"The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone", or "Rainbow Dash Gets Another Indiana Jones Reference" · 9:04pm May 23rd, 2015
It's episodes like today's that make me wish FIM did multi-part episodes more often than just the season bookends. The concept of this episode has a lot of potential, but the important character moments were gutted for rushed exposition and semi-irrelevant callback jokes about Pinkie's baking. I'd say the episode would have been better if it cut the fat and focused more on the griffons and giving them a less idiotic plight, but I'm not sure that's entirely true.
MLP is fundamentally a silly show, even when it's doing serious things. Covering something like poverty and destitution without any kind of levity would go against the established tone of the series, and you'd have a different problem: The episode might be a good story, but it wouldn't be a good episode of FIM; the constant, stupid jokes are a necessary aspect of the show. Imagine Family Guy without its clip gags, whether you like the show or not, it would not be the same kind of show without them.
I mentioned in my thoughts on Castle Sweet Castle that information density is something I desire in my entertainment, so I certainly don't mind when a significant fraction of an episode's run time is devoted to trivialities, but I do want to be fair here and say I think "The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone" did this the wrong way:
In an episode that's not really about baking, I don't give a fuck if Pinkie's too blind to realize that her retard alligator can't bake. It's not a joke that's incidental to the plot, it's not "on the way". It's actually the opposite of being "on the way", it forced the story to start ever further away from the meat of the plot, the griffons! Speaking of which, it would have been much more amusing to me if Gummy had actually baked the fucking cake because that would defy my expectations.
My point is these humorous asides shouldn't be divorced from the plot. The "Who's on First" bit in "Tanks for the Memories" was a good example of this done well because it happened while Rainbow was fucking with the weather ponies in the background. I also enjoyed the shitty muffins in "Cutie Maps" because they pulled double time: They showed what the Equality Marks did to ponies, and they were part of a dubious plan by the Mane 6 to get away from Glimmer's goons.
To come full circle, all of this is to say the run time should have been partially devoted to constant, stupid jokes, but this episode told the wrong ones. More topical jokes would have helped define Griffonstone without having to resort to getting the same plot dump twice from Twilight and that geezer griffon, which would have made the episode far more interesting, informative, and interactive.
Ultimately I came away from this episode disappointed by Griffonstone and how forgettable it was, and that's a shame because I've been interested in the griffons since we first met Gilda in S1. Since then, and until now, we only had Gustav and some background griffons, and this was the payoff? The Griffons are somehow incapable of being real people because they lost an artifact that might not even be magical? What made Gustav different? Was this somehow a misguided attempt to justify Gilda being Gilda?
Fucking please, Hasbro. This is stupid. The griffons deserved at least a two-part episode to explore their culture/biology/magic, especially if you were going to cast them in such a poor light, and ESPECIALLY if you were going to make Rainbow and Gilda make amends.
I've talked enough theory about this episode, let's get into the specifics:
1. I like that the Map doesn't have to send all of the Mane 6 for every problem, it can choose to just send the relevant ponies. That's cool.
2. Is it just me, or does this season like to do hair gags? See:
3. I liked that Pinkie had a fair amount of interaction with Gilda since she was a big part of why Rainbow and Gilda became estranged. On the other hand Rainbow had almost no interaction with Gilda, which I did not like.
4. The griffons are strangely well dressed and groomed for living in absolute squalor. It's dumb.
5. Gilda had an Indiana Jones moment when she tried to grab the Idol of Boreas over a chasm, but chose to leave it to save herself, Pinkie, and Rainbow. This is a reference to the Last Crusade.
6. Pinkie doesn't see the value of having a symbol of hope. Nothing is actually resolved for the griffons except the vague suggestion that Gilda is now somehow the only griffon that knows about FRIENDSHIP and she's going to teach it to the rest of the griffons.
7. In "Cutie Markless" Pinkie makes a point of everyone being able to stay long after the conflict is resolved. In this episode she and Rainbow can't wait to get away from Gilda after "making amends". Sounds legit.
Except for Rainbow's impression of Twilight there's nothing worthwhile in today's episode. See it if you need your fix or if you're interested in seeing Gilda again, but otherwise it's skippable as fuck.
The Indiana Jones reference was clever, since I actually played a part in the story, namely Gilda realising that the value of friendship is greater that that of money. But I agree with the whole baking thing. As a little pre-opening bit, it was fine, made you smile a little maybe. As a key part of the episode though, it needed more explanation. The world building we got was okay, though it could have been so much more (I'd already forgotten the name of generic evil villain #256687 by the end of the episode). Really, I think the main issue was that the episode lacked closure Okay, we saw Gilda and Dash reconciling, but it would have been great to see Griffonstone recover too. The lack of 'summing up' feature like the letters to Celestia or the diary entries in this season can make the episodes feel as if they tapper off.