teygrim

I pick stuff apart either way. I think I've picked apart my favorite episodes the MOST, actually. Some people don't like analyzing things because it ruins the mystery. I'm not like that at all.

I'm the same way; I wrote pages of analysis on Season 1, but I was talking more specifically about Season 2 in my reply. Anything that elicits a strong emotion (whether positive or negative) compels me to analyze it until I can figure out why it makes me feel the way I do.

Something I've noticed about TV shows. When you become an avid fan of a TV show, you pretty much enjoy the episodes you have to catch up with more than the ones you have yet to see. Usually. I came into the fandom during "Dog and Pony Show", so everything after that I have 7 days or more each to critique and pull apart every episode. The extent of my conversation about the episode "Swarm of the Century" was "Ok, next episode."

That definitely sounds like a reasonable explanation but I know that, for me, that is definitely not the case. I'm not disappointed with Season 2 episodes because I'm picking them apart, I'm picking them apart because I'm disappointed. While, it is true that I watched Season 1 over only a few days, after almost every episode I felt a very stong positive feeling (something between inspiration and joy). A lot of Season 2 episodes, on the other hand, just leave me with a feeling of emptiness (with the shining exception of Sweat and Elite). I can't choose how I feel about an episode, all I can do is try and understand why I feel the way I do. And so I pick the episodes apart, because I'm disappointed, and I want to know why.

And for as much sense as that makes, we've all came up with Twilight. She was such a major component in the show that discarding her to the point of not even seeing her in an episode, let alone giving her three to four lines of dialouge is simply alien. While I do appreciate that she doen't have to be the glue holding the mane six together anymore, I can't deny the fact that she's been shortchanged for her time. Maybe it's the writers keeping her low profile to prevent people from deriding her as a sue, but either way, everyone who's been down from S1 through S2 has some degree of care for the little purple filly.

Don't get me wrong, I love Twilight and she is one of my favorite characters in the series, but I still think the difference between Season 1 and 2 is the switch between a friendship focus into an individual focus. In my view, we rarely ever see the characters interact as friends in this season. In the Discord episodes, all the characters had their personalities switched so, although the interaction in these episodes were fun, they weren't interactions between the characters we'd grown to love. Lesson Zero was probably the closest we've gotten to an episode about friendship this season, but Twilight and Rarity were so ridiculously exaggerated that they might as well have been different characters. These were the interactions between cartoon characters not the friends we know and love. In the luna episode all the characters interacted with Luna (which was fun) but not really each other; the Sisterhooves Social had a little but it's main focus was on family and not friendship; the Cutiepox (my favorite episode of the season) was all about Applebloom and her friends might as well have not been there for all she interacts with them; and both of the Rainbow Dash episodes were just Rainbow Dash with very little input from her friends.

So basically, my problem with this season is the lack of friendship. And although some of the individual character focused episodes are entertaining, that's not what this series was about. This is Friendship is Magic afterall, not Individuality is Magic.

hi hi

I've finally figured it out! As my hero, Twilight Sparkle would do, I went and systematically analyzed every aspect of the season 2 episodes to isolate qualities that it lacks in contrast to season 1.

The results were conclusive. The only thing that Season 2 lacks that Season 1 had is...

Twilight Sparkle in Every Episode

While that is technically true, I think that the lack of Twilight Sparkle is more of a symptom of the real problem. In Season 1, Twilight and Twilight only wrote the letters to Princess Celestia, which forced the writers to make the mane six interact. In order for the shows formula to work, Twilight had to know what her friends were up to whereas now each character can be dealt with in complete isolation from the rest of the cast (eg the last two Rainbow Dash episodes minus a couple of very superficial exchanges). Now that any one can write a letter to Celestia, the writers don't have to deal with friendship at all.

I remember some people saying that the change in the letter writing was a good thing because it allowed the writers more freedom, but I feel that it has only allowed the writers the freedom to write stories abouts individuals and cut the friendship out of the show. It's just easier to write about one character than two, three, four, five or six so it's inevitable that the writers would take the easy option when the show's formula no longer forces them to make the characters interact.

