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| Honestly, I'd be on Starlight's side at this point |
S8E13: "The Mean 6"
6 Jun 2018 (in the UK; 9 Jun 2018 in the US)
My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 7.8
Thoughts: This was one of those rare and precious occasions when the UK got an episode before the US – although the scale of early international releases and indeed leaks going on by this point made it all a bit moot. As a mid-season finale, though, this is a bit on the weak side, largely because of all the potential it wastes. Chrysalis here starts out properly villainous, as she should be, but then shows surprisingly little of the intelligence we know she possesses, not least in not nipping Twilight's plotting in the bud sooner. The Mane Six are absurdly – let's face it, unbelievably – dense not to realise that their friends are behaving way out of character, some with very obviously wrong cutie marks, and the one "maybe it's poison joke" reference isn't enough to save that. (Special boo for Twilight "We know each other really well" Sparkle here, given she personally observed something very similar happening to said friends in "The Return of Harmony".) Now, I don't think this is a terrible episode. Even if Starlight's presence is a bit superfluous, she is good value in her part. The voice work, visuals and incidental music are all excellent. Evil Twilight, more than the others, actually has a certain depth of character. The famous "melting faces" scene, even though short and diluted from the draft version, remains memorably unpleasant. The real problem here is that this is an intriguingly ambitious setup that in the end doesn't really deliver the goods. Knocking it down to two stars.
Choice quote: Starlight: "Home has books, tea... fewer bugs... a roof."
New rating: ★★
That brings us to S8's mid-season hiatus. The next Friendship is Magic episode in term of broadcast was "Yakity-Sax", which was pushed up the schedule as part of a Discovery Family promotional event, but it's nevertheless generally considered to be E18 and so I'll review it in that spot. That means next up for FiM will be "A Matter of Principals". However, before then we have the second Equestria Girls special, namely "Rollercoaster of RariJack Friendship". That one was a mixed bag for me first time around.
Yeah, this one was a disappointment. The humor in it is grasping at low-hanging fruit, and it's not even that good, plus as you said, everyone carries a really big idiot ball.
ReplyDeleteThe idiot ballery is especially annoying. I wouldn't have minded the easy humour without that.
DeleteI remember really liking this one when I first saw it, but reading others' opinions has dampened my appreciation for it. I think it was probably just a matter of something different (not to mention what's maybe the darkest scene of the show's entire run!) coming after a sea of just bad crap.
ReplyDeleteLooking back, the UK of Equestria folks ranked this episode all over the place; it was one of the most "controversial" eps in the season. Darkest scene in the show, though? Ooh, that's a thought-provoker. I might even put up a post asking folks about their opinions on what they think counts as that. :)
DeleteI don't care for Michael Vogel as a writer. At all. Every episode (with one exception much later on) in which he's a solo act, he can't write to save his life, either because the pacing is really sloppy or the characters are complete idiots. (And half the time, he causes bad episodes to happen indirectly.) The Mean 6 is a prime example of both of these in full force.
ReplyDeleteI mean, really, how could any of the Mane Six and Starlight be this stupid and not figure out that something is off with them? Making things more frustrating is how Vogel said the outline was so complicated that no one would be sure which pony was where and when, so he was told to run with it as it would probably make sense in the end. I could watch this episode 50 times over and it still wouldn't make sense to me! Hell, Non-Compete Clause had a more coherent story, and that episode was terrible!
The Mean 6 is basically a 22-minute guide in how not to write a misunderstanding story, and is a complete and utter waste of time, making it the worst episode of the first half of the season. And yes, I do think it's worse than Non-Compete Clause, but again, it's not the worst of the season overall.
Well, I'm not going to agree about Mike Vogel, but you already knew that. Except perhaps for Nick Confalone he's the writer I have the best time with in late-series FiM. I do agree, if not to quite the same extent, that the idiot ballery of the Mane Six was incredibly stupid, though. For all I generally get on well with Vogel episodes, this one is something of an exception.
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