Author: sixcardroulette
Pony Notes #4: where have all the female writers gone…?
AKA: a bunch of my collected random thoughts, mostly previously posted on Reddit. I noticed this while rewatching Season 6 during the summer 2016 mini-hiatus, and was confused. An observation, rather than a rant.
I don’t know why this kind of jumped out at me, but has anyone noticed… almost all the episodes this season have been written by men? Like, off the top of my head, I think we’ve had one episode this season where the script was written by a woman.
I’m not going off on some sort of SJW quota quest, and indeed I don’t really believe it’s had any particular bearing per se in terms of the resulting show – some of these Season 6 episodes have ranked right up there with my personal favourites – but for a show originally entirely conceived by a woman, aimed (officially) at a predominantly female audience, with a mainly female cast, an awesome female storyboarder and several women generally historically considered to be among its “top tier” writers (Meghan, AKR, Cindy Morrow), does anyone else feel it’s slightly weird that there don’t really seem to be very many women involved outside the recording studio any more?
I mean, I know we lost both AKR and Meghan kind of abruptly, but Natasha Levinger, Noelle Benvenuti, Lewis/Songco and GM Berrow all (IMHO) totally nailed it when they came in to write episodes here and there – where are they?
Again, I’m not necessarily complaining, just thought it was a bit interesting and/or strange.
Pony Notes #3: “No Second Prances” going to dark places
AKA: a bunch of my collected random thoughts, mostly previously posted on Reddit. Having previously touched on this (see Pony Notes #1), the sixth-season episode No Second Prances brought out a whole lot of emotions and feelings, and once again I thought I’d (over-)share. The original post was very well received on Reddit, but some of my phrasing was a bit clunky and my comments a bit unclear in places, and so I’ve also appended some of my replies from the thread where I try to clarify things a bit more. I’ve stripped out any of the comments from other people that I was replying to, as I don’t have their permission to share.
(Obvious spoilers if you’ve not seen No Second Prances – we won’t get to it with a proper Ponywatching recap for probably a couple of years yet!)
…So, that final scene really struck close to home. (Alright, not the final scene, I don’t mean I was especially moved by curious Cranky and cranky Celestia). So… here goes.
I suffer from depression. Despite being a successful and really generally quite happy person – I’ve two wonderful children, a good job – I spent a lot of my life going through extreme spells of depressive behaviour, including suicide attempts.
(This isn’t a cry for help – I’m on medication and pretty stable right now. I’m just filling in the personal background here.)
Now, I understand from my time here that quite a few bronies have the same issues, so apologies if I’m going over old ground or opening up old wounds, that’s not the intention at all. But here’s my experience as it pertains to No Second Prances.
I’ve seen a few critiques already of that scene from a number of points of view. When Trixie decided she was going to do the potentially fatal trick anyway, despite knowing the likely outcome, people are asking various things – was she really suicidal? Did Twilight and Starlight realise? If so, did they just assume she wouldn’t go through with it? And so on.
But from my own experience, the very essence of depression and its accompanying suicidal urges is that those urges make no sense. They come out of nowhere, often prompted by incredibly minor setbacks that one would ordinarily laugh off. They were ridiculous. And they were extremely dangerous, for one reason that anyone who’s had encounters with depression will instantly understand: if you’re the one having them, they make perfect sense at that moment. Like, ending it all seems completely rational, to the point that it appears an acceptable and even preferable outcome among several possible outcomes for whatever dumb thing you’re about to do.
And this is where Trixie comes in. I really do think that was beautifully handled. She didn’t necessarily want to kill herself, she just wasn’t all that bothered if she did, because at that moment, it seemed like a viable alternative to figuratively dying on stage and heading off, alone, in her “messy” wagon, to the next town and the next town and the next town, forever.
When I tried to kill myself, contradictory though it sounds, I wasn’t actually actively trying to kill myself. It was always more about me doing something incredibly, stupidly dangerous, and being completely apathetic as to the outcome. Not even curiosity, or the thrill of living on the edge, or anything like that – just a great big “oh, whatever”.