... It is comforting to know that they were just targeting a different audience instead of having gone through a total lapse of sanity. ((I mean, enough people watched "Meet the Parents," to warrant sequels when -to my delicate tastes- it seemed like a movie where nothing but a bunch of horrible stuff happens to the protagonist the whole time.))

That may be the case but I feel that they went way too far. I don't think superhero's or citizens in peril belong in a FiM show, there are other shows for that. FiM is about friendship not action, so I hope that they don't focus too much on gaining a new audience at the expense of their old audience.

You're not missing much. Trust me.

I can second that. The level of disrespect is increadible. I'm actually amazed that they banned you for getting "huffy" after reading some of the nasty things people are allowed to say when someone expresses an unpopular view.

hi hi

Maybe someone really did decide that having ponies pulling a train was too weird? The weather factory and wrapping up winter were great, made Equestria feel like a different world. They had an opportunity to continue that here... not sure why they didn't take it.

Well, from what I hear, it was a new writer so they were probably unfamiliar with the world. Thus, instead of Equestria we get tired and cliche "citizens in peril" settings.

I want to write these off as "gag items" much like Twilight's "computer" for the sake of the plot. The main reason is that such things are out of place in Equestria and don't fit in with the general technology and culture of pony society. The dam I could pass, but the hydroelectric generators was too much. The crane bugged me for the same reason, it would have been more interesting with a bunch of ponies up there on the top floor and one of the supporting beams buckle, but that's just me.

Plus steel beems were clearly being used to build a high rise, which is extremely out of place in a village like Ponyville where houses are generally no higher than three stories. Actually, the whole world was changed to contrive a story that had no right calling itself My Little Pony.

@Dessa

Yeah I miss that too. But what I miss most of all is the friendship. I loved the friendship of the mane six in Season 1 and the way each character played off each other. I really miss that. Now they just focus on characters individually. Even when they're together it feels more like a group of individuals than a group of friends.

I'm stunned. I may have had problem's with previous Season 2 episodes, but this wasn't even My Little Pony. It was just a dumb superhero show, and a badly written one at that. I think I'll leave it at that for now, I need to go to bed.

I see a lot of people arguing that Rainbow Dash still learnt a lesson because she chose a pet that wasn’t cool but I disagree. For one thing, I don’t think that a tortoise is any less cool than a butterfly. Certainly, you wouldn’t see a Hell’s Angel taking a butterfly as a pet for its cool factor.

But, in a world where butterflies are cool, the audience can only infer what is and is not cool by the way the characters see them. Obviously Rainbow Dash initially sees Tank as uncool but she is the only one in the show that thinks this way and her attitude changes by the end of the episode. With no one left to judge Tank as “uncool” we can the tortoise who could not fly but suddenly can, is also a tortoise that was not cool but suddenly is.

The only way I see the uncool argument working in the context of the episode would be if there was a character who continued to see Tank as uncool, even when Rainbow Dash accepted him (maybe Dash could have even stood up for Tank so that their relationship would be more give and take rather than take, take, take). You could argue that there will be characters who continue to see Tank as uncool but they just weren’t in the episode but I say if the conflict is not contained within the episode then neither is the lesson.

Therefore, I don’t think that Rainbow Dash learnt a lesson (or at least not a good lesson). It's just a story about a selfish pony getting what she whants. But, I guess you could still say that the lesson was "don't judge a book by it's cover". Well, if that were the case, then they didn't do a very good job of it. Just look what happens when you apply that lesson (to the same degree) to real world: "Hey kids just because you don't like strawberry cake doesn't mean you shouldn't eat that cake just because it looks like a strawberry cake and everyone tells you it's a strawberry cake because it might just magically taste like a chocolate cake even though it obviously isn't one. You can't just assume that a strawberry cake tastes like a strawberry cake just like you can't assume that a flightless animal can't fly."

Tank spends the whole episode trying to be what Rainbow Dash wants him to be and Rainbow Dash wanted a flying pet. Every animal in the competition was a flyer except Tank. He was a tortoise and tortoises don't fly, that is part of what they are. You can't make a flightless animal into a flying animal in the real world just like you can't make a black man white. It might seem fine in the context of a cartoon but when you apply the same logic to the real world then you create a standard that very few can live up to. A tortoises value doesn't lie in it's flying ability so it should have been up to Rainbow Dash to relax her policy of "flyers only". By sticking to this policy and making the non-flyer conform to an impossible expectation, the writers have inadvertantly legitimised discrimination (ie, it's not up to the employer to remove racist policies it is up to the employee to conform to them, even when this is impossible).

