“All the ponies in this town are CRAZY!”
Episode written by Lauren Faust
Entirely unofficial reflections by sixcardroulette
This is a full-length Ponywatching essay. For a condensed review
of this episode, check out The Shorter Ponywatching!
So, here we are then. At the start. Or a start, anyway.
A question which seems to tie the fans in knots: what’s the best way to introduce your skeptical friends to the show? Which episode should they watch first? Should you begin here, or what?
It’s interesting to me that this, the actual beginning, doesn’t seem to feature too often in that conversation; it’s not common consensus among bronies, apparently, to start at the start. I find that fascinating, and I’d like to know the reasons behind it in the comments, if you hold that view. I have my own thoughts on the matter, which we’ll get into here before too much longer.
I didn’t have a choice: my daughter, who’s 2, got the first season on DVD for Christmas, and so we sat down to watch it. Here, then, is my introduction to the show. Disc 1, episode 1. With that in mind, here seems a good place to introduce myself.
Your Faithful Student
Let’s get this out of the way first, then. I don’t really like doing “about me” type stuff – after all, why should you care? I really like writing for the fun of it, and I publish that writing because I also really like reading other people’s opinions, especially when they’re different from my own. But usually, who I am is a pretty unimportant part of that bigger picture.
So, biographical details I’ll keep to a minimum: I’m British, male, a lawyer and part-time radio presenter, I’ve got two children (1 boy, 1 girl) both under 5 as at the time of writing. They both love the show. So do I.
Oh, I’m a brony now, it would seem. Mm-hm.
But here’s some stuff you do probably need to know about me for the purpose of reading these little essays. I’m a complete geek, but not in the way you might be used to. I’m a walking compendium of sports statistics and obscure music trivia. I’ve never read comics, at least not since my age got into double figures. I don’t really know anything about superheroes. I don’t watch a lot of cartoons, or indeed a lot of TV generally these days, unless I’m sitting down with the kids. Sci-fi and fantasy have largely left me cold. I can’t draw, I can’t sing, I’d never in a million years dress up or go to a convention (or dress up to go to a convention). I don’t pay much attention to online fan culture. The Internet for me has always been for talking about sports and music, areas where I can hold my own. Can you name both bass players on Stevie Wonder’s “Fingertips”, or the winner of the 1958 Moroccan Grand Prix? Yeah, I’m that guy.
And then this happened, and I find myself in strange and unfamiliar waters. I’m a new brony. These are my thoughts.
The Making of a Brony
My introduction to Friendship is Magic was great, actually, because it was so unheralded, so seemingly inauspicious. I didn’t have a nervous otaku friend on my shoulder recommending I see the show (or, worse, “give it a chance”), watching my reactions, trying not to telegraph the best jokes, tensing up as we got to each part that might potentially put me off.
[I wonder how many successful “conversions” have been made in this fashion? What’s your story, bronies – were you evangelised by someone else, or did you trip across the show by accident and feel the need to spread the word?]
Anyhow, my experience was very much the latter. As seems to have been the case for a lot of fans, I went in with the assumption it wouldn’t be particularly good. In fact, having just made it through a marathon session of Make Way For Noddy…
…(a show whose animation and voice acting is best described as “shoddy”)…
…I sat down wondering how long I’d last before poking my own eyes out.
A little over three months later, I’ve just finished watching Season 4, and I’m so impressed, and so smitten, that I’m writing a blog about the show, having learned the words to all the songs and the names of a load of background ponies. I dread to think what vital information has been pushed out to make room for this stuff – will I suddenly discover I can no longer speak Spanish but recognise “Roseluck”? – but, yeah, that’s me now. How did I get from there to here?
I’m not like most bronies. They’re described as “the unexpected adult fans of My Little Pony” – that’s completely valid, because the show is all kinds of awesome and the universe is an amazing place to add your own creative endeavours, but it’s not me. According to Lauren Faust herself, as a male parent who watches the show with his children, I’m actually part of who the show is aimed at. I don’t see a lot of perspective from other parents who love the show themselves, I’ve yet to find a Bronies With Kids group discussing these things, and so I thought I’d go through some of the main points myself and see if this strikes any chords with anyone else.
And that’s what this blog is going to be about: how I, a grown man and proud parent, came to love My Little Pony. I’ll write about each episode, what my thoughts were at the time, what my thoughts are now in hindsight, and, really, what made me laugh/groan/nod appreciatively/whatever. I’m assuming you’ve seen the show before reading these things, because, well, spoilers abound, but I’m really interested in what you think, whether you agree or disagree, whether you want to highlight stuff I’ve missed… I hope you enjoy retreading these paths with me. Buckle up.
My Little Pony? Really?
When my daughter was born, my wife and I were very, very clear we were both on the same page when it came to how much we were going to push her to Be A Girl. Which is to say, not at all. We made the conscious decision that if she wanted to play with dolls and hold tea parties and wear pink frilly dresses and bows in her hair, that was fine, and if she wanted to play with cars and monster trucks and action figures and wear combat trousers, that was fine, and if she wanted to pick and mix, that was fine, just so long as she was happy, just so long as she always understood she was free to do anything and everything her brother was free to do. (And vice versa, for everything I just said, but that bit only becomes relevant later in our story).
I wasn’t too bothered about the toys she was playing with, because from experience (both as a kid and as a parent), bright children use a toy’s baggage as a starting point, not a straitjacket. The joy of a toy is in the eye (or the imagination) of the beholder; the stories you make up when you’re playing, pulling in whatever else is to hand, inventing relationships, effortlessly switching between characters, franchised toys making guest appearances in each other’s franchises, and just building up these amazing worlds… the only limit is your own mind, and so the trick is not consciously limiting it.
Some toys just seem like they’re designed to interfere with this. Talking toys are a particular bugbear (shades of Lisa Simpson and Malibu Stacy), but really anything that takes your child’s beloved freewheeling imagined character and pushes it back in its box makes me feel uneasy as a parent. TV makes it worse, because the character you’ve invented runs a real risk of being steamrollered and replaced with the TV version, and if the TV version is a simpering idiot… Yeah.
I want my daughter to feel like she can aspire to be a microbiologist or a princess, and so that doll can be a model or a nurse or a pilot or the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and something else again tomorrow. Some toys’ reputations just precede them in being “stereotypically girly”, their names instantly stoking up some primal urge for nervous dads to spontaneously shout things like “IT’S OKAY NOT TO BE OBSESSED WITH SHOPPING AND SHOES AND TIARAS! YOU CAN STILL BE A NEUROSURGEON!” Barbie, for example. Or My Little Pony.
I have dim memories of seeing the cartoon in the 80s. In particular, I know I watched a feature-length one about “Flutter Ponies” with my sisters on a Channel Islands ferry when I was maybe 8 or 9; I remember the embarrassed-sounding tough sailor guy doing the tannoy announcement telling us passengers about it much more than the show itself –
…uh, there will now be films for the children showing in the saloon, starting with, uh, “My Little Pony, and, um, the End of, um, Flutter Valley”. So, uh, yeah. In the saloon.
– and, honestly, my memories of the show weren’t entirely negative, if rather blurry, though I’ve not yet gone so far as to rewatch those old 80s shows to check whether I’m remembering correctly. My sisters had some pony toys, my wife says she did too – the hair salon/stables thing seems to have been a very popular choice! – and, universally, they report the stories they invented had almost nothing to do with the ones on screen. Sounds familiar, right? But I’ll get into this a bit later. For the moment, here’s what I knew going in:
- My Little Pony was a show from the 80s.
- It was tied in to the toys of the same name, colourful plastic ponies with rayon hair and little pictures on their flanks.
- It was For Girls. Woe betide the 8-year-old boy admitting he liked it, or even that he sometimes used them as horses for He-Man and his mates to ride about on. (You know, hypothetically).
- It was twee. Though given the premise “it’s a show about brightly-coloured cartoon ponies”, I guess this is a given.
- There was a remake/reboot sort-of-recently, the woman behind (sic) The Powerpuff Girls was somehow involved.
- Ummm… I’m scrabbling around the back of my brain for more pertinent information here.
- (Scene missing)
My 2-year-old daughter liked playing with some pound shop (or dollar store, for American readers) knockoff ponies, so her grandmother bought her the newly-released UK Season 1 DVD for Christmas. She’s too young to really know what’s going on, but picture the scene: it’s December 28th, and she and her brother (4 going on 5) want to watch it. Given the above information, here are my thoughts:
…My Little Pony, though? Really? Really?
… Eh… the ponies on the box are kind of cute, I guess?
…uhnghhhhhhhhh…
…Okay, fine, let’s do this.
[Main menu. “Play all”.]
Here goes nothing.