And yet oddly I never really wanted to die as such, I just wasn’t that bothered. My doctor said – somewhat brutally, but she’s right – that if I actually wanted to be dead, I’d have just killed myself without any of this cry for help stuff, and the fact that I didn’t – even without an explicit cry for help – showed that deep down, somewhere, I still cared what happened. And so Trixie’s would-be last words struck a huge chord too:
If you’re out there, and you still want to be friends… let’s be great and powerful together?
That little glimmer of hope speaks volumes, because at the end of the day, suicide is so stupid, it’s such a waste, a needless, stupid waste. If people just took a moment to step back and realise how stupid it all was… Of course, if you’re going through a depressive episode, the whole point is that you can’t take a moment to step back and realise how stupid it all is, and that’s how people end up pointlessly, stupidly dead.
I’m reminded of two things. One, from Steinbeck’s Cannery Row – the watchman who, not really thinking through what he’s saying, threatens to commit suicide and then sadly feels he has to go through with it when nobody seems to care. Two, from an essay by Anthony McGowan in The Nightwatchman (a cricket magazine, of all things):
“Many years ago I recall watching a programme about the Scotland Yard Black Museum. A grizzled old detective was talking about suicides – specifically those who threw themselves off one of the London bridges into the swirling murk of the Thames. He said that they always do it for one of two reasons – for love or for money. And, he went on, his rheumy old eyes staring straight at the camera, you could tell which by looking at their fingers. The bankrupts and the petty fraudsters who jumped would always have clean, unmarked hands. But those who jumped because they were thwarted in love – the jilted, the rejected – had fingers torn and bloodied, nails ripped and shredded, often down to the bone. For, as soon as they hit the cold water, they would realise that in fact life was worth living without Francine from Accounts or Rod the photocopier guy.”
Was Trixie “suicidal” in the way it’s traditionally portrayed? No, of course not, but then if I had managed to “successfully” take an overdose or jump off the bridge, people would have said the same things about me – he seemed fine, a bit down or sullen but not outrageously so. And that’s why this really struck a chord with me; Trixie was depressed, and could have ended up killing herself, for absolutely no good reason.
I’m past that phase now, or at least I sincerely hope I am – it’s been over a year since I started taking the antidepressants and I’ve had no suicidal thoughts at all. And I’ve said in other threads that I credit MLP for helping me stick it out the last few months when things were getting serious, and helping give me strength to seek the help I needed. But you know what? If this episode had been around back then, I think it would have hit me even more powerfully, and even more positively. I might even have sought help even sooner, because honestly, some of that scene was like looking in a sodding mirror, and it wasn’t a particularly flattering look.
It’s never a good idea. There are always friends or potential friends out there.
Good luck, Trixie.
Well, the above is purely my own experience, y’know? I think – as with Inspiration Manifestation and Tanks for the Memories – I feel there’s a subtext (or that it’s possible to plausibly read a subtext) there that my daughter didn’t need to pick up on to “get” the episode, in full, even while at the same time I’m marvelling at just how close to the bone this one cut for me. Even if it was completely accidental, and the whole suicide thing is nothing more than elaborate headcanon, well, it works for me.
Or, to try and phrase it a bit better, the show excels in working on numerous levels, not least making sure the story makes sense for the target audience while also not officially endorsing or shutting off any genuinely plausible alternative reading, however radical. Whether it was or wasn’t “meant” to be read a particular way is something only the writers could really say for sure, and without that kind of clarification (which is never likely to be forthcoming and doesn’t need to be – indeed, probably shouldn’t be, if we’re treating this show as subjectively-received Art), well…?
tl;dr: I thought it worked beautifully either way, which is why I still love this show.
It’s all about interpretation at the end of the day, isn’t it? I mean, we all take from it what we take from it, even if some of the personal headcanons that fly around – subtexts, allusions, ships – are less plausible/more stretchy than others (and even that judgement is itself subjective, I guess). I think it’s great that the show manages to work under the weight of different interpretations. The episode works absolutely fine – hell, I’d say is meant to work absolutely fine because that’s the best way of reading it – if Trixie is in no physical danger at all and “only” beating herself up for being an idiot and screwing everything up, works absolutely fine if she’s having a highly public meltdown in front of a baffled crowd, and, yes, for me, the episode works if Trixie is having a depressive episode with potentially very bad consequences. But the impressive thing to me wasn’t the potentially going to a very dark place (which may be accidental – like I say, it just struck a massive chord because that’s exactly what it was like), but that the episode itself doesn’t actually rule that in or out, and works fine either way.
