Present Perfect vs. G1 · 10:05pm Aug 20th, 2014
My Little Pony, My Little Pony,
Isn’t the world a happy place?
My Little Pony, My Little Pony,
Ruthlessly crush it in your embrace!
Yes, now that I’m fed caught up with the new Doctor Who series, I’ve decided to watch through as much of the old MLP generations as I can stand. I will be posting about them generation by generation, and likely not giving any ratings, just impressions. This is gonna be a long one.
Rescue at Midnight Castle: Let me just say: everyone owes it to themselves to watch this, especially after the season 4 finale. This is where a whole bunch of things in G4 originate from. We see Firefly (aka Rainbow Dash), Twilight and Applejack for the first and only time. We see cloud-walking; we see Tirek and Scorpan trying to bring about “the night that never ends” and getting zapped to the moon by a giant rainbow. (And we see the seaponies, but that’s not G4 yet. :|)
This pair of episodes is the original pilot of G1 (and it shows; the series has far worse animation), and at some point during watching it, you will have to stop and turn to look at whoever you’re watching it with and say, “This was made for little girls.” It’s dark. Tirek is intimidating. He’s voiced by the guy who did all the toy commercials in the 80s. He keeps the Rainbow of Darkness in a bag that beats like a heart. And he pets it. Ponies are turned into mindless dragons and enslaved by him. This was made for little girls.
Granted, it’s not the best thing ever, the plot being a definite letdown. It skips along, asking the audience to fill in gaps like “how did Firefly know where to find Megan?” (The version broadcast as the season 1 finale removed a few scenes, making the fast pacing even worse.) But this is where everything started, everything that we love today, and there are so many direct parallels, that that’s going to be most of the fun in watching this today. (There’s a certain word that originates in this episode, but you’ll have to watch and find out!)
Escape from Catrina: It just so happens that I watched this slightly prior to starting G1 for this journal, in preparation for writing Heads in the Cloud. This was released as a stand-alone before the series proper started (and was re-aired as the finale of season 2), and features the ponies rescuing the Bushwoolies (shudder) from an evil witch furry named Catrina. They’re successful almost entirely by virtue of Catrina’s sidekick, Rep, being completely not into the whole “evil” thing. (It's a theme in this series that the bad guy always has a soft-hearted sidekick.) They actually have a song together about how nice Catrina used to be, but she decided she hates being powerless (wow, character development!) and so she has the Bushwoolies labor to produce a potion for her that… makes her bigger, I guess. I actually didn’t watch the whole thing, I just wanted to see to where Catrina was beaten, but overall, it’s really not as memorable as Rescue.
The End of Flutter Valley: In a move that surprised the heck out of me, the actual G1 pilot picks up where the original My Little Pony Movie left off, with the Witches of Gloom Volcano seeking revenge against the Flutter Ponies for stopping the Smooze. (Apparently, I never actually reviewed the movie, which is odd, because I didn’t see it all that long ago, considering. It was p. bad, in the laughable way of 80’s toy commercial cartoons. You should watch it. The Smooze song is one of the best in G1.) Their plan takes the form of enlisting one Queen Bumble, leader of a swarm of bee people, to steal the Sun Stone that keeps Flutter Valley sunny and fertile. Bumbleland — marvelous names in G1 — is an arctic wasteland that has to import all the flowers the bee people eat. So the bees get the stone to grow their own flowers, and the witches, being 80’s cartoon villains, get a desolate valley of waste and rot, just the way they like it. There are, of course, a lot of uncomfortable things going on here, like pitting the survival of two races against each other in an untenable moral conundrum.
There are also a lot of surprising character threads, surprising in that they even exist in the first place. The skinny dumb witch, Draggle, goes through a lot of angst over the fact that she’s stupid and useless and can’t do magic right. When the ponies trick her to earn their own escape, I was honestly ashamed of them and felt sorry for her. That’s some powerful shit. And Queen Bumble’s sidekick, Sting, ends up befriending one of the Flutter Ponies — Morning Glory, the boring, nice one — and siding with the ponies through the second half of the episode.
Of course, the good guys are mostly bland. The only development any of them gets is unfortunately relegated to newcomer Useless, Annoying Animals, the Furbobs, “cousins” to the more well-known Bushwoolies. Their big thing is that they can’t agree on anything — a clever inversion of the Bushwoolies :| — and they have beef with these giant armadillo things called Stonebacks. Which isn’t to say the good guys are all useless. I found I like Gusty (she’s violent), Fizzy (she’s hilariously ineffective; she even quips at one point, “I’d make a bubble, but it’d be useless!”), and the Flutter Pony named Honeysuckle. She turns out to be a real firebrand who worries that her concerns are overlooked by the other, less important Flutter Ponies, doesn’t take shit from anyone (she even accuses Megan of being useless at one point), and amazingly ends up sharing the “I was right” credit with Morning Glory at the end. I wasn’t expecting that. If I ever write the G4-ified Flutter Pony fic idea I came up with while watching this, you can bet your sweet ass Honeysuckle will show up in it.