In which we encounter a potted history of Equestria, and a purple unicorn
I had no idea about any of this brony business, or even if the show was still being made, but watching it on DVD gave me a different perspective from someone who stumbled across it “cold”, whether accidentally or otherwise. It meant I wasn’t completely unprimed for what was coming: the box artwork and menu screens give an idea of the bright, bold Flash artwork style, featuring as they do a lot of what I later learn are the main characters, as well as the theme song (about which, you guessed it, more later).
The upshot of this little bit of super-minimal preparation? The very first scene, which is totally out of kilter with the rest of the episode, season and indeed show as far as I’ve seen at the time of writing, didn’t throw me off as much as it might have done.
And So It Begins
As I write these reviews, I’ll normally do a little bit of background, then some stuff about each phase of the programme – the cold open, each act, blah blah blah – and some concluding thoughts. Rest assured, they won’t usually be anywhere near this long, but just as this “pilot” episode isn’t necessarily indicative of the rest of the show, so this blog entry isn’t quite how things will go in future either; I find the way Lauren Faust chose to begin her reboot and present the new show to the world absolutely fascinating, and so I’m going to spend a bit more time here for this one.
So. The opening sequence of Friendship is Magic: Part 1 (or Mare in the Moon, the episode’s snappier but perhaps less appropriate alternate title), and by extension the whole new series, is both amazing and off-putting in almost equal measures. Amazing, because, well, it’s beautiful – a gorgeous faux-parchment sequence, featuring mediaeval European imagery, muted colouring, and very limited animation, calling to mind Celtic and Norse mythology as it tells a creation myth of its own, and filmed as if we were watching a real 10th Century manuscript come to life – and because it’s so very brave.
And yet, off-putting. More than any other scene I can think of off the top of my head right now, it seems to all but scream out, “This is a show for little girls!” Was that intentional? Surely on one level, it was; you sit down to watch this thing, this new show you may or may not have been told (but which you hope) is a hip deconstruction of everything that was bad about the old My Little Pony franchise (and your possibly-unreliable memories of its lamest, pinkest, frilliest, girliest baggage, the bane of every feminist and parent of young girls), and what’s the very first line of the very first episode?
“Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria…”
Sheesh.
As with so much of this first episode, my initial reaction on first viewing isn’t the reaction I now have watching this bit back again. In-universe, we later learn, this is meant to be fiction, mythology, a “dusty old book”, an “old mare’s tale”, the equivalent of a disaster movie set in modern-day Los Angeles but opening with a shot of someone reading an illuminated scroll of ancient prophecies.
But let’s go back to me and the kids in front of that DVD. Right now, we don’t know any of that stuff. Even if we can probably guess this semi-animated, narrated storybook format isn’t what the show will be like all the way through, we also don’t know for sure that these aren’t our protagonists. What do we know about My Little Pony? It’s a show about fancifully-coloured ponies. It’s been rebooted. It could easily be a fairytale about magical princess pony sisters. Or rather, well, it could easily be no more than that. If you follow me.
So, I’d wager that this scene is the number one reason already-converted bronies wouldn’t want to show Mare in the Moon to non-converted, potential bronies; I can practically see the uncomfortable squirming, feel the uneasy silences, hear the plaintive voices: “It gets better, I promise…”
A Portrait of the Artist
But let’s just take a moment and applaud Lauren Faust’s chutzpah, okay? What a brave, risky move this really is! Ms Faust, starting out with a blank sheet of paper (or a whole sheaf of them), is given something approaching effective carte blanche to suggest how she’d like to reboot a dead franchise. Not necessarily a beloved one, either (as I’d contend, based on no evidence at all, the boost from fond name recognition by parents who remembered their old pony toys – and that bloody theme song, of course – would be cancelled out by the amount of people who simply wrote it off altogether before watching a single minute).
Brandishing the result, pages and pages of hand-drawn concept art for characters, locations, a sketched-out world, she somehow persuaded the toy company who were signing the cheques to commit to making a fantasy epic for grade-schoolers. She then further convinced them to open it with a two minute scene with none of the main characters whose dolls they’re hawking, made in a totally different animation style, told in a totally different storytelling fashion, and played completely straight.
I mean, just look at this stuff. Amazing.
My Little Pony was really the perfect franchise for Ms Faust to retool. She’s invented a whole world here, she’s about to unleash a cast of dozens of fully-realised characters, and she’s doing it on the shoulders of… well, some very famous toys, but no coherent, established storylines or characters to hem her creativity in. I still to this day don’t know how much or how little of the old pony universe (ponyverse?) made it into Friendship is Magic, and I reckon that’s what everyone involved was counting on – colourful, talking ponies? Check. Pictures on flanks tied to off-the-shelf, easily-established personality? Check. Beyond that? Terra incognita. Go nuts. And she hits it out of the park.
I didn’t know much about Lauren Faust, other than (incorrectly) having credited her in my head as the creator of Powerpuff Girls. (And I knew precious little about that too, beyond a couple of half-remembered excellent jokes.) Later, I discovered that one of her motivations for taking the MLP gig, and taking it even knowing it would result in much unfair and ill-informed criticism for sacrificing her principles and compromising her artistic vision for the sake of a toy corporation’s grubby dollars and blah blah blah, was that she’d been a big fan of the toys as a little girl. She’d been disappointed at how little the characters on screen represented her games, with her infinitely more diverse spectrum of characters: going on big adventures, having tons of fun. She knew how good a My Little Pony cartoon could be if it was done right: the show her inner seven-year-old wanted to see, her imagination made real up on the screen.
The first minutes of this first episode are testament to her astonishing vision. Start out with the mythology of this strange new world, as dark as any fairytale, but softly-coloured, gently-drawn; like the shipping forecast, the horrors of the words are lessened by the soothing way they’re spoken. Then, suddenly, we’re jerked out of that world: pan out to the bold, brash new Flash animation style, and to Twilight Sparkle reading a book: the first time we see the new pony designs, assuming we haven’t been following Lauren on DeviantArt or something, and it immediately works.
Let’s be honest, there’ve been less adorable introductions in cartoon history.
These two episodes – I’m treating them as separate episodes for the purpose of these review things – aren’t the best written episodes in the show’s history, in terms of dialogue or plot, something which becomes especially noticeable in the second half. This two-parter marks Lauren Faust’s only solo writing credit in the entire run of the show, and in future she’ll leave the actual writing in the very capable hands of the, um, stable she put together, which suggests (completely unfounded speculation ahoy!) that she possesses the greatest possible skill a creator can have: the self-awareness to know when to delegate and when to take charge.
So she probably isn’t the strongest screenwriter on the show’s staff. Some have argued, more controversially, that she’s not even the best showrunner, that the show itself actually got even better after she left (as one classless tweeter crassly put it directly to her face!), and while I don’t think the “who is best X” line of thinking is all that helpful, it’s certain that she’s no longer involved with the show, that much of what’s happened since she left was the work of other writers and runners (and may be different from, even directly contrary to, what Lauren herself had intended), and if you still like it, it’s no longer because of Lauren Faust.
Except it still pretty much is because of Lauren Faust. This wonderful, incredible, magical world came out of her own head, practically ready to go and with a ton of great stories to get us started, to the point where others have been able to pick up these characters and run with them in new directions that would never have been possible without the astoundingly solid foundations she so painstakingly laid out. She’s done something more incredible than write a great episode: she’s created a great world, a playground that extends and enables creators’ creativity, whether those creators are adults in a storyboard meeting, bronies hunched over graph paper, or seven-year-olds taking Rarity and a Pound Puppy on another grand adventure scaling the side of the sofa to get to the top of a dangerous mountain. Lauren Faust did that. She’s a genius. A 100% bona fide genius.
She also did this, which isn’t half bad either.
We Build Arks
So let’s spend a moment looking at how this show sets itself up. Firstly, we have the mythology from Twilight Sparkle’s book. It was a little jarring, for me, to realise later that there was an inconsistency in the way the ponies react to this mythology. Some of the story Twilight reads is, it turns out, meant to be “real” (as in, accepted as part of the way the ponies understand their world works – there is magic, there are princesses, the sun is actually raised and lowered through the intervention of a magical horse princess, that sort of thing), but other parts are written off as wacky ancient legend, and almost everypony scoffs at Twilight for worrying about an old mare’s tale.
(That it actually pretty much all turns out to be true, and indeed later we find it was a fairly accurate rendition of what went down, helps a lot as far as potentially confused children go. But it’s still a little weird, as if someone were reading the Bible and scoffing at the story of Noah’s Ark, then pausing to actually watch God as He physically moved a mountain out of the way.)