If I thought the only reading was the suicide one, and a particular version of it at that, I’d have been disappointed, even though the portrayal (to me) was impressively accurate.
No, the point of me telling that long and tedious story was just to give a bit more insight into what a suicide attempt is actually like for a manic depressive, at least as far as I got. There’re no “GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD” histrionics, no long notes to loved ones, you literally just fail to give a shit what happens if you walk in traffic or take an impromptu swim in the lake or, sure, down a load of random pills. You might not even recognise it as a suicide attempt until, for instance, you wake up in a fucking ambulance covered in neon pink vomit and immediately regret your poor choices. But if you don’t wake up in that ambulance, you get marked down as a suicide, and don’t get that…
[RELEVANCE KLAXON]
…second chance.
ANYWAY. If the writers didn’t mean it that way, they didn’t mean it that way, I’m not going to be the crazy person who insists on the ABSOLUTE TRUTH of a particular reading or a favourite ship or that Catcher in the Rye foretells 9/11 or something (I’ve had enough crazy already, ta.) But if it’s left open to interpretation and works well enough under different ones, that’s even more awesome.
[IRRELEVANCE KLAXON]
(Like the films of Kieslowski, which are basically a set of great stories that are nothing but massively open to interpretation, and – perhaps as a result – are wonderful.)
I’m definitely waffling now.
I wouldn’t go that far [as to say Season 6 has been the best season to date], but I was starting to worry the show was coasting a bit until this one, which really felt like a proper solid episode. Whether or not it actually meant to veer into the darker waters I was talking about, well, Trixie’s issues and what all this says about her (and Starlight, and Twilight) are worth serious consideration in any event, and the show that doesn’t flinch from showing stuff like that – redemption isn’t a magic handwave, Trixie and Starlight do still hold grievances legitimate and otherwise, Twilight isn’t an omniscient friendship teacher… That’s the show I love.
Pony Notes #2: Pin the Tail on Rarity
AKA: a bunch of my collected random thoughts, mostly previously posted on Reddit. For my Rarity-obsessed daughter’s third (!) birthday – she features quite heavily in the blog, and is in many ways the reason I’m here – she requested a pony-themed party, and my sister made her an awesome Rarity party game. I went on Reddit to show it off, only to see someone else had also made the exact same game for a birthday party that week. Freaked me right out, it did.
My daughter loves Rarity above all other ponies, and so my sister (the artistically talented one in the family!) decided to be the cool aunt and made this awesome game for her niece – I don’t know if you can see, but Rarity’s tail, cutie mark and earring are all stick-ons, and there were some more accessories (and an Opal!) but sadly I failed to take a picture before the crowd of 3-year-olds got to those…!
For bonus points, spot one of her presents in the picture. Her and her brother (5) have arguments over whether her name is “Muffins” (my daughter) or “Derpy” (my son). Either way, lots of plushie cuddles were had.
Pony Notes #1: this time, it’s personal
AKA: a bunch of my collected random thoughts, mostly previously posted on Reddit. Asked why we like the show, someone replied that it had helped them with depression; when questioned about how that could possibly work, I decided to share something rather personal. As a general primer as to why I’m taking the time to write all this stuff, this is actually not a bad starting point.
…Depression, in the medical sense, doesn’t mean being “depressed” and moping all the time – rather, it’s a horrible, sucking, consuming thing that sits on your shoulder every hour of every day, a thing that can easily and without warning whip-snap you into believing there’s no hope and no point to anything because everything is shit and you’re shit and the world is shit, and so you either lash out or withdraw for hours at a time. If that happens, finding a ray of light can quite literally be a life-saver; if you find something that brightens the darkness, makes you feel something that isn’t, well, this, then you cling on for all you’re worth and slowly haul yourself out again. MLP is an example of just such a thing – it’s not that it’s relentlessly bright and shiny and cheery (indeed, if it were, that might actually tip you further down the slope once the credits roll and you look around and you don’t live in Equestria), it’s that it draws you in, it’s honest, it’s hopeful.
