Thoughts on the finale and Season 3 in general · 11:04pm Feb 17th, 2013
Just had the opportunity to watch the finale of Season 3, as I always have to wait an extra day to watch the new episodes, as I'm a PROUD CUSTOMER OF APPLE INC. ® and the ITUNES STORE ®. Just a bit of a digression: I know many of you don't buy the episodes off the store, but you should, really, and I say this not as an Apple fanboy (I'm not), nor as a My Little Pony fanboy (I unashamedly am), but as a man who knows what the spirit of money is and who respects the work and effort and value provided to me by others. "But!" you cry, "Apple's DRM on their videos compromises the integrity of my collection!" I understand that, and I sympathize. If only there was some sort of program that losslessly removed DRM from computers running Itunes 10.6 or 10.7, for Windows or for Mac. If a program like that did exist, it would require that your computer be authorized first, but if it is, it losslessly removes DRM and saves your videos. Such a program would not remove the identifier tags, meaning that if you have intentions of filthy piracy in mind for the removal of DRM, they would be thwarted, for uploading it would allow everyone to see the metadata and would allow Apple to sue your ass (and rightfully so). But, unfortunately, no such program exists. sigh What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Season 3.
In general, Season 3 was very mediocre. It did not posses the subtlety or the humor that made Season 1 so charming; it did not have songs, for the most part, that were as memorable as the ones from Season 2. The episodes are blurring together in my mind. For me, the only ones I'll remember is the Discord one and the wonderbolt one. The rest left me with just a "meh," kind of feeling. It just didn't seem to me that as much thought were put into the episodes as in the previous seasons. It was at the end of Season 2, i.e., the wedding episode, where I actually became aware, for the first time since the first few episodes of Season 1, that I was an adult man who was watching a cartoon for little girls about talking horses—this feeling stayed with me for the entire duration of Season 3 and only went away during the two aforementioned episodes.
That being said, let's talk about the finale.
A musical episode? Beautiful. That's something the show needed. Though many of the songs were insipid, there were two or three that stuck out (can't remember their names), and I know I'll be listening to them in the future.
Right off the bat, I was immediately intrigued by the pacing of the story. There was a lot to include in this episode, so the writers obviously could not follow the standard story formula of "Setup, Conflict Establishment, Rising Action, Climax, Resolution," and, instead, has us dive right into the rising action. Thus, until it was actually explained why their cutie marks were reversed, the episode put me into a dream-like state, made me question what was real and what wasn't—fitting, for their was actually a spell that really did abridge their personalities, their talents, and reality in general. So much was thrust onto the viewer and Twilight at once, that the despondency she felt a third of the way through or so was actually believable, i.e., this monumental problem presented so quickly and so overwhelmingly really did make me feel that this might be one thing that was too difficult for her (similar to the Season 2 premiere). I can only describe the sequence with Princess Celestia and Twilight as "eerie,"; this moment actually made me question what I was watching, made me wonder where this was going, made me speculate as to the changing themes and the nature of the show—and, most importantly, for the first time in a while, made me sit on the edge of my seat with my nails in my mouth, dying to know what happened next.
In addition, despite Season 3's shortcomings, I do have to applaud the animators: Every additional episode seems to have some new sort of visual subtlety or something that makes my jaw drop and just say: "Wow." If nothing else, I do believe Season 3 was less story-driven and more visually-driven, that the animators just wanted to see how much they could do. And it was really impressive, every bit of the season and the finale, I must admit, visually-speaking. All in all, Season 3 was good. Not great, but just good. Season 1 was amazing; Season 2 was great; Season 3 was good. I refuse to extrapolate from the given data.
And Twilight's an alicorn now.
Now, I knew this would happen. I avoided spoilers and speculations where I could, but it was impossible not to know that Twilight was going to become an alicorn. I also heard that there was a bit of a backlash, complaints; I saw Twitter posts of the writers assuring everyone that everything would be ok. Now, even when I look back, with my twenty-twenty hindsight, I cannot shake the question that I had since the beginning: What was the big deal? Everyone knew that Twilight was going to become a princess, an alicorn. What was the big deal, really? Were people upset that that meant she was going to leave her friends, that the show was going to turn into something different?
I don't know, but I will say this: it kind of made sense, to make her an alicorn, I mean. My only complaint with the episode was how the mystery was brought up in the first episode of season 3 and never referred to again until the end. Though I don't care for the character Twilight that much, I must say that, all in all, I thought it was a satisfactory ending. I'll google what people were mad about the moment I finish this blog post, but I have no idea why people would be so upset.
