MLP Reviews #3: Winter Wrap Up · 7:47pm Jan 5th, 2014
MLP Review #3: Winter Wrap-Up
Intro
It’s late at night. We see Twilight wake up nerding out about Winter Wrap Up Day. She wakes up Spike, who asks for Mommy. He sees Twilight nerding out and then mumbles, “You’re not Mommy.”
Ah, more abuse towards Spike, as we can see from Twilight’s checklist. “Spike refusing to get up and go back to sleep”. Twilight is all ready for Winter Wrap Up but it’s still the middle of the night – very much in character for the unicorn who cannot stand being tardy.
The exchange between Twilight and Spike points out a major flaw in Winter Wrap Up. It’s something which can be cleared better and more efficiently by magic. However, the ponies in Ponyville still wrap up winter without magic due to tradition even though Ponyville is 1/3 unicorn, 1/3 pegasi, and 1/3 earth pony. However, the founders of Ponyville were earth ponies hundreds of years ago – taking away some credence to Granny Smith’s entertaining story in “Family Appreciation Day”, unless she is hundreds of years old which I guess could be possible…or Twilight just doesn’t know what she’s talking about. However, we seem to have intelligent nerd Twilight for this episode – so she probably knows for sure. Still, my question is and still is: why not just use magic like in Canterlot? Hell, even if I was an earth pony, I would totally support that.
Act I
Ah yes, this brings in the most memorable part of the whole episode: the Winter Wrap Up song. Among MLP fans, this song is an absolute classic. You even see sleepy Spike perk up when the song starts. It gives a good idea of what roles the other Mane Five have in wrapping up winter. This is an interesting twist from what we have typically seen in Season One since Twilight is usually the hyper-competent one and her friends are more or less following her lead. Here, they all can do things which Twilight can’t. One thing which kind of hurts “only doing things the earth pony way” is that the pegasi are clearing clouds and bringing birds home for the winter. Can an earth pony do that? No.
What gives the pegasi special treatment over unicorns? I guess, to be fair, earth ponies and most unicorns are incapable of doing the tasks the pegasi do. All of the tasks which could be completed easier with magic can also be done the “earth pony way”, it is just often slower and less efficient. Twilight is determined to help with winter wrap up without using her magic – and I guess Spike has to tag along, even though the mayor said that every pony needs to chip in – not every dragon. Like Spike, I found myself more interested during the “Winter Wrap Up” song but once the song was over, the interest kind of died down. Poor Twilight though.. she is desperate to help out. She asks Rainbow Dash if she can help clear clouds – but no wings. I guess Alicorn Twilight will have less of a problem but, for now, Twilight is still a unicorn.
Besides the song, the first act is kind of dull though. I was left with the impression that this episode would be one of those episodes which would have a great song but nothing else.
Act II
Here we see Twilight’s failures regarding wrapping up winter.
After the abuse Spike suffered in Act I, we see Spike getting his sweet revenge and gloating in it, I wouldn’t call that out of character – very much in line for the baby dragon.
As is common throughout the MLP series, we see Twilight approach her friends one by one.
First up, Rarity who is making nests for the birds. Rarity’s nests, not surprisingly, are perfectly fashionable. Twilight fails to make a nest. We get a gem of a line from Spike, “That nest should be condemned!” Rarity is polite and kind regarding the “nest”. Spike is less so, can you really blame him though? Spike just wanted to stay home and sleep. I like episodes with “good Rarity”, that seems to be an underlying theme in all of Cindy Morrow’s episodes. She can either put Rarity in a good or sympathetic light, not any of these “prissy stuck-up” stereotypes which I said was my only problem with “Return of Harmony”. Here, craftwork isn’t Twilight’s strong suit and she realizes she can’t help.
Second up, Pinkie Pie. What’s Pinkie doing? Skating. She said she was delegated the task of breaking the ice on all the lakes. This makes us wonder why the Mayor just didn’t assign Twilight a task. Oh well. Maybe, the Mayor intended for Twilight to go through all of this. Pinkie is a fantastic skater. Pinkie encourages Twilight to skate. Twilight is hesitant but Spike pushes her into the ice. Twilight fails miserably. Pinkie is super nice and sweet about it all but it doesn’t change the fact that Twilight is a “flop”. Spike has more fun at Twilight’s expense.
Third, Fluttershy. Fluttershy has the job you would expect from her: quietly waking up the animals from their hibernation. Fluttershy teaches Spike what hibernation is and Twilight learns how to wake up the animals. Unfortunately, while Fluttershy gets all the cute and cuddly animals, Twilight is stuck with the terrifying and more challenging sorts including snakes, bats, bees, and skunks. This is a half-fail for Twilight. She surely ran into some bad luck here. However, something tells me Fluttershy would handle herself just fine with any of those animals. Twilight gets skunked and Spike helps give her a tomato bath.
