S5-8 The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone - Reactions · 5:36pm May 25th, 2015
I think this is the first episode since I started watching the show that I ignored all of the promo stuff before watching and so didn’t have any idea going in what would happen in the episode. It was nice. Gilda showing up and all the griffon stuff was a pleasant surprise. I think I’ll keep watching episodes blind. It’s more fun.
This isn’t a review or analysis, just some things I wrote down as I watched/rewatched the episode.
- The opening
- What makes for a good opening in a tv show? I liked this opening. Pinkie Pie was fun and silly, and Gummy continues to play the perfect straight man, and her interactions with him are really cute. But it’s only barely related to the plot of the episode, and it’s an episode that ends up feeling rushed for lack of time. I would call this minute used for the opening wasted, but it is still a really fun little scene, and if it gets laughs and has ponies acting cute, is it really wasted?
-So, is this a good opening?
This is a screen cap of a pony.
-Twilight and map scene
-Twilight’s nerdy excitement over their trip is really cute, and her grumbly passive aggressive disappointment with the map for choosing the wrong two ponies to go is funny.
-Interesting to see that Rainbow Dash is apparently still so bitter over the Gilda debacle, and has decided that she dislikes all griffins everywhere forever because of it. It fits her character to make a bunch of grand generalizations about a whole culture because of one of bad experience, but her attitude is a little confusing. It feels like she has totally forgotten that her and Gilda were friends once and how much fun she had hanging out with Gilda in that episode. It feels even stranger later on when we find out that Gilda does miss their friendship.
-All of this Griffon world building is pretty cool, and I especially like these added animations.
This is a screen cap of griffons.
-Traveling scenes
-Twilight’s voice over is kind of meh, but I do like that she’s written an entire travel guide for them. Twilight would be a good travel writer. Somebody should a write a series of fics about Twilight’s journeys through Equestria in the style of her voice over here.
-I like the contrast in enthusiasm between Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. Rainbow Sparkle on the train is funny. A lot of cool mountain climbing shots here.
-Pinkie and Dash look incredibly cute in those hats.
This is a screen cap of cute hats.
-Griffonstone
-Oh, hey, it’s Gilda! Her introduction comes with awfully little fanfare. She’s just… there, being grumpy, because that’s apparently her one and only character trait now. That’s fine, I guess.
-More cool griffon worldbuilding. That’s a pretty terrifying monster.
- ‘The only problem Griffonstone has is YOOOOOOOUUUUU’
- Jeez, this is a pretty ridiculous overreaction. I like it, though. It makes sense that someone would get frustrated that two outsiders they don’t like coming and telling them that they’re town needs to be fixed and they’re the ones to do it would cause frustration.
- I’m really disappointed that Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash split up for the rest of the episode. I was hoping for more interaction between them, and Rainbow Dash gets relegated to a ‘is wrong the whole time’ role, which is lame.
This is a screen cap of a terrifying monster and a startled griffon.
- ‘I’m here to find your missing idol and save Griffonstone!’
- ‘And I’ll need some bits.’
- At first, I thought Rainbow Dash’s reaction to being told she’d need to pay for equipment was really strange. Why would she ever expect that she wouldn’t have to pay? But now it makes some sense. Rainbow Dash is probably used to getting the hero treatment back in Ponyville. I imagine saving the town from certain destruction twenty times comes with some benefits
This is a screen cap of a sexy pony with entitlement issues.
-Pinkie Pie and statue scene
-This is terrible and I love it.
- ‘But how do you break out into uplifting musical numbers with no singing?’
- Reflective humor is fun!
- I also love that Pinkie’s go to solutions for solving problems is singing, then parties, then cake. But I’m also disappointed that baking does actually kind of turn out to be the solution to the griffons’ problems.
- ‘Let me guess, friendship?’
- ‘Um, no. Baking powder.’
- I love how utterly perplexed Pinkie looks that anyone could ever suggest that friendship is the secret ingredient to good confectionaries. Also interesting to learn that Pinkie Pie is a practical baker, no vague symbolic ingredients for her!