I was diagnosed with depression earlier this year, having suffered the symptoms in various ways for years and done nothing about it because I’m a man and a father and a sports fan and a lawyer, we’re meant to be tough but stoic, and not punch holes in walls or go on five-hour walks around the docks in the middle of the night (both things I actually did because they seemed like good ideas at the time).
Once I went to see the doctor, was diagnosed and given some antidepressants, things turned around pretty quickly and looking back at some of the stuff I did, it’s like reading about a totally different person. But here’s the thing – I’m not sure I’d have been able to stabilise myself enough to get myself the help I obviously needed without having found MLP. It sounds really trite to say it, but plunging into four (at the time) years’ worth of MLP from a standing start and binge-consuming it might possibly have even saved my life.
tl;dr: Ponies isn’t “painful to watch”, it’s pretty literally what kept me going.
The Shorter Ponywatching: Quick Reflections on “Call of the Cutie”
Episode written by Meghan McCarthy
Entirely unofficial reflections by sixcardroulette
This is The Shorter Ponywatching. For a really long, in-depth essay
on this episode, check out the full length reflection!
This was a game-changer when it came to my becoming a fan of My Little Pony. If it seems to be almost turning into its own spin-off at times, it also introduces not one but two important new elements to expand Lauren Faust’s amazing fantasy universe: cutie marks, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
Before I watched this episode, based on the last one we watched (Owl’s Well That Ends Well), I thought Friendship is Magic would be good and everything – a sweet and clever sitcom that just happened to feature magical horses as its protagonists. After Call of the Cutie, it was like anything was possible, as if that tantalising thread of ambition that felt like a gleam in the eye of this crazy show in those early days had been picked up and could never be lost again. At the end of Call of the Cutie, I was a fan. Continue reading “The Shorter Ponywatching: Quick Reflections on “Call of the Cutie””
Reflections on S1 E12: “Call of the Cutie”
“Ah’m gonna have a blank flank forever!”
Episode written by Meghan McCarthy
Entirely unofficial reflections by sixcardroulette
This is a full-length Ponywatching essay. For a condensed review
of this episode, check out The Shorter Ponywatching!
The Ponywatching story so far: between Christmas and New Year just gone (2014), while staying with family for the holidays, we (as in, me, my wife and our children) were introduced to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic via the newly-released-in-Britain Season 1 DVD box set.
We watched all six episodes on the first disc, increasingly impressed with the show’s smart plotting, great acting, beautiful animation, excellent jokes, thoughtful world-building and believable characters, when quite honestly we’d expected none of those things going in.
We got to the “sixth” episode, Owl’s Well That Ends Well (not yet realising the running order on these British DVDs was all jumbled up), and experienced a bit of a comedown; it wasn’t bad, and had plenty of good gags and sweet moments, but also some clunky ones and a blurred sense of identity. It ended up being our least favourite episode so far, because it averaged out as, well, average – like I say, not bad, but not extraordinary, when every other episode so far had outshone its context, the standard of the “competition”, the surrounding field of kids’ TV animation.
We saw Owl’s Well That Ends Well late on New Year’s Eve, we were all tired, it wasn’t amazing, and so we weren’t as excited as we once were to carry on, to watch some more. The “fear”, if you can call it that, was that the excellently unexpected likes of Look Before You Sleep and Griffon The Brush Off would turn out to be outliers, early experiments, and that Owl’s Well… would be a much more accurate picture of what the show was actually like. (Given our pre-existing prejudices against the My Little Pony franchise, this didn’t seem such an outlandish leap as it does now seeing it written down.)
An artist’s representation of my family watching the show.
But New Year’s Day rolled around, and it was one of those lazy New Year’s Days where everyone is sleeping off the night before, and taking long naps in the middle of the day, and I’m up looking after the children while everyone else is still in bed, and they wanted to watch something… and after a couple of shots of Handy Manny and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, I see the My Little Pony DVD box and suggest we have a look at Disc 2.
Now, I’m not prejudiced against the show any more, not like I was when we first braced ourselves to watch the first episode – I’m still expecting it to be pretty good, just not necessarily any better than those other shows. Something kind of fun to pass the time. We cued up Call of the Cutie.
