My Little Pony Best Gift Ever Holiday Special Review

Trying my hand at blog-style review posts. Wish me luck!

Given the audience here, this is written assuming the reader has already seen the episode. Which just means it isn't spoiler free (though getting spoiled on this won't affect your enjoyment either way, I'd wager) and skips past a lot of the boring plot stuff.

Wowzers. This special had a lot going on, but it didn't feel rushed, and all largely worked really well. It had 7 distinct plotlines to balance, 6 if you fuse Fluttershy and Applejack's together given how much they overlap, and though I wouldn't commit to it unless I ran the numbers, they are felt like they got equal screen time. So it doesn't matter if one did get slightly more then the others, because they all felt balanced.

The first observation to make is that this special is predictable. There's no two ways about it. But many of not only the best Pony episodes, but also the best holiday specials in general, have been predictable. Kind of comes with the territory. And I'd say this one handled said predictability really well. Even as I was first watching it, it was as if I had already seen it and was merely revisiting it in a spirit of nostalgia, in the best way. Some plotlines coasted on the easy choice - until Spike fell asleep doing Rarity's gift, there wasn't a single tiny surprise in his plotline - but most of them either spiced up the predictability with some pretty solid comedic timing, or heartwarming moments so precious they broke through my (weak?) defences. Actually, the comedy was really good, full of not only a few moments the fandom will treasure (Derpy's lovable mistake, Fluttershy correcting Applejack on saying yay) but lots of moments that would be funny in any context. It almost approached the high-comedy levels the early Unicorn Twilight seasons largely sat at. While maintaining the style of the later seasons.

Michael Vogel was this special's sole credited writer and... really? He delivered this well? Kind of surprised. Not to slight the man, but he's not exactly my favourite Pony writer. While he only has one outright dud to his name in "The Cart Before The Ponies", nearly all of his episode scripts, and I include the Movie in that, suffer in part or in full from a sense of the perfunctory, shuffling characters from plot point to plot point like chess pieces, with not as much care to the character development and personality and comedy around them. Though he's obviously very familiar with the characters, having being involved in development since Season 2. And he does have some really solid scripts to his name - What Lies Beneath is a common highly-ranked Season 8 episode for a reason, The Mean 6 bounces between it's characters and comedy well, even if it is a structural mess at times, and I would be remiss to not point out Stranger Then Fan Fiction as another good one.
My sense is that he's too used to thinking of the characters from an executive perspective, due to his years in that position before he started writing scripts in Season 6, and though he obviously does care for the characters, he's first and foremost committed to hitting all the items on the requisite (executive mandated?) checklist. Actually, he's written a holiday special before, A Hearth's Warming Tail, his first script for the series, and this improves on pretty much every problem that episode had. That had nice production value work and songs, and was an alright Christmas Carol take, but not much beyond that. Unlike most, I don't see it as really bad or really good - just middle of the road.
Anyway - long winded way of saying, man's got the goods if he is solely responsible for this. Just wish he could deliver more consistently.

Back to the episode - outside of a few visual gags and cameos during the opening song and the ending shots, there was nothing about this that couldn't have taken place in Season 5 (okay, probably in Season 6, given it has to be at least the next Hearth's Warming after Hearthbreakers, and Season 7 if you factor in Grand Pear, but that's only a few shots more then cameo, really). I don't mean that in a "Season 6 onwards is worse" way. What I mean is that, after a season where half the episodes directly related to the season arc or new characters, and nearly all the others had it as background material, it's nice to have something that could, almost, take place in one of several seasons. Arc and growth are important, and we love them, but having our fair share of more out-of-time stories within the show's timeline is important too. Even more so with Hearth's Warming, I find.

I think Rainbow's plotline was probably my favourite. She really wanted to do right by Fluttershy, and her frustration at not being able to think of the right gift didn't feel false - I struggle with that for my own siblings. More so, it effectively serves to redeem Discord after A Matter of Principles, at least in my eyes. More on that at the end. Neat comedy too.
Rarity's story was a real treasure, easy to guess, but balancing between being generous to Applejack, or this new kid who wants to get into fashion and looks up to her, just melted me. Also, I think she kind of saw a bit of herself in him - her own parents, her father especially, are more country-like and not at all the high society type she leans more towards. Seeing another young pony in a country family aspiring to a career in fashion, I think she got all nostalgic.
Applejack and Fluttershy's could have been annoying, being another Film and Flam one, and it is probably one of the weaker ones, but good comedy and careful script balancing kept it from being so. Also, it get points for not having them trying to ruin it in Ponyville all episode: exactly that was done in the 2017 Holiday comic. Spike's was predictable, but really touching, especially with the final song he performed. And Pinkie and Twilight's, being the emotional core of the episode, balanced the comedy and fuzzy feelings well, not just with Pinkie making another trip to first the Yaks and then further up north, but with some especially funny obsessive Twilight bouts. And those Fates in Disguise - I mean Reindeer - fulfilled their purpose. And their name was a cool pun on the Northern Lights. Also, Discord was wrong - that was more of a Chekhov's Gun then a Reindeer Ex Machina.

