Filli Vanilli ice cream-I mean episode review! · 2:07pm Feb 16th, 2014
I’m aware that this picture is not pony related but it is easily the cutest valentine’s related picture I could find this year. Yes, even compared to the FlutterDash ones (which there sadly weren’t many of this year).
So then, how did this week go. Well first there was this thing;
Which completely ruined my week. Seriously, why would they make another Equestria Girls movie? Putting aside my personal opinion that it was absolutely horrible, how are they going to make it make any sense? Also, if they were going to lead Equestria Girls into a 80's rock band, why didn't they just revive Jem and the holograms and make an animated movie/new TV series out of that instead of bringing this into existence... again! Yeesh, nothing this week is going to cheer up my sour moo-
Squealing like a little kid whose found itself in a land made of chocolate!
Fanfiction Progress
Aside from a bit of planning and organising, I haven’t got much done within the realm of fanfiction this week. This is good for me; I needed a short break from things. I’ve got quite a few fanfiction related matters coming up, some of them being Super Smash Bros related. My current ongoing SSB fanfic is based off of writing chapters for each newcomer reveal and I’ve yet to even finish writing Rosalina’s yet alone the now announced Little Mac. That may take a little while but I can ensure you that you’ll be getting some pony fanfiction enjoyment from me soon. You’ll just have to wait and see though.
Other Episode Reviews for Simple Ways
James Corck
Thejboy88
NintendoGal55
Episode Review of Filli Vanilli
The reason I did not watch this episode during the live-stream and part of the reason this blog post is slightly late in being uploaded is because I was worried about this episode. From the two preview scenes, this episode wasn’t filling me with confidence. This isn’t unusual for me, particularly with Fluttershy episodes. I expected the worse from both Putting Your Hoof Down and Hurricane Fluttershy; the former was as bad as I expected it to be while the latter is my 2nd favourite episode in the entire series. So, I went in with low expectations and I’ll explain how it turned out with this review.
The premise of this episode goes about in such a way that it is filled with both positives and negatives. In a non-opinion based summary of the premise though it goes as such; Fluttershy has organised an animal charity and is having Ponyville’s Pony Tones sing at the events. Big Mac, a member of the Pony Tones, loses his voice and when they go to see Zecora she cannot help them cure Big Mac in time. Zecora can however use poison joke to make Fluttershy have a deep voice and take over for Big Mac; the only problem than being that Fluttershy has stage fright. An that is all I shall spoil here, though may mention some more in the positives and negatives.
So what was good in this episode? Surprising me, there were quite a few good things about this episode though I found most of them to smaller qualities. For instance, I like Zecora and as such I like her appearing in the episode. I also like the shipping, CheeriMac, and this episode offers some within a couple of scenes. There is also this one explanation scene between Applejack and Big Mac towards the end which I found outright hilarious. An most noticeable of all, Big Mac sings!
In terms of the larger scale things I guess I’d say there are two decent points. This is a Fluttershy and Rarity episode and as such we see plenty of their interactions; their sweet and well-presented interactions. Rarity goes through this episode with a keen understanding of Fluttershy and though she disagrees with Fluttershy on certain matters, she is always respectful to them. It was real nice to see and we haven’t had this big of a focus on the two of them interacting for a long time.
The other decent factor to this episode is the direction it takes. While I feel there was a route it could have gone to be even better, it does avoid going down my low expectation routes and makes itself more interesting. It presents Fluttershy’s lack of confidence in a different manner and allows it to feel different from previous times addressing her confidence problems. It also helps the previously mentioned Rarity and Fluttershy focus to shine even more.
Of course, the surprising amount of positives did not mean the episode was without its negatives. It had those and it had negatives I fully expected judging from the preview clips. My first negative is Pinkie Pie; Pinkie Pie can be naïve but she isn’t insensitive. This episode did the latter… several times and in such obvious ways that there was no way Pinkie Pie wouldn’t notice how distressed Fluttershy was getting.
Another problem include the singing; we get the same song over and over and over again throughout this episode. I criticised Pinkie Pride for how a lot of its songs would end up singing the same tune but in Filli Vanilli it is literally the same song over and over again.
But the biggest problem of all though was it’s most obvious one; Fluttershy has sung in public several times already. Fluttershy has sung in public with no problem whatsoever. Heck, even taking into account her stage fright, this was already a known fact. We saw she had stage fright back in Hearth’s Warming Eve, we saw her managing to put it aside in order to perform a play in front of many more ponies than what was shown in this episode. One of the big issues with these problems is that Fluttershy’s singing isn’t even noteworthy, at least compared to what we've seen. It’s good but that has been presented before and it isn’t much better than the rest of the mane 6 who have all been shown to be just as good at singing (in fact, every character in the show has, even Scootaloo is now good at singing with Flight to the Finish). The even bigger problem is how they depict Fluttershy’s stage fright. It not only contrasts with how it was depicted as a small issue in Hearth’s Warming Eve but is depicted as so absurdly bad that I just can’t generate sympathy. Literally, the way Fluttershy was reacting, without any real explanation as to why unlike her previous flight related confidence issues in Hurricane Fluttershy, was so exaggerated I would have expected to be played out as a moment of humour from Rarity. It doesn’t make me feel for Fluttershy but just get irritated with her; I was just shaking my head in disappointment at Fluttershy’s various ‘stage fright’ moments throughout this episode.
We now reach the conclusion of this review and I can sum up that the negatives I expected from this episode were as bad as I was expecting. The preview clips clued me on the problems I would have with this episode and I found them to be as bad as I thought they’d be. They did not however clue me in on all the good moments of the episodes, all of the small little things and the consistently great Fluttershy and Rarity interactions. The good things were a welcome treat as I fully expected my opinion of this episode to have it fall within the Poor category. Instead it manages to elevate itself out of that ranking and I shall rate Filli Vanilli as an Average episode, giving it a 4 out of 10.
While I always try to find the best in a Fluttershy episode, this one did have several gaping problems. I'm not part of a singing group but logic dictates that singing the same song four times in as many days isn't a good idea.
I have to agree, nothing seemed all that special regarding her singing this episode except maybe the harmony but other than that it really didn't impress. There's lots of inconsistencies but I liked the continuity of bringing back Flutterguy.
Pinkie was terrible this episode, she was way out of character (as with most other episodes this season).
It had a nice lesson, but I really don't think it brought much else to the story.
Also, Fluttershy (at the end) didn't really add to the quartet's performance. She sticks out like a sore thumb.
I think I'm going to listen to the one hour yay loop and mope a bit.
1841595 It looks like you're the sole commentator on this blog post Kiheersedman. Thank you for that.
I'm pleased to see I'm not the only one who has noticed the flaws in this episode. While bringing back Flutterguy and in turn, referencing Season 1, this just makes the continuity flaws of Fluttershy's stage fright which can be seen within Green Isn't Your Colour and Hearth's Warming Eve even more apparent.
Pinkie Pie's OOC was way worse here than previous episodes. In quite a few cases, and not just limited to this season, when Pinkie Pie is not the focused character she isn't used to much affect other than random humour (which is not all there is to Pinkie). Here she was just a complete jerk, at least the previous mistakes were a simplification of her character; here it is just wrong.
The episode was better than I feared but had all the mistakes I expected from it which is a real shame. That said, I should have expected a few average episodes to pop up. Anyway, thank you for commenting as always Kiheersedman.