Well, the 100th episode of MLP:FIM is coming up on June 13 and the episode features the Mane Six fighting a fearsome monster bent on destruction in Ponyville. Except that’s not what this episode is about, as the Mane Six and their monster battle only appear in the background. The real focus of this episode is on the regular ponies of Ponyville as they try to put on/salvage the wedding ceremony of Matilda Mule and Cranky Doodle Donkey amidst the chaos.
Teaser Trailer is here. Featuring more background ponies than you can shake a stick at: Derpy Hooves! Octavia Melody! Featherweight! Lyra Heartstrings! Amethyst Star! DJ Pon-3! Dr Hooves!
Well, My Little Pony had it’s 100th episode after a hiatus of a few weeks and as advertised, the Mane Six are relegated to background characters. (Twilight gets a few lines at the very end). As the teaser trailer showed, the Mane Six are occupied defending Townsville from a monster attack while the rest of the town is preparing for the wedding of Matilda Mule and Cranky Doodle Donkey. The situation is made a little more stressful because the invitations were sent out with the wrong date (Cranky tried to save some bits and hired Derpy Hooves on the cheap) and the wedding is today! The story follows several lesser characters, some of whom get their first speaking lines, throughout the day and finishes at the wedding.
The ep actually shows how important the Mane Six are in the town. The other ponies are rather blase about the monster attack, and since Pinkie Pie isn’t available to plan the wedding, Rarity isn’t available to do last-minute alterations, and Twilight isn’t available to meticulously organize everything else, the regular ponies of Ponyville have to step up.
It’s a wonderful, silly, over the top episode with so many shout outs to fandom memes that it might not make sense to a casual viewer.
Notable points:
-Cranky and Matilda are pretty famous in their own right, which is why they had so many VIPs at their wedding. In all those years of wandering Equestria searching for his lost love, Cranky apparently had a lot of adventures.
-Apple Bloom mentioning that if her sister and friends aren’t preparing for a monster attack, they’re probably having a friendship problem that can be resolved in an hour or so.
-Derpy Hooves plays a pretty big role in the episode, but her name still isn’t mentioned. She’s officially listed as “Muffins” in the credits.
-Same with Dr. Whooves/Time Turner, who is just addressed as Doctor by other ponies.
-Dr. Whooves, a true believer in science, said he’d been trying to crack time travel for years, but stopped when another pony developed a magic spell to time travel (i.e. Twilight in a previous episode
-Since he couldn’t get his shirt altered in time, Dr. Whooves showed up at the wedding in the only thing he had left in his closet: Tom Baker’s scarf.
-Celestia and Luna having a sisterly tiff over who forgot to bring the wedding gift.
-Perhaps-more–than-platonic-besties-and-roomies Lyra Heartstrings and Bon-Bon share their deepest secrets. One of them was an agent of a secret monster-hunting agency reporting directly to Princess Celestia. The other ate all of their roommate’s secret stash of fancy imported oats.
-Speaking of roomies, Octavia Melody and Vinyl Scratch are confirmed as (unlikely) roomies. They team up for a dubstep cello number.
-Pony Bowling with the Dude!
-Mayor Mare’s wedding speech is kind of sweet.
Next episode is titled “Princess Spike”. Synopsis: When Spike is put in charge of making sure nothing disturbs Princess Twilight, the power soon goes to his head and he begins making decisions in her name.
They literally jumped a shark (DJ Pon3 and Octavia) in the episode.
My little one is little, so not a teen-20s brony/pegasister, but adored the episode. Sure, a lot of the grown-up jokes were not as funny, but seeing background ponies was well-received. So I guess the target demo and the “other” demo both liked it.
My favorite part was the changling sitting all by itself. I also enjoyed Princess Sister fight and Gummy’s… whatever the fuck that was. And Steven Magnet donating his mustache.
EQD did a nice post-episode breakdown and pointed out some of the blink-and-you-miss it moments, like The Dude’s cutie mark was a rug and he was drinking a white russian.
Still watching My Little Pony. The latest episode was “Princess Spike”. Canterlot is hosting the biggest Grand Equestrian Pony Summit ever, with delegates from all over Equestria (including a very familiar-looking delegate from Whinnyapolis, donchaknow?) and Twilight has been up for three days straight planning and is spouting gibberish. She needs to get some rest before the reception, and Spike is tasked with making sure she is undisturbed. He finds that things go a lot more smoothly when he acts in Princess Twilight’s name, and Spike being Spike, he starts hella abusing the power, despite Princess Cadance warning him a few times during the episode. Eventually, Spike’s bad decisions link together in a Rube Goldberg-ian chain of fail and an angry mob storms the castle to demand satisfaction from Princess Twilight.