Of course, as is likely to be the case for most of the series, the copious animation errors often made it difficult to figure out what the hell was going on at any given point. The voice acting was okay, though the male characters and villains were strongest. Most of the ponies sound the same, and Jennifer Darling as Draggle was ear-numbing after long stretches. But the inimitable Tress MacNeille as head witch Hydia was amazing, and I have to give it up to whoever voiced Queen Bumble. She was marvelously overacted, rolling every R whether or not it made sense. (It’s also worth noting that Tabitha St. Germain voiced a Flutter Pony named Lily. I couldn’t tell you who that actually is, but there you go.) Actually, the thing that irritated me most was the conflict with the bees being resolved via niceness. Not kindness, niceness, as though that conflict had never existed in the first place (or, more on the nose, as if the writers realized they had forgotten about it and needed to wrap it up in the last three minutes of the final part). Again, I expect this to be a recurring theme. (And let’s not forget the die-hard “one song per episode”, all but one of which I skipped over.) Overall, the episode is… dumb to bad, and overly long, but nevertheless surprising for the continuity at play. I expect to never see the bee people again.
The Ghost of Paradise Estate: If there’s one thing in this series that really irritates me, it’s the baby ponies. Baby Heartthrob, Baby Cuddles, Baby Lickety Split, they can all go fuck themselves. And yes, they’re all addressed with “baby” at the start of their names. As far as I can figure out, they’re some kind of magical soul spawn of the regular ponies, which is why many of them have the same names as adult ponies. But the worst thing about them is the baby-talk. For that reason alone, the first episode of this four-parter really strained my resolve. In a grand demonstration of how coked-out the writers of 80’s cartoons were, though, what starts off as your classic “there’s a ghost but someone doesn’t believe in it but oh, now they saw it, let’s catch it” story quickly turns into legitimate world-building, but only after Galvatron sings a song about being a ghost. Part two is where my attention was got and kept. Anyway, it turns out the ‘ghost’ is actually a shape-shifting bird named Pluma, who’s trying to drive everyone out of the Paradise Estate Playset so she can search for a missing amulet, because a giant, evil octopus named Squirk is holding her grandfather captive. It turns out Dream Valley, where they all live, was once entirely underwater, with Squirk as its tyrannical ruler. He wants the amulet, the Flashstone, back so he can bring back the water and rule once more. The voice acting is great, as usual, but overall this one’s just kind of okay. Pluma’s annoying, the baby ponies are annoying, the seaponies shoo-bee-doo their way into a cameo, and even Fizzy gets to be useful, which destroys any love I had for her. (Gusty, at least, has a couple opportunities to be a total jerk for no reason, so she’s still Best Pony.) Oh, and also the Annoying Children are in this. I can’t even remember where they came from, let alone why they exist. I guess the takeaway from the last episode is “Megan lives here now”, and where she goes, they go. Joy.
The Great Rainbow Caper: Annoying Child (Boy) messes with the Rainbow of Light, and that somehow doesn’t really have anything to do with this episode. Actually, he and Surprise take off to do some aerial photography and get captured by a couple of inventor monkey things called the Gizmunks. (Clever.) Then lots of stuff doesn’t happen (the Gizmunks want the Rainbow and hold them hostage, but nothing really comes of it), ACB and Surprise fuck shit up and the Gizmunks decide they’d rather keep all their shit than get the Rainbow. This episode, which definitely should have been two, is about the epitome of bad 80’s cartoons. It’s pointless, nothing happens, it’s over almost before it begins, it may as well have never existed for all the good it did. That said, it does have two minor things going for it: the Rainbow of Light is used for weather manipulation (despite Megan saying they need to “only use it for special occasions”), quite likely a precusor to cloudbucking, and Surprise gets to shine a little bit. Seeing her in previous episodes, I was wondering how she ever became Pinkie Pie, but now I wonder less.
The Glass Princess: It’s the Pony Olympics and Shady is upset because she sucks at everything. So when Gusty, Lickety Split and Heartthrob are captured by flying dog things called Raptarians who work for the vain Princess Porcina, she decides to try and lend her help. Porcina, you see, has been told by her lackies that pony hair is magical (they just sort of think this, but it ends up being true nevertheless) and she needs magical material to fix her magical cloak so she can turn Ponyland into glass… so everyone will see her “beautiful self”. She is, of course, not that beautiful.
If this sounds convoluted and ridiculous, it is, but this is also far and away the best episode of G1 I’ve watched so far. For starters, it’s got tons of Gusty, who is best pony. (Aside: I was watching this with Midnight Quill, who realized that Gusty is voiced by Bart Simpson, Lickety Split by Milhouse and Shady by Lisa. Surreal.) Shady is also decent, vacillating between being annoyingly emo and adorably emo. (The latter of course is preferable.) But most importantly, and I’m going to spoiler this because you should watch the episode: it inverts its own villain trope. The dog-things are following Porcina because they want Dream Valley for themselves (they seem to be obsessed with having territory with no one else around). It is Porcina and not them who ends up being soft-hearted and helping the ponies in the end. Once again, this show amazes me with what it’s able to do. Keep your standards low and go check this out, maybe after you’ve watched Rescue at Midnight Castle.
Pony Puppy: A bunch of baby ponies find a giant puppy. Literally, talking Clifford the Big Red Dog here, four times the size of any of the ponies and only getting bigger. They name her Dinah because she’s “big like a dinosaur” and that’s when this one-shot stopped being dumb. Given how disappointing the first one was, I had low hopes for this, but it ends up being a fun little romp that introduced me to the majesty of Truly, not to mention it carries a rather weighty lesson in “nothing lasts forever”.
