Episode Re-Review: School Daze Parts 1 and 2 · 4:36pm Jun 23rd, 2021
Oh boy, Season 8. It's been a while, hasn't it? After Season 7 became arguably the show's greatest season and marked an improvement in quality, this season arguably almost killed the show's legacy. Even to this day, some regard it as one of the worst if not the worst outright season of the show.
While I still regard Season 1 as the weakest season of the whole show and don't think any of the seasons are outright bad, I can't deny that Season 8 was plagued with a lot of missteps that stem from Hasbro's decision to once again meddle in the show. This time, by mandating a School of Friendship and immediately canonizing that big movie from 2017. And to kick things off, Michael Vogel and Nicole Dubac were teaming up, just like they had done under a pen name for the "Ponyville Mysteries" chapter books. After Seasons 6 and 7 had premieres that were pretty big duds, Season 8's premiere had a lot working against it already. But did it at least get the concept and the season off the ground? Well, let's find out.
Part 1 begins by revealing that the map has expanded considerably, featuring all those locations from the movie in a very in your face kind of way, as if to say: "Hey, you should go see the movie." And even as someone who likes the movie, shoving it front and center into people's faces won't make them like it. Anyway, Twilight apparently was okay letting Tempest Shadow (who she doesn't disclose the real name of) just wander off on her own to spread the word of the Storm King's defeat, which just feels like a flimsy way of writing out Tempest since the show obviously couldn't afford to hire Emily Blunt and would be hard pressed to find a good soundalike. The rest of the mane six begin to wonder if going on more friendship missions will expand the map further, and Pinkie Pie proposes an extreme home makeover for the throne room.
However, Twilight decides that instead of going out after every potential friendship problem, they'll bring the friendship to the ones who need it by building a school. A school dedicated specifically to friendship. Not for nothing, but it kind of feels patronizing and nationalistic, as if saying "Other nations/kingdoms don't get friendship, so we need to indoctrinate them into our way of life so they'll understand it." I can buy this being a dream Twilight's had for some time, though it does feel like a step down for her after all she's already done. And I can buy her asking Princess Celestia for advice since Celestia has her own school in Canterlot. What I do find odd is that Twilight doesn't ever consult Cheerilee, the one who has actual teaching experience and would know a thing or two about running a school (even if it's a one room schoolhouse).
Apparently, all schools in Equestria are under the jurisidicition of an organization called the EEA: The Equestrian Education Association. They require schools to follow certain guidelines in order to receive accreditation. And the head of the EEA is a stallion named Chancellor Neighsay, voiced by Maurice LaMarche who you may recognize as Brain from Pinky and The Brain.
They're intended to be straw men (or at least Neighsay is) considering we see them in the dark, looking down on Twilight. Anyway, Twilight proposes her school and Neighsay seems to believe it could work as a means of defense for ponies despite Twilight's efforts to correct him on the subject. Then, we have a time skip as the School of Friendship is constructed near Twilight's castle and Rainbow Dash complains about it being "too much". Apparently, Twilight wants herself and all her friends to serve as teachers at this new school, even though they're probably not that qualified. And even though the cirriculum is based around friendship, Twilight insists on doing things in accordance with the EEA's guidelines. We also learn that Starlight Glimmer is apparently going to be guidance counselor, a rather weird position that I'm not sure she's really qualified for.
We then get to meet some of the students, the ones who will become what are alternatively called the student six and the young six. Right out of the gate we meet this random earth pony colt named Sandbar, voiced by Vincent Tong in roughly the same voice he used for Rumble. Then, one by one we meet a grouchy blue feathered griffon called Gallus who is being dropped off by Grandpa Gruff, a dragon that looks just like Scootaloo but is named Smolder (voiced not by Madeline Peters but by Shanon Chan-Kent) and is being dragged in by Ember, a clumsy yak named Yona introduced by Prince Rutherford, an insanely cheerful hippogriff named Silverstream who at the time just seemed like the show's substitute for Princess Skystar (introduced to us by the show's replacement for Queen Novo in General Seaspray) and a shy changeling named Ocellus that Thorax has brought along. Twilight then instructs the students to pick up their class schedules as we get to the song "The School of Friendship". A song that conveys a passage of time as Twilight tries to impose the EEA's rules onto her own school, and her friends struggle to figure out how to teach their respective elements. Kind of gives this a Hogwarts sort of vibe in that it's a boarding school the students stay at year round. Just need a sorting hat for the dorms.
