For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils review! · 12:46am Apr 6th, 2014
Good news: my hard work streak is over! New chaps of About Last Night and Direction in time for BABSCon! Anyway, catch up time:
The cold opening has no real jokes, it merely sets up a plot: Sweetie Belle asks for a rush order from her sister when she has another rush order and pretty much guilt trips her into saying yes. After the opening, we find that Sweetie waited until late and tried making the dresses herself, only going to Rarity when she realized she couldn’t. Said older sister shows up just in time and says she made improvements, to Sweetie’s annoyance. The play gets a standing ovation, but at the after-party they find out it was for the costumes.
Um, really? The costumes got a standing ovation? People will really applaud something just for costumes? ...Has that ever happened? I’m sure the public wouldn’t applaud something because it looked pretty (insert slam at next gen gaming console of your choice here, I only care about playing the next infamous, Kingdom Hearts, and Zelda games, so I’m not keeping track).
Anyway, Sweetie proceeds to get on my nerves and chew Rarity out for the whole thing. If it weren’t for the fact that this is how real little kids can act, I might have hated this episode. Sweetie then decides to get revenge by ruining Rarity’s headdress for Sapphire Shores.
Then we get... Luna! Monitoring everypony’s phone calls dreams again! But unlike Sleepless in Ponyville, she has a connection to Sweetie’s problem, so it makes sense she’d want to get involved.
This episode goes for the trippy dream stuff, but... look, there’s an Adventure Time episode I saw just days ago called “King Worm” that really does this and does it better. Go see it.
But what we get is okay too. We get a flashback to Sweetie’s fifth birthday (yay! the CMC are at least older than five!) but she’s overshadowed by Rarity. It’s a well done seen and despite how she was acting before, I really felt sorry for her... well done writers.
Next scene, we find that Rarity was entertaining the others to keep them there because Sweetie was taking so long. Then she shows her what will happen if she doesn’t fix everything. I really hope Luna’s just playing this up, because if not, then Sapphire joins Spitfire as a character who became a jerk in season 4.
Sweetie wakes up and rushes to stop this, but drama demands she already be gone, so Sweetie gets Apple Bloom and Scootaloo, and somehow they get train tickets to Canterlot despite being underage foals! Oh, I totally get Sweetie’s reaction to not knowing the current songs...
This chase scene is one of the few instances of actual comedy in this episode. Everything turns out happy, the end.
Sorry if that was a wall of text, but there wasn’t a lot to nitpick. Good ep, next episode tomorrow.
Third best episode of Season 4 and fourth best episode of all time in my book.
The Mane Six are pretty special to Luna -- she more or less owes them a lifedebt for saving her from the Nightmare. I can see her taking a special interest in protecting them and their families. And Rarity in particular may have a high destiny -- if you take the IDW comics as canon she fell into Nightmare once before.
I think it's obvious from "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" that Equestria is very much a Free Range Children kind of culture. Our own present-day paranoia about older children is of very recent vintage -- things didn't work that way when I was a child in the 1960's and 1970's. And the Ponies are much less likely to hurt a child than are Humans.
I don't know when exactly we started demanding ID and proof of age just to take train trips, and Ponyville isn't even that far from Canterlot. I remember that when I was a young adult in the 1980's, nobody ever asked to see my ID when I boarded a train or bus; all they wanted was the fare or ticket. As late as the 1990's, there was pretty much no security on intercity buses and trains. This may be purely an artifact of 9/11.
The Human cultures closest to that of Equestria -- America and Britain c. 1875-1925 -- let older children do pretty much what they wanted subject to parental authority. Unless they were pretty obviously being abused, were in some clear danger, or started engaging in serious lawbreaking, no one really cared. The intense, smothering protectiveness we show to children today is a very recent thing -- no more than a decade or two old.
well done seen
Luna did what could be called "the ghost of christmas treatment", in order to give a little bit of perspective to Sweetie's actions. And the thing about the train, maybe Equestria uses a fees-free ferroviary system, so the CMC would have no problem going from Ponyville to Canterlot and Back.
Though then it would be very easy for a minor to run away from home... Oh wait!
Luna has clearly gotten up to speed on NSA monitoring techniques.
FWIW, I think that Luna had a connection to Scootaloo's problem too. The key line from Sleepless in Ponyville is: "If you must face your fears, Scootaloo, otherwise the Nightmare will never end!" I really did hear the capital 'N' in 'Nightmare'.
I think that the writing team has decided that each of the CMCs will have a personality flaw that mimics part of the issue that led Luna to become Nightmare Moon. For Sweetie, it was her jealousy of her older sister, based on incomplete knowledge. I suspect that, with Scootaloo, it was her false pride that led her to internalise her fears about her worthiness and not seek help. I'll be very interested to see what will be Applebloom's reflection of the personality of Nightmare Moon. I suspect it will be her overconfidence and impatience.
If Luna wasn't playing it up, then intervening in the matter was a matter of national security. The Mane Six probbly all need to be present to open the Lockbox of Harmony, and they can't do that if Rarity's gone all spider hermit.
Though you're right about it painting Sapphire Shores in a jerkasinine light. Maybe Luna just has a tendency towards pessimism and cynicism.