Do you know what I like about it, though? I didn’t actually notice that at first, instead being swept along for the ride. I think I know why, too. The world – Lauren’s world, I mean – isn’t fully formed yet, and our understanding of it only gradually fills in over time (indeed, with Season 5 just getting underway at the time of writing, it’s still filling in now). The precise minutiae of this stuff can be handwaved away because it’s not important – not only to the story, which would be nothing special, but to the world.
For instance, I’ve no doubt the repeated references to past events occurring “a thousand years ago” is just a standard shorthand meaning “back in the old days” or even “beyond living memory”, not something for us to peg consistent timelines on. We’re meant to take it as read that the real Nightmare Moon, an incident from ancient history, has been long-forgotten and passed into myth. Without really realising it, we’ve also learned the basic parameters of the world of Equestria. And, indeed, the name “Equestria”. The message is what’s important, not the intimate details. An Introduction to Hermeneutics for Grade-Schoolers.
Very soon, we learn to trust the show and its approach to the world’s mythology – if it’s important, it’ll be highlighted, and if it’s not, they won’t make an issue of it, and we can rest easy knowing they know what they’re doing and won’t contradict themselves. Time and again, when plotholes rear their heads, it feels as though the writers are a step ahead, like they’ve already anticipated a discerning audience raising flaws (the “But… what about…?” ability to sniff out inconsistencies, even more potent in kids than in Internet nerds) and found a way to pre-emptively plug those holes. If they don’t, it’s because the answer isn’t important yet. We get attuned to it without really even noticing we’re doing it. That’s some skill right there, skill you can’t pull off if you aren’t rock solid in your knowledge of your fictional world.
Net effect? These colourful ponies live in a world where magic is real and Celestia is a ruler who’s acknowledged to have unspecified magical powers, and it’s still a surprise to discover Princess Celestia is the sun-raising princess from the story, a surprise to us and a surprise to the cast. And we learn as we go along, and we learn really quickly because one of the hallmarks of this show is that new information is presented with excellent economy and always told in the most effective way. It’s so effective and economical, in fact, that it’s more noticeable when it goes wrong (whether on the rare occasions this show does it badly, or – much more often – when other kids’ shows don’t take such a conscientious approach.)
Music To My Ears
Layers are important to this show. (And that’s not a geeky joke about Flash animation). Firstly, we get that potted history of Equestria and the relationship of the two sisters, and then all the information we need to process the threat of Nightmare Moon. Then, as I say, we’re jerked out of one set of fantasy world rules, and pitched right into another.
As far as I can remember off the top of my head (yeah, I know, that’s the kind of research you want after 4,000 words!), I think every single episode from here on in has a cold open which ends on either a joke, or a character-building cliffhanger, or both. Mare in the Moon is, I believe, unique in that it has neither. We don’t get to find out this purple unicorn’s name, or anything about her beyond that she can read, and instead of a joke, we get, well, this:
‘Elements of Harmony’. I know I’ve heard of those before… but where?
And then, blam, or not blam but rather gentle, breezy whoosh, we’re bundled right into the theme song.
The theme song. Right.
I’m not going to take the rest of this review, or this blog, at anywhere like this slow a pace. We’re not going to be plodding through this or any other episode line by line, and breaking off for twelve paragraphs of diversion for every nine seconds of screen time. I promise. But I’m going through this opening bit at glacial speed because I think it’s really, really fascinating. Was I in love with the show yet? No. Was I dispelled of my preconceived notions of the show being garbage? No.
Think about it. What does your hypothetical first-time viewer see as their very first exposure to this amazing show, if they choose to begin at the beginning? A barrage of preconceived notions seemingly being confirmed. In order:
- “Once upon a time in the magical land of Equestria”…
- Animated storybook.
- Scene of cute purple unicorn looking up from her book with a quizzical expression. And:
- Instantly-familiar 80s theme music – twee, lilting, My Little Pony, My Little Pony…
- …Accompanied by aforementioned purple unicorn riding in a cute, kitschy lavender hot air balloon in rolling clouds.
Yep. This is going to suck.
But then the music changes – a key change not masked but emphasised by a rising, euphoric harmony, louder and brasher instrumentation, a drum beat, the music ascends as the balloon gently descends, and then it really is blam! because here’s Rainbow Dash –
Fschooooooooooooom!
– rocketing past the screen, almost too fast to see her properly, a bright blue flying pony leaving a rainbow trail, her face scrunched up in an expression that’s part determined frown, part wicked grin, at once taking it very seriously and having a great time, which we can later totally recognise as her just being Rainbow Dash but for now just calling to mind the jovially snarling nose art on some dive-bombing fighter plane, which is kind of appropriate as she blazes across the sky banishing those big fluffy clouds and literally blowing away everything that’s gone before, including past pony generations and any residual sticky cuteness we picked up from the intro scenes so far and all of our preconceptions and leaving behind her a super-bright Technicolor rainbow loop-de-loop and a vision of the town of Ponyville approaching at a hundred miles an hour as we hurtle towards the ground before the balloon sets our heroes down gently –
– all in the space of a couple of seconds.
The rest of it is just fully rocking. The song itself is great, just catchy and euphoric and happy, and it’s also – appropriately enough – welcoming, in several senses. There’s an “extended” version knocking around which makes an appearance as an extra feature on that Disc 1 DVD, and which might be an early demo rather than an expansion on the same conceit – if it is, well, less is definitely more. That extended version is weighted down with too many nonsensical puns (“Once smitten, twice Fluttershy!”, anyone?) and bloated in its overlong two-minute duration.
This one, on the other hand, is just perfectly paced: short enough not to grate, long enough to get its message across, expressive without being wordy, awesome without being lunkheaded, the closing Do you know, you are my very best friends! capable of being punctuated multiple ways. The animated sequence that goes with it is great too. I like the interpretations that these are actual scenes from the show we haven’t seen (the most convincing one I ever read was that we’re seeing Twilight’s second arrival in Ponyville, when she returns with all of her stuff ready to move in permanently between Elements of Harmony and The Ticket Master!), but I think it works better as an abstract summary of what’s about to unfold.
It also introduces all of the main six – or mane six, an excellent Internet coinage I’ll be using from here on in – characters repeatedly, including everypony posing for the photo at the end, but quite honestly between the surprise of the tone shift and my kids dancing, I didn’t really take much of it in on that first viewing, and so the actual introduction of a certain crazy pink pony as a recurring character managed to catch me unawares. It took me a while to get it all; one extra pass to realise the individual lines of the second verse apply to each of the (yet-to-be-introduced) Mane 6 in turn, still more to start spotting and noting all of the various characters dotted around. But by the end of it, song and sequence taken together, we somehow knew what sort of show we were in for, even if we still had no idea what it was about.
So, the intro sequence does a great job as, well, an intro sequence. We understand now how Lauren could afford to use the cold open in such a daring, potentially alienating fashion; that intro can bear the added burden. A cutesy-wootsy title sequence and a sappy theme song might have done some real damage, but instead, the seeds of AWESOMENESS have been sown. The first conceivable point where our putative would-be brony (or indeed our savvy target-audience kid) might realistically have got up and walked away, writing off the show, never to return –
…That’s it, I’m out of here!
– and s/he’s still watching. I’m still watching. First hurdle: negotiated successfully.
In which we learn more about Twilight Sparkle, and her move to Ponyville
Twilight Sparkle. (Originally to be called “Twilight Twinkle”, trivia fans, and changed in circumstances that may or may not have had anything to do with a certain popular-at-the-time young adult vampire movie franchise). “Twilight Sparkle”. Obstacle number two.
Y’know, before I became a brony, I found the famous New York Times correction –
“An article on Monday… misidentified the character from the animated children’s TV show My Little Pony that Ms. Lindsmith said she visualized to cheer herself up. It is Twilight Sparkle, the nerdy intellectual, not Fluttershy, the kind animal lover.”
– one of the funniest things I’d read that week. It really impressed me that the NYT would be so diligent as to correct something so obviously trivial and silly. That’s dedication for you; that’s attention to detail. What made the story trivial and silly to me (and, I’m guessing, lots of other smirking people who queued up to retweet it)? Well, first off, the preconceived notions about My Little Pony (and, I’ll be honest, in my case, notions about any grown-up weirdos who openly admitted to liking My Little Pony, that sappy 80s cartoon for little girls etc etc). But more than that, it’s really that name that does it. Twilight Sparkle.
“Twilight Sparkle”. Bloody hell.
But, look. Here’s a sentence I never thought I (or anyone else) would be caught saying, ever. Deep breath: Twilight Sparkle is one of the great characters in modern television.