Observations:
-No Mane Six except for Twilight. All the Princesses are in this one, though.
-Fancy Pants returns
-They play polo in Equestria.
-They also have chainsaws and jackhammers
-It’s good to be the Princess.
-There’s a griffin delegate. IIRC it’s Gilda’s friend from two episodes back.
-Cadance uses a variant of Sombra’s dark crystals to seal the busted water main.
I’m usually not a fan of the Spike episodes, and “Spike at Your Service” from Season 3 is the worst MLP episode ever. Part of it is that Spike is one of the few characters that can still carry the idiot ball to advance a plot, as he is still a baby dragon. This episode works pretty well because Spike’s a) not mooning over Rarity and b) interacting with a whole lot of new, different ponies.
Next episode is “Party Pooped” and guests Weird Al returning as Cheese Sandwich.
Another episode. “Party Pooped” is a Pinkie Pie episode, so it has a lot of wackiness, but it also shows a more serious side of Pinkie. A delegation of yaks led by Prince Rutherford of Yakyakistan is in Ponyville because Twilight is hosting talks to establish a treaty between Equestria and Yakyakistan, which is beyond the Crystal Empire in the far north and so distant that no pony has ever been there. The yaks are big and imposing and resemble the Mongol Horde with the personality of the Incredible Hulk when he was written as a petulant six year-old (Yaks no like! Yaks DESTROY!).
Twilight has done a lot of research to make Prince Rutherford at home, but the yaks are very particular and any attempt that doesn’t meet Yakyakistan standards sends them into a destructive rage. All the ponies strike out in their efforts to deal with the yaks, but they are still confident that things will work out because they have an ace in the hole: Pinkie Pie! She’s scheduled to throw a big welcoming party later when Princess Celestia arrives and there’s no way a Pinkie Party could fail to get even the truculent yaks to loosen up and have fun. Twilight and the rest are so confident in Pinkie that don’t notice her twitching and hyperventilating into a paper bag. Pinkie decides to take an epic journey to Yakyakistan to understand yak culture in the course of an afternoon. Se travels all over Equestria, but doesn’t quite reach her destination. Luckily, she ends up back in Ponyville to save the situation before the talks break down and the yaks declare war.
Memorable stuff from “Party Pooped”
-Pinkie has a secret party planning room deep under Sugarcube Corners where she keeps details on all of Ponyville’s ponies with their likes, dislikes, and fears.
-Twilight’s secret fear is…quesadillas. “They’re just so…cheezy”
-No Cheese Sandwich in this ep. Instead, we get an appearance from Cherry Jubilee from “The Last Roundup”. Princess Candace shows up as well.
-Pinkie’s long “nooooooo” as she slides backward down the mountain from the gates of Yakyakistan all the way back to Ponyville.
-In her epic afternoon journey, one of the things Pinkie did was join a band, which then broke up because of creative differences. Pinkie is shown in the Ringo role in pony-fied versions of iconic Beatles moments, such as the Abbey Road cover.
-“John”‘s cutie mark was a peace sign. Did anyone catch the others’?
-Twilight actually lies to Celestia (not very well, but she does)
I’m not sure what point they were going for with this episode. Prince Rutherford has a softie side, but the yaks get so angry and destructive at the slightest thing and do so much damage, I’m surprised the ponies would even want to deal with them. They not only smash up a lot of places (Twilight’s palace, Applejack’s barn, Rarity’s shop, Sugarcube Corners), they also attempt to destroy Fluttershy’s critters and Spike. Pinkie’s last minute save of showing the yaks what is special about Equestria rather than try to make the yaks feel at home by re-creating Yakyakistan things could have easily backfired.
This weeks episode is definitely one of the best slice of life episodes this season. Moondancer was a bit too jerky but otherwise an excellent episode. Anybody here read Fimfiction? I couldn’t help but think of the nympho Moondancer from the Stallionverse series.
I didn’t really like the Amending Fences episode. It wasn’t awful, but it didn’t grip me at all. This season overall isn’t as good as the previous ones. However, it’s still really watchable and enjoyable. Just not A+ every week anymore. And it’s been ages since we’ve had a new song.
I do like the IDEA of Adventures Throughout Equestria And Random Ponies, but the execution has been hit and miss.
I have successfully hooked my 9yro and 5yro sons on this show. (Making up for their other love, The Power Rangers. Oh God! It burns!) MLP:FIM happens to be on right up until it’s time to leave for school, and I picked the show myself so neither could whine the other had gotten to watch HIS show, drama blah blah. Now they are both REALLY hooked, with 36 episodes in the DVR and all three albums on my iTunes. Boy 2.0 just got a Rainbow Dash plush. Boy 1.0 is obsessed with horned animals, so YakYakistan was a huge hit. Love. But Discord is his favorite, and all that John Delancey goodness cannot be denied.