Apparently, during this song the student/young six begin to bond with each other even though we don't really get to see it. Then we see them starting to fight each other because they regard the school and its lessons as a waste of time. The fighting gets so bad that Applejack has to intervene to break it up. The rest of the mane six complain to Twilight about how the school isn't going great, but Twilight is surprisingly calm about this which shocks everyone. However, she suffers from a bad case of "Aesop Amnesia" here in that just after we had a movie where it was a plot point that Twilight didn't listen to her friends, Twilight is now refusing to listen when her friends say the EEA's guidelines aren't working. She just says they need to "work harder to make sure that they do!"
So it is that the student/young six opt to ditch class under the guise of what Gallus calls a "Mental Health Break". And Ocellus is able to use her shapeshifting abilities to pass as an almost flawless Rarity (though Angel Bunny isn't fooled). Meanwhile, it's apparently Friends and Family Day since Chancellor Neighsay is paying a visit like he promised. And in a nod to another Maurice LaMarche role, he travels through portals due to having attended the Doctor Strange Academy of Teleportation.
Unfortunately, Neighsay's arrival coincides with the student/young six disappearing with no one knowing where they went. But we find that they're totally okay, they're hanging out together and are bonding without the need of the school, undercutting the tensions and undermining the purpose of the school. They then start fooling around, ultimately causing chaos and destruction in front of everyone gathered for Friends and Family Day, even going so far as to knock the leaders over like bowling ball pins.
Neighsay is furious at seeing other creatures besides ponies and goes on a racist tangent, causing the various leaders to withdraw their students in protest. But when Twilight tries to lecture Neighsay over what he's done, Neighsay turns around and berates Twilight for "Irresponsible students, unqualified teachers and pony lives being put in danger." and much like Starswirl the Bearded he's unfortunately a case of "Jerkass Has a Point". Twilight's friends were indeed not qualified to teach, the students were not being supervised properly and their attempt at fooling around could indeed have endangered others unintentionally. And at no point did Twilight ever consider maybe going beyond her friends to recruit actual qualified teachers. So Neighsay uses his magic to shudder the school with chains as part 1 ends.
After the recap that always kicks off the second half of these two parters, part 2 begins with Spike trying to cheer up a sulking Twilight who is having a breakdown. But Tara Strong really underperforms here even though this is supposed to be a really big failure on Twilight's part. Then, we have the rest of the mane six do more or less obligatory character introductions as they offer up things that would make them feel happy, though we do get a good meta joke when Pinkie Pie says "You didn't tell me this was a pity party, I would've brought ice cream!"
I can't help but wonder if maybe Tara had a cold or something when she was recording here, considering Twilight sniffles and sounds kind of stuffy during some of these lines. Anyway, Twilight says "Not everything can be fixed with dresses and cupcakes." and goes off to sulk and feel sorry for herself. However, Starlight Glimmer shows up and basically gives Twilight "tough love", telling her to forget about the EEA's rules because according to Starlight "Why should you let someone else tell you how to do your job?". That's pretty questionable advice. I do like how Starlight ties the school back to her, how Twilight didn't give up on Starlight the first time it didn't work out. But when Twilight decides "What we're doing is way more important than how we're doing it" that kind of leans into the whole "The ends justify the means" mentality, which is very problematic since it rarely works out that way.
Plus, yet again it looks like a case of shilling Starlight when she can get Twilight back on track where her friends can't. She does thankfully apologize to her friends for not listening to them and offers to let them teach the Elements of Harmony their own ways, running the school without the EEA. But they face a new dilemma when they learn that the student/young six are missing, though apparently Sandbar's parents aren't too worried. The leaders for the other students though, they're all ready to start fighting and going to war even though they received a note from the students announcing their intent to stay together by running away. So again, we know the students aren't in trouble and that in turn undermines a lot of the tension. Plus, when only Thorax is not gung ho about going to war, these leaders are unintentionally proving Neighsay right. So with that, Twilight, the rest of the mane six and Spike try to find out where the students went. And it's at that moment that Sandbar shows up to pick up a whole bunch of cupcakes, basically declaring that he's getting them for the other students.