Which is really important, because for this episode, and in varying degrees for at least three quarters of this first season, My Little Pony is the story of Twilight Sparkle, and so we need to be on her side – or at least care about what happens to her – from the word go. She’ll be our audience surrogate as a newcomer in the bewildering new setting of Ponyville, and (very cleverly) she’s also shortly about to be parachuted into a situation where we know everything she knows, she knows everything we know, and where everyone else knows even less. The setup is ripe for story development. So it’s a big deal that we get over that name fast – for any boys watching, never mind any grown-ups, it could be a deal-breaker before we’ve even started.
Here, Lauren Faust pulls another masterstroke, and something which will become a kind of trademark of the show going forward: playing the hand Hasbro deals with expert skill and minimal fuss. Older fans? You know as well as we do that our hand is being forced here. We’ll incorporate the mandatory inclusion of this toy into the show in the most thoughtful way we can, and if that means developing a meaningful story around it, great. If that means giving it a throwaway namecheck or showing it on screen for five seconds, so be it. Younger fans? We know you’re not stupid. We’ll never compromise the show just to flog you more plastic tat. Even if we’re all here on the understanding the show technically only exists to flog plastic tat.
(And, look, kids really aren’t stupid. It does children a gross disservice to assume that they can’t tell the difference between a compelling, well-made show that makes them actively want to play with their own versions of the characters, and a shoddy infomercial attempting to astroturf affection for a new product. A cool toy tied to a bad show may be a hit on the shelves and a flop in the ratings, but a ratings hit will very, very rarely produce a flop toy. Unless, y’know, the toy itself is unbelievably crummy. But anyway.)
So this adorable nerdy purple horse’s name is Twilight Sparkle. We don’t get given time to argue, because this information is only provided later, when we’re already softened up. She’s introduced solely as “Twilight”.
How I Learned To Stop Worrying, And Love Purple Unicorns
Gotta go!
In the first seconds of the show, we encounter what I first took to be Twilight’s friends: some more ponies with 80s-tastic names like Twinkleshine and Moondancer (again, not named on screen immediately, or indeed at all), inviting her to a party, in what turns out to be the wealthy and manicured and very clean royal city of Duloc Canterlot, but which at this point looks like an old-line university campus. In fact, the vibe of this first scene proper is that of a college or high school sitcom, and so maybe this is the ragtag gang of students we’re going to be following across these five discs.
But they’re portrayed almost as a vapid group of giggly Valley Girl stereotypes, again raising the threat level for grown-ups; having already established this won’t be a cutesy wootsy retread of the pastel rainbow ’80s tea party fest, is it instead going to be a clichéd high school show, Pony High or something, of equally limited appeal to boys and grown-ups and grown-up boys? In short, these ponies – they’re not going to hold our attention, are they?
And the show again happily wrongfoots me, as Twilight makes her excuses and leaves, literally running off and leaving them behind – and in the process, displaying a quite stunning “gallop” animation sequence – having worked a bit with Flash in the past, I don’t even want to think about the amount of work that must have gone into such an astonishingly lifelike, fluid motion. And I don’t think about it, because it doesn’t even look like a cartoon, it looks like an effortless depiction of a horse running. People rag on the animation quality of these early episodes in light of the leaps forward that have come since, but really, the quality of this first episode is plenty impressive; for sure it was enough to blow me away.
So, summing up her character pretty much perfectly in one move, she heads for the safety of a library (and not a silent, dark, wood-panelled library of the sort usually shown on TV, with musty stacks and dusty books everywhere – this one is a huge Oscar Niemeyer meets Etienne-Louis Boullée job, a glass-and-steel type place, with massive curving windows and Art Deco shelves and lots of light and probably air conditioning). Is this her library? It’s not impossible that she actually lives there. For sure, she’s more comfortable there than hanging out and – ugh – socialising with those three ponies we just saw.
Honestly, I didn’t notice this the first couple of times. I’m just that observant.
Those three ponies she leaves behind – one of whom, just to underline what’s happening for any slower kids watching, spells it right out:
I think she’s more interested in books than friends!
…represented, to me, watching for the first time, Twilight literally leaving behind another false premise for the show. Just as it’s a huge relief when Rainbow Dash’s cloudbusting dive blows away the twee cutesy version of the show that we could well have been saddled with, so it’s a similarly huge relief when we discover that that little clique are actually the Rosalind of the piece, a bunch of ponies who are never seen or mentioned again once the action relocates to Ponyville.
Once again, the show feints and then plays off the ensuing feeling of relief to raise more intrigue: well, it’s not all going to be kiddie picnics and fairy dust, it’s not going to be high school backbiting, I can be fairly confident it’s not “The Adventures of Twilight the Librarian”, so where are they going with this? I already want to know. The last time I saw a cartoon open with a bookish girl blowing off a social engagement, it was Beauty and the Beast, and that one turned out OK.
It’s fascinating, now, months later, to watch these early scenes of Twilight’s life before she really had a life. It’s a great portrayal of a nerdy bookworm who’d rather curl up with an encyclopaedia for hours on end than go outside and play in the sun, and it’s a portrayal which I’m guessing hits pretty close to home for a lot of people (it certainly did for me!), people who aren’t often portrayed sensitively and realistically on children’s television. The overall impression we’re given for two entire seasons is that, essentially, Twilight has never had any friends, and even when that is slightly softened by the much later revelations she had kind parents, a caring big brother and a loving foalsitter, it’s still not exactly the happiest childhood we can picture, at least not in terms of relationships with other ponies.
But then, is someone unhappy if they don’t realise they’re unhappy? Does Twilight miss having friends, never having actually had any? In this episode more than any other, she comes across as awkward, brusque, sometimes positively antisocial, and I don’t think it’s simply a case of what TV Tropes calls “early instalment weirdness” (oh, if you’ve never been on TV Tropes before, please don’t click that link unless you want to still be online at 4am. And if it’s already 4am, please turn this off and go to bed. The Internet will still be here in the morning.)
Impressive thing number whatever (I’m already losing count): I was a little concerned to see this realistic portrayal of a bookish, academically-inclined wallflower, because oftentimes on the rare occasion one of these characters does show up in a kids’ TV show, it’s as the “before” part of a before-and-after transformation into a social butterfly – lighten up, do your hair differently, conform. Or maybe she’ll take up some other role which plays up (and plays on) just how much of a boring bookworm she is, becoming the gang’s resident geek and randomly discovering or inventing things. But neither of those things is true of Twilight Sparkle and the way the show treats her; she stays true to herself whilst still lightening up and opening up a little bit, though it takes a traumatic shared experience to start breaking down some of those walls. My fears were unfounded: the “before” Twilight never goes away. Worth bearing in mind for when we’re talking about a rather more drastic transformation further down the line.
Similarly, I don’t believe she’s being portrayed like this because the writers haven’t got a handle on who she is yet. I believe Lauren Faust knows this character inside and out already, to wit: exactly the sort of pony who would still be on the Internet at 4am. I won’t cast aspersions on what Lauren’s own childhood was like, and whether she was anything like Twilight (again, I can say for sure that I was, and the portrayal is pretty damned accurate), but whatever the background, I think we’re definitely seeing pre-Ponyville Twilight in a very deliberate light. She’s like this because she doesn’t know (or particularly care) how to interact with other ponies, or understand why it might be important. It’s hard not to feel sorry for her, even if we’re not being hit over the head with the loneliness of her existence; she’s got her books, but she’s got no-one to confide her thoughts and fears, nopony to keep her company.
Except, of course, she does.
And Your Little Dragon, Too
From distant memory again, I was always confused by Spike in the 80s cartoon – he’s not a pony, I don’t remember anyone owning any of his toys when I was a kid, and if he was there just as a token character to appeal to boys then he failed the “still likely to get your head kicked in for owning a My Little Pony toy” test pretty miserably. Maybe he was just there as a cute baby animal, because, y’know, young girls like baby animals, right? Except 80s Spike wasn’t even particularly cute or anything.
Um… adorable?
But in Friendship is Magic, Spike is the oft-overlooked and much-maligned heart of the show. Lauren Faust could have been ordered to include him by a Hasbro edict from the top, or she could have had free rein (no pun intended) to leave him out of her brave new ponyverse. Whatever the reason (and I don’t know either way), Spike ends up as one of only two main characters from the old 80s cartoon to be transplanted to the new show, and he’s integral to its dynamic, certainly in these first tottering steps into a world that might have been indifferent or hostile.
Something I’ve not really seen discussed anywhere yet, and it’s something I want to get into here, is the role Spike plays, not just in the plot but in terms of our understanding of Twilight in these very early scenes. She wouldn’t acknowledge him as such just yet, but Spike is Twilight’s only friend, the only character to work alongside her, live with her on a day-to-day basis, the only character to get her. Their relationship as portrayed in Mare in the Moon is a complex one, Twilight given to rudeness bordering on outright physical abuse, Spike brushing it off with an implied long-suffering attitude.
