"Marks for Effort" Review: Cozy Glow · 3:42am Jun 3rd, 2018
Review for "Molt Down" will be written in the mid-season hiatus. Last weekend was the Grand Galloping Gala in "Legends of Equestria", so I only saw the episode once and couldn't do more with it, due to attending the Gala and some after-Gala stuff over the last week.
This week's episode has finally done it! A thing that I've been waiting for ever since "School Daze" aired:
A proper, Friendship School-focused episode!
Of course, there has been "Non-Compete Clause" before, which can qualify as such an episode in some way, since it was about a field trip of the Student Six and there were some lessons involved that are on the school's curriculum. But the lessons were more incidental and we did not see the classrooms or anything from inside the school.
But this episode has everything one would expect a school-focused episode to have; classes, teaching, homework, tests, learning for school, even problems with learning!
MLP: FiM is slowly growing into Twilight's school now and starts to adapt it more and I can't wait to see that trend continue! And this is something that happens in the most cute and most adorable way imaginable and that way has a name:
Cozy Glow.
Cozy Glow is perfection. She is cute. She is adorable. She has an incredibly kind and good heart and is the most innocent filly I've ever seen. Her ability of giving you puppydog eyes with maximum charme, her chubby cheeks, her cute, tiny laugh, the way she says "Oopsie" when she made a mistake..... Open a dictionary and look for the word "adorable" and you're going to find a photo of Cozy Glow there.
We had Sweetie Belle, we had Dinky, we had Cotton Cloudy, Peach Fuzz and Boysenberry, Chirpy Hooves, Flurry Heart and Kettle Corn, just to name a few, but they have all found their adorable master now.
Cozy Glow is the ultimate definition of cute, adorable, charming, sweet, innocent and lovely, all at once.
And, she enhances the show right where it needs to be enhanced! As I said above, this episode finally really tackles Twilight's friendship school for the first time since "School Daze".
We first learned that Cozy Glow has problems with the lessons in the school and this led to us seeing a typical homework the teachers there give, assigning random ponies to students who they need to do something nice for.
A basic key element of friendship is being nice to your friends, so being required to do something nice for random ponies is a perfect way for learning this first, basic aspect of friendship. It also helps with knowing what your friends enjoy, as Cozy Glow first needed to find out what Bon Bon, Mrs. Cake and Big Mac liked to be able to do the homework she was assigned to. And since this is such a basic lesson about friendship, it seems that Cozy Glow is in one of the beginner classes of Twilight's school, which makes sense, considering how she said that she just moved to Ponyville recently.
After that, we found out about a test Cozy Glow and her class are having at the end of the week, when she asked Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle to help her learn for it. That alone isn't a big surprise, there will probably never be a school without tests, but the subject of this test is a lot more interesting.
While helping her to learn for the test, Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle taught Cozy Glow about the Elements of Harmony; what they mean and stand for and how to live by them. We saw here that Twilight and her friends teach the students about their elements and it is amazing that they now pass on their knowledge and experience to the next generation, to ponies and other creatures who might just be the next heroes of Equestria or maybe even the whole world!
What I find admirable here, is how willing they are to do that. Everyone knows how heroes can become arrogant and think of themselves as the most or only important ones. But that Twilight and her friends so willingly share what they experienced and learned over the last years, shows that they wouldn't mind if other ponies/creatures would become new heroes in their stead.
If their time would have come to make room for new heroes, they would be humble and step back, let the new heroes do what they did before with the help of the things they taught them.
"You either die a hero or watch yourself becoming a villain", just without the dying part (hopefully), this is clearly something Twilight and her friends live by.
Speaking about admirable, we saw Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle act admirably in this episode, too. They were peeved at first because Twilight did not let them become students in her school. And when they asked Cozy Glow for help, they did not do the obvious, helping her in hopes Twilight will let them into the school for helping out one of her students, no, they helped Cozy Glow out of a genuine and honest interest in helping her.
They went and helped her simply because they saw she needed help, without any ulterior motives, just like Sweetie Belle said: "That's how friendship works: When you give from your heart, you don't expect anything back."
They even said that helping Cozy Glow is a lot more fun than being students in Twilight's school after she got perfect grades on her homework thanks to them. Which makes it all the more heartwrenching that Twilight accused them of having taught Cozy Glow the wrong things so she would fail her test as revenge for not letting them enter her school as students. But all of this showed what selfless ponies they are, always willing to help and never asking for a favor in return. That's why they are best ponies.^^
Though, with that said, I'm also worrying about Twilight a bit now, after thinking more about the episode.....
The start of the episode made me wonder a bit, why do Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle try to sneak into the school when they could just trot into it and ask Twilight to get a look around and watch a lesson or two? I thought of that as silly at first, but after they asked her if they could become students, Twilight was quite harsh with them when she told them they can't be students, almost to the point of throwing them out, which shines a light on their decision to peek in through the windows rather than just entering the school building.
