MLP:FiM Season 8 Episodes 14-15 Review/Recap (SPOILERS) · 4:31pm Aug 4th, 2018
Two new eps to celebrate the end of the hiatus.
I think I miss the hiatus.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Season 8 Episode 14: "A Matter of Principals" (SPOILERS)
In which apparently a tree can be a substitute teacher. Also, the writers suck.
Twilight shows off a whole bunch of irreplacable magical artifacts from across the world to her students, then hides them for a scavenger hunt to give the students a fun friendship activity. However, before she can assign the pairs, the entire Mane Six are called by the Cutie Map! With the Mane Six called away, there's no teachers to teach at the Friendship School.
(This is exactly the kind of thing Neighsay was concerned about back at the start of the season. Jerkass has a point?)
Of course, Twilight always has a backup plan. She leaves Starlight in charge, with Spike as assistant. They're not even gone five seconds before Discord shows up, presuming to stand in for Twilight.
Yeah, we're doing a "jerk Discord" episode. Yawn.
Oh hey, Twittermites. Haven't seen those in a while.
So Discord hires a bunch of "substitute teachers", which WAS on Twilight's to-do list, except, well...
Iron Will. Cranky Doodle. A dragonsneeze tree.
Yeah, so we've basically got season 4 Discord here. Just like in "Non-Compete Clause", we've got an episode where the writers have no concept of what the fuck they're doing, so they've reset characters to earlier states of fail and damn character development!
Once Discord exits stage left, Starlight brings in HER substitute teachers: Spitfire, Trixie, and Maud. Of course, Discord isn't done yet--he crashes classes as a fake student, behaving in the most obnoxious way possible.
Aaaaaaand Starlight just regressed in character development too, in a big way. Yikes. Then again, there was something oddly cathartic about that massive blast.
The rest of the episode is Discord "haunting" the school to create as much chaos and panic as possible. Because that's apparently all Discord can ever do, EVER, according to the season 8 writers. Basically, this was every S4 Discord episode plus O&O all jammed together into an ugly, badly-written mess.
Trixie pulling Derpy out of her hat was a funny bit. I liked that. It's about all I liked here. Outside of that and introducing a bunch of new MacGuffins, this episode is pure turds. 2/10.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Season 8 Episode 15: "The Hearth's Warming Club" (SPOILERS)
In which we get our obligatory seasonal Hearth's Warming episode.
It's Hearth's Warming at the Friendship School...but most of the students aren't that into it since they're not ponies and HW is a pony holiday. Twilight dismisses school for a two-week holiday break. But a mysterious cloaked figure does something to the Fire of Friendship on the HW tree in the school, causing it to turn into purple Gak that spreads all over the place and wrecks the HW decorations.
The Mane Six follow the prankster to the dorms. There was only one unlocked way in, the prankster never came out, and the only ones in the dorms are the students. So who did it? Since none of the students will own up to the crime, Twilight makes them all help clean up the mess while she calls them into her office one at a time to question them. If she can't find who did it, she's going to cancel holiday break for all the students.
Uh, Twilight? How is that fair? There's no possible way any of the students could have done it. They had all left the room before the gakking happened, and nobody came back in, and the windows weren't open, so...what the hell?
While Twilight interviews the students, they talk amongst themselves, trying to figure out who did it. We learn that Ocellus and the Changelings love Hearth's Warming after Twilight introduced them to it last year. They...took her celebration tips a bit literally, which is kind of silly to watch. Carols, carols carols caroooooools!
Yak holidays ALL about smashing and stomping. And singing. Singing Yak Song.
Smolder's story...umm...happened. Yeah. That...happened.
Sandbar, stop being a bologna sandwich on white bread.
The amphibiquines have an actually pretty cool holiday festival.
No creature confesses to the prank, and the students turn against each other in suspicion and anger. Gallus gets them all to stop fighting, and we find out that the "holidays" at Griffonstone suck and he has no real family to spend it with...so he's the one who pulled the prank.
After Gallus confesses the truth and his reasons why to his friends, Twilight and Rainbow Dash let on that they guessed it was him all along. The rest of the students decide to spend Hearth's Warming at the school with Gallus so he won't be all alone, and Twilight invites the lot of them to the castle for Hearth's Warming.
This episode was incredibly average, but it did give us a little bit of fun worldbuilding, so I'll give it a 7/10.
I like "amphibiquines."
Also, that second one actually did quite a lot to flesh out some of the students' rather skeletal characters. Especially Gallus. Apparently the logic in Griffonstone was "Ugh, fine, throw an orphan at the stupid pony princess so she'll stop bothering us."
Discord has always been a jerk he's only ever nice to Fluttershy. I admit this is probably the worse he's ever been but it was worth it to see Starlight blast him. The fact that he comes back as a ghost is hilariously morbid.
This shit isn't going to stop. Even if the episodes weren't already pre-made, the producers can just hide behind the "made for kids" excuse to evade judgment. Why do you think they had all those episodes chastising critics and adult fans? You're not allowed to have standards. You're just supposed to be grateful that you're still getting fresh pony material, regardless of its quality.
Edit: reduced inflammatory content
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To be fair, that episode was targetting the more...douches members, and more obessed ones
Seeing the changeling hearth's warming was cute. Those little baby changelings, OMG.
To be fair Discord was very much asking for what he got from Starlight. We knew whatever she did wouldn't stick though, she probably should have known too. The biggest complaint is the fact the stuff Discord was doing wasn't just mayhem, it was dangerous.
Not to mention teleportation is a thing in this universe, so the culprit could've teleported out when they realized they were trapped. Heck, the culprit could've been Discord for all they knew. It seems like the kind of thing he would do. Though arguably he'd at least make sure the ponies knew it was him.
My question for the Discord ep is...why does Celestia have a bunch of artifacts that clearly belong to other species(not counting Clover's cloak of course)?
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But Rainbow Dash got what she wanted both times she stalked Daring Do to her house, and even got a cameo for it.
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Maybe they were gifts? Or maybe they were given to her for safekeeping?
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That will be enough of that, thanks. I won't have you picking fights with the entire site in my blog. Also, the downvotes are probably because the wording of your first comment is confusing, misleading, and inflammatory.
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Donation?
So a Starlight episode and another outta season Holiday episode.....
Yeah I'll probaly just have them on as background noise while i'm playing on my PC to get them off my DVR.
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I'm sorry for potentially causing you grief by proxy.
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Well, every group needs someone grounded. A voice of reason. I guess that makes him the Applejack of the students.
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I was thinking neighsayer was behind it.
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Yeah, me too. It's my headcanon after this episode that he's one of those guys who thinks stamp-collecting or such is the most fun ever.
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Don't you think the students would have noticed someone who doesn't belong there teleporting out of their dorm room?
4916339 Not if they were busy packing. From what we saw none of them left their rooms after being sent to pack for the train rode home, and that was from Twilight's perspective.
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I mean who would possibly want to mess with Twilight? I mean it be low even for Queen Chrysalis or Neigh Say. It's also not creative enough for Discord. He'd probably let you know it was him.