Season Five Episode Reviews: Make New Friends But Keep Discord · 2:17pm May 22nd, 2015
Today, we look at a Discord episode. May God have mercy on us all.
This is “Make New Friends But Keep Discord.”
TECHNICAL SPECS:
Season: 5
Episode: 7
Written By: Natasha Levinger
First Aired: May 16, 2015
SUMMARY:
Discord is enjoying some afternoon tea with Fluttershy when he learns that, during her trip to see the Breezies last season, she had made a new friend named Tree Hugger. Even worse, Fluttershy had already invited Tree Hugger to be her plus-one to this year's Grand Galloping Gala, assuming that Discord would have gotten his own ticket...which he hasn't. Nevertheless, Discord is so not angry that he storms out and begins hitting up each of the Mane 6, seeking to become their plus-ones. Unfortunately, Twilight is helping to oversee the event (meaning she has no ticket), the CMC are the plus-ones for their adult counterparts, and Pinkie is taking Maud. That's when Discord actually meets Tree Hugger, a hippie that seems to have sampled her brownies a little too much. But he's still not angry that senpai Fluttershy didn't invite him, and to prove this, he goes to his home in a dimension of limbo to dirty it up a little. That's when a hapless mailpony, having been stranded there for who-knows-how-long, finally delivers his ticket. And he knows just the plus-one for the occasion...
At the Gala itself, Twilight is excited to have taken over some of the duties, as it gives Celestia more time to actually enjoy the event she's supposed to hold every year. (Luna, meanwhile, continues to do actual work and be unappreciated.) That's when Discord shows up with his “friend,” the Smooze – a green blob-creature that's attracted to shiny things and grows larger as it absorbs more. Twilight makes it perfectly clear she will not stand for his shenanigans, but Discord promises that they're just going to have a good time...and proceeds to try and intrude on Fluttershy's night to reassert himself as the dominant friend in the relationship. The Smooze, meanwhile, is still terrorizing the other guests because of its love of shiny, which is exacerbated by just about everypony wearing necklaces, bracelets, and other bits of jewelry.
After one such scare, Twilight tells Discord to keep the Smooze under control. Instead, Discord locks him out in the garden so he can keep harassing Fluttershy, breaking the poor blob's...um...heart? Unfortunately, Rarity was also out in the garden, and is promptly slimed for her jewels. Discord then locks the much-larger Smooze in a closet while he tries to engage in a stand-up routine to prove he's the “funniest” friend Fluttershy has. Not only does his routine fail so much that Maud gets the only laughs by heckling him, but the closet was full of treasures and trophies, so the Smooze is now an all-consuming mass that bursts forth and covers the entire ballroom. The day is saved, however, because Tree Hugger is able to use her mastery of “calming vibes” to soothe the Smooze into reassembling itself into a single pile.
That's when Discord decides enough is enough. He rips a tear in reality and hovers Tree Hugger over it, threatening to cast her into a dimension full of cheap sock puppets. Fluttershy, having been somehow oblivious to Discord's feelings the whole time, snaps at him for thinking that she would abandon him just because she had a new friend. Realizing he's been a bit of a dick, Discord closes up the portal, removes all the shiny bits from the Smooze (shrinking it back to its base size), and apologizes to Tree Hugger for attempting to banish her out of jealousy. He also apologizes for using the Smooze's heart just to make his friend jealous. A laugh is had by all...including Celestia, who masterminded the whole thing, thereby ruining all of Twilight's work.
Happy endings for all!
It's that time again. After being absent for most of the season so far, Discord, the one-great villain turned running joke because all of you couldn't stop talking about how wonderful he was and wanted a story-breaker bad guy back so badly, has returned. And as I've mentioned many times, I find reformed Discord largely annoying, agitating, insulting, and other negative adjectives that I don't care to list at the moment. The only times I've enjoyed him is when they drop the “I'm a friend now!” act and just let him be a villain again.
Thankfully, that's what this episode (mostly) does.
Pretty much the whole episode is Discord becoming increasingly obsessed over Fluttershy daring to have a friend besides him. He starts with passive-aggressive snark and dismissive comments about how he's not upset, followed by him trying to use the rest of the Mane 6 to infiltrate the Gala and intrude on Fluttershy's night. When that doesn't work, he's content to go back home (which is in an incredibly fitting place for something like Discord) and sulk until the mailpony gives him the ticket. And from there, he grows increasingly desperate to interrupt Fluttershy and Tree Hugger's evening, counter anything Fluttershy compliments her new friend on, and finally threaten to straight-up dispose of the interloper in his relationship.