Bright Lights: Hooooly shit. This is the most convoluted, frightening, batshit insane and amazing episode yet. If you’ve seen images of a pony rock star named Knight Shade and his zebra pal Zeb, this is where they come from. It starts off with Megan and the ponies at a Knight Shade concert, and a bunch of baby ponies (again) toddling off to go meet him because they are big fans. They’re greeted by Zeb, who turns out to be the most lascivious and repulsive villain I think I’ve ever seen. Seriously, they introduce themselves as “baby” such and such, and he’s leering at them and rubbing his hooves together with a pedo smile plastered across his face. D:
It quickly becomes apparent that Knight Shade’s show is a front for him and Zeb to steal his fan’s shadows with a weird satchel full of magic smoke. That’s majorly fucked up, but it only gets weirder. Megan and the others go looking for the babies (I have to stress that, once again, the existence of the baby ponies has yet to be explained, despite the fact that the adults Heartthrob and Lofty are said to be their mothers; a mother’s love for her child is a major theme of this episode, fyi) and Megan makes the mind-boggling leap of illogic from “children are sick” to “Knight Shade is stealing their shadows”. No, Galaxy, I must vehemently disagree with you, that does not make any fucking sense whatsoever. So they capture Knight Shade and get his sob-story that he’s actually being controlled by Zeb and a giant cloud sorcerer named Erebus.
Erebus turns out to be a really great villain. He’s smart, he’s competent, he’s powerful, and his only disadvantage is that he needs a continual supply of shadows to keep his power levels up; his downfall comes because he uses up all his energy and shrinks to palm-sized. (He and Zeb also sing a weird song about shadow stealing.) But I want to stress, this episode is majorly whacked. They go to Knight Shade’s home town, which is the first place the shadow-stealing occurred, and the inhabitants chase him and the ponies out while singing about making him sorry he was ever born. That’s Brave Little Toaster levels of “give children nightmares”. Anyway, while Erebus ends up being defeated by deus ex machina, this turns out to be another really memorable episode, and if nothing else, features the very first male pony. Weirdly, the inhabitants of his town all seem to be horses. What can ya do.
Sweet Stuff and the Treasure Hunt: This episode taught me that unicorns cheat at hide and seek and no one cares, and that Bushwoolies are some kind of idiot hive mind. Beyond that, I kind of don’t know what I just saw. Sweet Stuff, who is distinguishable from Buttons only by virtue of gem eyes, keeps trying to play games with others, but since she’s the new poster child for “pony who is hilarious because they can’t do anything right”, she keeps fucking everything up. (The difference between her and Shady, I later realized, is that Shady thinks she can't do anything right, while Sweet Stuff actually can't do anything right.) Also a trio of seaponies, in what is undoubtedly the best scene, use her as a goalpost. (This episode also taught me that seaponies are dicks.) But she ends up figuring out a scavenger hunt riddle and then everything’s okay. Notably, the song comes at the very end (and here I’d thought we could get away with not having one!) I made note of two ponies, as well: Whizzer, who is apparently the pony version of Blurr, and another that I think is maybe Wind Whistler, who sounds like a dude and is apparently the pony version of Perceptor. Fun times in Dream Valley. Oh yeah, and there’s a squirrel in this who sounds like Webbygail from Duck Tales.
The Return of Tambelon: I reviewed this already. Funny how wrong I was on a couple things. Funny how not wrong I was about liking Heartthrob. :V
Little Piece of Magic: A shitton of baby ponies are bored, so Ribbon and Buttons teach them how to amuse themselves with that time-honored tradition: imaaaagination. People who complain about CMC episodes don’t know annoying until they’ve seen one centered around baby ponies. Those little fuckers continue to be equal parts irritating and baffling. This time, we see Baby Ribbon next to Actual Ribbon and there’s still no explanation for why this little pony looks exactly like the bigger one. It’s freaking me out, man. It doesn’t help that this episode, while being the fillerest of filler, scores high on the Coked-Out Fever Dream scale of nightmare fuel. (Baby Half-Note’s dream is, arguably, the most frightening.) Also, this episode has what is quite possibly the worst song ever, right at the end.
The Magic Coins: First thing about this episode: I’ve come to the conclusion that all the audio sync issues I’ve encountered are likely due to the files I’m using. It’s just too consistent, and if there’s anything this show is not, it’s consistent, about anything, failure included. That does not, however, excuse nor explain the ponies looking like they’re stoned. Seriously, pink or red sclera everywhere (except Posey, who has apparently been in the really good stuff and gone green; that’s Flutterbutt for you, though). But that does explain some of the difficulty I've had following what's going on.
Anyway, this starts off with the ponies and humans having a picnic. The seaponies — whom this episode has taught me are always watching — find a chest full of coins, and Sweet Stuff ends up knocking them everywhere, the clumsy bitch. They soon find out that if you step on one and make a wish, it will come true! Cue “be careful what you wish for” moral. Baby Lickety Split proves baby ponies are a blight on the face of the earth and ends up wishing Dream Valley into an endless drought. (A baby pony also later sets the entire valley on fire. FUCK BABY PONIES.)