Reader, we watched all five episodes on that disc in a row, back to back, sitting riveted on the sofa as people drifted in and out (and, often, back in again, to watch the pony show). We rewatched several of them again straight away for the benefit of those who’d missed them first time around. The children were loving it. I was loving it. And by the end of it, I was no longer in any doubt: I was a fan of the show.
Call of the Cutie changed the rules and won my heart. I didn’t know there was a word for it yet, but I’d become… a brony. Continue reading “Reflections on S1 E12: “Call of the Cutie””
The Shorter Ponywatching: Quick Reflections on “Owl’s Well that Ends Well”
Episode written by Cindy Morrow
Entirely unofficial reflections by sixcardroulette
This is The Shorter Ponywatching. For a really long, in-depth essay
on this episode, check out the full length reflection!
My least favourite episode of the first season, for various reasons (we saw it as the sixth episode thanks to a nonsensical British DVD running order, though – luckily – we were too tired when we first watched it to realise it contains a huge spoiler for Call of the Cutie).
Does that mean you’re in for a couple of thousand words of negativity and carping? Goodness, no, this is still lots of fun; without wanting to become the Pollyanna of the brony analysis community, I don’t believe there are any episodes of Friendship is Magic which are outright bad. Even the ones which I – wholly subjectively – think are, well, less good, the ones I’d put nearer the bottom of my personal pile (and surely mine will be different to yours!) still have plenty of good things to commend them. This one certainly does.
The main reason I’ve found this one less satisfying than other early episodes is that it’s built on sand. The plot boils down to “Spike gets jealous”, insanely jealous at that, and his “rival” is a pet owl whose only dialogue is hooting noises.
There’s a great story waiting to be told about Spike’s insecurities over what happens when he feels Twilight no longer needs him, or whether his inherent dragon nature will overwhelm his sweet personality; this is not that story, but rather a standard-issue “jealousy” plot, and it turns out Spike isn’t the best peg upon which to hang such an episode.
Having set off on a weak footing, Owl’s Well… stumbles along to the finish; there are some cracking gags and some lovely moments, but also a lot of padding, some jarring tone changes, and Spike spends almost the entire episode keeping tight hold of the famed Idiot Ball. It’s a mixed bag of an episode – but this being My Little Pony, even the “weaker” episodes are still pretty good, certainly by the standard of the kids’ TV animation that surrounds them.
Like I said, there are some lovely scenes interspersed with the clunky or random stuff. The opening scenes feature Spike showing his skill as Twilight’s assistant (though he does set fire to a rare book, which will come back to bite him later), as Twilight and Spike get ready for a stargazing picnic under a meteor shower. These scenes are a nice reminder of their pre-show relationship, both at work and as friends; in fact, Spike’s relationship to Twilight is similar to Twilight’s with Princess Celestia (including, unfortunately for Spike, a tendency to have meltdowns when they think they’ve disappointed their mentor).
There’s a great little scene at the picnic between Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo, building (not that we knew it) on Scoots’ hero-worship as seen in The Cutie Mark Chronicles and laying more groundwork for later stories:
Wow, Twilight! You’re lucky to have such a rad assistant. I wish I had someone to do whatever I told them.
Ooh! OOH! Me! Me! Me! I’ll do whatever you want, Rainbow Dash!
Yes ma’am!
That’s your Hearth’s Warming Eve present, Scoots!
Her giddy little grin at the thought of getting rid of Rainbow Dash’s apple core is adorable, and was adorable even when we had no idea who she was or what the hell was going on. (Of course, we never actually see her get rid of the apple core, so it’s entirely possible it’s been kept as the centrepiece exhibit of Scootaloo’s private Rainbow Dash Museum and Archive).
See, there’s loads to like about this episode.
Things move on apace – Twilight takes in a cute owl to help her with night-time chores (any similarity to other highly successful franchises where magicians have cute owl assistants is wholly coincidental), and Spike is immediately threatened by Owlowiscious (I’ve taken the spelling from the Elements of Harmony book!):
Whoa! Dude, that’s creepy.
