saying Zecora's life is in danger. Indeed, there's more jeopardy later when 'Shy herself is infected. She has a really meaty role this time, showing lots of initiative and determination – though a little less common sense when it comes to sleep, as both Twilight and Cattail point out. Meanwhile, we've heard about the excellent Mage Meadowbrook and her clever realisation about the flash bees, which Fluttershy later works out herself. Not everything is perfect – the bees being yet another conveniently magic-resistant thing made me groan. But so much more is good, topped off with a solid, relatable moral. I am more than happy to maintain this episode's four-star rating. It's still one of my favourites.
Choice quote: Twilight: "Anypony who lives in a tree is okay by me."
New rating: ★★★★
Only one more show episode before I rewatch the G4 film! That ep will be "Marks and Recreation", which is one I've gone back and forth on a bit over the years but expect to find at least reasonably still appealing.
I've never gotten a definitive sense that this is widely regarded as the best Pillars episode the way Pinkie Pride is for the Keys. Even The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone, though usually regarded as just "the better one after the weaker other two" of the Season Five map episodes is still usually cited as the best. Possibly because the Pillars as a concept and their episodes are pretty widely derided, this one usually just gets acknowledgement as "the not bad one".
ReplyDeleteThat's kind of a shame – I've always liked it myself, and rewatching it just now in following along My Little Repeats (unexpected evening post Logan, caught me off guard), I'm in a position to appreciate that, while it is very much a Season Seven episodes and repeats a lot of its little writing blips (an overlong first act which forces rushed pacing towards the end, overstating the moral at some parts and understating it in others, circular dialogue that short-changes the wit the show's writing used to have, plot devices that are magic resistant to generate the climax, and casual continuity breaking in Meadowbrook no longer being an Eastern unicorn as in "The Cutie Map"), the episode's strong points and decent energy are able to carry it through said blips much better then its contemporaries.
Just comparing it to "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You" last week. That episode had so much faffing about in its 9-min first act to Rarity losing her mane that I frequently checked the timecode: here, when the act break fell at Fluttershy and Twi leaving the castle, I was surprised that eight minutes had gone by. That first act could and should still have been tightened up (the cold open and the scene thereafter have the Season Seven "circular dialogue" thing), but the content within is engaging.
It's much the same for the episode as a whole: there's not a shortage of things to pick apart when thinking about it (no one's ever cross-referenced that the Mysterious Mask is Mage Meadowbrook? When Fluttershy, a smart pony but not the most studious, did it in an all-nighter?), but the share of cool ideas – Meadowbrook remains my favourite Pillar, largely for her design and that Cajun accents in animation are always distinctive – plus Fluttershy's determined, resilient, stubborn attitude (the best way to show how far she's come and where she isn't shy, when a friend needs her) carry it a lot of the way. This aspect could for sure be smoothed over, not just for the circular repetitive dialogue but for the statements of the moral, which are sometimes too on the nose and other times not (you don't really get a sense that Fluttershy would have thought of the mask sooner were she not sleep deprived, something she says at the end). But the core of it suffices.
Toss in surprisingly high stakes with dark edges I'm surprised the show allowed in the swamp fever, a neat guest character in Cattail, good chemistry between Twi and Fluttershy (even if it doesn't get to capitalise on it as much as "The Bird in the Hoof" or "The Hooffields and McColts" owing to 'Shy's stubbornness) and it'd be a workable episode at any point in the show. At this rather arid stretch of Season Seven, it really did the bizzo. I don't know if I can see my way to your rating, Logan, but it's an easy three-star (you can probably guess, but most episodes this season haven't managed that)
I don't know that this was my favorite pillar episode, but it's among the best ones. Still, I don't remember it well, and I'd be surprised if I saw it more than twice, though that's not unusual for late-season episodes.
