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| Early-series Twilight doing this at her library might have been fun |
S8E08: "The Parent Map"
5 May 2018
My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 7.4
Thoughts: This is a reasonable enough episode, with a reasonable plot leading to a reasonable moral. It doesn't do anything I hate, and it's nice to see Starlight and Sunburst teaming up, but by Celestia it's predictable in its overall direction. The "don't touch the books" bookshop is strange, all the more so as Firelight does handle them later with no comeback. You do wonder what Starlight's dad was doing while his daughter was off brainwashing ponies. I do like the tension between modernisation and preservation, but then I do live in an old town in Europe! As in 2018, I rather wish that had been the central conflict here. And where are our heroes' other parents? Even a line would have been nice. Some nice visuals and jokes, such as those gates, but even some of those get reused noticeably often. Not a terrible ep, but a bit flat compared with other family-based episodes like "Parental Glideance". All in all, a time-passer of an episode rather than anything more; just too predictable to be more than that. I think only a smidge above the purely run-of-the-mill, which means a top-end two-star rating now.
Choice quote: Stellar Flare: "Use your words, Sunburst."
New rating: ★★
Well now, let's see what's next on the list. And... "Non-Compete Clause". Oh. Well, it has to be done, doesn't it? I suppose. See you there!
Never liked or cared for this episode to begin with; partially due to Sunburst (one of the show's least interesting characters), but mostly for how all over the place the conflict is.
ReplyDeleteIn the first half, Starlight's dad and Sunburst's mom argue over keeping heritage intact versus progressing with the times, but then in the second half, it's suddenly about parent and child needing to reconnect. And that's where it gets a bit creepy since Starlight and Sunburst are treated like they're still foals. Seriously, the plot is all over the place to the point where the episode just... ends.
I'd say The Parent Map is my least favorite of the season thus far, but then I remember the episode that comes immediately after...
I don't dislike it quite that much, but looking at some of the other comments here I'm not out on my own at the top by any means!
DeleteNot the first time I've liked an episode more than you, but I'd be very surprised if it happens again in Season Eight. Just rewatched it this morning too off realising we were overdue for the next My Little Repeats, so it's not just nostalgia talking.
ReplyDeleteI cannot deny in principle that this is predictable and straight, and one could certainly argue parent-child family dynamics have been explored better in episodes past. But I think there's three key elements that elevate it. Firstly, it does nothing obviously, disastrously wrong, the kind of writing mistakes that when you're watching an episode you go "the episodes would have been immeasurably improved if they just made this tiny tweak". Certainly in principle the two halves of the parents butting heads over gentrification giving way to a parental conflict should bother more, but I think the episode simply has enough goods to paper over it.
Bizarrely, one of those is character. This is the first time Sunburst and Starlight actually feel like friends organically, rather than due to the machinations of the script. This is done through being rooted in their shared history, without dwelling on it. The way they bounce off each other fully conveys two ponies who may be largely apart, but dealing with old shared things like this brings they right back to their old "no awkwardness talking to each other" phase as kids, just modulated through being adults. Plus, all due respect to Sunburst, but he's rarely a pony all that interesting to watch, yet he works well here too even apart from Starlight
Amazingly for a Josh Haber-run episode, there's not a single joke about Starlight's evil activities (making it easy for those given to their own headcanons to imagine this Starlight who just had a troubled childhood and left home she as she was legally able to – I even buy Haber's statement that Starlight was a latchkey kid), and it can also have Stellar's mention on Sunburst flunking out of magic school come across as hurt but heartfelt for both of them. That feels like a minor miracle. Likewise, the parents being not blameless, but still taking some guilt and learning something, it a more balanced takeaway for a Map episode, as is the lead duo still being embarrassed by them at the end. Our Mane 6 would not be permitted that! It certainly fixes the finale of "Parental Gildence" chickening out in that regard.
And on the note of Starlight, much as there's always caveats with her reformed take even as we get further away from it (at best, besides her lack of social etiquette when it comes to addressing problems, she is still bland, or at least for the kind of stories not pivoting on character arcs for her), this is the best kind of balance of how to use her; rooted in her past without being shackled to the details of it,
Finally, everyone has their own taste, but I still find this episode genuinely funny. I chuckle at Spike's ego early on (people, tell me why it's cute/funny when the Mane 6 have moments like this, but not him?), and that plus other amusing character beats come before we even get to the hotbed of gentrification jokes. That's something I normally can't stand, but which somehow, through just being a thing for amusing bits on Stellar Flare's part (and the lengths she went to), is probably the best register for a sow like this, rather than fumbling to handle it as a plotline. The small side characters are amusing enough, and while the parents are one-note, they get good bits too.
Perhaps starring side characters with less moral obligations permitted just enough sand at the edges to roughen up the squareness of the scenario. Still absolutely a sedate, late-season episode, and it lacks much of anything standout, but one I think works, without qualifiers or asterisks.
And where are our heroes' other parents?
Jim Miller said this was because that would be two more things to deal with in an episode full of new things, in both screentime and budget. Which is totally fair. I'm guessing the lack of a line addressing this was for S&P notes, or pre-empting them.
I think this was a "just didn't really click" episode for me. I watched it, I didn't wince or groan too much, I noted the jokes, and... it drained out of my head like sand. Terrible it isn't, and I'm sure I'll look back on it quite fondly when I watch bloody "NCC", but even so.
DeleteEven allowing for that last point you made, I still think it would have been nice to work out a way to acknowledge their other parents (that didn't lead to non-kid-friendly inferences), all the more so after "Surf and/or Turf" had found a way to show separated parents without actually saying that -- but oh well, that wasn't a huge issue.
yet another episode that I loved and everyone else is meh on, it seems XD
ReplyDeleteI always took the lack of discussing other parents as evidence they're dead, because that's the kind of thing you tend not to bring up in a show like this
and, of course, Starlight and Sunburst will have two parents each again when theirs finally hook up :v
Mike likes it more than me as well!
DeleteI'm not sure Trixie would be that keen... :P
Yeah, this was just... there. I did like some things about it. The smoothie shop, a number of the characters, and Sunburst's mom had a cool design. I'm all for real horse characteristics, so I appreciated that his family had socks, but very few characters are spotted, and I think Troubleshoes was the only one with a blaze. The notes of Starlight's teenage goth phase were nice, and it's far from the first show to show one parent and never so much as hint at the other. Somewhere in the 2-3 star range for me, and the fact that I don't really care where in that range it falls probably means a 2.
ReplyDeleteI did like Glimmy's bedroom, all the more so because it wasn't hammered into us but just left as a two-second gag.
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