Season 5, Later Half Bulk Reviews · 2:05am Dec 1st, 2015
So, I just finished off the finale. All in all, not too shabby all around. Season 5 was pretty solid over all. Below the break (I'm not actually sure how to do that. I assume a Page Break is sufficient) are my semi-live reactions and thoughts during my viewing session. It was a 9 episode binge, so this post will probably be lengthy. Each episode is headed in bold by episode number and title. Possible spoilers, I guess?
17 - Brotherhooves Social
I was wondering how they were going to do an entire Big Mac centered episode with his limited vocabulary. I was not expecting them to have him speak in faux-Southern Belle while he was in costume. All well played there.
I like that everyone knew it was Big Mac in drag the entire time. Mac and Bloom's end scene under the apple tree got me a bit choked up, being an older brother myself. I have almost 9 years on my next oldest sibling, but there's only 1 year between her and our younger brother, so I get feeling distant from my family.
18 - Crusaders of the Lost Mark
So, here it is. The Big Episode we've been waiting 5 seasons for. Let's see what the writers pulled out of their flanks.
*watches intently*
Starting off with a song is always a bonus in my world. Especially when Scoots finally gets down on the action. Aww, and Sweetie's telekinesis is coming along well. Neat. Also: Tirek callback. Love it. And Discord callback!
Still hate Diamond Tiara. Silver Spoon comes off as the innocent bystander of the duo. And more songs! I'd vote for Pip. BUTTON MASH! God I hate Diamond Tiara.
Just kidding. I hate Diamond's mom. Wow. It all makes sense now. FilthyRich, while being a shrewd business pony, at least isn't a giant dick. Tiara really seems to be showing some regret with her song—though she's still kind of a bitch. Sometimes? She's really bipolar in this episode. Those faces though. Priceless.
Man, this episode is loaded with songs. I love it.
Okay, so triple, themed Cutie Marks. That's an unprecedented event in Equestria, as far as I can tell. Hmm. Oh, and a "if Mom and Dad were here" line from AJ. Sister support all around!
Very solid episode.
19 - The One Where Pinkie Knows
Pinkie episodes post season 2 are kind of hit an miss, so I'm interested to see what they can do with her here. Season 5 hasn't disappointed so far.
Well, that reveal happened fast. Now, is it real, or something Pinkie misunderstood? I don't know. We'll see.
Blame it on the Pinkie Sense. Good job. "Gotta bounce," she says, before breaking a hole in the crystal wall.
"Saturday." Hmm... conventional day naming conventions. And she explodes into pieces, and the baby is real.
So, all in all, a pretty good Pinkie episode. She's her usual hyperactive self without being too 4th wall breaking and annoyingly goofy. Pinkie had an honest to goodness personal issue at hand and did a great job handling it, despite the effort involved.
Two horns up.
20 - Hearthbreakers
I typically like the Hearthswarming episodes. Family, home, tradition. All that jazz. Nice to see Twilight's castle all decked out in holiday cheer. The pre-opening scene makes me think this will be about the Apple and Pie family traditions coming into conflict during this most prestigious of holidays.
Nice candy based Windigo recap. <3
Wow, Maud just Sherlock'd AJ's hoof right proper.
My god, they're actually Amish. And Marble is only a few minutes younger than Pinkie. Pinkie has a twin. :mother of god face:
Looks like AJ is getting all nosey and sticking her hooves where they don't belong again. Oh shit, pappy Pie just used Pinkie's full name. That's when you know there's trouble.
Now, Big Mac and Marble Pie are distantly related enough that their inevitable love child probably won't be a genetic freak. Though I anticipate her being mauled by a bear sometime at the future, much to Fluttershy's "shock and horror."
21 - Scare Master
JESUS CHRIST THAT SPIDER IS TERRIFYING.
Oh, nice callback to Fluttershy's singing adventure. I'm really enjoying the fact that the writers are referencing old episodes and lessons learned. Continuity is always nice.
It's sad to see that Fluttershy is still such a baby about things. She's also terrible at scaring people. WELP, JUST KIDDING. She knocked that one out of the park. And... she's backed out.
But you know what? That's okay. You don't have to like everything your friends do, and sometimes it's okay to split off from the group and do your own thing.
Fuzzy legs is still terrifying though. Oh, also disappointed she didn't go full FlutterBat.
