), I do love fussing over stats where anything of interest is concerned, Fimfic included. Happily, I’m not alone (because duh 
): Recommendsday blogger, fic writer and all-around awesome chap TCC56 does too, and in his latestMini Re-Reviews: "Games Ponies Play" - Season 3 Episode 12 · 9:44pm May 14th, 2020
PEACHBOTTOM: "Whoo-wee! That welcome you threw for me really was something! Why, if this were a hotel, I'd give it five stars!"
TWILIGHT: "That's, um, great. But could you, you know... not come back for any future episodes? Thanks."
APPLEJACK: Twilight! Why in Equestria would you say such a thing?
TWILIGHT: "Did you see how much effort the writers, actress and animators put into making her distinctive? If she returns, they might start focusing on them more then us!"
FLUTTERSHY: "...We have writers?"
On "Too Many Pinkie Pies", I'd mentioned that that episode felt like a bridge between the wacky comedy hijinks episode Dave Polsky did in Season 1, and the more emotionally complex stories he sought to do in in Season 4, but in a way that had the best of both worlds (I'm aware this is not a universal opinion). And in some ways, that was also true of "Keep Calm and Flutter On", though it did not otherwise 'feel' like a Polsky episode, probably due to the scenario and story not coming from him, so I didn't dwell on him there. With "Games Ponies Play", there is a bit of that merging, in ways that are quite surprisingly successful, but they pale in comparison to other blunders the episode makes from a dramatic and structural perspective, as well as a conceptual one, that make it merely fine, except on a comedy level.
The first 20-30 seconds repeat Twilight's departure from Spike in the last episode, in a manner that I'm sure confused lots of viewers the first time around, given the way "Just for Sidekicks" played out doesn't directly indicate that the events the Mane 6 got up to would get its own episode; there, it just read as a way to get them out of the picture so the episode could take place. But I still really like it; the connection between these two episodes was enough to justify shifting the airing order so they'd air this way, I understand, and I think it was well worth it. As we'll soon discover, this episode ends up being jammed enough in some ways, so saving some setup by having the last episode take care of it helps out. But neither does the gimmick get in the way, confined only to the start and end, with both episodes standing very well alone. That said, this one teases the other far more, so there is argument to be made for reversing the order.
One of the first things the episode does of note is giving the characters, or one of them, a personal stake in the issue that they are outsiders to. Rainbow Dash bearing witness to Cloudsdale not getting to host the Equestria Games in her youth stoked a fire in her belly, and she's kind of at her best here. It would be easy to imagine an earlier Dash, especially from one of her less-then-stellar Season 2 showings, trying to monopolise the attention towards Cloudsdale getting a shot again, perhaps even going so far as to sabotage this, but learning this is wrong towards the end. That would have been supremely irritating and lackluster; instead, we get a Dash fully aware the Crystal Empire needs the opportunity to host what later turns out to be the Pony Olympics, given how much it would indict them back into Equestria after their long absence, increase their tourism and trade, the works. And that Dash redirects her focus, while keeping her usual intensity towards the task, speaks volumes about how far she's come. What a loyal pony.
There's also a amusing mini-arc for Twilight, all in the visuals, about Cadence having a Princess Sigh (Trademarked!), which Twilight is guided on doing once, to calm down in a moment of stress. She observes Cadence doing it thereafter, and she repeats it later during the mishap, at moments where she would normally raise her voice and yell. It even justifies an oddball moment from last episode shown during this one's coda, where Twilight voices her confidence that Spike is handling things fine. Such a thing seemed odd when she showed her suspicion right before her departure, but it all falls into place here, given that she got to a stage of not worrying at the track meet. It's a small part of the episode, but beautifully handled with lots of nuance, and given the events of the very next episode, it takes on extra special meaning.
Seriously, though: we went from this... to the Twilighting and freak-out lampshading of S9.
As a Polsky episode, the humour's largely in good hands, and while some gags come across as a little strange ("Pinkie's Spike-like "NOOOO!" one is grand, though rendered oddly, but some of her other lines revolving around Cinnamon Buns are just warped in their weirdness), the majority of them are winners. Highlights include Rainbow Dash smacking on and sliding down the roof window of the spa, with Rarity unable to place the source. The sports chant the Mane 5 do works better then it really should (while being more amusing and entertaining in a few seconds then the next time the show used a "2, 4, 6, 8"-type thing managed for a whole 22 minutes). And Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy's little "Bump-cha!" moment continues the trend of squeezing in adorable moments of their bond on the side, after "Spike At Your Service".