The only solution? Go to the Moochick. I was inordinately excited about this for reasons I cannot explain. While Megan and the ponies go off to the Crimson Whatever in search of a troll named Niblick to whom the coins belong (in the process purposefully launching into a song), the Annoying Children and a few other ponies try to find water to save the seaponies, who unfortunately don’t die. :( The troll is unsurprisingly mean, and they end up in a bargain to get him something better than the missing magic coins, after which he’ll undo the wishes. The episode turns out to be a big fetch-quest, and provides a lot of good fodder for Daring Do stories, if you like doing the G1 reference thing. The adventure aspect was actually unexpected as well as welcome, and while this isn’t the most amazing episode, it’s certainly enjoyable. (Also, watching Heartthrob interact with Spike was very strange.) In the end, the day is saved with friendship and gay trolls.
Mish Mash Melee: Okay, this is by far the best of the single episodes, and there’s no easy way to explain it. Gusty, Fizzy, Wind Whistler and Shady get lost in the Everf Mysterical Forest, where live the Dell Dwellers, who make things like rocks and trees. They of course fall into the Dell Dwellers’ dell, the clumsy bitches, and fuck up everything. The DD’s have a barrel in the middle of their digs labeled “Balance” and when it’s overturned, a bunch of parasprites Frazzits come out and flip everyone’s personality. So for a while we get smart Fizzy (I had no idea she was so dumb! I love her even more now), brave Shady, cowardly Gusty and silly Wind Whistler, and you know what? I just love this. Sure, the ponies get thanked for fixing a problem they themselves made, but who cares. I’ve been building a mane cast out of these episodes as I go along and Wind Whistler is definitely going to be part of it now. Also there is so much Gusty/Fizzy ship fuel in this episode I can’t take it.
Woe Is Me: This episode starts out with a big lizard thing (an “alligasaurus”) chasing down a little leprechaun dude. I was captivated by this character the moment I saw him: he’s got a ruined umbrella, is continually followed by a tiny black cloud, and wears a beat-up top hat with a four-leaf clover in it. Evocative character design has not been a hallmark of this series, but he's tops. As the ponies quickly find out, the little dude, Woebegone, was cursed by a witch to take bad luck with him wherever he went. In short order, Paradise Estate and the baby ponies’ nursery fall down, shit catches on fire, stuff breaks, stuff leaks, and all manner of bad things go on. Can I just say how much I like this episode? Woebegone is a compelling character, for all that his backstory, which takes up a large amount of the two episodes, is a bit off. (He and his friends are shown picking on the witch to “have fun” yet he’s hailed as a hero for pushing her into her cauldron? Also, I felt like this was a crossover with some other Hasbro property; the characters having names gave that impression, anyway.) And while the resolution just sort of happens, the message is a good one. Also, there’s some fridge horror when you consider how long this dude has lived with this curse, especially once he fixes it. Ponies spotlighted this time around are Lickety Split, who shows off her mean streak, and Masquerade and Gingerbread, neither of whom seemed to have any real personality. Lickety Split climbs up the New Mane Cast ladder. (Seriously, what's not to love about a pony obsessed with ice cream?)
Fugitive Flowers: Oh shit yes, this starts off with Masquerade and Whizzer finding a group of crab things, the Crabnasties (what a name!), tearing up trees. Their leader is Optimus goddamn Prime. :D Turns out they’re searching for a group of flower-people, the Florries. (One of them is voiced by Dot Warner. Also, we finally get to see Posey talking to animals, and you’d better believe I was Flutterfagging everywhere.) The crabs profess to be police, and the Florries’ innocence quickly becomes suspect. Masquerade investigates and is quickly vine-bondaged. I am not kidding. How have I not seen R34 of this yet? Anyway, it’s just a lengthy whodunit with Posey learning not to judge books by their covers, but at least it’s got one of the most buttnutty fights I’ve ever seen. (I was hoping Peter Cullen would sing a song, but that was sadly not to be.) But seriously, if you like Fluttershy, this is basically where she was born. Also, Optimus Crab. Also also, dat ending, omg. (Also also also there’s a point at which it seems like Peter Cullen is about to say “Crabnasties, transform and roll out!” There’s a pause in there, like he had to rein himself in.)
Would-Be Dragonslayer: Have I mentioned before that the term “earth pony” originated in G1? Because I think that’s very important to note. Anyway, this starts off with Spike interrupting some kind of horse competition on account of being pursued by a squire named Alonzo who needs to do a good deed in order to become a knight. (“Everyone knows dragons are evil!”) The kid has a talking camel who’s pretty funny, and he’s kind of sympathetic himself. Of note, there seems to be a human kingdom somewhere in Ponyland; a prince of some sort (with a big horse-sized unicorn) shows up in The Magic Coins, boasting about his father being king. This is, of course, never explained. The ponies try to help him do knightly things, but it blows up in their faces. Eventually, Alonzo ends up doing a good deed, a fairly minor one, all on his own, and getting his wish. As one-shots go, it’s not bad, no Mish Mash Melee but no Great Rainbow Caper either.