Some people have commented that their relationship seems “off” here – I’d contend it speaks volumes. Twilight and Spike are so comfortable with each other already that Twilight can just be Twilight, OCD and awful social skills and all, and not worry about Spike taking offence (even wholly warranted offence) when none is meant; Spike knows that Twilight not only trusts him implicitly as a research assistant but also needs him to keep her from having regular meltdowns. And they obviously actually do care a great deal for each other, expressing it in that same Holmes-and-Watson, bordering on passive-aggressive way that two bright, socially-awkward people are wont to do. We learn so much about Twilight just from the way Spike talks to her, treats her, reacts to being around her.
Look on the bright side, Twilight. The Princess arranged for you to stay in a library. Doesn’t that make you happy?
Yes. Yes it does. You know why? Because I’m right! I’ll check on the preparations as fast as I can, and then get to the library to find some proof of Nightmare Moon’s return!
Then… when will you make friends like the Princess said…?
Think how different this scene, and this episode, would play out without him there as an audience surrogate. (An audience surrogate to help the designated audience surrogate!) Stuff like that, where you don’t even notice until you consider what its absence would do not just to the story but to the dialogue and pacing, that’s what I love about this show. Acting, writing, directing, it’s all done with the perfect lightness of touch to spell out the relationship. I’ve known these two for a handful of minutes and already I feel that, well, I know these two.
(Also, and it’s easy to overlook this, for very young children watching – such as, say, my daughter – his method of sending letters by breathing fire on them, and receiving post by belching up scrolls, is uproariously funny the first few times. Keep that in mind whenever we get any kind of physical or slapstick comedy that seems pitched below even the stated target audience of the show – it’s likely because it is, because families watch TV together.)
So let’s hear it for Spike. He’s clearly a good guy, he’s brave and loyal, he’s got a lot of flaws but slack is cut on account of his young age (and on account of how often the older ponies who ought to know better make bigger screw-ups than the baby dragon), his sarcastic, snarky demeanour is so often exactly what’s needed to puncture any sappy bubbles that might be ballooning out of control…
…And, yes, he provides good comic relief when being laughed at as well as with, via his unfailingly offering himself up as the butt-monkey for a given scene, or even an entire episode. It never gets tired for me, for the same reason I don’t feel bad about the way Twilight treats him here: because it speaks to the strength of his relationship with her, and later with the rest of the Mane 6. They rib him a lot, but I’ve no doubt that if he were in trouble, all six would instantly drop what they were doing to help him. The team, and the show, are better with him in it, and they all know it.
Though I have to say, it’s a relief watching this back now that they soon dropped the comedy “illiterate scribe” routine tentatively being tried out here for the first and only time, a tiresome schtick whereby Spike can’t understand or spell big words:
Take a note please, to the Princess!
“My dearest teacher,
My continuing studies of pony magic have led me to discover that we are on the precipice of disaster!”
Uh, hold on. Preci… prec-i…
Threshold?
As if Princess Celestia would tolerate receiving pages and pages of this stuff from her prize student. Hey, some jokes work and some jokes don’t, so it’s a relief it was quietly abandoned rather than beaten into the ground – can you imagine how annoying this trait would have been if it had carried on? Doesn’t the fact the writers were able to identify and rectify a bad idea actually seem like a positive thing, like the show’s somehow in safer hands than if they hadn’t proved it by making such a mistake in the first place? But I digress.
Movin’ On
And so when Twilight is ordered to up sticks and report to Ponyville for a couple of days – ostensibly to personally oversee the preparations for a big upcoming royal visit, the Summer Sun Celebration, and to get her out of the library and force her to interact with other ponies, although even my 4-year-old could suss there was something else going on here – Spike goes along with her. He’s a combination of confidant, PA and stepchild, and Twilight needs all three, however little she realises it.
We need him there too, because there’s no other way the show could get Twilight from A to B and have us understand what was going on, never mind have all that vital exposition shine any kind of light on Twilight as a character, or have us understand what’s been happening before her chariot touches down. (Though we do get one just after she lands, when she takes the time to thank the guard-carthorses pulling the chariot (I guess it’s more like a rickshaw in pony terms? But I digress); she’s clearly not always brusque.)
Touchdown! “Thank you, sirs.”
Ponyville is an interesting location, isn’t it? We’ve already seen it from the air, and yet from the ground, it seems to change size and character according to the mood the writers need to set; depending on the episode, it’s either a bustling provincial center, or a sleepy medieval village with two streets. A boon for the writers, and a ready source of winks to the audience, in much the same way that South Park uses its flexible fictional setting as both plot device and lampshaded joke.
More importantly, perhaps, while Twilight has been uprooted from her home in Canterlot and feels out of place in the new town, we’ve only lived there for a couple of minutes, and now we’re on the same footing as she is. For sure this place feels more rural than Canterlot, but it’s also less intimidating: it’s more believable a complete unknown could quickly rise to prominence here, the people seem markedly more friendly (though I love the faint Deliverance vibe from the first moments after Twilight’s arrival in what to her could seem very much like the backwoods, not really helped by the fact the first ponies she encounters are apparently a lunatic and some hillbillies)… and just like Twilight and Spike, we don’t know any of them yet either. If it’s a plot design choice that casts Twilight as the heroine at the centre of the show, an impression that’s hard to shake off even when the actual episodes no longer contort themselves to put her in the thick of events, it also helps us very much as newcomers; we’ll find our way around this new town and all of these new faces together.
By this point, I didn’t even consider getting up at the break.
In which the Mane Six are introduced
The meat of the episode, with five great scenes piled back to back. Later on, we’ll see the show handle copious amounts of plot development and exposition through song, but this first episode has no songs at all (although the first ever run-through of the opening theme should probably count), and there’s no way to skim through the introduction of the five major characters besides Twilight Sparkle other than having her meet each of them in turn. As always, the order in which Twilight meets her friends-to-be has been carefully thought through, either the sign of endless rewrites or a remarkable accident to arrive at what feels like the best possible running order. Even if the first one isn’t really a meeting at all.
“…Easy as Pinkie Pie…”
I love Pinkie’s introduction. Sensing Twilight’s unease at (a) having to make friends by royal command (when she’d clearly rather eat her own hooves), and (b) arriving in the pony equivalent of the sticks (and interestingly, as at the time of writing – I’ve just watched the start of season 5 – we still actually don’t know much about Twilight’s background at all, though she and Spike appear to have grown up in Canterlot if flashbacks are anything to go by), Spike suggests she try talking to one of the random ponies she sees looking around. Of course, the first pony she approaches is the pink one with the frizzy mane, whose only reaction is to give a ridiculously elongated gasp, hover eight feet off the ground, and then immediately run away.
Yeah, that went well.
It’s a great little scene, because it makes perfect sense in hindsight and absolutely zero sense on first viewing, other than to confirm Twilight’s increasingly firm suspicion that Ponyville is inhabited solely by weirdos. There’s no indication that that crazy pink pony will become one of the key characters in the show, or even that she’ll ever show up again. (Unless you were paying close attention to the opening credits, or you’ve really studied the DVD box. I wasn’t and I hadn’t.) So the first “proper” introduction, the first one we actually get a heads up saying HEY, THIS IS THE INTRODUCTION OF A KEY CHARACTER – both because it’s on Spike’s checklist, and because fans of the 80s toys and cartoon will surely recall the name of Applejack – is for Twilight to meet the Apple family.
“…You are the Applejack of my eye…”
Full disclosure: Applejack is my favourite pony. But that’s a story for another day. For the moment, she gets a great introduction, almost as iconic as Pinkie’s.
Twilight and Spike approach the farm with low expectations, and the first thing they see is a pony in a cowboy hat shouting “YEEE-HAW!” in a non-specific Southern accent, complete with banjo-laden background music just to underline how country these Apples are, charging towards a tree. Applejack is giving us our first experience of apple bucking (second if you count the opening credits), which now seems so commonplace it barely merits noting, but which I remember seeing for the first time and thinking very clever.
Huh, so that’s how you harvest apples with no hands.
And Applejack seems pretty pleased with herself, too:
And that, my friends, is what we call “gettin’ ‘er done!”
Twilight’s so unimpressed she actually says so out loud, and you can practically feel the condescension radiating through the screen. AJ, who is portrayed as emphatically not stupid (whether that’s some kind of patronising “good ol’ fashioned country wisdom” or not, it works), doesn’t visibly pick up on the vibe, and to her enormous credit, she tries her hardest to make friends with Twilight despite the latter’s unflattering behaviour:
Well, HOWDY-DO, Miss Twilight! A pleasure makin’ yer acquaintance. I’m Applejack! We here at Sweet Apple Acres sure do like makin’ new friends!