This might all seem trivial but let me put it into context. There is a famous study that takes black and white girls (aged, I think, around 5) and presents them with a black doll and a white doll. They are asked to pick the doll they prefer and tell the experimenters why. The majority of the black girls picked the white doll and told experimenter that they picked the white doll because it was better. And when the girls were asked to tell the experiment which doll they were most like, they pointed to the black doll. It seems from this study that coloured people in America are conditioned to believe they are less good than others from an early age and I believe it's because of shows like this.

I sort of get what you're saying, but at the same time, I really don't think it's quite the same. There's nothing that indicates to me that Tank is uncomfortable with the new setup. Again, to me, he seemed consistently frustrated by his lack of agility. I wouldn't be surprised if Tank was a tortoise who wanted to move faster, fly around and do complicated tricks, but couldn't for the simple reason that he was a tortoise. Using the helicopter thing is less pretending to be something he's not and more using a tool to make up for his shortcomings and allow him to be who he wants to be from how I see it.

I admit I'm reading into things to an extent there; Tank is a silent character and we didn't see any of his life prior to wanting to be Dash's pet. Still, I just don't see it in Tank's character from what we do see that there are ever going to be any negative consequences for him, as I see nothing that convinces me he's more content or comfortable being slow and on the ground compared to flying around in the air.

Okay, I think I need to tell you something about myself for you to understand where I’m really coming from and why this issue is so close to my heart. I am half Pilipino and half Irish living in Australia. Growing up, I was conditioned to believe all the stereotypes about Asians so I came to identify strongly with my Irish heritage and completely reject my Asian blood.

I believed that everyone was right. I believed that Asians were only good for math and lacked all social skills and that Asian men were impotent. But I believed that I was an exception. I wasn’t one of those Asians who hung out with other Asians speaking in Asian. I was better than that. I was white.

But later on in life I came to realize that although I saw myself as white, others viewed me differently. I still remember the reaction of one of my white friends when he found out that I was half Asian: “I knew there was something off about you.” He said it in a joking tone but it hurt all the same.

I started to accept myself for what I was and began to hang out with more Asians. But when my white friends noticed this one of them asked me, “do you identify as an Australian or an Asian?” it was very clear from the tone that she was trying to determine which “side” I was on but the context and wording of the question made it very clear that you can’t be both. Either I’m an Australian or an Asian and Australians apparently only associate with white people.

And currently I’m trying to find work. During an interview, I was told that the interviewer believed that I could do the job but he still said that I was not suitable. One reason he gave was that I was too “smart” (that was the exact word he used) and that I would get bored. He went on to recommend that I find a more academic and less manual job.

So basically, no matter how hard you pretend to be something that you’re not and no matter how much you want to be that something, you can only really fool yourself. I can’t change the way that others perceive me so I can’t deny my Asian blood any longer. I’ve come to embrace my multiracial heritage and when I see someone (or something else) in a similar situation, I believe that they should embrace what they are as well. An Asian should not be ashamed of being an Asian; a Black should not be ashamed of being Black; and even a tortoise should not be ashamed of being a tortoise.

(I’m probably going to regret saying all this here because I know that people who have never dealt with racism like to fool themselves into believing that it doesn’t exist in modern society, but I feel it must be said.)

Yeah. I still disagree. I mean we're to assume he set up that trick in the talent show thing himself, right? Why would he set something up like that if he didn't somewhere want to succeed at it? When he fails there, he's surely frustrated by it. I think the same can be applied to the other trials. He wants to be able to compete with the others, but meets only with frustration at his inability to keep up. He competes against the others because he wants to be Dash's pet, and he doesn't give up on the goal even through his continuing, no doubt frustrating failures. He wants to become the sort of pet Dash wants, so I would assume he is happy in the end to become just that.

I don't see why the end result can be considered bad when Dash get the sort of pet she wanted and Tank gets to be the sort of pet he wants to be.