Baby, It’s Cold Outside: I was once again disappointed to see an episode starting off with the baby ponies, as expected from the title, but luckily they don’t stick around. The main issue is that it’s snowing, which means fun time and playing and whatnot, except it’s not the right time of year for it. Galaxy gets center stage in this episode, spouting off a lot of worry and having no one listen to her. (Her special talent is insight. Also, Truly proves that she is the real Element of Bitchiness.) It’s not until the fucking rainbow freezes that anyone takes Galaxy seriously. Surprise goes off to collect Megan (why is she back in human world? It’s never explained) and they set off to the north to see where the cold weather is coming from.
The reason people talk about this episode is because of its villain, a penguin named King Charlatan. This guy is evil. I’m not even talking about 80’s cartoon villainy, the guy is a straight-up racial supremacist — he’s freezing the world not because penguins need more cold to live in, but because he wants to rule everything and any race who can’t handle the cold is ‘weak’ — and he fucking freezes his son’s best friend solid right in front of his eyes. I was agog at this fella’s capacity for pure dagnasty dickishness. Anyway, the ponies eventually show up and sing a song to show him that he’s been going down the wrong path and ignoring what’s really important to him all along, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that Megan almost dies during a chase scene. This episode is dark, man. (Sadly, we couldn’t get through an episode without a fucking “shoo-be-doo”.)
Crunch the Rockdog: This episode is 100% amazing from start to finish. It is a fever-dream that works. It starts off with Paradise reading the babies a romance adventure story and making them cry. Seriously, starting off with baby ponies crying? Best episode ever. The main moral conflict is revealed to be everyone thinking Wind Whistler has no feelings, because she’s always logical about everything. (Have I mentioned how much I like her?) After that scene, we see a bunch of Bushwoolies running from the titular rockdog and holy shit oh my god.
For starters, he’s a giant dog made out of stone. Good design, pretty intimidating. Secondly, wherever he walks, everything around him turns to stone: plants, dirt, swamp, water, everything. Finally, he’s introduced by (kind of) singing a song about how he hates soft, nice things. This is the most perfect introduction for a villain, especially given that it concludes with him turning a bunch of Bushwoolies to stone. Yay! Anyway, once Megan and the ponies hear about this, it’s off to the Moochick again for some reason. He tells them about some king up in the mountains who might be able to control Crunch. I don’t want to give too much away, but the king is pretty awesome, and the denouement, while admittedly really hammering home the “feelings” moral, is pretty amazing. (Why does he turn into a regular dog and then back into himself? “It’s the 80’s” is the only possible answer.) Also, Megan says “magic please happen” and the magic happens in the Heartstone. Yay for Wind Whistler, and Truly being a bitch again! :D
The Revolt of Paradise Estate: Paradise Estate is falling apart, and Paradise and Sweet Stuff go looking for better tools to fix it. They end up meeting this Grinch-plus-Beavis dude who turns out to be an evil sorcerer named — wait for it — Beezin. (You can’t imagine the number of times I quipped, “Huh-huh, settle down, Beezin.”) He gives them some magic paint that brings all the furniture and, well, pretty much everything in the playset to life. Things quickly turn south as the various fixtures decide they can take care of themselves better than the ponies can. There’s a subplot about Baby Cuddles making friends with her baby buggy, but I of course didn’t care about that.
There isn’t much to this episode, honestly, though the end has a nice little turnabout. Paradise gets some character development — she’s the storyteller, and tends to approach the world with a “why can’t it be more like a story?” mindset. But the one thing that sticks out to me is that, for about the third episode in a row now, they go and see the Moochick. Why the sudden need to shoehorn him into every episode? He doesn’t even do anything important this time, they could have easily figured out the source of Beezin’s power on their own; it’s not like it wasn’t obvious. (Granted, neither Megan nor the ponies are shown to be terribly bright.) It’s even weirder when you consider that Rescue, where the Moochick is introduced to the series, aired at the end of the series, after we’ve seen him a few times and wondered who the hell he was. (Assuming, of course, that you missed its original broadcast. The same goes for the seaponies, the Flutter Ponies, the Bushwoolies... They didn't plan this out too well.) It just seems like a weird thing they’re suddenly doing. I’ll say this, though: considering the final chase scene includes Beezin essentially killing all the living furniture by undoing his magic and turning them back to normal, this is kind of dark.
Through the Door: Okay, this episode? Basically all of season three of Transformers combined. This is so entirely cracked-out, I cannot even begin to describe it. North Star, proving that she combines both the adventurousness of Daring Do and the recklessness of Rainbow Dash, all while being charmingly British, opens a giant golden door she finds in a mountainside, despite Paradise (hey, she gets all kinds of screen time now!) telling her it’s a bad idea. Behind the door are all kinds of figures from legends and tales. There’s Robin Hood, whose Merry Men break down crying at the drop of a hat. There’s Hercules, who is a neat-freak. Aladdin has a genie who is cripplingly anal-retentive. Sheherezade teaches the ponies how to belly-dance, and Paul Bunyan does nothing at all. Then, there’s Prince Charming, who in the most jaw-droppingly stupefying scene in this entire freaking series, hits on everything, including every pony, in sight. Yes. it was all canon in G1! Anyway, there’s also a giant monster in the door who gets out, and who cares, the reason to watch this pair of episodes is to feel like you’re experiencing an acid trip while sober. (Okay, but the monster is also a trip. He gets a song. This is just the wackiest 22 minutes of television I have ever watched.)
