Season One Revisit Thread

@DerpyFast
I think Rarity and Sweetie dont fully understand each other and theyre a bit less close just by the fact Rarity works a solo job that Sweetie cant meaningfully contribute to.

Rarity probably thinks Sweetie has it easy and might even be a bit spoiled; after all Rarity didn’t have a successful older sister growing up. While Sweetie thinks Rarity doesn’t appreciate Sweeties own hard work and passion.

And over time they start to appreciate each others work and presence.

And for Luna, yeah that dreamscape allows many possibilities, honestly I dont even know if there are any episodes that really deal with Lunas moon abilities.

Do you think this is one reason why you find Luna better than Celestia in that she has something better to do? Do you think Luna would be a duller character without them?

@Cosmas-the-Explorer
So there are very good reasons that Luna is more popular.

Even in the very beginning, people found the story of Nightmare Moon to be oddly one-sided and self-serving, and a lot of fans assumed that there was another side to it. Then there’s A Bird in the Hoof. The Cakes are extremely nervous, so Celestia pulls a quick prank, but the moment doesn’t end with her having built rapport with The Cakes. There’s also the part where Twilight thinks that Celestia will throw Fluttershy in the dungeon. It’s funny, but it’s also strange that she thinks that.

We didn’t know anything about Luna until Season Two, so we had to fill in the blanks. In Luna Eclipsed, Luna is this loveable dork, and despite a series of mishaps, including cancelling Nightmare Night, she somehow manages to do a better job of building rapport with her subjects.

Despite being Twilight’s mentor, I don’t think Celestia gives Twilight any advice that isn’t just an empty platitude. Compare that to Luna, who has offered life-changing guidance to The CMC.

And then there’s the big one. Luna embarks on this huge redemption quest where she tried to help others avoid making the same mistakes she did. She feels so guilty about turning into Nightmare Moon that she created a nightmare creature to punish herself, and when it gets out of control, she tracks it down and helps capture it.

The decision to release Discord and send him after Tirek caused more harm than anything Nightmare Moon did. Celestia doesn’t feel any guilt or remorse. She doesn’t apologize or reflect on her decision. In fact, it’s like she’s forgotten about the whole ordeal by the end of the episode.

Celestia started out as “a bit off” and went downhill from there. Luna started out as endearing, and got even better over time.

This episode gets credit for being a bit more advanced; exploring topics like false hope, placebos, and the idea that a person’s word means something. Unfortunately, watching it was a bit like trying to rewatch The Magic School Bus as an adult; it’s great at teaching, but I don’t find much entertainment value in it. And like The Magic School Bus, it would have benefitted from an afterword about the importance of just talking to your doctor.

I kind of like the idea that Granny Smith tried the tonic. She doesn’t have a reason to trust them, but I like how it shows that elders aren’t immune to scams, and how a person can let their guard down when it’s something they really want.

The song is nowhere near as memorable as the one from Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000.

This one’s fine, and there’s nothing really wrong with it. It’s just not for me.

I don’t have a ton to say about it. I like how it explores different styles of learning. I love how it gives Twilight and Rainbow something to bond over. And I especially love how it adds an extra bit of depth to Rainbow’s character; she has insecurities about her own intelligence.

And then the whole town getting together to help Rainbow was just the sweetest thing ever. I’m not sure it’s a sustainable learning method, but it’s a good springboard to get kids thinking about their own learning style. It gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Trade Ya! is a nice simple downtime episode. It’s funny, there are lots of fun little easter eggs to spot, and it’s just characters doing stuff. Including Twilight finally doing some princess stuff. I enjoyed this one.

This could have probably been an 11-minute episode. It’s trying to be about addiction, but it only covers the “enabling” aspect. What would have really been cool is if Spike had told the truth at the halfway point, and then the rest of the episode is about her struggling to function without the magic. Maybe she relapses and goes after the book again. They wasted a perfectly good metaphor.

It’s really weird that Rarity is this upset over something like a puppet theatre. She makes costumes for celebrities, and this is the most upset we’ve seen her since Suited for Success.

They did Dave Polsky dirty. A single line from Rainbow Falls meant that Equestria Games was barely about the Equestria Games they’ve been building up since Season Three. Instead, it’s about Spike’s weird self-esteem issues. The sequence of events leads to a weird situation where hundreds of lives are at stake, there are four alicorns in the arena, and it falls to Spike to save the day.

This episode missed its calling as a worldbuilding episode. What sorts of athletic competitions do these ponies have. If you come up with five games, and dedicate two to three minutes to each, that’s ten to fifteen minutes of the episode filled. Maybe there’s some kind of shotput, where unicorns have to throw the shotput through an anti-magic barrier, and there’s a ceiling so pegasi can’t use flight to gain an unfair height advantage. Or Polo. Ponies playing polo would be kind of funny.