We have a miniature horse who resembles Applejack–we’re planning on decking her out like AJ (freckles, cutie mark, and all) for a Halloween show, with her cart disguised to look like AJ’s apple cart. I might need to dress Boy 2.0 as Spike.
The weekend’s ep was “Amending Fences”. An offhand remark by Spike about how, even though she’s the Princess of Friendship now, she was a bad friend to her friends back in Canterlot. Twilight is determined to go back to Canterlon and make it up to her old friends…as soon as she can remember their names. (For the record, they are: Minuette, Lemon Hearts, Twinkleshine, and Moondancer. The first three appeared in first few minutes of the first episode, when Twilight gave them the brushoff and refused to go to Moondancer’s party).
Making up with the first first three on the list goes rather easily, as they are excited to see Twilight and didn’t take her snubs personally. However, they’ve lost touch with Moondancer. Investigation reveals that she’s turned into a friendless, study-obsessed recluse (sound familiar) living in a shabby cottage who slams the door in Twilight’s face. The Princess of Friendship strikes out, so it’s Pinkie to the rescue once again, as she recreates the party that Twilight blew off to make cathartic moment for Moondancer to let out the anger and resentment she holds against Twilight and be able to connect with friends old and new.
Noticeable Stuff:
-There was a Mane Six (Twilight, Minuette, Lemon Hearts, Twinkleshine, Moondancer, and Lyra Heartstrings) before there was a Mane Six.
-Twilight and Moondancer are identical designs except for the glasses and the color scheme. Moondancer changed her appearance to look different after Twilight left.
-Minuette and Lyra are also the same except for color scheme, as are Twinkleshine and Lemon Hearts
-Why do these ponies appear as background ponies in both Ponyville and Canterlot? Simple, Lyra moved to Ponyvill a while ago and they go back and forth visiting.
-Twilight sure takes some friendly fire this ep. Between Spike’s initial comments, Minuette telling her they didn’t take it personally when she blew them off and moved to Ponyville without saying good-bye because it’s what they EXPECTED from her, and Pinkie already knowing her old friends via Lyra and from Cadance’s wedding (Lyra and Minuette were two of the possessed bridesmaids), she’s feeling her oats even before Moondancer lets loose.
-How did Lemon Hearts get her head in that beaker?
-Lemon Hearts works at the palace planning special events. Ponies got jobs! (How everypony earns their bits is a discussion for another post)
-Science lab flashback. I believe Twilight and Moondancer are discussing how to make a salt lick.
-The return of Donut Joe’s.
How ponies earn money
Twilight: Government salary
Rarity: Dresses and suits, tailoring
Applejack: Apple based products
Fluttershy: Pet sitting maybe government salary for taking care of nature preserve
Rainbow Dash: Her parents must have been rich based on that elaborate house she lives in.
Pinkie Pie: Baker, party planner.
Applejack: Historically, she’s the most concerned with earning money for the family farm. Sweet Apple Acres not only supplies apples, but also their very popular cider and zap apple jam, and of course apple-based baked goods. However, it’s a very seasonal business. Farming is a precarious livelihood requiring a lot of hard work even in the best of times, but it doesn’t seem like the Apples aren’t plagued by some common farmer problems. Ponies control the weather in Equestria, so they won’t lose their crops to a sudden frost, and when you’re your own workhorses, you don’t have to take out loans for work animals or expensive farm machinery.
Rarity: Like Applejack, she has a business she worries about. However, Rarity defines success more by building up her reputation and clientele rather than earning money. Granted, having a talent for finding gems certainly takes the sting out of day-to-day monetary worries. No wonder she could afford to be such a big tipper in Manehattan!
Pinkie Pie: Works at Sugarcube Corner for the Cakes, and does a lot of party and event planning. The only time I’ve see her handle money is when she spent the huge back of bits (presumably from Twilight) that was supposed to be used in Griffinstones to clean out the sweets-trolley on the train.
Twilight Sparkle: Royal Coffers. Prior to becoming Princess, she was Celestia’s favored student and presumably received a stipend, kind of like a perpetual grad student. Celestia also arranged for Twiilight’s housing in Ponyville and Canterlot. Since her Canterlot apartment has been vacant since Twilight left for Ponyville, I presume it is reserved for whoever is Celestia’s favored student at the time. I wonder if Sunset Shimmer used to live there?
Rainbow Dash: She has a lot of responsibility for the local weather and as the defacto leader of Ponyville’s pegasi, but it’s uncertain how that translates into bits. She certainly has a nice house. Many pegasi seem to work at the Weather Factory in Cloudsdale, but where the bits come from is uncertain. Do send around collectors to get ponies to pay their weather fees?