Hey, guess what? It’s time for Season 2! Yes, after the show’s first run, it was rebranded My Little Pony and Friends and aired in tandem with a bunch of other toy properties, including Glowbugs, which you bet your ass I way into when I was like five. I am not, of course, watching those.
The Quest of the Princess Ponies: Spike gets lost in a crystal desert thanks to the ever-unhelpful Bushwoolies, and stumbles upon the Royal Paradise Playset, home of the princess ponies. Unlike our modern princesses, these are just regular ponies with weird cutie marks (seriously, they all have like, lace or something around them) and stupid party hats. They were also all catty bitches, constantly squabbling about who gets to be queen. (Apparently the “princesses are good, queens are evil” thing was not in effect at this time.) They guard a bunch of magic wands that keep Ponyland’s magic in balance. Cue King Lavan and his lava demons lava-surfing out of a crack in the earth to steal said wands. Lavan wants to use their power to become a crystal being with enormous magical strength, natch.
A lot of stuff happens. Princess… Ugh, Princess Tiffany goes to get Megan to help. Megan brings the Rainbow of Light and drops it in the desert, the clumsy bitch. If you’re playing along at home, this is when you take a shot because yup, you guessed it, they go see the fucking Moochick. (At least he gets eaten by his armchair, making his presence in this episode significantly more tolerable than normal.) Meanwhile, Spike, the Bushwoolies, and the remaining princesses get captured, escape, and meet up with the ice trolls, who are, of course, the lava demons’ mortal enemies. (Their leader, Ganache, is voiced by Cyclonus, which added some surrealism.) Interestingly, the reason for their hereditary feud is because their opposing elements prevent them from shaking hands and being friends; I thought that was kind of neat, honestly. The Bushwoolies prove they have a use after all, putting their power of annoyance to work in being a distraction. Spike makes a tactical error. The crystal desert encroaches on Paradise Estate. The princess ponies remain hilariously unlikeable, complaining and bickering at every opportunity.
Anyway, Lavan completes his plan, becomes a giant crystal thingy, and sings one of the best songs in the show. (I should mention, he’s the best character, in terms of amazing overacting, since Queen Bumble. I wish there was more info about the voice actors from this time.) There’s a bunch more questing to be done, because the wands need to be recharged, but who cares about that. (The Heart of Ponyland bears a lot of resemblance to season 4’s mystery box, I'll mention.) The princess ponies recharge the six Elements of Harmony wands and bust Lavan a new one, thus preventing the episode from being enjoyable anymore. Well, except for when they had me convinced one of the Bushwoolies died. (That’s pretty intense for a kid’s show!) But seriously, Lavan’s the reason to watch this one.
Spike’s Search: Spike’s growing up and getting depressed because his flame breath is getting uncontrollable. So he and Annoying Boy Child go on a… dragon quest…
Y’know, to find some dragons? To teach him how to control his shit. Along the way, he befriends a little... bird...
Once they find the dragons, they discover that they’re big bullies…
And they reject him at first and ask him to help them with something…
And he recognizes that their behavior is wrong…
And they make fun of him because he lives with the ponies…
And he sides with the ponies, who help him drive them off...
MLP:FiM writers? I’m looking at you. I am judging you. >:| I am very disappointed.
The Golden Horseshoes: It’s saying something when I mention that the animation takes a dive in this episode. So I can’t tell if Mimic turning transparent is an animation error, or the most terrifying thing to happen to a pony ever. Anyway, she’s sick, so it’s Moochick time. After proving that he’s a colossal dick, he tells them about a legend of four golden horseshoes given to a unicorn who was Mimic’s ancestor, and somehow this has to do with why she's sick. Quest time! (Also, the Moochick’s rabbit changed colors from his last appearance; I prefer to think that the Moochick is so senile, he just assumes that whatever rabbit is hanging around is his assistant.) So it’s off to She-Ra Skreera to meet the Skree, who are ostriches whose designs were definitely ripped off by Disney years later. After Wind Whistler loses a race for the first horseshoe, Megan uses the Moochick’s dick machine to scare them so she can steal it. Good role model, that one.
Then it’s time for a fetch quest across various stupid lands, meeting elves, goblins, and… “Blargs”. Thankfully they aren’t all giant assholes. The things the ponies have to do to get the horseshoes are generally dumb. One of the worst songs ever features in the second half. Look, this is a really bad episode, no two ways about it. Even when I was a kid, I could tell when the animation budget ran out, even if I couldn’t explain what was wrong, and those episodes were always head-scratchers. This is definitely a low point in the series.
Flight to Cloud Castle: Heartthrob and two unimportant pegasi we’ve never seen before (Locket and… Twilight? She’s apparently So Soft Twilight. This explains nothing.) run afoul of a giant bird and soon meet a dweeby gnome named Garth (party on), who’s trying to find his true love in a floating castle. (I really wish this guy had been the one from Would-Be Dragonslayer.) They decide to help the poor yutz out because Heartthrob is a sucker for romance stories. The castle proves to be a tricksy character, and they waste a lot of time trying to catch it. This is a decent adventure, even if it spends a lot of time on faffing about. Plus, Heartthrob gets to kick ass. And I gotta hand it to the writers: the ending is definitely something you’d want little girls to grow up seeing. (They do bobble it a smidge, but let’s not split hairs: it was the 80’s.)
