-When Luna says that nopony can help her defeat the Tantabus, Spike chimes in that he’s no pony. Unfortunately, Spike doesn’t get an Eowyn moment.
-Lots of hat tips to previous episodes, a bunch of which I probably missed: Dash and Applejack as their Power Ponies selves, vampire Fluttershy, and Spike-in-Shining-Armor (riding giant Derpy/Muffins).
Some of those dream forms are rather psychologically revealing…
-Fluttershy dreams she is Angel’s little pet and he fusses over her like she does to him.
-Saccharine cuteness reduces Rainbow Dash to shuddering in a fetal position.
-Scootaloo dreams she has giant wings that kick of winds when she flaps them.
-Filthy Rich has money-based superpowers
-Lyra and Bon-Bon dream they are literally joined at the hip and are delighted.
-and, of course, Alicorn Princess Big Mac.
Last week Twilight got put through the guilt wringer and this week it’s Luna’s turn.
I hate that they are delaying the MLP season again with another unasked for, unrequested EG movie. They need to just hire a different team to do that because there’s been little crossover onscreen so there’s no reason they should be worked on by the same group!
I didn’t know about the hiatus and was none to thrilled to hear about it. There must be some demand for Equestria Girls movies, and hiring a whole separate team to work on them is probably not feasible.
I realized a while back that one of the downsides of being invested in a show that, at it’s heart, is a licensed property designed to sell pretty toys to pre-pubescent girls, there will occasionally be decisions made by the PTB that reflect that an not what I would prefer to see.
It was odd to see the place so abandoned, but I don’t think it was her apartment to rent out. Judging by the sheer size of the place and the accoutrements, I assume that the apartment belongs to Celestia and she uses it as housing for her favored students. I’m assuming that the books, telescope, and so on belong to the apartment, which is why they were left behind.
I’m guessing that Celestia left the apartment vacant after Twilight decamped to Ponyville just in case she wanted to come back and then forgot about it.
Faust did say that Pinkie is semi-adopted by the Cakes, but I’m guessing that room-and-board are part of her wages, much like Applejack at Cherry Jubilee’s. Pinkie probably throws her friends’ parties for free, but she has to get money somewhere, if only to cover party supply expenses.
As far as carving out a niche, Pinkie is really the only one of the Mane Six who doesn’t really have a path towards advancement. Twilight has already achieved her goal. Applejack has the farm. By this point, it’s clear that Rainbow Dash is Wonderbolts material and Rarity has what it takes to be a successful designer in Manehattan or Canterlot. The show’s need to have them in Ponyville might actually be holding them back. Fluttershy seemed like the odd one out, but she now has the the Study of Magical Creatures (or whatever it’s called) organization to get more involved in.
Equestria Girls: Friendship Games trailer is up here. It looks like there won’t be any crossover between worlds and this installment will feature human Twilight, who attends a rival school.
New episode this weekend. I’d assumed that new eps would be held until after Friendship Games, so I’m glad I checked. It’s “Canterlot Boutique” followed by “Rarity Investigates” followed by “Made in Manehattan”, so it looks like three straight Rarity episodes.
Well, the second half of season five kicked off with “Rarity’s Boutique”. Rarity’s saved enough money from designing costumes for Sapphire Shores’ tour that she’s going to open a new Carousel Boutique in Canterlot! Rarity and the Mane Six show up to open the boutique but because Rarity still plans to live and work in Ponyville, she has hired Sassy Saddles, a unicorn with a lot of experience working in boutiques. While Sassy Saddles has a lot of connections in the fashion world, knows the tastes of Ponyville mares, is PR-savvy, and can certainly sell dresses, but she steps all-over Rarity’s toes as they have very different ideas of how to run the business. Rarity is reduced to cranking out copy after copy of her in-demand dress in the backroom while Sassy Saddles generates even more orders with the customers. Rarity is so disgusted that she decides to close the boutique down. She brings out all of her different dresses to have a going-out-of-business sale and it’s such a success that she changes her mind and gets Sassy Saddles to adapt to doing things the Rarity way.
-The first musical number in a quite a while, “The Rules of Rarity” is reprised several times throughout the episode as Rarity’s mood goes from elation to despair and back to elation again.
-Rarity seems kind of naive in her expectations of what opening an off-the-rack boutique in Canterlot would be like, especially in how many orders she would get and demand for her to crank out copies of a popular dress. In Ponyville, her business seemed to based almost entirely on creating custom outfits for clients, and little, if any, walk-in traffic.
-It figures the goth pony would gravitate towards the Luna-inspired dress and the valley pony would want the Celestia-inspired one.
-Sassy Saddles actually wears saddles as accessories
-Rarity gives her dresses punny names.