…even though most of their interactions are pretty limited. Indeed, the episode spends an inordinate amount of time hanging more and more bells on a joke that can’t bear the weight: an owl’s hoot, you see, sounds a bit like the word “who”, and that’s a recipe for hilarity. You know, if you’re a Vaudeville children’s entertainer circa 1916.
Hoo!
Uh… Spike. You know? Assistant Number One?
I’m SPIKE! And who are you? What are you?
(I like the idea that griffons and manticores are commonplace in Equestria, but owls are comparatively rare.)
This bit felt like it was going to carry on for the next four hours until thankfully someone pulled the plug.
And so the two “rivals” start a protracted game of one-upmanship, except Owlowiscious doesn’t actually do anything in the first two acts, and Spike simply gets more and more unhinged for no very good reason. That there’s no good reason is immediately underlined:
What’s he all saddle-sore about?
Maybe Spike feels threatened? Or worried that Owlowiscious will replace him?
Replace him?! Ha! That’s crazy. Spike knows he can’t be replaced!
I get the feeling that was probably meant to be the key at the heart of this episode – if only Twilight had taken the time to spell out her feelings, instead of just assuming Spike knew how valued and loved he was, and how irrational his fears were! – but it’s undermined, because the episode just keeps piling up Spike’s resentment and jealousy higher and higher without ever flat-out confronting either Twilight or Owlowiscious about it.
Firstly, Spike tries to prove his worth, but he’s trying much too hard and ends up making more and more mistakes, particularly when he goes on an extended hunt for a new writing quill. This sequence features a genuinuely brilliant comic bit (the Quills and Sofas store!), and another bit that starts funny (Pinkie Pie rummaging around in her house before proudly resurfacing with… a quince, having forgotten what she was looking for) before it gets overmilked.
It’s all too much for Spike, who – after some harsh criticism from Twilight, having discovered the burned book from the intro – completely flips his lid, hatching a plot to frame Owlowiscious and dressing up like Snively Whiplash from Dudley Do-Right, complete with cape, moustache and evil laugh:
I mean, it’s funny, but it’s also jarring, like the wackier moments of Swarm of the Century dialled up to eleven.
Anyway, Spike’s crazy plan – to dismember a toy mouse, complete with ketchup and feathers everywhere – is interrupted when Twilight catches him in the act, leading to another funny scene where he’s forced to just go ahead with it and pretend it’s working anyway, before Twilight, furious, tries to snap him out of it:
SPIKE! I don’t know what upsets me more – that you deliberately tried to set up Owlowiscious, or that you actually thought this pathetic attempt would work! You’ve let your jealousy get the best of you, Spike. I am truly disappointed. This is NOT the Spike I know and love!
It feels… a little wrong. While Twilight is right to admonish Spike for being silly, no real harm has been done, and she seems a touch insensitive considering Spike, her oldest friend, is acting massively out of character and that the Owlowiscious situation is clearly bothering him; conversely, Spike’s reading of Twilight’s last line is a fairly radical interpretation of the text:
Everything wrong with this episode in a nutshell. It was around this time on first viewing, I remember, that I started to get a little fed up with everyone acting like an idiot for no reason except to move the plot from A to B.
So, Spike puts the idiot ball in his knapsack and runs away from home.
The rest of the episode feels like it could come from any run-of-the-mill Saturday morning adventure cartoon – Spike accidentally wanders into a giant dragon’s cave, is almost barbecued, Owlowiscious and Twilight come to his rescue, and there’s a chase through the forest to safety. I think that’s the issue here – but it’s also the extent of the issue. It’s not bad, it’s just not extraordinary. The dragon battle and the chase scene should be thrilling, but they aren’t; there’s no real sense of peril, and the chase scene (which probably looked stunning at the storyboard stage) is just a perfunctory sequence with lots of black and purple:
There is a lovely reconciliation at the end between Spike and Twilight, the former admitting he went much too far, the latter admitting she should have been more sensitive to her oldest friends’ feelings, before Twilight lets Spike write the obligatory letter to Princess Celestia setting out the week’s moral:
So, that was that. Did I enjoy it overall? Yes, and more so on subsequent viewings; still, this has always been one of the less popular episodes with my family, in that while we rewatch old episodes all the time (like, once or twice a day, pretty much every day) it’s rarely the one the children choose.