About the one part of this that doesn't work is that Discord gets off pretty much without any punishment. He's still able to enjoy the rest of the Gala, nopony locks him in a dungeon or banishes him, and he isn't even made to help clean the place up. Granted, it's kind of hard to punish a reality-warping chaos god without the Elements of Harmony, but he tried to banish a pony into another dimension. Just something would have sufficed.
Tree Hugger is an okay addition. She's pretty much a new-age retro hippie in every way, and like with “Owl's Well that Ends Well,” the episode goes a bit overboard in making her the awesome solution to the problem. Still, she manages to get in some amusing moments, and her reaction to Senior Huevos (his name was confirmed on Twitter shortly after the episode aired) was appropriate considering how much of an abomination sock puppets are. (Something I did find cute is that Senior Huevos also appears to be able to see through the rip in reality, so when he sees a world populated by two-dimensional cartoon horses, he is also freaked and starts to run.)
The Smooze, on the other hand, is just a lot of fun. It's basically a big pile of snot that oozes over everything, and naturally becomes a Gala-destroying disaster. They still take time to give it some bits of personality, however, as it just seems to want to have a good time at the Gala. Unfortunately, Discord is a cold creature and repeatedly shuns and degrades it, and each time, you can catch a glimpse of the blob's heart breaking through the translucent sludge. It's only its monstrous appearance, growth spurts when absorbing stuff, and inability to resist the pull of shiny things that make it a threat.
The comedy, much like “Three's a Crowd,” is based heavily in blatant references and fourth wall breakage. There's an obvious Metal Gear reference (so obvious, in fact, that Hideo Kojima retweeted it), Discord and the Smooze wear outfits from Dumb and Dumber, the stand-up scene is basically referencing one comedian after another, and the Smooze breaking out of the closet is an incredibly forced homage to The Shining. This stuff is hit-or-miss for the most part, but it doesn't feel anywhere near as relentless or forced as “Three's a Crowd” was with its infernal song. Helping things is that there are actual funny gags not based on references peppered throughout, such as Discord popping up in Spike's bed, him sucking Rarity's dress off and leaving her to sneak away naked, and pretty much everything to do with Maud.
Where the episode hits a major bump, though, is the ending. As mentioned, Discord gets off with causing massive destruction and referencing Gallagher (an offense worthy of the death penalty) without so much as a slap on the wrist. The most punishment he gets is a lecture from Fluttershy, and while that might hurt a bit (seeing as she's his only friend), it still does nothing for all the ponies whose night he's ruined. Sort of like when the Mane 6 got away with destroying the Gala and ruining everypony's night because their selfish desires were not met.
...And like in that instance, Celestia is behind everything. She invited Discord knowing full well that he'd probably do something crazy, although considering how she's incapacitated by the Smooze, she probably wasn't planning on any blob monsters showing up. It's the return of Trollestia, forever ruining things for her subjects so that she can have a laugh. She even mocks her faithful student's flying ability, which seems even worse once you factor in her undermining Twilight's attempts to make sure the Gala goes off without a hitch. Heck, I'd bet she made sure Fluttershy met Tree Hugger during the Breezy expedition just to provoke this kind of reaction.
Then again, I'd take a thousand episodes of Trollestia over one more instance of Uselesstia.
CONCLUSION:
This episode is a lot of fun humor-wise, and actually used Discord fairly well, but it feels very middle-of-the-road as far as episodes go. Outside of the comedy, there isn't anything to really hold up as interesting or memorable, save perhaps for the Smooze. Discord doesn't change, his relationships don't change, and there isn't much of substance that isn't just there to provide set-up for another gag. It's better than “Three's a Crowd” and “Keep Calm and Flutter On,” but it's still not one I see myself going back to over and over.
Next time, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie betray Shiva.
Om namah Shivaya, om namah Shivaya, om namah Shivaya....!
Wait, what?
The Metal Gear reference had me laughing my socks off. Pinkies shaking the camera not so much. I personally found it pretty funny that characters can still make fun of twilight's flying. I feel like they tried a bit hard with tree hugger to make her a one note hippie as much as possible. But overall a pretty solid episode. And yes discords home looks exactly like I hoped it would.
I loved the episode and my favorite bits were when Discord was being... Well, evil or menacing.
There's just something satisfying about seeing Discord traumatize Spike, be absolutely terrifying (then completely dismissive once he's done) with the mailmare (although that's not the voice or gender that same character had back in "The Last Roundup") Even his rage at the gala and the almost casual way he decides to "banish" Tree Hugger/Embrace was very much appealing to me... If only they would TAKE THAT F
CKING CAMERA AWAY FROM THE PRODUCTION TEAM!