Does much hold this back?
I guess the predictability works against it a little, and may impact it on the rewatch, as much as the seven solid plotlines serve to give it a rewatch factor. I could see myself watching this one a year, anyway. Starting with in two months time leading up to Christmas.
Given I now know the opening song wasn't the setup for a musical episode (probably wise, 40+ minutes would have led to a few musical duds, though had it worked, it would have been great), it feels a bit long and overextended.
And due to Applejack getting sidetracked with Fluttershy, barely anything was given to her choosing a gift for Spike, nor her personal feelings at failing there. In some ways, that's a good thing: the Hearthswarming Helper was her idea, so it makes sense she'd be the least stressed and easily narrow a gift for him down to two choices. I guess I just feel she got a slightly shorter stick then the rest. I suppose that's why she and Fluttershy were given the Flim Flam plotline - they are the two who would struggle the least with picking gifts for the others, so they needed some obstacle there. I guess since Applejack and Spike are my two favourites, I would have liked something there. With so many wonderfully dynamic characters, getting specific (platonic) relationship moments can be great, and those two have very little outside of Spike At Your Service, which isn't exactly a great episode.

But, this is easily one of the best new Pony things I've seen since the Movie got me on board a year ago, avoiding pretty much every issue that has plagued even the best episodes of Season 8. And compared to all the others Hearth's Warming episodes (A Hearth's Warming Tale, Hearth's Warming Eve, Hearthbreakers, The Hearth's Warming Club, maybe others I'm forgetting), I think, at least for now, it's my favourite. Whether it'll remain that way after I see it again before Christmas is hard to say, but it was as fuzzy and comforting as a well-worn pair of slippers - arguably a little worn around the edges, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Happy Hearth's Warming!
...what do you mean it's two months away? Airing a Hearth's Warming Episode around the time of Nightmare Night? Did Pinkie Pie hijack Hasbro's scheduling department?

THOUGHTS ON DISCORD
It could be argued that the show reforming Discord was a mistake. He's become a crutch on the fans' part for why action episodes and the Movie suck, whether they include him or not, in a "why doesn't he fix it just like that" way, and certainly had a few stinkers to his name (What About Discord?, A Matter of Principles). While Season 4 used him effectively, it wasn't until To Where and Back Again that something else actually benefitted from having him there, and even then, I don't doubt it could have been written to be just Staright, Thorax and Trixie saving the day.
But, that's not what I mean to discuss. Discord was done well in this episode, and I think the trick came with pairing him with Rainbow. The reality is, we've only really gotten proper stories where Discord can play off another of the Mane 7 with half of them, and thus gotten a full insight into the opinion of both that given pony/dragon on him, and him on that given pony/dragon. We have that with Fluttershy, Spike and Twilight (though I think we're in need for a proper smoothening over between him and Twilight in season 9, they've had their share of downs lately). Pinkie did get that shopping advice scene with him in Discordant Harmony, and though I think an episode with those two could work, they would clearly get along well, so little problems there.
But up until now, there's been little on any of Rarity, Applejack or Rainbow with/to him, and that was probably by intent - it's not likely to be more then a "he is reformed, but I prefer to avoid that trickster when possible" situation, and not without reason, given episodes like A Matter of Principles. Anyway, if they were to do a plotline between Discord and a distrusting member of the Mane 7, Rainbow Dash makes sense. As the element of loyalty, she doesn't forgive easily. Even less so then Applejack.
One could even argue that the reason she hadn't really forgiven him was because of his successful brainwashing of her back in Return of Harmony - sure, he did that to all of them, but she's the one he got to abandon their quest and who thus represented the opposite of her element for the longest time. And though it could all be in my head, as such things often are, I think that was the subtext there. More so then even Applejack or Twilight, she didn't want anything to do with him, and not until he provided his suggestion for a gift did she actually accept his help.
The moment where she said "Fluttershy would love having you, and... I wouldn't totally hate it either", if we ignore why Fluttershy hadn't invited him to begin with, given she knows he has little other friends, as easy as it may be, really means a lot. As shown in The Washouts, Rainbow doesn't let go of the past easily, and certainly not anything she views as a loyalty betrayal. They're both characters who really don't want to ever talk about their feelings, so they tip-toe around it just right. And given Discord's actions here were all towards giving Fluttershy her chance to shine, thereby meaning he wasn't specifically singling Rainbow out, means he was in character, even though I think a part of him, the non-chaotic part, does want to be an equal part of the group (remember when Fluttershy told Discord he wasn't quite there yet on getting his own throne in the castle in Twilight's Kingdom? Yeah... that's never going to happen).
Anyway, this episode handled him really well, and while we can all argue as to whether the show would be better off just straight up ignoring him by this point, given how much they're clearly running out of ideas for him, when they do him as well as they do here, I have little complaints. Just reservations for next time.