Season 5 Episode 19-26: Review and Final Thoughts

Well, I feel it is that time where I do more reviews on the episodes that I have watched now that the fifth season is over and I have finally watched the season finale myself. Boy, has a lot happened since the last time I reviewed the episodes; and last time I was flipping my shit with the reveal of the crusaders getting their cutie marks. I think I have finally calmed down enough from that roller coaster of a trip and am ready to get on the next one that will finish out the season with a bang. Lets get this started and pick up where we last left off with the previous review and go over episode 19.

Episode 19: The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows

Okay, so we start off with a Pinkie Pie episode and she finds out that cadence and shining armor are going to have a kid….

…… ooooooohhhhhhh, so that’s what they’ve been doing since the last time we saw them! They were having a little rustle and tussle next to the pillow and one night happened to be the lucky winner! Ha ha, going off of how old shining and cadence’s predicted ages are (in my perspective), I would say that makes them around late twenties or so and already having a baby. I guess this is the least bit interesting since Celestia appointed the two of them to lead a nation all by theirselves, so adding a baby to the load can't be that bad right?

Back to the episode, it was silly seeing Pinkie Pie freak out with trying to keep the news a secret and not tell anyone or give any hints about it either. Though, if someone I knew was freaking out that badly over simply mentioning the word baby in the same area as them, I would have guessed something was up. But everyone remained clueless until the very end.

I did feel like the whole scavenger hunt was reminiscent of an episode from a previous generation of MLP. I only know this because of the ‘Bronies React to G1, G2, and G3’ video where one of the clips was an old episode featuring a scavenger hunt. So the whole thing felt familiar as I was watching this episode until they finally reached sugar cube corner to find shining armor and cadence there.

And then we had the whole happy reunion and finally revealing the news about their future child. A little bit on the morbid side, but wouldn’t it be funny if all the hype came down to a miscarriage?

Too dark and too soon? Whatever…

Episode 20: Hearths breakers

Now we have our second Christmas special in the series and it’s with the Apple family and the Pie family. Finally, they did an episode putting the two families together! I feel like I already did something like that in passing in one of my stories… hmm, I might have to search for it. But really, we all saw this coming after Pinkie Pie hung out with the Apple family; we just didn’t know when it was going to happen.

I thought this episode was pretty cool. We got to see a little bit more of Pinkie’s family and how they celebrate Hearths Warming. Turns out they are an Amish family with really rigid customs and habits. That kind of surprised me. I was more of expecting to just see a really strict family trying to do its best to make a living, not Amish culture to come up.

The interactions between the two families was pretty awkward (which was expected) while the Apple family tried to feel out the Pie’s traditions. Of course the Apple family was going to have a hard time coping and someone was going to snap.

And as per usual, it’s Applejack who is the first to break down the walls of tradition and try their own Apple family traditions. Well, she should have seen the outcome coming when she tried doing that way. So the Pie family is pissed off and are ready to kick the Apples to the street; go figure.

I will say that felt a little sad seeing Applejack try so hard and to have her efforts dashed when trying to unite the families. It was nice seeing her and Pinkie Pie come together and make up in the cave and more so when Applejack realized how to mix the two kinds of traditions in a happy compromise. If only real life could work out so sweetly. Anyways, the two families get back together and find some common ground to at least try each other’s traditions and ways of life.

On a side note, big mac now has a new shipping partner to contend with Fluttershy now. And I know everyone has already exploited that ship already since the episode went up. Yeah, I remember seeing the flood of stories pairing those two up in the featured box for two weeks straight you attention whoring sickos. Try something new like making a love triangle story with big mac, Fluttershy, and the new girl. Boom! Story idea, right there; you’re welcome.

Episode 21: Scare Master

This was an awesome episode! I really liked this one! Our second Halloween special in the series and it’s even better than the last! Though, they still missed out on Luna showing up in this one…

Anyways, I thought it was great seeing Nightmare Night again with Fluttershy going out to brave the night for her douche bag bunny. Watching her get swept up in the night and choosing to participate got some points from me, but that slowly dwindled as she kept shying away from everything and not diving head first into everything to push her fear.