This is a screen cap of... I don't know what this is a screen cap of.
- ‘I did have a friend once, but you saw how that turned out.’
- Huh. So all of those Gilda tragic backstory fics turned out to be right. That’s really lame.
- Rainbow Dash and Gilda flash back
-Well, this is crazy cute.
-But why is Gilda the only griffon child in a school full of ponies? I guess we have plenty of room for more tragic Gilda backstories. Let’s get to work fellow fic writers!
This is a screen cap of a tragic backstory.
- ‘You’re more important to me than some dumb chunk of gold.’
- What? Why? Since when? One little flash back and a quick Indiana Jones parody scene is all it takes to make a complete one-eighty in personality and attitude?
- From this point on, Gilda acts like she’s completely ‘reformed.’ What made that second Trixie episode work was that at the end she was allowed to keep some of her characteristic show-offness while still learning and developing. But Gilda here turns into a whole new character. Really lame.
- ‘And I’m just sorry we didn’t get your idol back.’
-Really, Dash? That’s all you’re sorry for? Nothing else at all?
-I never liked any of those stories trying put all the blame on Rainbow Dash for Griffon the Brushoff, pretending like Gilda was the victim, but I’d hoped for some kind of reconciliation here. Even if it was just a ‘I’m sorry we left on such bad terms and haven’t spoken for a couple years. I missed you, a little bit, sometimes, on Thursdays.’ But, nope, Dash genuinely doesn’t seem to give a shit about anything in this episode except finding that idol. She totally doesn’t care about her old friend at all, or even seem particularly happy about regaining that former friend.
- I think this episode needed more time. 22 minutes wasn’t enough to do everything this episode needed to do, and Rainbow Dash was far too absent throughout. It would have been much more interesting if she was the one interacting with Gilda, but instead she gets sent off with the idiot ball to act stupid for ten minutes while Pinkie figures everything out.
This is a screen shot of a total cop out.
- ‘Whoa, Pinkie, that was… really sappy.’
- And then I kind of love Rainbow Dash again.
- That sexy little obnoxious pegasus sure drags ya through the mud every once in a while, but goddamn if she doesn’t always bring you back.
- But really, Rainbow Dash sucks in this episode.
- ‘And then she tried them and said they tasted good! That’s the first nice thing any griffon’s ever said to me!’
- Worth noting, she didn’t say anything nice about you. She complimented your scones. Which Pinkie Pie made. You doofus.
- I do like the idea that Griffonstone’s real problem is lack of friendship, and that the purpose of the map is to send the ponies to go show somebody the magic of friendship where it’s lacking. I like that Rainbow Dash and Pinkie don’t actually spread friendship themselves, but recruit a disciple to do it for them. But I don’t think this execution really works. Is Gilda really going to turn this whole society around with tasty scones? Is she going to make friendships based on how well she makes scones? Those aren’t friends, those are customers.
- ‘But, you’ll come back and visit, right?’
- Jeez, Gilda seems pitifully desperate for Rainbow Dash’s attention, and Dash is just totally oblivious.
- Gilda is obviously madly in love with Rainbow Dash. Makes sense. Dash is apparently literally the only person who has ever shown her any kindness. Of course she’s in love with her. That’s how these stories always go.
This is a screen cap of a grumpy griffon who is desperately in love with a fuzzy blue pegasus.
- Conclusion
- I did like this episode, though the first half is much better than the second. Twilight and Pinkie were both a lot of fun, and so was Rainbow Dash even if she got relegated to idiot and damsel in distress status for half the episode. Even Gilda was entertaining, if only because of what a drama queen she’s turned out to be. Getting to see more of the griffons and their history was cool, too. But, jeez, Dash and Gilda’s reconciliation and Gilda’s reformation are just so utterly unsatisfying and rushed, that the whole thing falls flat.
-So I guess the jokes were funny, but the drama sucked.
This is a screen cap of the funniest scene in the episode.