Friends?! Actually, I…
So, what can I do yer for?
I like to think she’s just naturally like this with everypony she meets for the first time, partly because Granny Smith raised her that way, and partly because that’s just the kind of pony she is anyhow. Whatever the reason, it’s refreshing to meet a pony so obviously lacking in artifice – so many people, me included, find the show’s utter lack of cynicism highly appealing, and I suppose the reason I like Applejack so much is that she seems to represent that lack of cynicism in perhaps its purest form. Honesty, if you will.
The introduction of the Apple family is done in such a way that major characters like Apple Bloom and Big Mac pass by at the tail-end of a blur of names and muzzles and cutie marks along with never-seen-again distant relatives, but the takeaway message is clear enough, and I think it surprises Twilight more than the audience to find a whole family of ponies who immediately accept her as a friend (complete with lots of invasions of personal space); friendship comes incredibly easily to Applejack and her family, because they assume good faith without being saps. Perhaps more than any other pony in the show, with the exception of Pinkie Pie, the Apples simply like to make new friends. When Applejack’s bulldozing of emotional walls causes Twilight to give us the show’s first honest-to-goodness spit take:
…we already know, for sure, that if Twilight had mentioned she’d nowhere to stay that night, AJ would have offered to put her up there and then without further discussion. She’s just that sort of pony, and Sweet Apple Acres is just that sort of place, and Friendship is Magic is just that kind of show, and while Twilight giggles nervously because this whole “outward displays of affection” thing clearly makes her deeply uncomfortable, a thousand ironic, cynical hipster defences are crumbling down.
“…You’ll Rainbow Dash to my side…”
Of course, Twilight herself is still on guard and bristling, even when visibly so full of pie (as freely given to her for nothing by a bunch of ponies she only just met and openly wrote off as hill people) she’s struggling to walk straight. AJ and her family, regardless of Twilight’s opinions, had at least done their jobs properly. In an echo of her future anxiety at disappointing the Princess, Twilight blows a gasket when the sky doesn’t seem to have been properly cleared, and she’s quick to lash out at the pegasus who’s meant to be responsible. Cue awesome introduction number three.
(THUD – SPLAT – groan)
Um… excuse me? Haha.
It’s possible to read this scene two ways, because Ashleigh Ball delivers that line so as to leave it open to interpretation. Did Rainbow Dash hear Twilight’s diss and deliberately dump her in the mud – making her “excuse me?” a kind of “I beg your pardon, didn’t quite catch that?” – or was she just being genuinely clumsy and offering up an apologetic after-the-fact “excuse me?”, as in “sorry, I didn’t see you in time, my bad!” Either one is consistent with what we now know of Rainbow’s character as laid out over four seasons, and I like the ambiguity.
It even extends to the next bit, some physical comedy involving Twilight being splattered with mud, drenched with water and then dried off so that her mane poofs out to three times its normal size, a sequence which had both my kids in fits of giggles (and which therefore serves a more important purpose than just messing up Twilight Sparkle’s mane ready for the next scene. Success with target audience? Check!) Do you know what’s very cute indeed? Rainbow Dash bouncing quickly on a cloud to make it rain, like a triple-speed Pinkie Pie on a trampoline:
Adorable. And, again, hilarious for toddlers.
Rainbow is a jock, and most shows would have left it there, except that she insists she always had the job in mind, and when Twilight calls her out for her ostensible laziness, she holds true to her word and clears the sky in…
Ten. Seconds. Flat.
(And yes, I did indeed go back and time it. Exactly 10 seconds. Attention to detail like that – the creators knowing some nerd would go back and time it to see how long it really took, so they might as well put in the extra effort to do it right – speaks volumes. The show had respect for its audience before they knew there even was an audience.)
And some shows might even have stopped there, with Twilight standing agape and Rainbow in smug mode. But not this show. Rainbow would be well within her rights to tell Twilight to get lost; she fully proved herself, got the job done, made Twilight look stupid for doubting her (and small for not apologising). But that’s not Rainbow Dash. Just as with AJ, she’s open to making friends; just like Twilight herself, she has a slightly different outlook to the rest of the world on what does and doesn’t constitute an insult. Being able to prove herself and show off her awesomeness to new ponies is one of the things that makes RD tick, pulling pranks is another, and now she’s established (a) Twilight understands it’s not goofing off if you know you can get the job done in half the time, and (b) Twilight didn’t take it personally that she dumped half a cloud’s worth of rain on her head and then fluffed her mane into a frizzy perm, the slate’s wiped clean and they’re all good:
And she means it, too. Twilight, completely failing to comprehend that they somehow just became friends, waddles off with her ludicrous-looking mane, and now it’s time to meet the character with the most hidden depths on the whole show.
“…A Rarity to come by…”
In common with a lot of bronies, I didn’t like Rarity to begin with, and this introductory scene is yet another one from this episode that only makes real sense in hindsight. Here, we apparently have Hasbro and their meddling to thank for turning Rarity from a ghastly caricature into an astonishingly well-rounded character. Apparently, Rarity was originally conceived as the Element of Inspiration, until some higher-ups decided “inspiration” was too abstract a concept for the target audience, and it was hastily substituted with “generosity”. At first blush, that seems insane; Rarity is the snob, the one who’s obsessed with dresses and tea parties and doing each other’s hair and simpering and never, ever getting dirty. Generosity? Really?
But we should all thank whatever focus group-driven executive made that call, because at one stroke it actually prevents her from becoming a one-note character. The contortions the writers have to perform to get her established faux-riche socialite persona to jibe with her being explicitly named as the Element of Generosity result in some fantastic development. We don’t get to see these hidden depths – or even that she has hidden depths – until the next episode, but once we know her a bit better, this scene actually fits perfectly. She’s very busy, genuinely too busy to acknowledge Twilight’s presence, and that feels pretty rude, coming across as aloof even though Twilight wanted to see Rainbow Dash hard at work rather than sitting around:
Just a moment, please! I’m “in the zone”, as’t were.
No. No. No. No. Oh, yes! Sparkle always does the trick, does it not? Why, Rarity, you are a talent!
…but what’s the first thing she does on meeting a new pony? Give them a makeover and a new outfit, straight away and free, before she has any idea who Twilight even is. Out of the goodness of her heart, not because (as it first appeared to me) she’s yet another crazy pony who wants to indulge themselves showing off their hobbies at the expense of Twilight’s valuable time. Twilight doesn’t see it, of course – indeed, I’ve only just noticed this, but every time a pony says something about becoming friends with Twilight Sparkle in this episode, she winces and the backing music does a little jarring sting! – but in hindsight, Rarity comes out of this very well.
My increasing admiration for Rarity, from grudging respect to outright adulation over the course of the next four seasons, will be a theme of this blog.
My daughter, on the other hand, took an immediate shine to Rarity and promptly installed her as her favourite pony. (My son, perhaps predictably, gravitated just as quickly towards Rainbow Dash). In these early scenes, when Rarity appears to be being established as the social climber debutante fashionista of the group and nothing more than that, haughty and girly and – let’s be honest here – deeply annoying, my daughter’s admiration for her was a bit of a concern. Later on, when her character turns out to be not only one of the most complex I can ever remember seeing on kids’ TV before, not only a true friend and a good person, but also entirely fabulous, I was rather happier with the choice.
Also, there’s an excellent visual joke I didn’t pick up on until maybe the fourth or fifth viewing – Rarity levitating the ribbons with her magic, scanning through and discarding the ones she doesn’t want, exactly mirrors Twilight doing the same thing with her books at the beginning. Krzysztof Kieslowski used to call these sorts of callbacks “bonuses for alert viewers”. Or in this case, parents watching the episode with their kids for the fifth time.
And we can’t pass without mentioning Spike falling for Rarity at first sight (amusing that he never mentions Moondancer, his apparent crush from the opening sequence (he bought her a teddy bear!) again – there’s endless fun to be had questioning the depth of his actual feelings for Rarity, especially when in a later episode just seeing another pony with her hairstyle is enough to attract his romantic attention). It’s one of the most amusing subplots in the series and it’s fun to see it come into being, both in hindsight and also on first viewing, when it just adds an extra layer to Spike’s character. It gives rise to another one of those lovely Spike-and-Twilight moments that casts light on their pre-existing friendship (and implies that, somehow, Casanova existed in this universe):
Wasn’t she wonderful?
Even if I haven’t yet understood we’re meant to like Rarity, that was just splendid. Four ponies, four great first scenes, can we make it five for five?
“…Once smitten, twice Fluttershy…”
(Yes, if you hadn’t already guessed, all of these “introduction scene” headings are from the nonsensical lyrics to the extended version of our main theme.)