Though at the end, she re-earned those lost points with making that ‘New’ section to the haunted corn maze. That was impressive on Fluttershy’s part to pull together so much in less than one night and scare the living shit out of her friends. A golf clap goes out to you, ma’am.

HOW-FUCKING-EVER!!! I have to point out all the fucking references everywhere in this episode because goddamn there were a lot of fucking good ones, in my opinion. There was Jason, Wizard of Oz, a pony cosplaying as Twilight, Flutterbat, Ranma 1/2, that weird floppy horse mask(?), fucking SAILOR MOON ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS! And I bet there were more anime references that I can't name during that cardboard cut-out surprise during that ‘Haunted tea party’. Needless to say, the costumes were spectacular with referencing Roman/Greek armor, the astronaut (or cosmonaut if you are Russian), the lion from the Wizard of Oz, and that funky seventies’ rollerblade hippie outfit. It was a blast picking out everything in this episode and I had a great time.

Only thing missing was the princess of the night. *cough* best princess *cough*

Episode 22: What About Discord

Another Discord episode, huh? Okay, let’s see where this goes. Twilight comes out from her three day book reshelving vacation and finds that her friends are now suddenly buddy-buddy with Discord. Okay, a little wary right now, but let’s see what up.

Come to find out while Twilight was on vacation, Discord and her friends had some misadventures of their own and now have their own inside jokes that Twilight has no way of understanding. Of course, Twilight does her very best to dissect the jokes and figure out why they are funny. Unfortunately, she fails to ever understand them and becomes saddened by the fact that she can't join in on her friends’ new jokes and adventures.

And Discord points out a really big thing. She can never understand it fully because she was never there in the first place to experience it. he goes on with making this apparent with even more inside jokes with her friends and Twilight finally admits that she is jealous of them that she couldn’t join in on the inside jokes.

Twilight, I know exactly what it’s like to feel out of the loop with inside jokes and pop culture references. I practically live that moment almost every day, so this is nothing new to me with not being able to understand some inside jokes. There’s a reason I’m always the awkward/strange one in a group of friends. I never get those inside jokes or those popular culture references to TV, movies, or gossip because that stuff never interests me and I never find out about them until I decide to come out and play (if I ever do come out). My interests usually lay somewhere else so I often just sit there and listen to everyone tell their jokes and laugh because it sounds funny, not because I understand why it’s funny. That, or they’re making fun of me in jest and I end up doing or saying something stupid. My talents do not include consistent quick wit, so it’s been hard learning how to think on your feet through trial and error. My quick wit and good comebacks either come in small, rare bursts while in the moment or minutes afterwards and the conversation has already moved on or ended. It’s never really a reliable or consistent thing.

Anyways, Twilight learns this lesson and to just roll with it in about a few minutes and already starts her own inside joke amongst the friends.

Wow, that was a lot quicker, easier, and far less painful than the years I had to go through just to learn that lesson and come back better from it. Despite my love of tongue-and-cheek humor, being incredibly smart, and being a smartass, hardly anyone gets my highbrow jokes or references and nobody likes a smartass. The price I pay for being smart while being surrounded by the lowest common denominator of humor; nobody gets it and you just look weird. Plus, it’s hard to tell a joke when you are still laughing at it yourself.

Episode 23: The Hooffields and McColts

If you have ever read ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by Shakespeare (or paid enough attention in class in between your naps while the teacher read it in English class), you will understand when I say this feels awfully familiar to the two waring families in that play.

Both families have been fighting for generations, they hate each other’s guts with a fiery passion, there have probably been deaths on both sides from the flying food causing freak accidents, yet they have no idea why they are still fighting each other after so long. The only thing missing from this is a pair of lovers from opposite families willing to do anything to be with each other and end up killing themselves for not being able to love each other; the guy taking the feminine way out with drinking deadly poison and the girl taking the masculine way out by stabbing herself.

I now wait for an episode that is going to feature a paranoid son thinking his mother and father are out to get him and his best friends are under his dad’s thumb and the paranoid son ends up killing everyone in the family including himself.

….. Hamlet; I'm talking about Hamlet.

Anyways, this has Twilight and Fluttershy being paired up which I think is a first. I might be wrong. But the two go back and forth to each family trying to piece out what the hell is going on while Twilight is trying to use her ‘Fast-track friendship solving guide’ to solve the problem in less than a few minutes.