The key difference, however, would be "maliciousness". The M6 never intended for things to get so far out of hand, and truthfully most of what happened was an unfortunate domino affect. Pinkie Pie's stage dive would have been harmless if not for AJ bringing in a cake at that exact same moment, and even the ensuing accident would only have made a small mess had Blueblood not been in the line of fire and used Rarity as a human shield, which of course is in turn what caused her to rant at him until he fell over and knocked the statue off its pedestal. More importantly all of them seem to realize the mistake afterwards and probably would have tried to apologize, if not for Fluttershy causing an animal stampede, which was the only "disaster" that was entirely the fault of a single character.
Conversely, Discord's goal from the outset is to at the very least ruin Fluttershy's evening, and quit blatantly doesn't care how many other pony's nights he has to also ruin in the process. Maybe he never intended for The Smooze to get so out of hand either, but when it douse instead showing even the smallest semblance of remorse, he basically laughs in everypony's face and pass the blame onto Fluttershy.
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I'd agree, except of course for how it only goes to highlight how much of an absolute farce his supposed "reform" was, and that never should have been released from his stone prison in the first place. It'd be one thing if Discord was just this uncontrollable jerk that everypony had to put up with because the were literally powerless do anything about it (such a s Q on Star Trek), but it was Celestia's fool plan to release Discord on little too no pretense and so now all his wicked antics reflect poorly on her as well... doubly so in this episode where she just LOL's the whole thing off.
This episode was pretty hilarious to me, considering how much of a hippie my Mom is. It was fun trying to pick out which line sounded more like her, especially the aura remarks. Maud was a hit, too.
All in all, decent episode.
I maintain my position that the best part of this episode was how calm the mail pony in Discords realm was. My new headcanon is that Ponyvilles mail ponies are all hardened bad asses.
I thought it was a fun episode, even if the whole 'getting off scott free' thing is annoying, it is at least consistant with the rest of the show...
Also Tree Hugger had EYEBROWS!!! EYEBROWS ON A PONY!!!
You know what really just baffled me about this episode?
How in the hell was Fluttershy unable to figure out that Discord was kind of upset over the fact that probably his one, true friend would be hurt when he was told to shove it?
I mean, this is fucking Fluttershy, she has a mental breakdown when she fucking stands in a crowd larger than 6 people and apologizes for quite possibly fucking everything. I'm not saying Discord needs to be babied but this guy is a fucking immortal, has been stoned for the past 2 fucking millennium and for what ever stupid fucking reason, most likely Natasha Levinger is somewhat of a one trick pony considering almost all of her other works are a fucking joke isn't the least bit terrifying to other Ponies. I mean this is fucking Discord, he used Celestia and Luna as pretty pretty princes dolls rather than the after market plushies. So how in the hell did Fluttershy not just pull Discord aside before hand and tell him, "Hey, I enjoy your company but use this as a chance to get closer to your other friends," and hitch him onto fucking Spike, I don't know, dude had a shit experience last year so I think he'd enjoy having someone with him this year.
You know what, that would have been fucking funny as hell, Discord acting as a somewhat terribad/begrudgingly good father figure/mentor for Spike while trying to not let Fluttershy dumping him like yesterday's newspaper, get to him, and seriously failing at it. Maybe then Meghan McCarthy and all the other female writers would get over their obsession with absolutely screwing over the poor guy.
You know... I think Discord actually grew a bit, here. He did remove the stuff the Smooze ate, did apologize and realized the error of what he was doing. For him that's pretty damned big.
Celestia, however, I've lost what little respect I had for her. Discord grew in my eyes, while Celestia shrank. And I NEVER thought I'd say that. [/legit]
THANK YOU! You are literally the only other person I've seen who noticed this. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but this is the first time Celestia blatantly disregard Twilights feelings without thinking in Cannon, and it bugs me.
what is this instant of uselesstia you're referring to?....
the part where discord was going to get rid of tree hugger really scared and bothered me , same with the mailpony too , nothing being done in retaliation to those things also bothered me , but also then after with celestia's reaction thinking it was all hilarious leads me to believe that they weren't in any real danger to begin with and sh was just faking being clueless and not being able to use her magic and such and that she also is able to traverse dimensions (thought let's not bring eqg into this) so she could have brought treehugger back if need be......
3094953 also i found it hilarious that she laughed at a joke about twilight's flying ability.....
3137523 The flying joke was funny, it was the thing with the Gala that annoyed me.
Organization is one of the things Twilight holds in importance. Another is her ability to fulfill the Princess's commands. And Celestia accidentally or not, smacked her good in both when she just did her best. It implies that Celestia doesn't know her faithful student at all, or that she's something of a sociopath.
3137555 ooor taking things too seriously ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.....