This, for me, is maybe the most successful of all the introductions, and that’s a pretty competitive category! Although these opening episodes are very much centred on the story of Twilight learning to make friends, Fluttershy is just as much in need of those lessons too.
In so many ways, Fluttershy and Twilight are extremely similar characters, introverts who get deeply uncomfortable outside of their very specific areas of interest – it’s a surprise to later find out that she’s apparently good friends with Rarity (which, I know now, actually lays long-game groundwork for a far more surprising friendship much later on!), but equally it makes sense that her being a sweet-natured doormat has made it easier to fit in than Twilight’s unwittingly prickly demeanour and inability to keep her mouth shut.
Here, we see Fluttershy (who, incidentally, is super adorable, even in a cast that has been entirely adorable so far) being quite comfortable talking to her birds – I remember being unclear as to whether all ponies can talk to birds, or whether this was unique to Fluttershy – when she thinks nobody’s watching, and then immediately and spectacularly going to pieces when another pony shows up. The show’s use of background music has been absolutely outstanding all the way through (I know I’ve barely mentioned it!), but here we see another great trait that will pay off time and again: the judicious use of a complete lack of background music to make a scene hilariously awkward.
However many times the pacing and timing falls ever-so-slightly short in this first pair of episodes (the Spike-meeting-Rarity scene we just witnessed is a good example, actually, as Twilight responds to Spike’s comment of “beautiful!” with several lines of dialogue before setting up a joke by saying “beautiful indeed!”), this scene is absolutely beautifully played, long, empty pauses perfectly timed to cause the absolute maximum amount of cringe without crossing over into making us – or Fluttershy – genuinely upset. If Rainbow dousing Twilight in water was the first proper belly-laugh (as opposed to a general atmosphere of “pleasantly amusing”) my children got, this bit was mine:
…
(incredibly long, awkward pause, punctuated only by a perfectly chosen effects loop of distant background outdoor sounds)
…What’s your name?
That first pause made me actually burst out laughing. Fluttershy’s increasingly timid replies to Twilight’s incredibly simple, innocuous question are hilarious too, especially given that Twilight herself is awkward in social situations and clearly trying really hard – I don’t know if some sort of processing was done on Andrea Libman’s voice to be able to do that third one, a barely-audible squeak (even though she does clearly enunciate the words “I’m Fluttershy” rather than just making indistinct noises) so high-pitched and tiny I can’t find a font size small enough to do it justice.
That she suddenly comes bursting out of her shell (to the point she body-checks Twilight out of the way to get to Spike!) is pretty funny too, but Twilight’s not amused – it’s getting late and, thus far, she has a fairly low opinion of all four of the ponies she’s just met. If her characterisation of them all as “crazy” feels a little harsh, we’re still seeing all of this from her perspective and it’s not un-fair either. What’s clear, though, is that Twilight is not taking the friendship part of her instructions particularly seriously just yet.
Here’s another actual laugh – call me naive but I didn’t see this coming either, even with the twelve-foot flashing neon signposting:
Huh! Rude much?!
I just need to be alone, so I can study without a bunch of CRAZY ponies trying to make friends all the time!
…Now, where’s the light?
Surprise!
In which everyone gets plastered, and Nightmare Moon returns
(Yes, I’ve pretty much just plonked act breaks wherever I feel they should go. Get used to it.)
So, pretty much the entire population of Ponyville is already there in the library gathered for a party – ironic that the town’s party planner is the only Mane Six pony not to be tasked with organising anything for the big Summer Sun Celebration! – and we get another of those truly cringey moments as Twilight has to shrug off having just loudly insulted every single pony in the room. Awkward.
And here we get our first proper look at Pinkie Pie, bouncing off the walls and generally being Pinkie in all her manic genki self, quite possibly the first time Twilight’s ever encountered someone like that. By rights, she should be incredibly annoying for the audience, especially if they’re over the age of eight, but somehow she isn’t; once again, it’s testament to the skill and care employed by the show’s creators that she doesn’t make you want to stuff socks in your ears. When we get to Season 2, we’ll see the full, horrific possibilities of what might have gone wrong with this character had she been less deftly handled.
Right now, Twilight seems like she’d rather have Pinkie sectioned than be friends with the likes of her, a feeling which seemingly persists for quite a while into the series’ run; of all the various combinations of the Mane 6, Twilight and Pinkie have perhaps the most different personalities, and thus the most ground to make up before they can really be friends. Well, from Twilight’s side, anyway; Pinkie doesn’t seem to care that Twilight just called her crazy to her face, either because she didn’t notice, or didn’t care, or thought it was fair comment. As we’ll later have it explicitly confirmed, Pinkie’s main mission in life seems to be to make friends:
I saw you when you first got here, remember? You were all “Hello!” and I was all [GAAAAASP], remember?! You see, I never saw you before, and if I never saw you before, then that means you’re new, ‘cos I know everypony, and I mean EVERYPONY in Ponyville! And if you’re new, then that meant you hadn’t met anyone yet, and if you hadn’t met anyone yet, you must not have any friends, and if you don’t have any friends, then you must be lonely, and that made me so sad! And then I had an idea, and that’s why I went [GAAAAASP], I must throw a great big ginormous-super-duper-spectacular WELCOME PARTY and invite everyone in Ponyville! SEE? And now you have lots and lots of friends!
Halfway through that waterfall of Pinkie, Twilight actually pulls a face and lets out her trademark nghhhhh! groaning noise, to absolutely no effect whatsoever. Even walking away to get a drink doesn’t give Pinkie any kind of hint. As a certain miserable donkey will later discover for himself, once Pinkie Pie is locked on and wants to make friends, resistance is futile.
After a little bit of slightly awkwardly scripted and directed fun and games with Twilight somehow winding up drinking hot sauce before storming off to bed in a huff (worth it for the horrified looks on the others’ faces as Pinkie pours it all over a cupcake and scarfs it down, exclaiming “What? This is good!” through a disgusting mouthful of crumbs), we get to my favourite scene in the whole episode, and probably the one that – more than any other – got me properly hooked.
Party Hard
And this is just fantastic.
A couple of hours have apparently passed, as it’s now the middle of the night; Twilight’s bedroom, an epic set in and of itself with her bed set up on a mezzanine balcony, and there’s the sound of the party in full flow back in the main library, complete with superb audio mixing: the muffled thud-thud-thud of loud dance music and the indistinct hubbub of a crowd, pounding through the walls as Twilight just wants to get some sleep.
…do you know, you’re all my verrrrry besht *hic* friendzzz…?
The door opens, and the audio mixing engineer really earns their money as the party sounds become louder and clearer, and Spike totters in, wearing a lampshade on his head. Which gives us an idea of what sort of party is taking place in Twilight’s temporary house. The implication to kids is clear: what a silly party! The implication to adults is equally clear: he’s bladdered.
So many things I love about this scene. Twilight’s bug-eyed, exasperated frustrexplosion (“All the ponies in this town are CRAZY!“), Spike apparently being hammered, Twilight’s hilarious impersonation of him after he leaves –
But what I really love about this scene is just how true it rings to me, and how true it surely rings to anyone who ever went to college, or had partying idiots for neighbours or roommates. Here’s Twilight Sparkle, the bookish nerd who just wants to do her homework, convinced she’s got an incredibly important exam interview mission in the morning, and she just needs a good night’s sleep, and instead she’s been billeted with a bunch of drunken yahoos who seemingly couldn’t care less that they’re ruining her life, and all she can think about is how she’s possibly going to have to go up against Nightmare Moon with the fate of the world at stake having had seventeen minutes’ worth of sleep. And at the same time, we know Twilight could actually do with loosening up a little bit, just like if we’re honest, we probably could have done with loosening up a bit and making some memories too. Sure, not lampshade-on-head loose, but there’s got to be some kind of happy medium.
This scene feels like it came from a much different programme; there have been plenty of little nods and references and things so far which were clearly aimed at the parents rather than the kids (even though one of the things that really sold me on this show is that it’s never cynical in making those nods and references, never punctures the atmosphere or derails the story for the sake of poking jaded post-modern fun at itself; the difference between, say, Pixar and some DreamWorks wannabe, I suppose?), but this scene is the first one that absolutely, definitely has no business being in a children’s show, which of course makes it the perfect thing to put in a children’s show. It doesn’t feel out of place, it feels like Lauren Faust set out to make a damned good show with solid stories and totally believable characters, that happened to also be a cartoon about colourful ponies.