The Ice Cream Wars: This starts off with four or maybe five baby ponies (actually, they’re First Tooth Ponies, which apparently explains the single tooth each prominently possesses; new toys, I guess) trying to take care of two pairs of twins who are even younger. (More new toys: the Newborn Twins.) One of them has a French accent. One of them quacks. I can’t make this shit up. The plot revolves around their local ice cream parlor being out of ice cream because two dudes in some other place hate each other. Needless to say, I hated the fuck out of this, I have no idea what I saw, and no amount of ridiculous Scottish accents could save it.
Somnambula: Holy shit, Nancy Cartwright voiced Truly. You can tell when she starts singing and sounds like Bart Simpson with a thick Southern accent. c.c That is fucking surreal.
Uh, anyway, this is the one with the Big Brother Ponies, which I was very much looking forward to. They are, in order: Score (football pony), Steamer (train pony), 4-Speed (I guess he likes cars?), Salty (he talks like a pirate sailor), Tex (basically G1 Braeburn) and Slugger (baseball pony), who is sweet on Buttons. Their homecoming is cut short by the arrival of an evil witch (guess what her name is) luring the other ponies away with entrancing birdsong. Since the magic apparently only affects the mares, not Spike and not the baby ponies, the Big Brothers head off to rescue them. Spoilers: it affects them too.
But that’s not important. What’s important is that Heartthrob uses the “I vant to be alone” line and it’s the greatest thing ever. :D
Anyway, Salty, Steamer and Tex are beguiled by illusions of things they like, and the other three have to snap them out of it with a song. It turns out Somnambula is stealing the ponies’ youth for herself, not to mention the unicorns’ magic, and all the mares are old and wrinkled. Her bird gets out and gets the baby ponies and Spike to help. Eventually, Slugger uses the power of horniness love to stop Somnambula and save everyone. This isn’t an entirely amazing episode, but the Big Brothers are at least a dash of interesting as far as introducing new toys goes (Salty's my favorite), and it’s a fair sight better than the last one. Also, it's worth noting that Score's toy name was actually Quarterback, a confusion that is mirrored in the fan name of one of the pegasus bullies in G4.
The Prince and the Ponies: The Newborn Twins get an invite to a party at the palace (what palace?) and the First Tooth ponies get jealous because they can’t go. Riveting. The centerpiece in this episode is the Duchess, who is loud, obnoxious, and hilariously can’t affect the horrible French accent her servants have. (She kind of sounds like Bernadette Peters.) She makes an otherwise godawful episode tolerable. She steals the Newborn Twins, and the baby ponies come to the rescue (they were planning to crash the party). No, but seriously, those accents are really horrible and this is a terrible way to end season two. I'm glad there wasn't a season three.
So, what have we learned? G1 is consistently poorer than G4 in terms of animation, not surprising considering its age, and I would wager songs as well. Okay, actually, probably everything, but it’s not like it lacks the things that appealed to us in MLP:FiM. The writing is often weird, but the episodes are fun. There’s some actual continuity. I sure as heck enjoyed a lot of the characters.
What G1 offers over G4 is lots of adventure. I mean, it’s even the first line in the theme song after “My Little Pony”: “What will today’s adventure be?” The slice of life episodes are few, far between, and consistently inferior. Even some of the one-shots have antagonists. The ponies are willing to end conflicts with violence. And this is the kind of thing that folks like Blueshift, Argembarger, and midnightshadow have been saying forever: G1 is not terrible. At the very least, it’s no worse than other cartoons with similar intentions (selling toys) from the same era. And as DGD Davidson recently pointed out, the full series DVDs are coming out. You bet your ass I’m gonna be picking them up.
So if you’ve got any interest in the show, and why shouldn’t you, here’s a list of my top ten episodes:
1) Crunch the Rockdog
2) Mish Mash Melee
3) Baby, It’s Cold Outside
4) The Glass Princess
5) Rescue at Midnight Castle
6) Bright Lights
7) The Quest of the Princess Ponies
8) Woe Is Me
9) Fugitive Flowers
10) Flight to Cloud Castle
As for top ponies, you'll just have to wait and see if I write this thing I want to write now. :V Don't hold your breaths.
Oh, and for the record? “Who’s a Silly Pony”, the song about Applejack, is not from the series at all, but a story tape released in the UK. That explains the singer, actually. I’d been wondering!
Have you been slacking off?
I was giggling all the way through reading this. It's been at least two decades since I've seen My Little Pony G1... I will have to find it again just for the weird and the nostalgia.
Thanks for gettin' through it to remind us all of the roots.
Did I see the genesis of a new trigger phrase in there too?
Baby Ponies.
*Grins* Ah the 80s. They have so much to answer for.
I believe that the Baby Ponies are actually clones created via a magic mirror. This explains the names; they're reflections named after their source ponies.
Also, I have a hypothesis: this is what Equestria was like during the early reign of Discord, before he really got creative.
Interesting stuff! Question: was there a Skyla in G1, or did Hasbro manage to pull something new out of their hidden dimension of Chthonian monstrosities when they made the world's most horrific pony toy a year or two back?
Congratulations, you've convinced me to watch some of the original stuff. Reading this was pretty hilarious.
Is "shoo-be-doo" one word or three?