Think about it: I presume that, when this episode was made, the writers didn't know that there was going to be a fourth season. How else would you have wrapped it up? Twilight, a student, came to Ponyville to learn about friendship, and when she finally solves an age-old problem with the lessons learned from her friendship, she passes; she graduates; and she returns to Canterlot a completed person. They did a really good job with her transformation: when she first notices her wings, you can see the apprehension and the doubt in her eyes; you can see she her questioning whether she's ready, whether it's the right decision, etc. And then, after her coronation, when she's told to address the populace, you can tell that she still has reservations, that she's wondering whether or not she can do it; but then she turns back, sees her friends, and she embraces them. They remind her how she got where she was, and she knows that she won't let them down. That was the entire point of the song that they sang.
In conclusion, the episode really did feel like an "end," a deep exhale after a long journey, a proper conclusion to an epic story; and if the entire show had ended right then, had it not been renewed for a fourth season, it would've felt right.
EDIT: Found this while browsing the My Little Pony subreddit. A very good point, very similar to mine. Let me just copy here the best part:
""As a finale this episode is stellar. It's a way of showing us how far we've come. A long time ago, we had just a pony and a dragon in a tower full of books; now, we have a princess, her wonderful friends, and a massive country full of love and hope. But all the same, we've still got the same ponies that we've adored, and even if we never see hem again, they'll continue to live their lives, practicing the virtues of harmony, knowing every day that life is good and they can make it better. They'll do what they've done every day, and we don't need more episodes to know how it'll all play out; we can say goodbye without regret, knowing that, while we may never see these girls again, we've all learned so much that we can only be thankful for it."
Emphasis mine—the most important part, what I was trying to say. There's nothing worse than being the fan of something and then seeing it end poorly. If you want a regretful ending, I direct you to the series finale of Angel.
Yeah... the last time I even attempted to put iTunes on a computer I own, I had to go through SO MUCH BULLSHIT whenever I wanted to do anything, and I found the program to not only to be a pain in the ass, but invasive as well.
Yeah, NEVER AGAIN will I have ANYTHING to do with Itunes, or ANY Mac products.
Now, if there was a place that offered the same services, that was NOT related to Apple Inc... then I would consider doing so.
840555 seconded. I object to Apple's business practices on a philosophical level and refuse to buy, own, or use any of their products or services.
But I digress.
I personally found the season finale to feel incomplete—given that I know more is coming. Were I uncertain that season 4 is going to happen or if this was in fact the end of the series, then I would absolutely agree that this was a fantastic way to end it. It brings closure and lets you say goodbye. But there is more coming and, as Ms. McCarthy said on her twitter, this is a sort of part 1 of 3 with the premiere of season 4 making up the rest of it. Given that knowledge and expectation, I felt like I had only been given the first act of a story and I kept waiting for something bad to happen or something ominous to get hinted at (especially with everyone singing about how everything is just perfect).
The way Twilight got all her friends back to normal also felt like it came too easily. I felt like it shouldn't have worked on the first try or that there should have been some other attempt made with a failure to complete the first act of this episode—to make the success feel genuinely hard-earned and well-deserved. Honestly, I think this would have been a lot better as a two-part episode and I would have been happy to have not had "Games Ponies Play" so we could have had a two-part finale.
I also tend to agree that season 3 as a whole felt like it was lacking in a lot of the places that made the first two seasons so great. Wonderbolt Academy, Scootaloo's episode, and Babs Seed (and family reuinion) are the eps that stuck with me. Mostly in that order. I have high hopes (and expectations) for season 4, though, and I suspect that 3's shortness is largely to blame for most of its shortcomings.
Losslessly? YouTube makes nicely compact .mp4's, so my collection of SD iTunes pony episodes on a terabyte drive takes the same space as a purely theoretical collection of 720p YouTube rips. Meanwhile a 30gb iPod Video is a ridiculous thing to waste on 65 episodes of a single show; better to have 6gb of processed 360x640 than 18 gb. It's not like my eyes are good enough to see the diff on a tiny screen. Purely theoretically, of course.
And then there are the fan-spliced two-parters, such as Sidekicks and Games, the wedding, and all three season premieres. How am I supposed to enjoy Shuffle if I hit a Part Two?
Anyway.
I set the Cadance / Shining Armor episodes to one side when considering the episodes in the seasons; they cast too long a shadow. (Sombra's plan worked!) I liked S3 more than S2, mostly because I didn't rewatch the S2 episodes during the season, and everyone was talking it down all the way through the hiatus. Now that S3 is complete, and I have watched every episode of it at least twice, I can say it felt more like S1 to me than everything in S2 after Sisterhooves Social. If S3 had aired after S1, the world would be a brighter place.