22 - What About Discord
YO BOB ROSS WHAT'S UP?! This is weird. Discord is being all friendly with everyone. I smell trouble, but he seemed honestly repentant after the Tirek ordeal. I'm smelling a "sometimes your friends have other friends and they'll do things without you" lesson here. Twilight seems to be playing it all off pretty well—and now she's on about the Science of Friendship. Go figure.
"Time travel is not to be messed with." Pinkie in the Marty jacket. Foreshadowing in progress, whee! It's really sweet that Discord pulled out Fluttershy's chair for her.
"Moments of levity and bonding between friends cannot be recreated [...]." Damn, Discord. Way to channel your inner philosophy professor. I'm sure that'll never come back to bit you in the tail...
Ha, it did. Good. Discord episodes are always fun. I love John de Lancie.
23 - The Hooffields and McColts
I think Twilight takes her research a little too seriously sometimes.
On the topic of dropping those enormous saddle bags on Fluttershy: I know Fluttershy is renown for being weak and meek, but Twilight, as the resident book nerd, isn't known for winning any strength competitions herself. While the writers and animators are probably just playing this up for laughs, I'm taking it as an example of Twilight's Earth Pony constitution rearing its head. Alicorns are supposed to have traits of all three races, after all. It's cool that they're taking the balloon, too.
Hey, purple guy recognizes an Alicorn when he sees one. And he knows about Cadance, but not Twilight. There aren't that many years between Cadance and Twilight's respective ascensions. Unless there are that many years in between, like I suspected once upon a time. Cady might be robbing the cradle with Shiny just a little bit.
Did Twilight just blink that piece of paper out of existence?! -_-
I smell a Trojan Carrot Cake... YEP. Called it.
Did Twilight just time lock a small army? >_>
Quantum Mechanics confirmed for existing in Equestria.
24 - The Mane Attraction
"Freak your frizz!" - I can accept this phrase. And I like how Sapphire Shores is suddenly only the second most important pop star in all the land. Nice retcon. Or clarification. Hmm...
Rara is a terrible nickname. AJ, you should be ashamed. Or maybe I should blame Lady Gaga. But shit, this girl has pipes. She's singing so hard her hair is waiving. And now that she's grown she looks suspiciously like a damned Siren.
YO GUSTAV WHAT'S UP?! Nice hearing about that Griffon again.
I'm seriously getting Siren vibes off this lady. I would have heard if she was, and it wouldn't make sense with AJ knowing her and, well, not being a fish-monster-thing, but still.
Oh man, tell me Sweetie gets to go on stage with Rara. I'd love if the Crusader's inner marks colored up a bit after they get the hang of their individual talents.
While we're at it, I know Colour-lady hasn't seen AJ in several years, but AJ's kind of a national hero renown for her honesty. Might want to take her concerns seriously.
Ho. Ly. Shit. Twilight knows visual/audio recording and projection magic. My first story is vindicated. I mean, not really. That was a pretty small part of it, but still. I'm actually gushing a bit right now. I feel like a fortune teller or something. Wow.
Ooh, she can play piano, too. That seems like it would be really hard without fingers. I mean, I have fingers (ten of them!) and I can't even play piano. Viola, a bit, but not piano. Unicorn lights during the concert are a great touch, too. This Lena Hall lady really has a set of pipes on her.
OOOH, all of the Crusaders go out on stage! That's neat. This episode was neat.
A Brief Interlude
So I popped over to Equestria Daily for my daily procrastination phase. I watched "Fluttershy reacts to Smile HD | CELESTIA HELP US ALL!" I had never seen Smile HD before so this was, uh... unexpected. I will agree with Fluttershy: it was very well animated. Now I need to bleach my brain.
I also rewatched an episode of Kill la Kill. It's the best thing. <3
Now! Back to our regularly scheduled semi-live blog/review.
25 - 26 - Cutie Re-Mark
Alright, kids. The Final Round. The ManeMain Event. Now, spoilers of some kind are next to impossible to avoid, so I know there's some funky time travel alternate-future hoo-hah going on, and that Starlight Glimmer is a total bitch, but beyond that I'm going in pretty blind. Let's see how it all plays out.
Hey, Twilight mentioned the simultaneous Cutie Mark thing being super weird, too. That's comforting.
Hmm, first impression here: Glimmer used the Cutie Map to augment her time travel spell to go back further. Self-levitation is also a neat trick. And, since Starlight isn't the cause of her own time travel, causality isn't self referential and she can actually enact change in the timeline.