Why this episode falls short in pervasive but complicated ways (complicated in so far as most viewers wouldn't be easily able to articulate why the episode didn't stick with them to a great degree, given much of it is really funny to watch and full of great character interactions) comes down to two things. The first is, of course, that the comedy-of-errors plot of the group picking up the wrong Pony for the Games Inspector is telegraphed to an almost stupid degree. Conceptually, that's not an issue - "Party of One" doesn't suffer at all from the fact of Pinkie's coming party being obvious - but the way the episode plays out largely doesn't freshen up that rusty comedy template one iota, something MLP normally does. It at least normally does enough unusual in the execution to make such dull premises sparkle, anyway. Were it not for the immaculate comedy and character construction, this would largely read as a flimsy script from a mundane late-series episode. That's not to say the episode doesn't try, for it does at least structure it in such a way that we can sort-of buy the Mane 5 not copping on. Rarity is pushed sideways into a subplot of preparing Cadence's hair that gives Tabitha more opportunities to show her acting chops, and Twilight is constantly checking on things like Cadence's hair treatment and later fetching Shining Armor. Having the two ponies most likely to cop onto the reality kept out of the picture is sound structural writing, certainly. And it's frankly amazing how fleshed out and well-portrayed Ms. Peachbottom, the not-inspector pony, is. She has claustrophobia, of all things, which is an odd decision as it doesn't feed into the episode much other then sometimes being a way to push the plot along, but it does allow her to by physically energetic in a visually dynamic way, and it's not played for laughs either. She's a hoot to watch, with her flirting with Shining Armor and his "uh, wut" face afterwards being my favourite moment there.
Still, it doesn't change the fact that nearly half of the episode plays out with the ticking clock constantly in the viewer's mind in a way that weakens the tension and stability of what's onscreen (incidentally, Rarity's subplot doesn't have much tension as Ms. Harshwhinny never gets to see the headdress before it's finished, but that's a tiny quibble, it's not the episode's dramatic spine or anything).
It is odd that so much time is spent on the castle tour, as the side effect is the episode's other problem: its nonsensical resolution. After all parties involved realise the mishap, the group catches Cadence just as she's finished, only for Harshwhinny to berate them for her getting no welcome at all. Yet mere moments later, Harshwhinny applauds them for treating Peachbottom so well because they thought she was the inspector, a mere minute after she recounted to Peachbottom while the pair were getting a spa treatment, how towns always put on a false show and she never got to see the real deal. She comes to this conclusion after it was stated, right in front of her, that Peachbottom's experience was the factory-made schtick she normally gets. And it can't be because she herself got to see the town for herself, because her day was shown to be kind of awful up to the spa, having to drag her luggage and getting splashed and knocked over. This is not new, of course: everyone has made this observation since the episode aired, but it's thrown into sharper focus by how quickly the episode wraps up once the mistake is uncovered (the episode has not even four minutes to spare at this point, and under three when you shift out the coda connecting this one to "Just For Sidekicks"), with the cutaway to Cadence's announcement of the Empire getting hosting rights to the Games being especially sharp in the bluntness of the writing.
Polsky and others have gone on record saying that a rushed schedule meant this problem (the result of an unfourtunate mixup, apparently) wasn't caught in time. It's not apparent from the finished episode how this could be easily amended, as the obvious solutions all require chunking some of the main group's antics to give more time to showing Harshwhinny seeing the Empire for herself (I once read someone suggesting having Applejack and Fluttershy break from the group and bump into her, spending some time and showing her around, to also solve them getting very little in this episode, and screentime issues notwithstanding, it's a decent idea). And that requires careful management of a new script to fit the runtime perfectly (trust me, getting an episode to hit the right length organically is not an easy thing to do). Corey Powell's dense-yet-perfect management of pacing would have been really useful here. Pity it's not contagious.
