An episode a day

[Rares]

Remember the episode where she gets kidnapped by Diamond Dogs? Spike imagined himself a buff knight in shining armor saving the day. Combine his psychological need to be the hero, with his one-sided infatuation with Rarity, and, well, it makes sense.

Well here's the difference I find. In DaPS, Spike immediately went to Twilight and pulled in the others for help. He still wanted to be the hero, but at least he knew this wasn't manageable on his own. You can still try to look like the hero and get help. In this instance however, he actively avoided the help, which to me makes the act of trying to appear like a hero far more selfish, because it really just made the situation much worse, as Twilight had to spend more time cleaning up the mess.

It also makes me think about magic. The things Rari was doing under the book's influence seemed, shall we say, beyond anything she's been shown to do before. One could attribute this to the book, but then, when Spike took the book away from her she was still capable of using her new powers. So did it just open the floodgates on her natural magical potential? Was the green glow some kind of condensed magic, or supernatural entity a la Nightmare who was semi-possessing her, and providing it's own magical power?

I think it was in the vein of Nightmare Moon, where it's not so much as possession, more so corruption of the user and who they are.

So many questions.

Not to mention the question that somehow this magic seemed permanent that Twilight had to spend time reversing, as opposed to normal magic.

[Rares]

S4E24 Equestria Games


That wasn't the worst episode, but it was very, very far from good. It felt like it was honestly a waste of a concept. I mean, not that I feel as if Equestria Games was something I was particularly excited for, but considering it was built up since the end of S3, it felt like such a waste to make most of it appear off screen and be about Spike, and pretty much halfway through the episode, it's just "Oh hey, the games are over." Seriously, imagine if Best Night Ever was about Spike's experience at Pony Joe's and then the Mane 6 come in. That would have been horrible, and that's nearly what this was. It was wasted on really uninteresting viewing of watching Spike first go through something that many people might experience, but then just kind of ruin that by making a fool of himself singing the anthem. And on a personal note, not necessarily a complaint, the idea of a spell that will disable unicorn's magic does make me a tad uncomfortable. And then there was the whole bit of Twi being seperated from the Mane 6, not being able to sit with them again making her seem like on a whole other level. I guess the episode had a decent message but it was a waste in every other field.

Oh boy, tomorrow is part 1 of Twilight's Kingdom.

At least Cutie Map is soon.

[Rares]

S4E25 Twilight's Kingdom Part 1.

"Oh no a new villain is stealing magic from other ponies, clearly the best choice of action is to send Discord. What could possibly go wrong?"

Fortunately I'm a bit braimd dead at the moment so I can't get that anmoyed with this episode. But damn this is the dumbest thing Celestia has ever done, and she isn't a dumb pony. Then it's like the episode somehow becomes self aware that They haven't done really much about Twilight being a princess aside from raising her higher and higher in a pedastal and bluh. Tirek was better in G1.

[Rares]

S4E26 Twilight's Kingdom Part 2

Heh. Well I guess I should start off on a positive note. I like Rainbow Power as a concept, especially Rarity's design, and something about it in particular just feels quite special to me. And they did fix the tree of harmony to at least include the Mane 5's elements

The bad:
Everything else
Like I don't even know how to begin. Is it how foolish Celestia is? Like she seems on par with Snails in this episode. Tirek likely doesn't know of a 4th Princess when A) Discord is his buddy now and B) There are the stained glass windows of her. Does she really think that Tirek is somehow blind to this? Hell he's more likely to know more about Twilight than Cadence. And not allowing Twilight to tell her friends, and then having Twilight basically abandon them to themselves because of that "Fuck the Mane 5 ever being allowed to do anything significant in this show" basically leaves them as bait for Tirek. And that whole bit with Discord, I'm sorry, what the hell was McCarthy thinking, and now they just accept him back? What? I'm at a loss. Admittedly I didn't think so much of it before because I never actually finished this episode until this point, but wow. That was stupid. And I go back to this is really awful with continuing to put Twilight on a pedastal with a guise of still trying to make it look like it's about the Mane 6, but really it feels like they're shoved in the corner more and more. That atrocious "fight scene" is by far one of the worst moments of the show. If I wanted to watch Dragonball Z, I would. It was unnecessary, contributed nothing to the episode other than wasted time for no real purpose. And the blowing up of the Library, what the hell was that? Firstoff, Ponyville could recover from the nonsensical DBZ damage to it, but the treehouse goes because fuck it, we need Princess Twilight to live in a castle now I guess? What was wrong with keeping it, it wasn't even done in a meaningful way, just blown up like nothing. I could go on and on. This really is just such an awful finale, and one of the more poor episodes of the show.

Now onto my thoughts for S4. All in all this really was on par with S2, in terms of its high points and low points. First you get a Rarity Takes Manehattan, then It Ain't Easy Being Breezies. It was highly varied, and I think a big problem of it was how it really showed that they kind of had no idea what to do with Twilight being a Princess, and it would appear as if they were stuck in some limbo state because of it. One episode would put her seemingly on a pedastal, the next would act like that didn't. And while I may prefer the latter absolutely, some consistency would be nice. But it didn't quite seem like that at all, in fact almost as if most episodes were written without even knowing she was a Princess. It was odd. All in all, the season was pretty evened out.