I think it’s just that it’s all so uneven – the overall tone, the quality of the jokes, the pacing, the characterisation, they all bounce all over the place. A Spike episode is very welcome, and having him doubt his place at Twilight’s side is a good concept; Spike clearly conflates his role as PA (i.e. what he does) with his role as Twilight’s old friend, beloved confidante and life companion (i.e. who he is), and that’s fertile ground which drives a lot of the issues here. But the overall jealousy/rivalry story idea wasn’t the best (Spike has always been shown to be fundamentally a good guy, so seeing him acting firstly extremely vain, and then paranoid and vindictive, felt uncomfortable), and the script feels bumpy, as if the episode was without a really clear and confident vision of where it’s going.
See, jealousy needs a rival, and the one Owl’s Well That Ends Well serves up is a vacuum. That needn’t be a fatal flaw, as the episode could then be about Spike’s own insecurities rather than anything real – and that’s presumably what the writers were going for, but it’s so disjointed (they also find room to cram in that tiresome recurring Vaudeville routine, plus a lengthy largely-silent sequence where Spike dresses up as a literal moustache-twirling villain, and two tacked-on action scenes involving a battle with a giant dragon and a high-speed chase through a dark forest) that there isn’t really time for Spike to gradually unravel as his paranoia gets the better of him, he just sort of snaps.
Mind you, if his breakdown isn’t really well-explained, it’s certainly well-depicted (I imagine Cathy Weseluck had a blast doing this one). It’s also beautiful, making better use of shading and light effects than any of the episodes we’ve seen so far:
…and while the underlying plot is too contrived to really work, and the “hooting” thing should have been taken out after the first table read (seriously, even my children weren’t amused by that), there are still more than enough good things about this one to make it worth watching at least once.
It’s hard to pick one, as the best scenes in Owl’s Well that Ends Well are either very short, or interwoven with less good material. Rainbow and Scoots’ little interaction is sweet, as is Twilight and Spike’s eventual reconciliation; Spike’s visit to the store is funny, as is his being caught by a stunned Twilight mid-caper trying to stitch up Owlowiscious.
But I have to go for a little moment from the second act that really made me laugh. Spike is up a tree, listening frustratedly as the Mane Six coo over Owlowiscious (Rarity even makes him a little copy of the special jewel-laden bow tie she gave Spike earlier in the episode). The staging of the shot makes it look like Spike is out of earshot, but when he does his little impression of Fluttershy:
…the ponies all immediately stop what they’re doing and turn to look at him for an explanation, leaving him to furiously backpedal:
Just a small moment, but a small moment that feels like My Little Pony, so I’m voting for that.
You knew this was coming, right?
Sorry, junior – all out of quills until Monday.
(perfectly timed beat)
Though I’ve found more to like about it each time I’ve seen it, the fact remains Owl’s Well… is still my least favourite episode of the first season; despite some lovely moments and a genuine keeper of a gag in “Quills and Sofas”, the poor concept and often mishandled execution mean it ends up bottom of my personal Season 1 pile.
Does that make it bad? Shoot, no. The context is everything. So it turned out not to be vintage My Little Pony exactly, but rather to be just another decent enough episode of a fun kids’ TV cartoon? Well, we’ll never turn down one of those.
Disappointing by the show’s own high standards – but context makes good stuff shine, and even at its “weakest”, My Little Pony is definitely Good Stuff.
PONYWATCHING
 |
 |
 |
| Full Length Reflections
Long essays on every episode |
Shorter Reflections
Condensed, more traditional-style episode reviews |
Pony Notes
Thoughts on various pony-related themes, Top 10s and the like |
Ponywatching Home
PREVIOUS |
NEXT |
| “Swarm Of The Century” | “Call Of The Cutie” |
I’d love to hear your own thoughts and comments below – all opinions are welcome and dissent is encouraged!
Reflections on S1 E24: “Owl’s Well That Ends Well”
Episode written by Cindy Morrow
Entirely unofficial reflections by sixcardroulette
This is a full-length Ponywatching essay. For a condensed review
of this episode, check out The Shorter Ponywatching!