-Rarity learns the hard way that the customer is always right.
-Sassy Saddles has an odd body type: more like Cadance’s than Rarity’s
-Speaking of odd body types, the pony who came in at the end looks like a sausage with a pony head.
Last weekend’s episode was “Rarity Investigates”, which teams Rarity with Rainbow Dash. The opener has Rarity and Sassy Saddles at the boutique, where Rarity is meticulously arranging a display of her newest dresses: inspired by film noir detective Shadow Spade. Just as she gets everything just right, Rainbow Dash barges in and knocks everything over. Dash is in town because the Wonderbolts are putting on a show in conjunction with a garden festival/banquet and Dash is the Wonderbolt Reserve on duty as emergency sub.
She’s very very excited, so she spills juice on Rarity’s silk dress and geeks out when she meets Wind Rider, a retired Wonderbolt who still holds the long-distance speed record. Spitfire remarks that Rainbow Dash might just be the pony to break those records.
The next day, it looks like Rainbow Dash will get her wish to fly with the Wonderbolts as Sptifire has disappeared. She apparently got a note that her mother was very ill and rushed off. However, Spitfire’s mom showed up to watch the practice and is right as rain, so who wrote the note? Suspicion immediately falls on Rainbow Dash, who hasn’t helped herself by saying that she would do ANYTHING to fly with the Wonderbolts and talked about her AWESOME dream where she flew with the Wonderbolts today. The Wonderbolts giver her until show time to clear her name, or be permabanned from the Wonderbolts. Luckily, Rarity is on the case, with a whole bunch of costume changes.
Notes from “Rarity Investigates”:
-The writers actually played it pretty straight with setting up the clues. Things that were shown early in the episode (Rarity’s attention to detail, the difficulty getting stains out of silk, etc) ended up being important.
-Dash gets lost in her victory dance, which includes both the Egyptian walk and the pop-and-lock
-Of course Rarity gets to wear a fedora. She also daydreams herself into black-and-white sequences complete with narration and muted trumpet music (which is also used for the end credits)
-Soarin’ is the second in command of the Wonderbolts. He’s usually been shown as a goofball, but he’s level-headed here.
-More Wonderbolts than usual, including a few that get their first speaking lines.
I can’t quite figure out what there doing with Sassy Saddles. The character design is totally bizarre and you never see her cutie mark. I wouldn’t be surprised if she turns out to be a alicorn. Maybe even Cadance’s mother and Celestia’s sister.
Whoa Nelly is the fan name for that fat pony. Weirdest background character yet. Why would anypony have their own face as a cutie mark?
Love how they make fun of several film noir tropes.
I liked the noir elements, but I thought the episode kind of sucked. At least with the one on the train (HE HAS MOUSSE IN HIS MUSTACHE!) was a true mystery and we as viewers didn’t know whodunnit.
This was as obvious as Scooby Doo.
I liked the Rarity/RD team up and the Wonderbolts are always nice. Just a meh episode and to me, a fairly meh season. A season that took too long to come, then with breaks. I know I’m not the target demo, but it does suck as an adult viewer.
Equestria Girls Friendship Games premiers Saturday night. IMO, too late at night for east coast little ones at 8pm. It’ll rerun a lot so we’ll catch it Sunday morning, but it’s annoying.
I seriously doubt that. Thinking about it, Sassy Saddles looks like Fleur-Dis-Lee. Maybe they are meant to be the unicorn equivalent of tall, willowy fashion models?
The Whodunit was fairly obvious (it’s always the special guest star), but I thought the Howdunit was better written than “Friendship Express”, especially since clues were given out even before we knew there was a mystery to solve. Then again, I really don’t like “Friendship Express” as an episode, largely because the cake-eating thieves got away scot-free. Besides, the key part of this episode isn’t the actual mystery, it’s the interplay between Rarity and Rainbow Dash, which is one of the few Mane 6 pairings that haven’t been explored yet. The film noir stuff was fun, and more Wonderbolts background is always good (though the more I see of them, the more I think that there’s something in the organizational culture that develops jerkasses).
I still think this season is much better than season 3 and comparable to season 4, though I think season 4 didn’t start coming together until the thematically-linked episodes in the second half.
Re: Rarity Investigates: Someone on Tumblr pointed out, in the background of one of the black and white scenes, two ponies that resemble BBC Sherlock Holmes (dark-maned unicorn with coat and scarf, with a bee cutie mark) and John Watson (blond earth pony with eye bags and a jacket, and a cutie mark that resembles a horse version of the smiley face on the wall of 221B). Later a pony in a suit and tie, who resembles Moriarty, runs past Rarity as she exits a shop, with unicorn Holmes and pony Watson following soon after.