The Hooffields and McColts Thoughts (Spoilers) · 6:15pm Nov 14th, 2015
Well, first thing's first, this episode wasn't the best but it was still enjoyable. There were moments in the beginning of this episode that had me expecting a bit more out of this one than we got, and I think that may have been what did it in for me. The main thing that I was hoping to see were some good interactions between Fluttershy and Twilight since it's already something we rarely ever see. This episode put them together, and, of course, that made me expect to see some of these interactions, but in reality, I felt like the two were never on the same page at all. Twilight was doing Twilight stuff throughout the episode, and Fluttershy was doing Fluttershy stuff. It seemed as though they weren't even trying to work together right up until the end, and even then it was barely anything. I guess that was the main issue I had with this episode, and it's still bothering me to this moment. There was so much potential for some great, sweet, and funny moments between the two, and this episode just wasted it.
That being said, since the two were so separated, we did at least get some nice individual moments out of them. As I said in my review of the previous episode, I absolutely love Twilight being Twilight, and we saw quite a good amount of it in this episode too. She's always overthinking, always over-planning, always thinking she knows exactly what she's doing, and always being adorable. As for Fluttershy, we had some classic caring animal moments with her as well, which of course, is always comforting and heartwarming to see. Still, it would have been so much better to see these moments mash together rather than be so separated between the two characters.
Onto the rest of the episode. We tend to mainly only ever see country ponies in the form of the Apple family or on the rare occasion that an episode is set in Appleoosa, so, in a way, it was nice to see some new ones, especially the more mountain fairing hillbilly types. There were plenty of new characters introduced and just seen in this episode, so I'm sure there will be plenty of fanfiction or at least ideas about them thrown out in the fandom. They all seemed interesting and quirky enough, and plenty of the characters had distinctive features and looks as well. This leads me to the setting too, I really enjoyed it. It was something new and different compared to the normal scenery we see in the show, and by this I mean when it was still a "warzone" so to speak. Everything had a slightly darker and had more lackluster feel to it, and I liked that. The story in the episode itself was pretty predictable along with the moral, but I shouldn't be expecting anything too spectacular in the sense that it's from a show intended for a younger audience. I did like the fact that Twilight once again figured she'd know exactly what she was doing and was more than wrong. I love seeing her flaws (something I also mentioned in the previous review as well) and I feel as though this is one she may never get rid of. She always ends up feeling completely defeated when she thinks this way, but she does it no matter what.
Finally, my favorite little gag in this episode was the fact that Twilight was once again called a spy, and even pointed out the fact that it's happened before. Oh, yes, it brings me back to the good old days when a very suspicious Rainbow Dash was under the assumption that a certain purple unicorn that just so happened to show up in Ponyville the day before Nightmare Moon returned, was a spy. Good times.
Dream
Someone else called it The Great Divide of Pony, referencing one of the most MEH episodes of Avatar The Last Airbender. It doesn't feel that way to me, but I acknowledge that 99.9% of all MLP will never feel that way to me because I approach the show as Healing Anime, like how some adults may watch Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. The episode content doesn't have to be thought-provoking or unpredictable for adults; as long as the characters do what they always do in the setting they're always in, I'm already satisfied.
The only eps which has fallen out of favor with me is Princess Spike. That eps couldn't even heal me.
That sequence of events was intentional on the writer's part. The 2 ponies were apart (just as the 2 clans are apart) and doing their own thing, and nothing was getting solved. The 2 ponies work together at the end, and were thus able to bring the 2 clans together.
Even though it was intentional, it did feel somewhat underwhelming because it was so subtle. But Twilight did allude to it, "I didn't need this book, when all this time I had a friend [hugs Fluttershy]."
At least it was much more elegant than The Great Divide's anvilicious parallel, where the protags disagreed over which clans is right, argued, and each went to 1 of the clans to support its side in the feud. If that happened between Twi and Flutters it would have been OOC and the eps would have been much worse.
3543010
Now that you've pointed it out, I can definitely see the major similarities between ATLA's and this episode of pony. I never would have even thought of that comparison if you hadn't pointed it out.
As for the separation of Fluttershy and Twilight, I understand what you mean. I can see now that it was in fact intentional. The issue that I have with it now though, is that considering how blatantly obvious the rest of the episode was, this separation of the two characters was really subtle, too subtle. Like I said, I didn't even notice it until you pointed it out. If the rest of the episode was more subtle I may have, but the contrast is just too much. Still though, I wish there was more interaction between the two, even with the lack of it being intentional.