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| Aw, even matching wrapping paper! |
S8E10: "The Break Up Break Down"
19 May 2018
My original rating: ★★★★
IMDb score: 7.9
Thoughts: This was a much-needed tonic after the mess of the last episode. I'm usually not a huge fan of romance being brought to the fore in Friendship is Magic, but this story is very enjoyable. You do have to accept one or two clichés, not least Big Mac and Sugar Belle repeatedly managing to miss the simple explanation, but that aside it's fun. The Guys Night stuff is entertaining and it's always nice for Peter New to get to talk a bit. The pacing is without the long saggy periods that some episodes suffer. There's some nice dialogue, especially between Discord and Spike; and the animators managed to sneak a few same-sex couples into the celebrations (one of them especially prominent!) without US TV bursting into flames. The CMC subplot was a little more ordinary, and it's a slight stretch that nopony thought of the other "Belle" given the setup. But hay, we got a Derpy cameo! It's possibly a tad over-generous to give this a four, but I smiled a lot, so it's keeping that rating.
Choice quote: Discord: "Please! Can't you see that that holiday is a commercialised ruse pushed on you by the greeting card industry?"
New rating: ★★★★
Well, that was quite an improvement on "Non-Compete Clause"! Next time, it'll be "Molt Down", which apart from annoying my spellchecker (and me) because of the title's US spelling isn't an episode I dislike much. I can't remember much beyond the very broad-brush details, though.
I seem to recall this being one of the few late-season episodes where I found Discord more entertaining than grating, but honestly? I don't remember it too well.
ReplyDeleteI really can't remember much about this at all, aside from the very top-level plot. I don't think i saw it a second time. It seemed pleasant enough but obviously made very little impression on me.
ReplyDeleteDidn't expect another My Little Repeats so soon, so I'm just after watching this one right now.
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to pretend this episode is great, or really good in anything resembling an objective sense. There are certainly things to pick apart if one feels inclined, and now that details about it are already starting to fade, it's clear the relative pedestal me (and others) put it on is largely down to being free of the sins the Season Eight episode surrounding it commit, and that the mode of goofy, yet-sincere romantic screwball comedy it's operating in is good for a few chuckles.
Still, it is free of those Season Eight sins. The plot may be built on a hoary cliché of a contrivance, and the trivialising of the Big Mac/Sugar Belle relationship for these kind of comic hijinks does put a ceiling on how touching their scene together can be. But a plot contrivance is far better to the usual casualties of lore, continuity and especially character these writers often leave in their wake. I'll second the lack of saggy pacing: for all that this isn't full of snappy comic timing (lost since past us, that!), it keeps things moving well and uses the jokes and Discord's antics to keep things lively, even though I honestly couldn't say there's anything really funny here, gag-wise.
I was surprised by Spike too: in a subtle but pervasive way, the writing nails a unique approach to romance different from the other players that fits his upbringing, and I'm always for him taking charge and being assertive too. If Discord must be reformed and neutered, this is a reasonable way to use him; nothing like a good showcase for keeping his character around, but he does no damage and makes things funnier, which is enough.
And while the CMC-subplot is basically a sitcom B-plot (though FiM always could have stood to have B-plots more, many draggy episodes get that way from trying to sustain one story for 22 minutes), I'm kept amused by how clearly it's portraying the CMCs as tweens bordering on teendom by now. It's not just the slightly less high tones to Michelle Creber and Madeline Peters or even the bottom well dropping out of Squeaky Belle; they react to this less in the "romance is awesome, let's help the adults with it" way of "Hearts and Hooves Day", but more in the confused manner of 11/12-year-old girls with puberty hormones starting to make themselves known, and being intrigued but also fearful of it (there's more to Sweetie Belle hoping it's not Snips and Snails than just it being Snips and Snails, for one). I don't know if I can say any of that makes the episode better (the fact their character models haven't changed since Season One bar their marks does made it a weird quasi-growth).
As said, this rewatch did hone in that it's basically all empty calories, and I'm hard pressed to call it more than pleasant in the moment. But a near-total absence of anything annoying (beyond making a crackship canon and the focus of a romantic comedy of error trio of episodes, which I am intellectually annoyed by but largely indifferent to emotionally) makes it the season's second-best after "The Parent Map". Whatever "pleasant in the moment" is not where you want second-best to be ten episodes in, that is earned. The episode does preach that it's better to communicate and be earnest, after all.
Oh, extra thing: with Josh Haber and Nicole Dubuc no doubt asleep at the wheel, beyond contributing the vague episode notions and approving script as they pass by, I'm putting that this works at all largely down to Nick Confalone. He has some duds, but has proven to be easily the most reliable late-series writer, able to do pleasant comedy stories that aren't base-breaking (though he's lucky he largely only gets assigned those), seen in full display here and in She Talks to Angel, one of the few worthwhile Season Nine episodes. And that's before getting into him doing the majority of late-era EqG content, the biggest flaws of which (stuck to shorts and one-off episodes/specials, unable to build up any momentum) are beyond him. Hay, enough people even take late-era EqG over late-era FiM, and I totally see it. So praise be to the man.
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