And apparently, no one thought anything out of the ordinary when Sandbar was doing things like picking up apples or pillows and blankets. They only now suspect the obvious, that he's taking them to his friends and that they should follow him. We the find that the rest of the student/young six are hanging out at the Castle of the Two Sisters which has been abandoned and ignored for over three seasons now. Suddenly, they are approached by these strange hedgehog creatures called Pudgewuges (or however you spell them), though when they start shooting out their quills we aren't told if their quills are sharp or poisionus, so this attempt to throw in a climax kind of falls flat. We do get a fairly good fight scene of Twilight, the rest of the mane six, Spike and Starlight all joining in to defend their students. Do it does lose a few points for having Spike be chased away after driving off just one. Ultimately, Pinkie Pie has them all rounded up and placed into her party cannon, and I guess it comes with parachutes from the get go since she fires them straight up into the air (and they don't explode).
Then, after a bit of convincing, the students agree to come back to the school as Twilight breaks the lock. This brings forth Neighsay who declares that "None shall pass", and Princess Celestia has to persuade the leaders not to attack Neighsay and let Twilight explain herself. Twilight does so by basically announcing her intention to run her school her own way as a non EEA school.
Neighsay claims it won't work, but Princess Celestia counters that a similar claim was once made about teaching three ponies under one roof and having a kingdom that united them all. However, Neighsay refuses to see sense and jumps through a portal, running away.
From here we get the song "Friendship Always Wins" which is a more triumphant song than "The School of Friendship". Interestingly, during this song we see Rarity style Yona's hair into little curls so that Yona won't keep tripping over her hair's loose ends all the time. And this song apparently takes place in-universe since Ember says Smolder can stay if the ponies "promise to stop singing". However, Grandpa Gruff intends to order Gallus to come home with him, and Gallus has to plead with Grandpa Gruff to let him stay. We would ultimately get more clarification on this in "The Hearth's Warming Club".
And that's the story, so what do I think of the two parter? Well, it does seem like Vogel and Dubac were at least kind of aware of the criticisms that some people might have with the concept of a School of Friendship and did their best to address them. I can't say they did the best job though, the school's established reason for existing feels questionable and brings up a lot of unfortunate implications. Neighsay is intended to be a strawman, but he comes across as one that actually has a point with his criticisms despite his obvious racist behavior. And Twilight in particular kind of feels like she's regressing and suffering from "Aesop Amnesia" in regards to her behavior, especially in not listening to her friends when they try to tell her the school isn't working like it should. The biggest problem though is that the student/young six are never in any danger at any point, really, not even when they try to claim otherwise. So that means we don't feel the urgency from the leaders to find their missing students or their desire to go to war over said missing students. Yet it does seem like they at least get the school off to a decent start, suggesting that maybe it could work or could improve. Ultimately, Part 1 gets a narrow B- and Part 2 a borderline B-/B for an overall two parter grade of B-. It's a step back in the right direction for season premieres after two seasons worth of missteps, but unfortunately that step in the right direction would not carry over to the finish line for Season 8, especially in regards to the school.
So now we'd have the first of many episodes that had nothing to do with the School of Friendship despite its establishment, and one that introduced a shipping pair some say is even more bland and uninspiring than SugarMac as we have "The Maud Couple" that introduces us to what many say is a ponfyied Sheldon from Big Bang Theory.
While this isn't the best premiere, it's definitely in the upper half for me.
For the reasons you mentioned in your review, this episode kinda ruined Twilight's character for me.
She made so many dumb decisions throughout this premiere that I have to agree with a certain question asked by Spike in Part 1:
"Who are you and what have you done with Twilight Sparkle?"