That's all right everyone's entitled to their own opinion and own interpretation. But I think I might not have explained very clearly. The best anology I can come up with is a relationship. You see young teens pretending to be something that they aren't for the sole purpose of impressing the object of their attraction. But even though they are happy in the short term, the relationship never lasts because they were never a match in the first place. This is what I feel happened here and that is why I don't see this as a possitive outcome. Because, although things seem to have worked out here, and help but think of the consequence so such actions in the real world. You can magic away consequences in a cartoon but you can't in the real world.

Okay early on, somepony says "Does dash even know what being a pet owner is about?" It establishes the question of responsibility. Dash's motivations and methods are COMPLETELY selfish. They make a point of it.

At the end of the episode, Dash chooses the animal that saved her from the avalanche. She makes her choice based on a selfish reason. Sure, it's a good reason, but it doesn't discuss the issue set forth at the outset. It's left as the point of tension, unsolved. Dash was and is selfish.

Missed opportunity.

My feelings exactly. I feel that this problem has occured in a few episodes in this season. They establish an interesting conflict but then they turn around and resolve a completely unrelated conflict and ignore what really mattered.

And besides, the helicopter thing isn't even really a compromise exactly. It's not like Tank isn't happier like this. Watch him throughout the episode. He clearly wants to be cooler and he wants to be more mobile. Dash gave him what he wanted just as much as he became what Dash wanted. Dash learned a lesson about looking past the surface and seeing inner drive and the end result is something that appeases all parties.

That message just makes me even more uncomfortable. Fluttershy established that Tank wanted nothing more than to be someone's pet so you can only assume that he was doing all the things he did just to impress Rainbow Dash. Remember the song when Rainbow Dash described what she wanted in a pet and Tank did his best to change accordingly. In the end he became what Rainbow Dash wanted but I don't think this is a good thing considering his motivations for doing so.

Making him able to fly is just logical. RD lives in a cloud home after all, and only pegasi can walk in clouds. How would Tank be able to be her pet if he couldn't fly? Even if there is the possibility for RD to live on the ground instead, she would always have to leave him behind when she visits Cloudsdale, for example.

Does it make logical sense? yes, but I think there were better ways around the problem of the flightlessness. Rainbow Dash could have left him with Fluttershy when she slept in her cloud home, or visited Cloudsdale, and she could have carried him around on her back during the day.

My problem is that I feel the writers have inadvertantly sent a message with this. The message that pets need to fundamentally change what they are in order to suit the wants and convenience of their owners. Throughout the episode they've established that Tank can't fly but when it becomes a problem for Rainbow Dash then magically he can. Instead of teaching kids about responsibility they've used a magical solution that can't be applied to real life.

The tortoise is still not really a cool or stylish pet by any stretch of the imagination, so I do think that RD grew through the experience, who is all about being cool. She did learn to compromise in that way.

Yeah, I guess I can see that. My real problem is with the sudden flight. It's just that I believe that people need to learn to accept others as they are and a tortoise is a flightless animal. Throughout the episode, Tank couldn't fly but, in the end, he made up for it with his loyalty. I wanted Rainbow Dash to realise that he was just as good as the other pets but for different reasons, but instead they went with, he's better than the other pets for the same reasons (ie he can fly) and more (and he's loyal). That's what I meant when I said that the tortoise might as well have been one of the birds.

I don't want a surprise ending I want some originality. I didn't just suspect what would happen when I saw the tortoise, I knew exactly what would happen and how it would happen, and I was right. And I didn't say that Rainbow Dash needed to ruin her life for her pet. Owning a pet is a big responsibility and you have to take a lot of time out of your day to excercise and care for it. Your time and energy is the sacrifice you make when you own a pet but the effort is definitely worth it. A flightless animal would have been more difficult for Rainbow Dash to care for but it could still be done with a little effort.

This episode actually reminds me of the "Twilight" book series in that the protagonist experiences all of the rewards and none of the consequences or responsibilities. Of course life is not perpetual tragedy but it is filled with challenges that must be overcome. As far as I'm concerned, if you remove the challenges, you remove the meaning, which is what I feel they've done here.

Well, I guess I'm the first then: Didn't like it. Writing was bad.

