Alright... Criticism Take 2 · 6:12am Oct 4th, 2016
I was just about to give up in trying to explain why I didn't like Pony Point of View when a group member from another site put it into perfect words:
"This would have been a fantastic Season 1 or 2 episode."
That's it. Right there.
It feels like a bit more than a day late and a dollar short. The relationships of the mane six feel far beyond something as petty as this.
Now I'm also one to believe that one of the things the show does the worst job at is show or tell a clear passage of time. For most of the time we assumed at least a year or two has passed with Twilight's time in Ponyville. Then Season 4 starts and we realize that, well, it's been just one. That caused a bunch of confusion looking back to season 1, having a winter episode and then a fall episode and then...
You get my point. The most seasoned of us have known these characters for five or six years (the show turns six years old on the 10th). To us, it doesn't feel like it's just been 1-2 years in Ponyville, and because the show is so inconsistent with showing (and/or telling) us how long it's been, I can only assume that most of us have treated the Ponyville setting in near-real time. That's what I've done, anyways.
So it wouldn't have been a bad episode four or five years ago. But nowadays, it felt like a significant step back in terms of character development for Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie.
You hit that nail square on the head.
Now THAT criticism, I can agree with. Much more well put than previous.
4239591 Your comment earlier really made me realize that I was failing to explain why I didn't like it. Thank you.
I feel the same way here, and this isn't the first episode that feels like it came a few seasons too late. A lot of people speculated that if you took away the CMC's cutie marks, "The Cart Before The Ponies" could've easily been a Season 1 or Season 2 episode.
Totally agree with you on this, Miles. Thank you.
And to MY reckoning, no matter HOW messed up the DHX crew is with the show's proper/real time line, there's been THREE Hearth's Warming episodes that we've seen during the series' run:
Hearth's Warming Eve in Season 2,
Hearthbreakers in Season 5,
and this season's A Hearth's Warming Tail.
SO, whether they acknowledge it or not, at least two (and probably THREE) years have passed since Twi and Spike came to Ponyville.
That's what I go by, at least.
Exactly. However, even if it did take steps back, this episode was saved with it's humor and both Twilight and Spike were very much on point. I felt Spike's frustration throughout the episode so I did have some characters to connect too.
4239681 Three years sounds like an acceptable time frame, especially when you take in the CMC as they are still children, not teenagers. So that would put them, given that they were about '8' at the start, at 11 years old. Sounds about right for their maturity.
4239905 Thank you.
And indeed.
Actually, in my own head-canon, that's about how long it's been since Twi and Spike came to Ponyville in the series premiere, and that's what I stick with.
The staff's time-frame nonsense notwithstanding.