 |
| I have absolutely no imagination today... |
FiM Special: "Best Gift Ever"
27 Oct 2018My original rating: ★★★★
IMDb score: 7.9
The one with Gummy's parachuteThoughts: Wikipedia doesn't count this as part of Friendship is Magic proper – which is why it gives the total FiM episode count as 221, not 222 – but I do, and this is my blog, so there! Written by Mike Vogel, who handled seasonal fare so well with "A Hearth's Warming Tail", this is a warm-hearted, gently amusing slice of life piece. It largely keeps the fanservice unobtrusive, it provides a great guest character in Pistachio, and the Mane Six and Spike all get decent parts. Rainbow and Discord interacting properly for once was interesting. On the downside, Fluttershy is unimpressive until the last act, Derpy is portrayed as a little more slow-witted than I'd prefer, and Sparity is getting very tired by this point. Aurora, Bori and Alice were great, though, and the naming was genius. Add two good-but-not-stellar songs and pudding and the result is a low-stakes, low-demand piece of festive fun. Four stars may have been slightly generous, but a top-end three it can keep.
Choice quote: Prince Rutherford: "Is that good angle for optimal smashing?"
New rating: ★★★
Whenever I finally get my rump into gear and next write one of these, I won't immediately be starting on FiM Season 9. That's because a week before that premiered, we had an Equestria Girls special to watch. Which, I am sure you'll all be delighted to know, was "Spring Breakdown". So that's coming next. Sorry!
I only remember this as "the one with the deer" and don't recall any specifics from it. I doubt I ever watched it after it premiered, which is par for the course on all the later seasons. I wish I remembered a lot of the details you mention, particularly Derpy's involvement. I do remember her messing up while trying to put the tree-topper on, but that may have been a different episode. On the other hand, I'm glad I don't remember any Sparity hints.
ReplyDeleteEven when I rewatched it back in 2021, this special still does nothing for me. As of this posting, it was the last piece of FiM that I rewatched, and I've still yet to rewatch season nine if I dare. It's just... blah.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking, oh, yeah, the holiday special, that was very okay
ReplyDeletebut then you mentioned Pistachio and the Reindeer, all of whom are amazing, and that is the terminus of that thought :B
I wrote a proper log of this on Letterboxd, if anyone's curious. The below is a summary tuned to the we-all-know-this-already-skip-the-prelude context of My Little Repeats. It can be read here: https://letterboxd.com/cartoonkarma/film/my-little-pony-best-gift-ever/
ReplyDeleteSince I last saw this, I've seen the two double-length holiday specials apiece in G5 and G3. Add to that how slow and insomnia-curing "Rainbow Roadtrip" will be half-a-season from now, and it's still frankly miraculous that, even relying on the stock "what to get my Secret Santa" plot line, this is as competent and watchable as it is. Not a single Season Eight regular mistake kills it in conception, and frankly it's only small quibbles here and there with some of the plotlines that are active detriments.
Present Perfect and Pascoite have it kinda right, though. Omit the reindeer and Pistachio (both two-scene wonders) and this is completely and utterly fine. Mike Vogel's crutch of how he does cross-cutting may be a good fit here (as opposed to being poison for something like "The Mean 6"), and it keeps the special from falling asleep at the wheel, but it also keeps it resolutely surface-level and light on wit. Not that the latter's a surprise at this point in the show, in writing or visuals, but still.
Good fine is still praise in this era, and the desire to capture the smaller, character-based coziness of the early seasons (take out Pinkie's sisters and the yaks appearing for a scene each and Flurry Heart's brief plot contribution, and this could be in Season Four) is successful, I think. For all that, like most good content from this era of the show, it largely only seems impressive next to its neighbours, and still shows that low-stakes stories in this show don't suit double-length (the single-length Hearth's Warming episodes, even the ones worse than this, easily have more energy and momentum), it's perfectly competent and watchable. Being largely forgettable beyond a few details isn't too bad an outcome from that, whatever I'd like a wittier, snappier and funnier take on this concept that the FiM of old could have delivered on.
P.S. I'd forgotten this special was where the show switched from Flash to Toon Boom. It seems to have been a testing ground, perhaps because, due to the plotline splitting the cast up, most scenes only have 1-4 characters to animate. Perhaps due to said switch, and the business of designing lots of winter outfits and altering the sets to snow-ify them, there's only a few of those model-breaking meme faces, and the switch is near-invisible otherwise. Hits a good balance of the visual density and complexity of later seasons serving an earlier-season story, once one makes their piece with the punchier comic timing in earlier seasons being gone (though, the script going for amusing warm fuzzies more then comedy, it's not too big a liability).