Season 5B: My Thoughts (As Well As Season 5 Overall) · 11:18am Dec 2nd, 2015
It's hard to believe that another season has come and gone. The days of 2011 when I sat up all night reading The Empty Room while listening to new(!) tracks from Not A Clever Pony... Let me tell you, those days have never felt so close, yet so far away. A lot has changed since then, within the show, within the fandom, and within my personal life.
After a long period of online classes, I have finally achieved admittance to college, and now my big worry is passing this semester. Meanwhile, the fandom seems to have calmed down after the rage and fire of the Twilicorn upset - though I can't say for certain, as it also seems to have become more split up into distinct groups that only pay passing attention to one another; the fanficcers and analysts in one corner, the artists and musicians in another, and everyone else doing whatever it is they do. And the show, it feels, has come full circle in an indirect sort of way. Season 5 strikes me as, if anything, the realization of a perfect balance between the unique properties of the first four, with a dedication to both Season 3's main-character focus and Season 2's sense of community, between Season 1's reserved, relaxed feel and Season 4's abundance of adventure and maybe no small degree of sheer zaniness. But that is not to say that Season 5 feels repetitive, either, even with its multitude of callbacks to the shows' earliest installments; it too holds a unique identity of more cohesive, more emotional, more interesting conflicts, and realistic resolutions that don't rely on deus-ex-machina to solve problems big and small, and even its misfires generally aren't as bad as Season 4's more... ill advised episodes. Frankly, I do believe this is the show's best season yet, and I hope that Season 6 only surpasses that.
Now, let's take a look at those episode ratings, shall we?
Season 5A
1: Amending Fences
2: The Cutie Map
3: The Lost Treasure Of Griffonstone
4: Castle Sweet Castle
5: Tanks For The Memories
6: Do Princesses Dream Of Magic Sheep?
7: Party Pooped
8: Make New Friends But Keep Discord
9: Bloom And Doom
10: Slice Of Life
11: Appleoosa's Most Wanted
12: Princess Spike
Season 5B
1. The Mane Attraction
2. The Cutie Re-Mark
3. Crusaders Of The Lost Mark
4. Made In Manehattan
5. Canterlot Boutique
6. Rarity Investigates
7. Brotherhooves Social
8. The Hooffields And McColts
9. The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows
10. Hearthbreakers
11. Scare Master
12. What About Discord?
I think this is one of the first times I've been able to give a two-parter episode a high rating without many qualifiers, and while in retrospect Starlight's freudian excuse does bug me a little bit, it's not enough to ruin the episode for me like the flaws in Twilight's Kingdom did.
Season 5 Overall
1: Amending Fences
2: The Mane Attraction
3: The Cutie Re-Mark
4: The Cutie Map
5: Crusaders Of The Lost Mark
6: The Lost Treasure Of Griffonstone
7: Made In Manehattan
8: Canterlot Boutique
9: Rarity Investigates
10: Castle Sweet Castle
11: Tanks For The Memories
12: Do Princesses Dream Of Magic Sheep?
13: Brotherhooves Social
14: The Hooffields And McColts
15: Party Pooped
16: Make New Friends But Keep Discord
17: The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows
18: Bloom And Doom
19: Slice Of Life
20: Appleoosa's Most Wanted
21: Hearthbreakers
22: Scare Master
23: Princess Spike
24: What About Discord?
It's worth noting that the bottom three items are the only episodes I'd consider that bad, and Scare Master at least had a fun third act to make up for the intentionally lackluster first two segments. Either way, Season 5's worst is still levels above Season 4's. More importantly, the high points of this season are also new high points for the show as a whole, in my opinion. It's nice to feel confident about the show's direction again.
Once again looking forward to what the future has in store, CGL signing out!
EDIT: Moved The Cutie Re-Mark from #2 and #3 slots to #6 and #12 spots, respectively. It was good, but the ending... had issues.
EDIT: Put them back, cause while I had some issues with the episode, I don't really care anymore - it was great anyway.
Well, I'm glad you were able to enjoy it. For me though it's by far the absolute worst season final the show has ever had. Otherwise, I do agree that Season-f as a whole might possibly be the best the show has ever had. The finale was still big let down for me that.
It had it's exciting moments, and I especially enjoyed the interplay between Twilight and Starlight. The various alternate futures where a bit much though and I think it might have been better two focus on just one or maybe two scenarios instead of trying to cram in so many. The real problem for me was the utterly botched reform of Starlight Glimmer, not so much because of her week excuses, as those actually fit somewhat with just how low key a villain she is. More so it's the way the whole idea of reforming her is just rushed through right at the very end of the episode. Because of how low key she was, because she was just an ordinary pony and not some world destroying monsters (reckless misuse of time travel not withstanding) she offered the show a unique potential to be a recurrent adversary and ongoing rival to Twilight, but now it feels like all that potential was wasted.
I don't really mind that she was reformed, I don't even mind that it was in the finale, but I really wish we could have gotten an extra mid-season episode or two for her to have done some more low key antagonist stuff before going all over the top insane and going to such extreme measures as rewriting history to get her revenge.
What absolutely bugs me most about this finale though is the implication that Starlight might be permanently joining the cast as a sort of Seventh Ranger. She made a great villain, thanks in no small part to excellent voice work that has consistently stolen every scene, but at least in this episode none of that really seemed to carry over into her reform and she felt hollow by comparison. Plus, I can't help but feel like she nothing more than a weak attempt to parallel Sunset Shimmer. I like Sunset, she really helps liven up the EQG cast and set that series apart from the main MLP line, however, the show is not the movies.
Sunset works in EQG (particular RR and to lesser extent FG) because she serves as a replacement for Twilight in the Hu-Mane-6. Even with Twilight's human counterpart now transferring to Canterlot high, I think there's enough to distinguish her and Sunset that the can balance each other out. That's not really the same case with Starlight Glimmer though, and so the fear we might be stuck with her is the first time as a fan where a finale has left me unable to look forward to the next season with optimism.
Much of what made both Season-4 and Season-5 work so well was the sense of progression, not just in various callbacks to past episodes, but in the way the cast had matured from learning lessons in friendship and was increasing instead going out into the world to pass those lessons onto others. While Twilight taking on an apprentice sort of fits that paradigm, bring her full circle as the former student becomes a mentor in her own right, I just don't think it works with Glimmer. It just feels to me too much like the show might be backsliding by adding a new character just for the sake of potentially rehashing old lessons.
...
Hmm, well that rant certainly snowballed. Sorry if I wasted your time or rained on your parade.
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Yes and no; I think the three and several snippets we got was fairly decent. Plus, the Ashlands timeline really drove the point home. That being said, the Chrysalis and Nightmare Moon timelines felt somewhat underwhelming, in a way.
Yeah, giving it more thought, I do have to agree with this. More specifically, I think everything in the episode after they returned from the Ashlands timeline could have used serious reworking; I almost think this should have been a three-parter.
This I can definitely agree with; the meta-setup was even there, with the mid-season wait.
Indeed, it feels like they could have found some way to write Sunset into the show and the end result would be the same, with less of a hackneyed backstory.
I can definitely see your point there too. I'm personally hoping for her not being a seventh ranger, but rather a recurring secondary character like the CMC and Discord, serving a role as Twilight's student.
Hmm, good point there; I think we'll just have to see where they go with things.
Overall, I still like the finale, but after what you said and thinking about it some more on my own, I do think the ending was more than a bit over the top, and the whole thing with Sunburst was frankly pretty ridiculous.
I guess we'll have to see what Season 6 brings.