[Gentian]

S4E26 Twilight's Kingdom Part 2

Heh. Well I guess I should start off on a positive note. I like Rainbow Power as a concept, especially Rarity's design, and something about it in particular just feels quite special to me. And they did fix the tree of harmony to at least include the Mane 5's elements

The bad:
Everything else
Like I don't even know how to begin. Is it how foolish Celestia is? Like she seems on par with Snails in this episode. Tirek likely doesn't know of a 4th Princess when A) Discord is his buddy now and B) There are the stained glass windows of her. Does she really think that Tirek is somehow blind to this? Hell he's more likely to know more about Twilight than Cadence. And not allowing Twilight to tell her friends, and then having Twilight basically abandon them to themselves because of that "Fuck the Mane 5 ever being allowed to do anything significant in this show" basically leaves them as bait for Tirek. And that whole bit with Discord, I'm sorry, what the hell was McCarthy thinking, and now they just accept him back? What? I'm at a loss. Admittedly I didn't think so much of it before because I never actually finished this episode until this point, but wow. That was stupid. And I go back to this is really awful with continuing to put Twilight on a pedastal with a guise of still trying to make it look like it's about the Mane 6, but really it feels like they're shoved in the corner more and more. That atrocious "fight scene" is by far one of the worst moments of the show. If I wanted to watch Dragonball Z, I would. It was unnecessary, contributed nothing to the episode other than wasted time for no real purpose. And the blowing up of the Library, what the hell was that? Firstoff, Ponyville could recover from the nonsensical DBZ damage to it, but the treehouse goes because fuck it, we need Princess Twilight to live in a castle now I guess? What was wrong with keeping it, it wasn't even done in a meaningful way, just blown up like nothing. I could go on and on. This really is just such an awful finale, and one of the more poor episodes of the show.

Now onto my thoughts for S4. All in all this really was on par with S2, in terms of its high points and low points. First you get a Rarity Takes Manehattan, then It Ain't Easy Being Breezies. It was highly varied, and I think a big problem of it was how it really showed that they kind of had no idea what to do with Twilight being a Princess, and it would appear as if they were stuck in some limbo state because of it. One episode would put her seemingly on a pedastal, the next would act like that didn't. And while I may prefer the latter absolutely, some consistency would be nice. But it didn't quite seem like that at all, in fact almost as if most episodes were written without even knowing she was a Princess. It was odd. All in all, the season was pretty evened out.

I completely agree with you about this episode. it was, imho, one of the worst finales. One of the worst episodes, in fact. Fortunately, nothing even remotely like this has happened in Twi's world.

[Rares]

S5E1 The Cutie Map: Part 1

This one was a much needed change of pace compared to how awful that finale was. It checks off a lot of the requirements I ask for a premier or finale. Mane 6 involved mostly equally, check. No overpowered villain, check. No absurd threat to the entire world? Nope. It really fits well. And honestly Starlight Glimmer makes for a good antagonist in this bit, as the ideology is something that is good to be question, and said what makes it wrong, while not being too much for a kids show. I think it works well. I wish there was more stuff put together as well as this was.

[whobawhats]

S5E1 The Cutie Map: Part 1

This one was a much needed change of pace compared to how awful that finale was. It checks off a lot of the requirements I ask for a premier or finale. Mane 6 involved mostly equally, check. No overpowered villain, check. No absurd threat to the entire world? Nope. It really fits well. And honestly Starlight Glimmer makes for a good antagonist in this bit, as the ideology is something that is good to be question, and said what makes it wrong, while not being too much for a kids show. I think it works well. I wish there was more stuff put together as well as this was.

Yes, completely this. I have nothing to add

[Rares]

S5E2 The Cutie Map Part 2

Continuing on the good streak of the first part, this continues to honestly be one of the better premiers of the show. I'd honestly rank this as the same par as Return of Harmony and the premier. I suppose I could be expected to complain that the Mane 6 don't save the day, but from a storytelling aspect, I can see why it was important for the other ponies to show their talents, and it still was a M6 adventure. Starlight Glimmer, although I prefer Nightmare Moon, is arguably the best villain in one of these, at least in this premier. Despite what happens later down the road which is for another day, I think from how it's portrayed here, she's not an insanely powerful unicorn, if anything appeared to really only use her magic for basic stuff, and then of course removal of cutie marks. In fact, rather the use of straight up manipulation (notably the speaker stuff) made for a more interesting use as it wasn't just another laser fight or something ridiculous that. Again, keeping this small scale was a great choice. It also set up the premise of "the magic of cutie marks" rather well for the season. (Despite if I feel it wasn't used right at all in the season, the introduction of it here was good. Honestly Josh Haber is most likely to blame, but again, that's down the road.)

All in all, although I've already seen this, part of me regrets not watching this when it first aired, after my personal hiatus after I hated the S4 finale. Seeing this live probably could have adjusted a lot of feelings.

Oh and it had some incredibly cute Rarity moments.

[Rares]

S5E3 Castle Sweet Castle

This was a very much needed episode. Honestly something like this was extremely necessary after the S4 premier, but instead we got that garbage episode of Castle-Mania. This episode does well of establishing events from the previous finale, without adding high stakes. It addresses what happened before, and keeps it light hearted. And while I really hate how they blew up the tree library, I feel like how they handled this episode with having Twilight move into her new home, and the way her friends handled it, especially what they did for her with tree, and their memories. That was incredibly sweet. I think Meghan McCarthy very carelessly blew up the tree with as much thought as Michael Bay, I feel like what happened here at least made up a little for it, and didn't make the blow as hard. If that makes sense. And how the Mane 5 contribute all this effort into making Twi's castle a home, by contributing their own characteristics to it (being spearheaded by Rari made it an extra step enjoyable) I thought was incredibly wonderful to watch. All in all this was a wonderful episode, and ranked pretty high up there for me.

[Rares]

S5E4 Bloom and Gloom

I like how this one offered a nice little bit of closure to the little mini-arc of Luna approaching the CMC and giving them personal lesson in regards to various nightmares, and I thought it was rather sweet on Apple Bloom, while also raising a pretty good question about "What if someone isn't satisfied with their cutie mark?" All in all, it was pretty good.

And it even had Rarity for a brief moment!