I will be honest, I am sad that LaMarche didn’t do any references to his other roles as Neighsay, specifically The Brain and N. Brio.
https://youtu.be/_DxEERrel7s
Has to say this these two episodes along with the others Young Six episodes are the only good episodes in this season for me. As for the episodes, I could see where they are going and is Twilight character to do something like this and I really enjoy them, but after these episodes and beside others episodes in this season. Season 8 went down hill
This is one of the reasons I hate the last two seasons: that darned school! I mean, c'mon! A whole entire school that only teaches friendship? Friendship is not some common, cookie cutter school subject one can easily learn from looking at a blackboard. It comes from real life experiences! Yeah, there are things that can help the learning process, but THIS is just totally presumptuous...
And yeah, Neighsay may have had a point with the school's problems (minus the obvious racism), but he didn't even TRY to suggest any solutions to fix them like any decent, SANE-MINDED inspector would have done. No, he just fulfilled his racist ego and shut it down right from the get go without giving Twilight a chance to fix things! What a jerk!
Yeah, I don't like this season (or the next one) AT ALL...
SugarMac is great I don't know what you're talking about.
While I wasn't around for its beginning, Season 8 was the first season I watched live. In spite of its lower-quality episodes, it remains a personal favorite, even if 50% of the reason why is pure sentimentality.
…I am the unluckiest sunuvab*tch alive when it comes to pop culture, aren't I?
5539957
Agree, I like SugarMac
5539952
Yeah, it's a pretty dumb concept overall. And for a season that was suppose to focus on the school, the incompetent boobs decided to wait until near the half-way point of the season to even bother with focusing on it and did nothing but prove Neighsay right and not having Neighsay having any alternatives is because they deliberately wanted him to fail.
I know some people in a group I frequent that have evidence that they allowed political bias into the show.
5539943
I'll admit I wasn't fond of the Young Six at first but watching some of their episodes made them grow on me.
5540009
Agree, the Young Six are not my favorite characters at first, but watching their episodes and after She All Yak, I love them to death
Not to brag or anything, but I actually met Maurice LaMarche in person at ConnectiCon back in 2014. Real cool guy.
Wasn't it more the other way around with Twilight's friends not listening to her? Also, I'm pretty sure the reason for Twilight's behavior here is that she was running on the mindset of "No EEA guidelines, no School of Friendship".
Do I even need to say why that's the case at this point?
5539957
Everybody can have their own opinions about the pairing, I personally find it bland 😒
I think the young six should be better off with a series on their own, we already have other characters besides the mane six that get focus episodes, such as Spike, Starlight and CMC.
This just adding too many characters to get the main focus, no wonder why the writers having trouble writing the young six.
5540151
If people canhype up ButterMac to be a god tier relationship I think SugarMac deserves some slack.
5540376
I don't care for ButterMac either. I really don't care for most pairings in the show, canon or non canon.
5540441
Shining and Cadance? SunTwi?
5540480
They are better ships but still don't care about it, I'm not much a shipper anyway.
5539960
Could be worse.
5542415
My other circa-2010s interests include Ready Player One, Greta Van Fleet, Ghostbusters 2016*, the first Fantastic Beasts movie, the entire Star Wars sequel trilogy (especially The Last Jedi), and Wonder Woman 1984. And I could still go on.
I appreciate your assurances, but I'm afraid it really is that bad. I'm a walking pop-cultural pariah.
*For the record, I liked it because I thought it was a legitimately funny film (even if it wasn't much else), not because it was "feminist". Just in case that comes up.
One problem I have is that Twilight and her friends still think that ponies are better than other creatures when that's not true. She thinks that friendship is something that only ponies know, when that's also not true.
They're still treat other creatures horribly like they did in the past and the worst part is that they still didn’t say that they were sorry to them for that because they didn't care about them before and they still don't care about them now.
That's why they kept saying everypony and not everyone before because they don't care about their existence. Or the fact that they keep saying only Equestria and not the whole world because they don't care about the other kingdoms or other species who are suffering as well.
They also hogged all the friendship, love, and magic for themselves while the other creatures continue to suffer in impoverished lands with no means to solve their own problems more easily like ponies have, making them seem very selfish.
I'm sorry. I know I went too far with this and I know I'm going to get a lot of hate for it, but I'm just so frustrated with how the ponies treated the poor creatures and refused to give them the help they needed in the past without apologizing.