"The Crystal Empire takes up half the map!" Sounds like Sombra's return went far better than expected. Wow, there's a whole concentrated effort in the war against Sombra. That's pretty cool. Grim, but cool. Oh shit, Dark Crystal Armor is bad ass. Oh, man. Rainbow Dash is jacked up. And Pinkie and Maud are badasses. Makes me wonder where Cadance is in the midst of this future.
And Rainbow Dash knows when she needs an adult. Good job, Dashie.
Changeling future. I can dig it. Tribal mentality takes hold, fear of the unknown, suspicious of anything remotely "other." Very America circa Red Scare. Ooh, and Zecora is in charge. Nice. I really feel like she's a tremendously underutilized character. Zebras as a whole, too. I feel like Zecora vs. Changelings is a good fit. The origins of the Changelings are very shamanistic. Very pagan, if you will.
So, Nightmare Moon had her old castle rebuilt and Rarity is a snooty bitch. Shocking. Nice to see insane Luna and the Thestrals again. Guile-cut Dashie is great, too. Kind of surprised Nightmare Moon isn't making a bigger deal about Twilight being an Alicorn.
I'm disappointed we didn't get to see more of the Tirek future. Though I guess him glassing the continent wouldn't be very exciting on its own. Discord, too. And Flim Flam. They have packed a lot in to a double episode finale already, I guess.
Starlight is actually a pretty gifted unicorn once she sets her mind on something. Her buddy Sunburst seems pretty swanky, too.
Ah, Twilight's Talk-no-Jutsu works every time. And now the friends deliberate on the punishment. I was hoping she'd be sent to a random town in the sticks to make friends. That would have brought the whole thing full circle in a really nice way. It's also nice to see that all the kids from Equality Village or whatever it's called are still hanging out there. They could use a touch of decor, however.
... why were they all looking at me? And what the hell am I going to do for the next year without any new pony?!
Not eeeeveryone...
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I found that to be an effective way to redeem DT. This was probably one of my all-time favorite episodes.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this episode aired on Back to the Future Day. Which makes the joke so much better.
I know, right? I heard that the story behind her was that she was a fan of the show and said something like " Friendship is magic!" during a speech she gave after receiving an emmy. Then show staff asked her to voice act for an episode.
Which I think is really cool, and not the first time they've done stuff like that.
Now as for the finale.
It was good. I don't like time travel much just as a personal bias, but it can be entertaining if it doesn't try too hard. And I think this episode did a good job.
Are there flaws and plotholes all around? Sure, but our imaginations can take care of that just fine I bet.
I am so freaking excited for the fanfiction that will come from the alternate timelines. Only one I've read so far is Skirt's "Ever Ash Project", but I think that it set a high standard for everything that will follow.
Wait wait wait. A YEAR!?
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH
I can only hope that the fanfiction will pull me through
3583717
Time travel can be very difficult to pull off. MLP has done it pretty well so far. In "It's About Time" they avoided a lot of trouble by keeping the events in a closed causal loop*, albeit one without a clear beginning. Probably the cleanest solution. Fun aside: I just pulled up that episode again and cringed at how poorly Twilight pronounced Tartarus. And yeah, plenty of scenarios in the finale could very well be plotholes. Personally, I'd chalk it all up to the combination of Butterfly Effect and Magic. Generally speaking, Time doesn't like being messed with. I'm also pretty liberal with continuity errors if the results of messing with things are awesome.
SS&E's "The Ever Ash Project" was pretty fantastic. I think it might be my first ShortSkirts story, actually. I've been following him for ages but I don't remember why or since when. I knocked out his story and ROBCakeran53's I Was Nothing today. ROB's work also explores the final ashen world, but arrives there in a very different, and pretty awesome, way.
On the topic of time, however, another Feature Box story, Unfair, did raise a terrifying possibility: what if non-closed causality time travel** doesn't change history, but results in multiple universes? That would mean every alternate reality that Starlight and Twilight caused continued to exist after we reached our conclusion. The Equestria Girls movies already lend plenty of credence to the idea that multiple parallel realities can exist.
Maybe the previous generations of MLP are also parallel, less awesome realities... *shudder*
*Closed causal loop: As in "It's About Time," history is apparently immutable, or at the very least, a person directly involved in the time travel can't alter their past any meaningful way. See Also: H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine." A man cannot be his own savior.
**Non-closed causal loop: Opposite of above. Any changes made in the past will ripple forward and change the present/future. Most common in "Terminator" (kind of, sometimes, it's complicated) and "Back to the Future." May or may not result in multiple timelines and realities, depending on whether or not J.J. Abrams is directing.