This one was a huge letdown.

I’m working on a system for recommending episodes. A blue triangle means that it’s a fan-favorite, or one of the best. A green triangle means it’s a solid episode I’m comfortable recommending. A yellow triangle often includes a timestamp, with the recommendation that the viewer skip to it if they get bored, or to skip to the next episode if there’s no timestamp. A red triangle means to skip to the next episode after the timestamp, and a red “X” means skip. Some episodes defy this system, so I have an interrobang (‽) for “It’s Complicated”.

Twilight’s Kingdom and Magical Mystery Cure are probably peak “It’s Complicated”.

Where do you even start? I like things about this episode, but it’s pretty dumb. It would not be unreasonable to drop the show after these episodes.

I like The Keys and The Box. The season benefitted from a season-long mystery, and I like how each of The Mane Six gain a more advanced understanding of their Element. It makes the show feel like it’s growing up. I even like how Twilight being an alicorn barely mattered this season. This was something that was dumped on them with no idea what to do with it or what it meant, so they made that part of the story.

Having said that, The Box is just a huge deus ex machina, in every sense of the word. It conveniently defeats the most powerful being we’ve ever seen, and it gives Twilight an easy and unsatisfying answer to the question of why she’s an Alicorn. I would have preferred it if The Box was opened as a denouement, rather than at the climax. Because it makes it feel like the world was saved by an extremely specific set of unrelated events that just happened to produce the required plot coupons. Feels less organic that way.

The decision to send Discord after Tirek was stupid, but it lends itself to some potentially interesting characterization. Maybe Celestia released Discord because she feels guilty about banishing Luna. Maybe she gets Discord to deal with Tirek because she’s gotten complacent and takes the services of others for granted. There’s a neat parallel, where both she and Tirek are just using Discord, but Tirek actually makes a valid point about friendship, and makes some effort at building rapport with him. And there’s a neat parallel between Celestia and Discord, in that they’re both lucky they have Twilight to bail them out.

This could have been such a cool deconstruction of the formula that two-part episodes follow, but nothing that happens means anything. Celestia matter-of-factly acknowledges that her decision has the potential to bring about the end of the world, but it’s like the show completely forgets about it by the end. She doesn’t say anything else about it, nobody calls her out on it, it doesn’t affect anyone’s opinion of her, and it never comes up again. This is the same show where Princess Luna has reflected on her mistake, punishes herself for the mistake, and she helps defeat The Tantabus when it escapes. There’s a very good reason that Luna is more popular, while Celestia is relegated to just being a meme. And you can’t even argue that she might be a competent leader off-screen, if these are the sorts of decisions she makes.

And then there’s Discord. If you haven’t watched this episode recently, you might have forgotten that it wasn’t enough to betray Equestria, Discord had to go and personally betray The Mane Six; to make sure they knew it was him. This is the second time he’s betrayed Fluttershy’s trust right to her face. And this isn’t even the last time he betrays Equestria.

At some point, you have to get over the novelty that they actually got John de Lancie to basically reprise his role as Q from Star Trek: TNG. Having watched most of TNG, it’s pretty clear that Discord is “No, we have Q at home”. TNG and everyone in it understands that Q is a terrible person. But he’s always in control, with the exception of the episode where The Q Continuum strip him of his powers. How cool would it have been if Discord was just faking, and Tirek never actually stole his powers. After Twilight negotiates for his release, he says that he’s seen enough, and snaps everything back to normal. Then he lectures Celestia about taking others for granted, and on the folly of thinking she can order The Lord of Chaos around. But as it stands, this episode just makes both Celestia and Discord look really dumb.

I do really like the fight. You have this setting full of gods and monsters, so it was about time they gave us a satisfying fight. And it’s a great fight; it’s well-choreographed, and it sells the power of the fighters. I love the subtle detail of Twilight using her ability to teleport to catch Tirek off-guard, and how her most powerful attack has a charge-up time, so she uses a quicker lightning attack to try and blind him. I showed the fight to a friend who doesn’t watch the show, and he thought it was a good fight. As time goes on, I’m less interested in action and lore, and more interested in things like character and theme, but the fight still holds up, and I still appreciate it.

Twilight herself doesn’t do very much to earn the castle. She solves a puzzle that was already mostly solved by Discord, then she loses a fight, and happens to make the choices that get the Deus Ex Machina to activate. But that’s the point; unlocking The Box was a group effort, and the castle is a group reward. All of the thrones are the same size.

This is the episode that made me add the “Guilty Pleasure” rating to my system. Because for all its flaws, I was never bored, and it is an undeniably epic episode.