That said, it's still a good episode on its own rights, very fun and satisfying to watch for the most part. Cadence and Shining Armor return again and getting to see both in their element, especially showing calming restraints as things go awry, is great. There's lots of neat animation and visuals throughout, being set in the Crystal Empire and all, with Cadence's finished manestyle and earlier botched one being the standouts (amusingly, in one shot in the spa all the Crystal Spa ponies lack their normal sparkling pigment). It's just a tepid one in the plot construction arena, and gets OHKO'd in the resolution department, by early season standards. But everything at the margins is largely watchable, proof that FiM nearly always delivers on the low-key and surface-level thrills at this stage in its life. The penultimate episode of the season gets a 6.5/10.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
- It took me a while to pinpoint where else on the show I'd heard Ms. Peachbottom's voice (and actress, kind of goes with the territory) and not until near the very end did it hit me - Patricia Drake also voiced Twilight Velvet, Twilight's mother, in "Once Upon a Zeppelin". Velvet's accent was less pronounced while still having a similar drawl, so connecting the two was difficult. This is all fun observations, Peachbottom's voice and acting is part of the reason why she's such a hoot to watch.
- I honestly would not have guessed prior to last episode that "Just For Sidekicks" would fare better then this, for I didn't remember it much at all, whereas I did this. It probably comes down to that episode doing nothing obviously wrong, whereas this one, despite having more obviously memorable about it and being just as fun a watch, having two obvious things to point out as lackluster. Them's the kicks sometimes, folks.
- I knew it coming in to this season, but it really is startling how much better the season's first half fared compared to its second. That first half of six episodes was, baring "One Bad Seed", basically Season 2 level quality on this rewatch, whereas much of this half has been in the "good-ish" category. This, I suspect, is much of the reason for Season 3 being almost always ranked low within the first five season by most viewers, though having only half the episodes doesn't help. A different episode order could have done wonders there. But, even when the episodes are merely good, they still provide the feel and tone and atmosphere of early Pony that feels more right that an episode from even Season 5 would, even if it had the same score. It's a small thing, just comes down to a season's overall level depending on more then the average quality of its episodes.
- Of course, there's still one episode left here. You know the ones, folks. Over 7 years after it dropped a major bombshell (spoiled by merch, of course) and caused a notable split in the fandom, how will "Magical Mystery Cure" fare? Guess we'll see!
TWILIGHT: "If only every pony had some distinctive unique feature that would have enabled us to identify the real games inspector!"
5262507
Is that from an Abridged MLP episode (of any of the many Pony Abridged series around)? Feels like it could very well be!
5262509
No, it's just an observation that I made at the time XD The luggage mishap always felt silly to me.
On a less silly note, I recall when watching this back in the day being rather underwhelmed by the synchronous episodes gimmick. I actually felt they did it backwards and that they should have aired this one first... because then you get the bizarre stinger which acts as a teaser for the Spike episode, and leaves you wondering what on Earth Spike could have done to end up in that situation. But even so, it just felt like a waste of the gimmick since neither episode really complements the other. I think the later use of this gimmick in S5 was better.
This was the first episode that really dropped the ball in my eyes, as I couldn't get over the plot convenience of the Mane Six picking up the wrong pony from the station. (They never once asked for her name?!)
That said, as you've highlighted the episode still gets a lot of the little details right (and I love the shot of Rarity failing to notice Rainbow Dash colliding with the window- top notch comedy there) so it's not a total loss, but it's still the episode of the first three series I'm least likely to choose to rewatch.
5263407
Eeyup. It's a shame, as the episode lacks the finesse and pizaaz in its treatment of that plot point enough to paper over both the simple premise and the convenience and contrivance of the matter. That and the messy ending do undermine it quite a bit. But as we both said, the low-key fun is there, and that matters a lot. I wouldn't go as far as saying it's the least-likely episode to rewatch from Seasons 1-3 myself. But I understand why one would.
5262519
I mean... possibly? It would have been better to be the other way around, we both said as such. Wonder if a friend has ever watched the series again with a newcomer and swapped the order of this and "Just For Sidekicks", to see what would happen? Very curious to know, I am.
That said, I don't necessarily think the gimmick is wasted. I find it's fine for what it is, as it gives organic reasons for both plots to proceed the way they do, though mostly for last episode, and not this one, I'll concede. As for S5, if you're referring to "Made in Manehattan" and "Brotherhooves Social"... I don't really see it? They don't use the synchronous episode gimmick any more then here, with one episode having a character(s) out of the picture so the plot of the other can happen the way it does. Beyond that, nothing really.