ReplyDeleteanother episode that made me really want to make a Youtube video about how "G4 MLP is really dark, Actually"
ReplyDeleteso glad I did not do that :B
Focus on Fluttershy's quest, and this is top-level stuff. The combination of urgency, determination, and her working things out from start to finish is both a testament to her character growth and an unusually tense, dramatic tale in its own right, so it's easy to cheer her on every step of the way.
ReplyDeleteSo of course I'm gonna bitch and moan about everything else, but seriously: what is up with this episode?
Firstly, the moral is tone-deaf. I could understand "slow down and take your time" for exam rehearsal, maybe, but in a life-or-death situation against the clock, it's bizarre bordering on callous. Twilight's supposed to be one half of a voice of reason here, but the unintended effect is that she comes off like she just doesn't really care about Zecora and is just tagging along in Fluttershy's (far better sold) wake, like she got the script for a slice-of-life drama when Fluttershy got the thriller adventure script instead. It frustrates me that this is where the thrust of the episode goes after such a banger of a premise. Especially since Fluttershy's the one actually getting stuff done, it makes Twilight's borderline apathy even harder to sympathize with.
Secondly, there are some hefty contrivances here. You mention the inexplicably magic-resistant flash bees, but the whole thing with Meadowbrook is eyebrow-raising too. The idea that her works could be preserved in a swamp for centuries (take it from me: not a great place to store books you want to keep in good condition) - especially ridiculous once you learn the Pillars date back to early Equestrian times over a thousand years ago - is just one example.
Another is the idea that Meadowbrook discovered this ever-so-crucial method for collecting the cure and then neither wrote it down nor spread that information so others could use it. How dramatically (in)convenient. There's some handwaving about eradicating the disease, but that's an awfully big neglectful leap to make with something this insidious and dangerous. I mean, heck, we still have smallpox vaccines today.
So, of course, somehow this thing survives undetected in what I guess must be the Everfree Forest despite it being the most contagious thing ever, and only now is it resurfacing. Maybe if there'd been a more limiting rule to how it spreads, I could buy that, but this thing spreads like crazy once it resurfaces, so it's a big stretch it went undetected for so long even in the Everfree (I mean, Celestia and Luna were still in the castle after Meadowbrook's disappearance, so there must have been at least a span of time between the Pony of Shadows and Nightmare Moon).
Thirdly... yeah, no, I'm gonna say it anyway: the big mask finish would be a lot more epic if it wasn't painfully obvious they had to nerf Twilight - UH-GAIN - to make it work. Apparently, she spent three days offscreen trying magic, and couldn't even telekinetically remove the honey? Bullshit. At least the Maulwurf was a big, imposing monster. This is just sad.
Nerfing Fluttershy's The Stare was extra annoying too. That thing can take down a cockatrice, for Pete's sake, whose whole magical shtick is to have the deadliest stare. And Fluttershy's in full Mamma Bear mode here. Bullshit upon bullshit.
Fourthly, while not a deal-breaker for me, retconning Meadowbrook from the Season Five premiere (eastern unicorn, eight enchanted items) feels like yet another itchy example of the Haber-era's f*** it approach to continuity.
DeleteAnd lastly, again not a deal-breaker for me personally, but frankly Zecora's been such a nonentity for multiple seasons that it feels a bit weird and lacking to suddenly make her the crux of Fluttershy's motivation. I got nothing against Zecora, and this is technically more of a ding against the show as a whole for not doing much with Best Rhyming Zebra, especially in the context of being someone Fluttershy's especially friendly with, but yeah. Kinda puts an upper limit on how strong this episode can sell its conflict.
I like Fluttershy's performance in this episode, plus some of the cool concepts. I really don't like the episode's overall script, which lets those elements down. So... Fluttershy gets her four stars, everything else gets a high two at best.
if anything bugs me about this episode, it's the retcon of Meadowbrook, though it also gave me a banger of a story idea that I will never write, so it's not all bad :B
Delete@IN I take those points, though obviously they don't bother me as much as they do you. I'm not sure I entirely agree about Twilight, though. Long, long ago I was in a situation -- not life-or-death, but pretty serious, though I don't want to go into details. -- where something similar happened, and it was the apparently harsh person talking like Twi who got me to rest... which in the end was what I needed to sort things out. So I'll admit to personal bias on that one.