Thank you, I'm tired of being the only neighsayer on this forum. But I didn't think it was so much the righting as it was the painfully predictable story. As soon as you see that turtle you know exactly what's going to happen and exactly how it's going to play out. There is no surprise in the slightest and it becomes boring to watch a story you've seen a million times play out for a million and one.

Worst of all is that they tease you at the end of the episode. One of the ponies says that having a tourtoise as a pet would force Rainbow Dash to be more grounded and it makes you think, "Wow, Rainbow Dash is really going to have to compromise to find a balance between her ambitions and taking care of her new pet. Now that she has to think about Tank and not just herself, she'll have to learn to make sacrifices for the wellbing of her pet. This could really be interesting." But then the writers magic away all these problems with one of the biggest copouts I've seen in this show. If the turtle can magically fly at the end of the episode, the eagle might as well have won. There are no consequences for Rainbow Dash's choise so, as far as I'm concerned, there is no lesson worth learning here.

I was hoping that the last episode would mark the beggining of a series of episode that were on the same level as Season 1 but, from this episode, that doesn't appear to be the case. It's not a bad episode by any means, it's just very disappointing. I'm actually surpsrised that so many people like this episode in particular because, as many hangups as I've had with a lot of the previous episodes, I feel that this one is the weakest of the series so far.

@Ginger Mint

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this episode because I don't believe that Sweetie Bell learned anything except that Rarity needed to change. And as for the Luna episode, that's not what Twilight wrote in her report to Celestia. In fact, the frienship report made it sound like the episode ended the way I thought it should have: "one of the best things you can do with friendship is to give it to others, and help them find it themselves", "... all of Ponyville has learned that, even if somepony seems a little intimidating, even scary, when you offer them your friendship you'll discover a whole new pony underneath." I believe that if the moral had been that you shouldn't try to change people then the report should have been much different.

@Ginger Mint

What do you mean? Of course it was a trick. They intentionally mislead Sweetie to believe a falsehood. I'm not saying that their deceit was malicious, and I understand the need for deception in science but my point still stands. Sweety Bell didn't "overcome" anything; she was just proven wrong.

As for the Luna episode, well, I don't agree that it was about Luna. Really, it was about Twilight and her efforts to help socialize Luna. She got Fluttershy to teach Luna how to speak and she got Apple Jack to teach her how to act (and she would have gotten Rarity to teach her how to dress if the scene wasn't cut). The logical conclusion would be that Luna eventually learned how to become less intimidating so that the other ponies could finally give her a chance and eventually accept her as part of the group. Maybe end with Luna enjoying the holiday with all her new friends. Instead, she remains an outsider and just has to accept that she is feared and demonised because that's just what the ingroup does and who is she to interfere with that.

In regards to the message of compromise. It might have fallen flat in the first half of the episode when Sweetie Belle was doing everything she could to make her sister happy, but in the latter half of the episode, she was uncompromisingly opposed to having anything to do with Rarity. Thats where Sweetie Belle's need for compromise comes in. She needed to accept that her sister made a mistake and let her back in.

I don't know about that. It's not much of a compromise is Sweetie has to be tricked into working with her sister.

((As for Luna: Her first order of business was to try to take away a cherished institution that everypony loved without realizing the consequences. She's a Princess. To paraphrase a wise cartoon character, "there's more to being a Princess than getting your way all the time. Twilight helped her see just how special she was.))

That's just it isn't it. They made the episode about "the true meaning of halloween" instead of about friendship. The more I think about it the more I feel sorry for Luna. She comes to Ponyville looking for acceptance and leaves learning that being feared is a good thing. Not a great start for her.

I actually really *like* the result. There's often a place for recognizing that the world WILL NOT change for your convenience... and instead of needing to change everything, one needs to accept and understand better, to look at the positives instead of the negatives. That's what Luna was doing. And that was the BIGGEST lesson Luna needed, because refusing to look at the positive and trying to change everything was the mistake she made 1000 years ago.

One of the most annoying problems I see in this world are people going "I want everyone to accept me in exactly the way I want to be accepted" and refusing to accept anything else.

I strongly disagree. The whole episode revolved around Twilight helping Luna change her ways so that she may be more socially acceptable in modern times but the writers just gave up and pretended that there was no problem in the first place. I'm just not satisfied that, in a show about friendship, the resolution is that Luna just needs to get over being singled out and ostracised because everyone else is enjoying themselves.

