My Review of MLP: FIM season 7 episode 1 Celestial Advice · 5:24pm February 3rd
Grading Scale:
A (fantastic episode)
A- (an excellent episode with at least one flaw)
B+ (a great episode with a couple of flaws)
B (a good episode which still could have been better)
B- (a good episode with numerous flaws but still rewatchable)
C+ (a decent episode)
C (eh... it’s not terrible but not good either)
C- (it’s not worth rewatching although it does have good elements)
D+ (a bad episode with a few good things in it)
D (a really bad episode with wasted potential)
D- (a terrible episode with badly written characters and butchered moral)
F (horrible and unwatchable)
Greetings, everyone! This is Mr. J back with more MLP episode reviews once again. At this point, I’ve already tackled the weakest seasons of this show, and they were so much fun to rip and tear apart. But then I decided to review each season but backwards…which is admittedly a weird strategy but who cares? If I want to review every episode beyond seasons 8 & 9, then that’s what I’m going to do. So for today, I will talk about the first episode of season 7: “Celestial Advice”.
The episode starts with Spike keeping Starlight Glimmer distracted while Twilight Sparkle appears in her room to prepare something special for her. Once that was accomplished without Starlight noticing, they make sure it is something Starlight would greatly appreciate after she, Trixie, Thorax, and Discord managed to save Equestria.
Later, all the ponies, reformed Changelings, and princesses gather inside the Castle of Friendship to commemorate their heroes for their combined efforts in saving Equestria from Queen Chrysalis. Honestly, it was kinda neat to see a ceremony take place in a different location—something that isn’t Canterlot.
As they received their medals of honor, everyone celebrates and gets merry. While they were all chitchatting, we see Discord proudly hyping Twilight up for the supposed plan she had to make for Starlight’s future now that the latter has learned everything there is to know about friendship and how it works.
Realizing she didn’t plan that far ahead, she panicks and discovers that Starlight has indeed learned every friendship lesson she taught her. She seeks for Celestia’s advice on the matter, and once she recalls what Celestia had to do for her when she was in Starlight’s shoes (i.e. sending her away to Ponyville), she fears she has to do likewise to Starlight.
So Twilight had to create a panoramic spell that gave them an imaginative scenario from her fantasy so they can see what it would be like for Starlight to live either in the Changeling Hive, Dragon Lands, or the Crystal Empire. Seeing that she kept worrying that they would potentially be dangerous for her, Twilight can’t reach to a decision as to where she wants to send her.
Now let’s talk about this for a moment: notice how Celestia only offered some bits of commentary here and there, but not once did she ever tell Twilight that she has send her away. She allows Twilight to make her own choice whether or not she wants to follow it through.
And she kept smirking throughout this episode too because she saw herself in Twilight when it comes to worrying about your student’s future; it explains how she broke down laughing out of nowhere. This is a great way to humanize—or rather, make her more relatable to the audience. She too has worries or doubts of certain things, and that’s perfectly okay to feel vulnerable in that regard.
It shows how much we care about someone or something and how hard we try to make things work or feel safe for the good of our friends and family. It's this very aspect that, in my opinion, made Celestia and Twilight closer than ever before. They trust each other's judgement and remained steadfast in their ruler/apprentice dynamic with each other. If only that wasn't abused from Celestia's part when it comes to having Twilight and her friends do all the dirty work in times of crises and being painfully incompetent in other matters, their relationship would've been perfect.
So it was cool to see some parallels between both cases of student/teacher relationships in this episode. Plus, it’s also important to let the graduating student have a say in the matter because their feelings also count.
We see how happy and nervous Starlight was in this celebratory moment and how much she truly admired and loved being there with her friends. And of course, Starlight wasn’t prepared to leave Ponyville in the same way Twilight wasn’t prepared to send her away. Although it would’ve been an interesting “what if?” storyline had they actually gone through with it, it was cute seeing them all vulnerable and sensitive.
If there is one thing I didn’t like about this episode, it would be Discord—as you all might have already guessed. Now granted, he was pretty tame in this episode, but he still made Twilight feel nervous and prematurely announced to her friends about something she never really planned ahead…unless he knew all along what was going on.
Whatever the case may be, Discord always finds a way to embarrass people for his own amusement. That’s something I both love and hate about Discord.
Anyway, this was a really cool episode and a great way to start this season. Even better, it is the only season that doesn’t start with a two-parter. It’s a huge breath of fresh air because this show is obsessed with opening their seasons with an action-packed or adventure-packed two-parter. So the fact they started this season with just a normal, celebratory episode with normal pacing and normal problems is so refreshing.
With that said, I will give this a solid A-! Props to Joanna Lewis and Kristine Songco for writing this episode together and not giving Trixie too much screen time. I really appreciate that.
Peace!
Good to see this season start well, based on this pretty good review.
Honestly I felt like the award ceremony rubbed it in on how Spike got robbed hard in To Where And Back Again.
HE was the one who befriended Thorax, and yet he got his chance robbed for Starlight. And it felt like ALL credit ended up going to her despite Spike befriending Thorax helped.
I like Starlight, but her getting stuff that should have been Spike's really irks me.
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Agreed. The show robbed Spike HARD of a great many things.
I agree with you on this.
“Celestial Advice” was a solid and refreshing way of starting off the season, and it was nice that they were wanting to build off the impact left by the events of “To Where and Back Again”.
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And at times it felt like he just can't keep his win.