After that, which is pretty much the scene that made me fall in love with the show, the rest of the episode is a by-the-numbers wrap-up. The explanation of why everyone is up partying (and, apparently, drunk off their ass) felt a bit crowbarred in:
– I mean, presumably Twilight knew about this tradition, what with being in charge of overseeing the celebrations and all? But I suppose she could have known about it, and simply not expected for it to be happening in her house, meaning she could let the other ponies get on with their timewasting pursuits like “friendship” and “drinking” while she did some homework and got an early night. See, the show’s already got me making excuses on its behalf. Hooks in, I reckon.
Well, it’s more than that, obviously. As we’ve already seen, the show regularly goes out of its way to pre-emptively plug potential plot holes, which suggests a level of diligence that makes you want to make excuses for when that doesn’t happen. If the writers don’t actively anticipate an apparent anomaly, they’ve earned our trust to the point it must be either because it has a perfectly rational explanation, or because it was never important in the first place. For them to have got me from “ugh, colourful cartoon ponies” to enthusiastically filling in their plotholes for them in the space of twenty minutes? Well done, creators.
Time Has Made A Change
And so it's off to the town hall: time to finish up the episode, which kind of feels as though it comes out of leftfield, despite us apparently being primed for it throughout the episode. The threat that's been lurking in the background with no real urgency, taking a back seat to Twilight making friends even as she worried (though, again, oddly without urgency) about it taking a back seat to her making friends, comes to pass almost straight away.
So the final scene has kind of a perfunctory feel to it; knowing it was a two-parter, it was obvious the conflict wasn’t going to be resolved in the remaining minute or so of screen time, but the conflict proper only actually arising with a minute or so of screen time to go feels a bit… off.
Watching it back again now, it’s more obvious what’s faintly unsatisfactory about the way this one ends. As an introduction to the whole series, this episode – I mean this first part of the opening two-parter – has to give us a flavour of both “modes” of the show. So, we need a taste of the epic scope, high-stakes quest mode, and we also need a taste of the more everyday “slice of life” mode, the relationship-building between six very different friends (who, by the end of this one, still all barely know each other, and who Twilight has no great affection toward as yet).
Strangely – I say “strangely” with hindsight, because I already know the show goes on to handle heroic quests and colossal battles for the future of Equestria in breathtakingly confident fashion – this episode is on much firmer ground when it’s dealing with the smaller-scale domestic stuff, and gets much more wobbly when the dramatic fantasy epic stuff takes centre stage. Epic versus domestic, big versus small; later, the show will make its strongest and most lasting impact when it learns to dovetail these things to feed each other, raising the stakes by threatening the everyday lives of our intimately-known characters with a hugely disproportionate outside threat. For now, the epic and the domestic are a bit more like oil and water, refusing to quite mix properly just yet.
Understandable: the domestic story is our six main characters meeting each other, a solitary nerd learning to let others in, a shy and awkward girl moving to a new town. All classic tropes with plenty of scope for Lauren Faust to add her own delightful twists on those sturdy foundations. The epic story, by contrast, is about a legendary horse princess fulfilling an ancient prophecy by coming down from the moon to bring eternal night; there’s no really simple way to integrate those two things in one 22-minute episode and not have it feel a bit like you can see the joins.
So, despite the introductory scenes and the whole “ominous threat” setup, the epic stuff is very much left on the back burner for most of this episode, brought up only as a nagging reminder that Twilight thinks she needs to stop messing around and hit the books. When it comes up again in full effect at the end, complete with cackling pantomime villain:
Confession: I don’t like the way Nightmare Moon’s mane is animated – it’s beautiful, but I took several viewings to realise it was meant to be her mane, and not some sort of aura that floated around her while she wears an unflattering battle helmet.
…the episode seems to lose a bit of the confidence and momentum it’s just built up, as though we’ve moved from surer ground to shaky footing, and the show which three minutes ago was absolutely sure what it was is now having to define and defend itself all over again. The conclusion for me? We’ve already headed off the fears over the slice-of-life stuff being too twee and girly – they nailed that, no worries. Now it’s time to move into new territory again, transition this from a comedy drama about six friends planning a civic event into a fantasy drama about six friends who have to save the world, and everyone momentarily panics. The pacing of line deliveries suddenly goes off, verging on the stagey and melodramatic:
…and the tone becomes noticeably darker, to the point of almost seeming ill-fitting compared to what’s just gone before:
Remember this day, little ponies, for it was your last! From this moment forth, the night will last FOREVER!
…and that’s it, the episode just sort of… ends. Time for another future show staple: an ominous cliffhanger, a “To Be Continued” screen, swiftly followed by the upbeat instrumental version of the rocking theme tune. Dissonance ahoy!
Cue reactions: Eh? Was that it? Did they just run out of time, or something?
Even then, of course, the scene isn’t a complete write-off; not only has the show built up enough goodwill by now that a banner advert reading “NIGHTMARE MOON PLAYSET AVAILABLE NOW FROM ALL GOOD HASBRO STOCKISTS!” wouldn’t have made me give up, but before the curtain, we also get some more good strong reinforcing character-building material. We see Applejack wisely holding back Rainbow Dash and Pinkie from confronting the cackling alicorn, almost wordlessly cementing her role as the pragmatic voice of reason. We also get Pinkie firing off one of the best lines of the episode, complete with ultra-Pinkie delivery from Andrea Libman (which totally cements her as this manic ball of energy only loosely bound by manners, or indeed the laws of physics):
Isn’t this exciting?! Are you excited? ‘Cos I’m excited! I’ve never BEEN so excited! Well, except for that time I saw you walking into town and went [GAAASP!] but I mean, really, who can top THAT?!
The visibly stressed-out Twilight’s reaction is just all kinds of awesome, and the sort of thing which really makes you want to keep on watching, as much to spend some more time with these characters as to actually see what happens. For sure it’s what helped me stay the course and keep my emotional investment intact through Nightmare Moon’s return, the weakest scene of the episode. But, again, it’s a choice that the show can afford, knowing the second part is literally just seconds away around the corner. Who’s going to turn it off now?
Impromptu, unanimous family vote: let’s watch! Episode 2, here we come!
Wrap It Up
But hold on, what about that question I asked at the beginning? Is this the best way to start watching the show? Given the choice, would I do it again differently?
I think yes, on balance, it is the best place to start. It isn’t the strongest episode overall, but that’s not really the same question. As to why this one tends to get short shrift? Apart from the very different issues that crop up with Part 2, of which more another time, I think there are a few things going on here. I think we, as bronies, overthink these things. I think we might be projecting a bit of our own insecurities – and I include female bronies in this – about liking cutesy, infantile, or stereotypically “girly” things, or being seen to like them. But you’re reading this, having watched the episode, and you weren’t put off.
So, yeah. It’s not the best episode in the show’s history, and it shows plenty of signs of being a work in progress – the plotting isn’t as tight, the dialogue isn’t as sharp, the characters aren’t yet fully fleshed out (on screen, anyway!), the animation isn’t as advanced – but honestly, those are things I noticed in hindsight, not on first viewing. On the whole, it’s still very good, and it does its job well. You may be eager to convert your friends to the wonders of the show, but trust in the wonders of the show to do the job for you – the good bits of this make it worth watching in its own right, and the who-what-where exposition is deftly handled to make this as good an introduction as you’re going to find.
That’s my view, anyway (and thanks for slogging through so many words to get to it!), but then of course we’ve only really told half the story; nobody is likely to watch Part 1 without following up with Part 2, which is a different kettle of fish. And a story for another day. I hope you’ll join me.
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I’d love to hear your own thoughts and comments below – all opinions are welcome and dissent is encouraged! Alternatively, there’s a lot more discussion and comments on the Reddit post for this essay: Reddit – /r/mylittlepony on Ponywatching 1.01
Ponywatching 
Was well worth staying up passed 4 AM to read this to completion. An absolutely excellent dissection of the first episode, I feel like you’ve nailed down many of the different vectors by which the show was able to unseat the viewers expectations. A tidbit of information to blow your mind: Each episode of the first season of MLP:FIM was made in week long deadlines!
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I really enjoyed reading this analysis of yours. I particularly liked hearing about the moments that your children found funny. I’d never properly watched episodes of the show in the company of children until season 5 began airing, and we definitely laugh at different bits of the episodes. Since the show is aimed at kids (sometimes I think the online fandom forgets that) it’s fun and interesting to hear what yours enjoyed in the first episode/season. I look forward to reading your next post! (I’m also looking forward to reading about how your affection for Rarity grows over time…)
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Thanks! I wasn’t really sure whether to keep this all about our first reactions (kind of a written version of a blind commentary), or more about me going back and looking at why we liked what we did. So we ended up with this 🙂
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“which, I know now, actually lays long-game groundwork for a far more surprising friendship much later on!”
Are you referring to her friendship with a certain “Q” themed character?
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I am indeed!
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