Fluttershy: A rare pegasi who doesn’t do weather-related stuff. She performs a valuable service for Ponyville managing the area’s critters, but it probably ain’t cheap to feed all her friends. Does the town pay her?
A lot of the better episodes have relatable themes, but Amending Fences was a little too real. Seemed like it was aimed right at the college age+ crowd.
Disconnecting yourself from reality and living in your own little world.
Growing apart from old friends.
Nostalgia for an ever receding past.
How your decisions negatively affect others, even if you didn’t mean to.
(bit of a reach) Staying in school to study because the real world is scary. Keep dem student loans rolling in.
There weren’t a whole lot of jokes or gags, either. It was just using your heart as a punching bag.
Moon Dancer breaking down at the end was a little forced, but they had to pack a lot into 22 minutes.
Descarte + Hay + Cart = Haycarte
Best horse pun ever?
I’m liking how this season is introducing so many other characters. Much less focus on the main characters. You pretty much gotta do that when a show goes on this long.
Speaking of Twi’s old house, that led to some serious fridge logic. I understand why they did it narratively (to show all the time that’s passed). But it’s saying she never went there all the times she’s gone back to Canterlot? They always stay at the palace? She left all her books and personal belongings there? Given Canterlot’s location I’d think real estate prices would be insane. She didn’t rent it out to anyone?
Pinkie emptied out a bag of dosh for cider in the first Flim Flam episode.
Event planning is a lucrative business. Pinkie doesn’t strike me as someone who went to school and got certified or anything. I’m not even sure if she gets paid for most of her parties, she might just do them for fun – which is why she still lives in the little loft. Or maybe she’s the type who doesn’t care and thinks living in a bakery is awesome. I’d think she might want to move out for consideration of the Cakes, though. Unless they really need the rent money or she’s indispensable to the business. That assumes she even pays rent. I’m vaguely remembering an ancient Faust interview where she said they took Pinkie in almost like an adopted daughter after she left the rock farm.
One weird disconnect of the show is how in their personal stories they struggle to carve out a niche for themselves, but they’re actually super famous heroes who save the world.
It’s safe to assume weather and nature management are government jobs. Those aren’t things you leave to markets. Heh, I remember when the show first aired people said Equestria was a communist paradise. Probably not a libertarian’s dream, in any event.
MLP hit the midseason mark with “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?”, which is a Princess Luna episode, natch. The cold opener is Princess Luna transformed into Nightmare Moon by a shadowy cloud. However, it’s the Mane Six to the rescue, as they turn into their Rainbow-Powered forms and defeat Nightmare Moon. Luna then wakes up, very upset that her dream had a happy ending.
Meanwhile, the real Mane Six are all exhausted because they are short on sleep. Talking it over, thy discover they’ve all had nightmares involving a shadowy cloud. Spike sends a message to Princess Luna, who appears and tells them that an entity called the Tantabus, that can invade dreams and turn them into nightmares, has invaded their dreams. Luna had been containing the Tantabus in her dreams, but it was able to escape when she dreamed about the Mane Six.
Luna monitors the Mane Six’s dreams, but refuses their assistance in fighting the Tantabus, saying the ponies have suffered enough because of her failure. The gang has the kind of dreams you would expect (Twilight studying in the Golden Oak Library, Applejack raising a giant apple, etc) which the Tantabus turns into nightmares. Luna is able to prevent the Tantabus from doing more harm, but it escapes, and because Pinkie Pie dreamed about sharing a giant ice cream cone with everyone in Ponyville, it could be hiding in anyone’s dream.
Luna uses her power to weave a shared dream for all of Ponyville to flush out the Tantabus, but it’s all she can do to hold the dream together. The Mane Six have their hands full with the Tantabus and the nightmares it creates, but discover they, and the rest of Ponyville, can do anything in a dream. Despite the beatdown, the Tantabus only seems to be getting stronger, strong enough to escape into the physical world. Twilight notices that the Tantabus isn’t just feeding from the ponies’ dreams, it is feeding on Luna’s guilt and self-loathing. Luna admits that she felt she hasn’t atoned enough for being Nightmare Moon, and that Celestia and everypony else forgave her to easily, so she created the Tantabus to give her nightmares every night. Just as the Tantabus turns into a giant, shadowy alicorn and rips a tear into the waking world the Mane Six and the ponies of Ponyville are able to convince Luna that she is not Nightmare Moon and can move on, and she is able to re-absorb the Tantabus.
And it looks like our last new episode until probably October. Episode titles imply that there is a Halloween ep, maybe a Hearth’s Warming Eve. We’ll have a new EG movie in September, so it’s not terribly long of a break, but I think it really sucks after a full year of no new episodes.