Spike gives her the advice of using magic, saying that it would help winter wrap up faster.
Only one more pony to ask, Applejack! Applejack is the manager of the snow plowing, it appears. She is hard-working, tough, and diligent as ever wanting to make sure winter is wrapped up on time. Twilight wants to help with the plows. She gets on but isn’t strong enough to move it. However, she decides to use magic to make the plow “come to life”. The plow does. At first, Twilight is doing well but loses control of the plow causing snow from the mountains to fall onto the ground. Applejack gets angry with Twilight for messing things up and using magic. Twilight runs off to cry somewhere. The problem here is that this was the wrong task to use magic! Twilight picked a bad opportunity and had some bad luck to go along with it. This doesn’t tell us that magic is bad to use during Winter Wrap Up but rather Twilight had some poor judgment out of desperation.
You really feel for Twilight though at the end of this act though. It’s not like she is out to do anything malicious and is getting screwed over, she just wants to help with winter wrap up.
Admittedly, many of these failures (particularly with Fluttershy and Applejack) seem quite convenient and more the case of bad luck than anything else. However, I like how they went about it on the whole.
An interesting thing about this episode in the first two acts is my interest in it seems to go well with Spike’s interest in wrapping up winter. Any part that left Spike bored and nodding off was a part which made me bored. This act had Spike’s full attention and it had mine.
Act III
This final act is what brought this episode up to me. Twilight is crying in a bush and Spike tries to cheer her up. However, Twilight notices some things: winter is not being wrapped up on time, the ponies are all arguing, and winter hadn’t been wrapped up in time for the past three years. Ah yes, this episode proves yet again conclusively that Twilight is the brightest of the bunch. Her “competent” friends aren’t really so competent after all. A laugh-out-loud moment was the mention of Ditzy Doo (Derpy). Apparently, Derpy flew north instead of south and in the previous year, she flew west. Twilight sees an opportunity and regains her confidence. She can help the ponies wrap up winter through her organizational skills! She builds a master plan to wrap up winter on time. Ponyville is saved. This is a nice episode because we really see that Twilight Sparkle is a fantastic pony and perhaps one-of-a-kind. They also showed it and didn’t tell it. It was also nice to see Big Macintosh with his “eeyups”. Twilight is brilliant here and manages to get winter wrapped up rather quickly and easily. Mother Nature gets its revenge on Spike by having him fall into the cold water when he’s sleeping on a patch of ice.
Rating: 8 out of 10 stars (This episode was above average by MLP standards. Except for the song in the beginning, the episode seemed kind of dull initially but picked up in the middle. One slight but not damning flaw is that it seemed far too convenient to have Twilight mess up at all of the Winter Wrap Up tasks. In the cases of Fluttershy and Applejack, they were essentially accidents. With that said, it was interesting to see how the ponies wrapped up winter and while some viewers may consider Spike kind of mean here – I think he was in character and honestly got his revenge on Twilight for making him go out in the first place to er.. do nothing. The world got its revenge on Spike in the third act. The pacing was well done here. Despite Twilight being inconsiderate towards Spike in the first act, this was a good episode for her. I liked her earnest and sincere desire to help in the second act. I liked how she wrapped up winter without having to use her magic, even though you have to wonder – would it be more efficient if Ponyville just used magic in the first place? That’s another flaw, in my opinion, but it’s one of those flaws I had to think about rather than a “wtf did I just see” flaw which already makes it less damaging to the episode. Good enough to earn eight out of ten stars in my book.)
REVISED RATING: 9/10 [I bumped up "Winter Wrap Up" a point since honestly I think this was a really strong Twilight episode. She was at her most likable here. I also have that song stuck in my head soooo badly.. even more than my favorite song in the MLP series, "Smile".]
As I review more episodes, I have changed some of my old ratings - trying to be somewhat consistent.
Ranking So Far
The Return of Harmony: 10/10
Winter Wrap Up: 8/10 9/10
Putting Your Hoof Down: 5/10 7/10
Next Episode: Secret of My Excess
I know some viewers are complaining about Applejack not apologizing to Twilight for making her cry, but in light of the new successful organized teams organized by Twilight herself, it's quite safe to assume that Applejack DID apologize to Twilight offscreen at some point, unless, of course, you count Applejack's part in her newly organized team as a way of apologizing/making it up to Twilight. Does that sound plausible enough?
1943778 That definitely sounds plausible to me. I think all was forgiven. Also Twilight is not the kind of pony to hold grudges.
1944639 How true that is. Plus, I'm glad you think it's plausible.