This, for various reasons, is my least favourite episode of the first season; to be more specific, it’s the episode I enjoyed the least on first viewing (again, for various reasons), and also one we haven’t often been back since to revisit. But here I am writing another really long recap/reflection thing about it – is this just going to be thousands of words piling on negativity?
No, absolutely not. I don’t want to become the Pollyanna of the brony analysis community, but quite honestly I don’t think there are any bad episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, at least not so far. With 99 of them now under our belts, I can say even the ones that rank near the bottom of my personal pile (and surely mine will be different to yours!) still have plenty of good things to commend them. This one certainly does.
See, I’m happy to be doing this blog, because I love the show. Does that affect my judgement a bit, I wonder? Do I give less-good episodes an easy ride because I’m so fond of this crazy show which came out of nowhere to win my affections so quickly – or did this crazy show win me over so quickly because, for me, even the less-good episodes are just that, “less-good” as opposed to “bad”? Continue reading “Reflections on S1 E24: “Owl’s Well That Ends Well””
Reflections on S1 E10: “Swarm of the Century”
“You’ve got a real problem alright – and a banjo is the only answer!”
Episode written by M. A. Larson
Entirely unofficial reflections by sixcardroulette
This is a full-length Ponywatching essay. For a condensed review
of this episode, check out The Shorter Ponywatching!
The fifth episode we ever saw, Swarm of the Century is also the first one where the wonky order of the British DVDs really had a detrimental impact.
(These DVDs are about to take a full-on running jump off the high board when it comes to respecting the show’s continuity – the next episode up is Owl’s Well that Ends Well, which ordinarily should come right near the end of the series! – but we didn’t know the order was jumbled at the time, which made Swarm of the Century unnecessarily confusing in places.)
Um… Who the heck is that?
For those keeping score at home, my daughter got the Season 1 DVD box set for Christmas; this was our third day of watching My Little Pony, and despite some trepidation on the part of me and my wife as to whether this was the sort of thing we and our 2 children should be watching at all, never mind whether it would be garbage, following some excellent episodes so far, we were actually looking forward to it. I wouldn’t say we were fans of the show just yet, but certainly we all liked it already, almost (but not quite) to the point where we could start differentiating between good episodes and less-good ones, rather than referring to the show as a whole.
Anyway, this is a strange one. First off, we expected a Fluttershy episode, because the other five main (mane?) characters have already had plenty of screen time in the ones we’d seen so far since the pilot (Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash in Griffon The Brush Off, Applejack, Rarity and Twilight Sparkle in Look Before You Sleep). But Swarm of the Century really isn’t a Fluttershy episode.
Secondly, after we figured that out, I always filed this one in my head as a Pinkie episode, because (spoiler alert – although really, if you haven’t watched the episode yet, what on earth are you doing reading some guy’s 9,000-word recap of it? Go and watch it! Do it now!) she’s the one that ultimately saves the day, and because both the problem and her solution to it are bonkers off-the-wall things of the sort normally associated with Pinkie episodes. But, again, it’s not really that either, as Pinkie doesn’t spend that much time on screen, and what time she does get sees her isolated and out of context (indeed, the structure of the plot needs her to be deliberately shown that way, not to mention for half of the jokes to work.)
So if it’s not Fluttershy’s week in the spotlight, and if it’s not actually a Pinkie episode, what is this? It’s tempting to flag up the first appearance of Twilight Sparkle’s OCD and overwhelming will to please her teacher actually driving her to a breakdown, but even that’s only one strand of what happens in these 22 incident-packed minutes.
No, the truth of it is that this is the first episode since Elements of Harmony (or possibly the first episode ever) where there isn’t a central character or pairing, but rather where it’s expressly written as an ensemble piece. It’s also, and I don’t think this is coincidental, the first episode where the plot’s driven by out-and-out comedy. The slightly sketchy moral of the story, the implicit relationship-building, and even the (otherwise extremely serious) threat posed by the titular Swarm, take a back seat to just making the funniest episode possible. Does it work? Let’s watch!
Continue reading “Reflections on S1 E10: “Swarm of the Century””
Ponywatching 