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No, this is the kind of thing I can do while doing other stuff. :B
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BABY PONIES CAN ROT IN HELL D:
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Yeah, I wish this was explained somewhere. :| It was frustrating, mostly because I didn't want to devote more brainpower to figuring them out that I really had to.
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Nope, she's new. :B Well, there's still two and a half gens to go, so maybe...
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Excellent. :D
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That's not it. :|
This was quite a read. Now I want to watch these. I watched MLP: The Movie before writing my (apparently horrible) Smooze story. Honestly, one thing that stands out to me is that either a lot of the song singers purposely snag off key and gratingly, or they just sucked.
Also, speaking of moochicks, can we have Danny DeVito get a voice role in season five? Please???
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Oh god. Discord created G3. That bastard.
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*reaches for the alcohol* so very, very, very much...
I watched G1 while watching my siblings recently. The Smooze is cool beyond belief.
I was amazed at how the plot of Escape from Caterina was pretty much identical to that of Rescue atMidnight Castle.
Never change, George Arthur Bloom. (The good bits in his transformer episodes were also pretty much taken note-by-note from Bob Budiansky)
Yeah, I remember G1 being pretty much on par with things like He-man and Transformers (which I simply couldn't get into). I should check-out some of the better episodes sometime, there seems to be a handful of interesting ones.
Also, good luck if you are submitting yourself to G2 and beyond.
Wow. So Dragon Quest was a remake of a G1 episode? That's... sad.
On many levels.
But at least we got Crackle and the wonderful dragon costume and the very start of that episode.
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I suspect it's 'ponyfeathers'.
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I may have to get someone to ask the writers about this at a con someday. Who did Dragon Quest, Merriweather Williams? Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised.
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Ding ding ding!
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Huzzah! My childhood of watching badass-for-the-time cartoons instead of going out into icky daylight and playing with other kids was not wasted!
Um, I mean ...
AH-HAH-HAH-HAH! I am
a) so glad you are doing this; I'm curious about the earlier generations and it sounds like fun. I think I watched 1 episode each of G1 thru G3, and one movie.
b) so glad it's not me doing it!
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Present Perfect Reviews:
We experience it so you don't have to!
Also we apparently are plural.
You know what we need?
... a MLP / HR Puff 'n Stuff crossover!
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Hey, she's written at least one good episode!
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Well actually, I liked Dragon Quest, though I seem to be in a minority there.
Williams is the most consistently terrible writer the show has ever had. She's obviously got no idea how to deal with the characters, the setting, or the themes of the show. She wrote the one episode that makes me horrendously angry. And now that Polsky's more or less redeemed himself with his S4 work (as far as I'm concerned), I can say without hesitation that she's the worst show writer.
Man, you know I was supposed to be rewatching and reviewing season 4? But no, I started watching G1 instead. :| I should probably do that before S5 comes out.
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What episode was it that made you angry?
As far as I'm concerned, the two worst episodes are Daring Don't, by Polsky, and Bats!, by Williams. What I would consider Williams' best episodes were Hearth's Warming Eve, Putting Your Hoof Down, and Wonderbolts Academy. Polsky wrote Feeling Pinkie Keen, which is better than any Williams episode, and Over a Barrel, Too Many Pinkie Pies, Keep Calm and Flutter On, Games Ponies Play, and Twilight Time were all fine. A lot of Polsky episodes have problems; Over a Barrel has an excellent beginning and a lousy ending, while Keep Calm and Flutter On has a poor ending as well, but is otherwise fine.
Both can obviously write something decent, but both can also obviously write something terrible, and both Bats! and Daring Don't suffered from actually being bad ideas for episodes rather than merely bad episodes; the actual execution on them didn't help. To some extent Meghan McCarthy is responsible for those episodes as well, because their ideas/scripts shouldn't have been greenlit in the first place.
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Mare Do Well. Bats is a close second. (It could be worse; I need to do some rewatching and reevaluating.)
I got the nagging impression that the reviews are more entertaining than the episodes
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I try. :B
Wuuughhh. Baby ponies are easily the worst thing about G1. Between the baby talk and the toddling over their own hooves it makes they episodes they're in hard to get through sometimes. I think it gets worse as the series goes on, because I can easily tolerate Baby Lickety Split but come the one-tooths complaining about the newborn twins I'm ready to smother myself with a pillow.
Their existence was explained in the MLP comics, in the aforementioned Mirror, but finding that out takes a good deal of digging. Where the heck the babies came from bugged me for YEARS.
Speaking comics and surprisingly dark stuff in G1, there was that one time where Applejack straight up killed a dude
Yeah, that moment is surprisingly cold for the ponies, especially when Sting redeems himself with Morning Glory in the same episode. Both the younger witches are clearly more incompetent than evil, and it seems like the show's setting them up to be redeemed (or at least come to a truce).
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Draggle certainly seemed like she was going to be the "soft-hearted minion" character on the witches' side, but nope. Just one of those per episode. :B
Reading this comic is weird because the dialogue is being read by Ashleigh Ball in my head. I don't remember what G1 Applejack sounded like, but I know it wasn't that!
Oh yes, god, I've finally read it! How much of the original series was established in not-cartoon form? Blueshift told me about that comic once upon a time. Applejack killing a dude, blind ponies getting gem shards shoved into their eyes. Flippin' intense, yo.