This behavior from Twilight, it makes me a bit worried about into which direction she is going. I wasn't worried when she got crowned a princess after her ascension, as she did not actually change because of that aside from getting a purpose other than studying after a while, but in this episode, she appeared to be unusually strict.
We have seen Twilight being stressed and occasionally losing her nerves in the past, pre- and past-ascension, but here, she was cold and strict in a way we have never seen her before. After she became a princess, we saw her trying to act more calm and collected, like Celestia does (even though that didn't always work out cause Twilight is, well, Twilight), so, now that she is a headmare of a school, she is probably trying to fit into that role, too.
But unlike when she acquired her princess status, she lets her personality go into a bit of a questionable direction with this. A lot of headmares are very harsh and strict and, based on what I could observe in this episode, Twilight seems to believe she needs to be like that to be a proper headmare. But, it is not actually necessary to be like that for a headmare. A headmare can be nice to her students.
Yet, Twilight seems to choose the opposite direction, which could let her become unnecessary cruel after a while. There's a bit of a lesson for Twilight herself to learn here and I hope she will.
Back to Cozy Glow, there are a few, small details in this episode that got me thinking about her future. When we saw her getting asked to name the Elements of Harmony for the first time in the clubhouse, she thought Twilight's Element is "Control". Which sounded really dark, that she would associate it with something like this, so I thought that maybe someone has put that into her head, perhaps her parents who raise her in a bad way and teach her about power and enacting control over others.
The next detail I caught was the way she looked when she finally managed to name all the Elements correctly. She had a rather insidious grin there, especially when she named Twilight's Element.
Obviously, the thought jumped into my head that she could be planning something sinister, but I shoved this away and did not really believe it, as her other reactions the episode showed us before were definitely genuine and because even the manipulation of her test, which brought Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle into trouble, happened with good intentions. Having evil plans, it is something that just doesn't fit to her, and nopony could act that well, so I doubted from the get-go that this is the case with her.
And when I watched the episode for the sixth time, I could safely put these suspicions aside completely. I realized that Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle had drawn a magical staff at the side of Twilight's Element on their chart, which is an instrument for the purpose to control something, so that is why she associated her Element with control.
And Sweetie Belle, who we know for a fact is not evil, had a very ambitious grin out of joy even before Cozy started to grin, so Cozy was just imitating Sweetie with a grin of the same kind out of her own joy that she finally got it down.
What we saw of Cozy in the episode did a good job at fooling me she could have some bad plans, but thankfully, this all cleared up upon closer look.
Though, one more thing caught my eye..... When she finally named the Elements of Harmony correctly, two of them got reflected in her eyes, Generosity and later Magic. The former looked rather dull in her eyes and the camera was not very close to her face. But when we saw the Element of Magic reflected in her eyes, it looked a bit more shiny and the camera was closer at her face. It focused on this moment and this made me wonder why.....
It seems like the creators of this episode wanted to say something there, that there is a connection between Cozy Glow and the Element of Magic. Which might not necessarily be a negative one, it could be a positive one, as well. But how that happened exactly in the moment when Cozy was wearing a grin that could be interpreted as sinister at first glance, gives the impression it is more the former.
Maybe by animating it this way and by zooming in with the camera, the creators of this episode, who already know Cozy's future, wanted to give a hint there that Cozy will drift to the dark side in the future..... Not quite foreshadowing, as that would require a bit more, but a small hint for those in the audience who have a sharp eye.
There seems to be something going to happen, if that is any indication, but personally, I hope this is not the case. Seeing such a sweet and goodhearted filly getting corrupted by some dark force would be heartbreaking and something I'd rather not see happen to her.....
For now, though, whatever might happen to Cozy Glow, I focus on her present and her current, true and adorable self and don't let this getting influenced by worries for her future.^^ I rather enjoy her the way she is now than delving into dark theories about her future.
It remains to be seen how big Cozy Glow's role in the show will be in the future. But if she becomes a new primary mane character, or at least a regularly returning secondary mane character, as the end of the episode strongly implies, then MLP: FiM has one character with potential more and increased its own potential for many more episodes and seasons that way.
I can't wait to see more of Cozy! :D
...School Raze made you cry didn't it? Don't feel bad, I also adored Cozy's first appearance.
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Cry? No. Not in a literal sense, at least. I was disappointed, but not crying. And the signs indicate that Cozy isn't actually evil, so I still like her and stick with her. Which will stay like that, whatever might or might not happen once the Finale rolls around the corner. I expect her to change soon, but even if that doesn't happen, even if she should go straight back to Tartarus, I'll still stick with her. I'm very hyped for the Finale to see what is going happen with her and what the future brings for her.