Delete@ PresentPerfect: Honestly, the Meadowbrook confusion is one of the episode's least problems in my opinion. It just doesn't help its case.
Delete@Logan: That's fair enough.
I think I should clarify. It’s not that I don’t agree with the moral about cooler heads. Sensible, pragmatic advice is good stuff.
What bothers me - give or take how well I’m remembering it - is how it’s played here, because going for that sort of angle is vulnerable to certain pitfalls.
And to me, the presentation feels like it’s too much at odds with it. Maybe if Twilight was the one getting results (say, up until the mask reveal to give Fluttershy her big heroic moment) or showed more signs that she’s, say, as worried as Fluttershy but doing a better job of suppressing it, maybe I could buy it. Neither feels like it’s at play: Fluttershy gets everything done regardless, Twilight too often comes off as an obstructionist or useless hanger-on, and we barely get any evidence that she’s all that invested, which all together just feels exactly like the kind of wrong pitfall that posing as the sensible, pragmatic one is vulnerable to.
As it stands, I don’t think the episode handles it well, and especially in conjunction with other narrative issues. I mean, when Fluttershy finally faints, Twilight… apparently just kicks at dust for three days, whereupon Fluttershy wakes up and picks up her winning streak right where she left off anyway.
Yeah, there’s a line about Twilight trying magic, sure, but we never get to SEE that effort, which is never going to land the same way Fluttershy’s onscreen desperation will. And it ends up tying into the nerf problem. So whether through lack of apparent effort in-universe or simple offscreen narrative contrivance, once Fluttershy wakes up and solves everything anyway, the way Twilight’s written just ends up making her look really damn useless and unintentionally hypocritical.
It comes across to me as the episode shooting its own message in the foot.
-Impossible Numbers
I'm not overdoing it, am I? Wouldn't want to crowd out the thread, so I can keep my comments in check for future reference if this is excessive.
Delete@IN I'm all right with it. I'm rarely able to think of an much to say myself, as can be the case when Mike comments at length, but what you say is still interesting.
Deleteas can be the case when Mike comments at length
DeleteAnd yet, even though Impossible Numbers wrote over 100 words more than me in response to this episode here, and was harsher than me – comment length and negativity being the commonly cited reasons why folks don't say anything to my comments here regardless of what they say – his words still got a lot of comments where mine produced the usual crickets…!
[The above is not meant to be taken seriously. I fully get that IN's words simply happened to provoke response points, and there's no controlling where and when that happens. Just before anyone start overreacting.]
Anyway, as I alluded to above, I do agree with most of IN's points, and do find many of them still properly distracting throughout the episode. Just that, unlike most Season Seven episodes, the main character base is sturdy and reliable, and often really strong, so even as the screenwriting contrivances, shortcuts and poor-in-taste decisions are, frankly, no less present than in the rest of the season, it's easier to ignore them, and so the episode wins the battle for me. If being rather close to clipping the hurdle than I feel comfortable with.
Remember Fluttershy Leans In in which I said that that episode wasn't Fluttershy at her peak? This is the episode I was referring to, and it shows just how much she's grown over seven seasons.
ReplyDeleteIf A Health of Information had aired in an earlier season, I don't think it would've been nearly as impactful and would've felt a little out of place. As it stands, it shows how far Fluttershy is willing to go in order to save Zecora's life, even at the cost of losing sleep over it and getting swamp fever herself. It's the third best episode of the season, right behind The Perfect Pear and A Royal Problem.
Also, did anyone else notice that this episode, Campfire Tales and Daring Done? all aired within two episodes of each other and were produced back to back? I'm almost certain that the writers were trying to say something there!