But also - you rarely have 'legitimate complaints' against little kids. They can be wrong and you punish them - to teach them what's wrong. You can be active with them and show them how to do things right - to teach them what's right. But just yelling at them or telling them something is wrong rarely gets through. The fault usually falls upon the caregiver, not the kid.

The degree of how good the kid learns is up to how well you provide punishment, reward, and instruction. You need to be very active with them - which is what Rarity was learning. Rarity is good at giving to ponies - but kids respond poorly to having things given to them. They become spoiled, they become demanding, they reject it, they don't value it, but rarely does it work as expected. What they need most is instruction, activity, and interaction.

Rarity wanted to either have Sweetie do it, or do it herself. Doing it *together* was the problem.

I am, however, surprised that she understood AJ's apple pie example.

Again, I don't disagree. It's not the morals that I have an issue with; it's the storytelling. If this was about taking responsibility, then the episode should have focused on Rarity but, instead, Sweetie got more screen time. A responsibility moral would have worked much better in this episode, but I felt that the writers were trying too hard to push a compromise message that just didn't exist in the actual episode.

Here's the thing. Rarity probably had the chance to say no to her parents about watching Sweetie Belle, or could have tried to pawn her off on somepony else. But she didn't, so it was her responsibility to entertain Sweetie Belle. I don't mean all day 24/7, but you can't just leave a kid alone and not give them anything to play with or do.

I have babysat kids before, and when you volunteer or get asked to do that, you make a commitment. You can bring your homework or a book or whatever for when the kid is napping or something, but when that child is awake, you need to do activities with them. Kids can play alone for a certain amount of time, but they get bored. When you're watching a kid, they, and their parents, expect you to spend some time with them. It's what you do because that's your responsibility when you commit to that.

Like I said, at the very least, you need to give them something to do if you're busy. You can't just let them sit around, or they make art projects from your special jewels. Sweetie Belle seems capable of taking care of herself, but there aren't any toys at Rarity's house. She resorted to arts and crafts, but got in trouble--all because the babysitter failed to provide necessary playthings.

I mean ya, she shouldn't have touched Rarity's stuff--but she's not old enough to understand things that are "rare" and "valuable". Also, Rarity never specified what Sweetie Belle could and couldn't touch--although that would probably be EVERYTHING. I would say that yes, Rarity had legitimate complaints... but you have to realize that they were probably her fault. Rarity never set any boundaries for Sweetie Belle to follow, so technically she didn't break any rules.

I think that Rarity realizes this, which is why it takes her anger awhile to build up. She knows that Sweetie Belle is young and doesn't know any better--but Rarity also doesn't try to correct the situation, she just sends Sweetie Belle somewhere else. In doing so, Sweetie Belle seems to get into more trouble--but again, it's not really her fault.

I agree with you 100% and I think that this episode should have been about responsibility but instead they tried to make it about compromise. Just look at Apple Jack's little speach. She says that sisterhood is about "give and take" and that Rarity was taking much more than she was giving. This isn't really evident in the episode, because Rarity wasn't "taking" what Sweetie was trying to offer, she was just ignoring her and trying to keep her out of the way. I just don't feel that the lesson matched the conflict. I think that they should have either made the lesson about responsibility or, if they wanted to keep the lesson, then have the episode resolve with a compromise between both ponies not just a change in Rarity.

I think you misunderstood that scene. Rarity's parents were leaving on a week long vacation and were simply there to drop Sweetie Belle off. More than anything, I think the point of the scene was to establish that Sweetie Belle doesn't in fact live with her sister usually.

Oops, my bad.

___

But on another note, has anyone else been disappointed with the resolutions of the past two episodes. I mean, last episode, Luna only wanted to be accepted but, in the end, she just had to accept that she was feared and ostracised because it amused the Ponyville folk (ie the episode ended in the same place it started). And for this episode, Rarity had ligitimate complaints but they were completely ignored. Personally, I would have gone mental with some of the things Sweetie did but she was very mature and held herself back. I understand that Rarity needs to lighten up but I think there also needs to be boundaries. And the lesson about "compromise" isn't very effective when the writers decide that only one person needs to make a change.