My Little Reviews: Testing 1 2 3

Well gonna try for a episode review of My Little Pony so…here goes…

Gotta start out by saying I’m not mad at Ponyville anymore. Ever since the Rainbow Falls episode where Dash got stuck with a team that has a 0% chance of even getting bronze in the Pony Olympics for whatever reason, I’ve kind of had it in for the town as a whole. It’s the Olympics, the place where the best of the best come to compete, it’s not a kindergarten field day where everyone gets a medal. Ponies like Fluttershy have no real business being there and with his huge muscles in comparison to his tiny wings, we all KNOW that Bulk is juicing. So the non-athlete and the cheater…yeah.

But we get Testing 123 and the writers actually manage to have Ponyville make up for it. Hell, if they had put this FIRST, and then stuck Rainbow Dash on the worst Olympic team ever, at least then Rainbow would have had a reason for being on a crappy team for paying the town back for their help in fulfilling her dream.

But I digress…

Rainbow needs to take a test, and Twilight (being the awesome friend she is) sees that Rainbow probably needs a bit of help to study since RD doesn’t do it at all. But Twilight makes the mistake of several 1st year teachers (myself included) and goes for very lecture oriented methods of teaching along with study habits that seem to lead towards repetition in hopes of memorization as this is her (and my) obvious means of learning something. Although I will give her points for trying different methods, they do all boil down to the same thing in the end.

Twilight also seems to trip up under another 1st year teacher pitfall by letting the student get under her skin. What’s worse is she allows this to build up over time with antagonistic teaching methods that end with Rainbow disliking her for this and basically making Twilight’s job impossible while ALSO making RD freak out about failing. They have a little fight, and after it stops, Twilight (thankfully) doesn’t take the next twenty minutes going about how she’s right, but continues to try and help Rainbow by going to their friends for advice/help on how to teach her.

So then Rainbow’s friends show up and each try to teach her using a different method from basically watching a video on the subject to connecting the information to something that friend was passionate about like Rarity (oh and Pinkie’s…whatever the hell that was, cause it was not instructional rap). Of course they all fail miserably, but it does highlight several different real world teaching methods that are used every day across the country. Hell even AJ had two with her pick up by doing (it’s called hands on) and then there’s the association trick that came with her “In Fillydephia when she was just a filly.”

Then of course we come to the point after failing multiple times when Rainbow just gives up, highlighting yet another thing about education in general. Long story short, when the kid doesn’t believe in herself and thinks she’s stupid, she isn’t going to be able to learn jack, and trying to get them back into learning with some pep-talk usually isn’t the most successful way to go about it. You have to prove to the kid they’re intelligent like she did when it came to the second flight over the town and using Rainbow’s overactive situational awareness to her advantage.

What’s even cooler is, they show this at the beginning of the episode when Rainbow buzzes Twilight and the alicorn goes after her so its not just some last minute thing.

Then, once RD has seen she’s absorbed the information, Twilight starts with the compliments; followed by one of the few ties they’ve actually laughed WITH Dash instead of at her.

Good job writers, good job.

But, it’s not just her friends helping Rainbow out, it’s like PONYVILLE was up holding signs, cutting shrubs, and flying around to help teach the pegasus what she needed to know. The whole town helped RD fulfill her dream!

Although, I gotta say they did drop the ball on one or things: this episode was supposed to really answer the question of just what the hell the Wonderbolts are! A stunt team? An elite section of the EUP? Princess Celestia’s personal flying monkeys? WHAT?

Second thing wrong with the episode: we got to see all these pegasi flying around, but they were NEW! WTF? Is it too much to ask for a talking part for Cloud Kicker or Blossom? Hell you brought Derpy back, which the fandom thanks you for, but now we want MORE!