What's wrong with dash being in the wrong? I felt like through this whole review you were upset dash is getting treated badly. Don't please dude don't be like that okay? Dash was in the wrong so what? Maybe this is me not liking dash anymore talking but I liked the lack of dash it made the episode enjoyable for me anyway. It's about time pinkie got a chance to shine dash takes all the glory anyway and needed to toke the backseat for once. I am tired of dash getting all the attention in this fandom and the show other characters like pinkie fluttershy and rarity need to shine too.
i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/8499374848/h5B0039B3/
I'll be honest, I didn't particularly like this episode either, although I had different reasons for that.
First, I was very unimpressed by the worldbuilding they did for the griffons because they made the entire culture one-dimensional greedy bastards which is never interesting. Yes the backstory with the idol and theft was well handled if a bit generic (although I really liked them making the idol a red herring), but making the entire culture so completely and totally dead really killed my interest so this is going into my pile of stupid season 4/5 canon I ignore along with the one year timeline.
Second, while the reconciliation was not particularly well handled as you mentioned, I got the impression that a lot of what we were seeing out of Dash for the first part of the episode was an act. I thought she still cared about Gilda after their fight and was just angry at her for what she did to Pinkie and expressing it the only way she knew how which was why it felt more natural to me that she would forgive Gilda fairly easily once she reconciled with Pinkie, but they definitely could have done a better job of showing this because Rainbow was very hard to read in this episode.
3096787 The issue here is that Dash was clearly not the only one in the wrong when she broke up with Gilda so she should not be taking all the blame here. Yes she was definitely part of the problem and deserves to take some of the blame, but Pinkie and Gilda also did not handle themselves well so they should be sharing the blame with Dash.
3097084
Okay understood. Maybe this episode should have been a two parter 22 minutes isn't enough time for a reconcile plot.
3097118 Yeah, that does seem to happen a lot and I think you are right that this would have worked better as a two parter. In fact, I think the series as a whole would probably be better off if they were more aggressive with multi-episode stories because it seems like a lot of episodes suffer from being forced to fit into a 22 minute timeslot and there is no reason you cannot split the two halves up across two weeks. Hell, that tends to be a good thing as far as hype and community involvement goes because you will have a lot of people anxious to see how the episode ends next week and rampant speculation about what is coming keeping people thinking about the show more than they usually would.
3096787
Rainbow Dash being largely absent from this episode is disappointing because this is an episode about Gilda, and at least in part an episode about them reconciling and becoming friends again. That aspect of the episode is unsatisfying because it feels rushed and manufactured, and a lot of that is because Gilda and Rainbow Dash barely interact. It's not because I think Rainbow Dash deserves more screen time than any of the other characters, it's because a reconciliation between Gilda and Rainbow Dash doesn't work if Dash isn't in the episode.
3097084
Yeah, I'd agree that they rubbed the greedy griffon angle in a bit much. But the griffon world building was really just window dressing for the actual story of the episode, and that story felt weak. I could buy that Rainbow Dash was happy to be friends with Gilda again just because she's apparently reconciled with Pinkie Pie, but it's not presented that way, and Dash never gives any solid indication that that's her problem with Gilda. It would have been a better route to take the episode, though.
3099004 Eh, the hints about Rainbow's feelings were there if you know where to look, the problem is that they were subtle and easy to miss unless you know her very well, and even taking that into consideration the actual reconciliation was very rushed and poorly handled.
As for the world building side of things, that is a critical part of any story which can do a ton to help or hurt its impact so it should never be this shitty. You can easily get drawn into good world building which does a lot to improve immersion and make up for a less interesting story or flaws in other areas (hello Xenophilia), and by the same token stupid world building can easily break the audience's willing suspension of disbelief like what we had here because the whole setup is just too stupid to believe.
3099004
Which makes sense this is why i felt it should have been a two-parter. That way things would be built up and the pacing would be slower. Which makes me worry about the other map episodes how will they be able to do all the map episode with the 22 minute time limit? I guess the writers didn't think about it.