So she somehow convinces one family to give a peace offering of sorts so that the two families will come to a truce. Well they turn it into a Trojan horse and all hell breaks loose. Hijinks ensues. The families devolve into open combat with fists flying everywhere. One heartwarming talk later by Fluttershy and the families kiss and make up while trying to live happily with each other.

Not much to say about this other than ‘I kind of saw it coming’. The only thing that was missing was a loving couple’s death to tie the families together and learn to coexist with each other. Wait, did the families come together in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ when they died? I might have to go back and read it to find out.

Episode 24: The Mane Attraction

This was a surprising episode for me. This one kind of caught me off guard as I was expecting one thing, but was rewarded with another. So, the gang is setting up a concert for charity and they have big stars coming to participate in it, including sapphire shores. This already has my attention because I have yet to see an event like this happen in the world so it’s nice to see that this world has charity events to help out the less fortunate.

Come to find out that the biggest of stars is also coming and Applejack is (supposedly) the only one who doesn’t know who that star is or ever heard of her. Well, I already feel a connection here since I rarely know what’s going on in the music industry. Then Applejack reveals that this star sounds a lot like her old friend from camp.

This was a surprise because this fact opens up a ton of new things. One, Applejack went to a kind of summer camp. Two, she made a really good friend there as well. Three, this now popularizes the already made cannon idea from the comics of possible summer camps in this world which now gives me more believability and credibility as I have one of five mini-stories planned out for ‘The Games We are Forced to Play’ that is based around a kind of summer camp.

The next thing to hit me was the song Applejack’s friend sang. The song itself was good, but holy shit did the singer have a voice! It shocked me how good the singer was and with just a simple guitar playing in the background, it really showed how good of a singer she was. Fast forward to the present, Applejack’s old friend arrives and has become this huge, flashy diva with fog machines and everything. Her manager was also a prick too. Needless to say, Applejack was shocked to see her friend changed so much.

Then she sings her planned song for the concert. Good, god, why have we come to this? Why has our music turned into shitty auto-tuning with fugly dancing, flashy lights, smoke machines and singing about how great I am or how much materialistic value I have? This instantly reminded me of this era’s ‘Popular’ music and how much it sucks. They all feel hollow, soulless, boring.

At this point, I thought the episode was going to be about how friends grow up and change and sometimes we have to let them go. But we have to have a happy ending in the episode and regain that old friend.

So Applejack helps her friend see that her manager is indeed a dick and is just using her with the help of her friends. Now with the manager gone Applejack’s friend, Rara, is slightly panicking over the concert and worried about how it will go, which is understandable. She had the manager for ages and he has always taken care of everything for her and made sure she became a big star. But Applejack being the ever faithful and steady person she is, calms her down and tells her that the show will go just fine.

Then we go into the next surprising song, ‘The magic inside’. Oh my god, this was good. This song sucker punched me and kicked me in the feels. I had to fight to hold back my liquid pride while I listened to this in public. God help me if the people around me saw me crying over a song from My Little Pony. This had soul, heart, meaning, and effort put into this and I loved it. yeah, I know the solo piano and solo singing has been done many times before, but a lot of them feel like whining or are just trying to get their one song in that is a piano solo to seem like they are soulful before going back to bragging about bitches, booze, and their endless river of money. Maybe I’m just not seeing that this song is the same as every other piano solo out there and I’m too blinded by the fact that this is from MLP.

Another note is that this voice has almost no auto tune to it. Literally, she is that good. If you listen closely, you can just make out small mistakes made by the singer which is normal because there are very few singers that are absolutely pitch perfect. But she is damn good and love it. My hat goes off to the singer of Rara and Daniel Ingram. You’ve hooked me again.

Then, to add the final curb stomp to my feels, Rara calls up the crusaders for a throwback to an old song loved by Applejack. Then, just to make sure they finished me off, they do one last curb stomp and pull Applejack on stage so the two friends can have one more pure friendship moment.

Come on me…. Don’t cry….. Hold them in….. Come oooonnnnn…..…. Damnit, I said I would only do so when I’m alone or with other fan members!!!!! Fuck!!!!!!!!

Episode 25&26: The Cutie Re-Mark

*sniff* Ugh, okay; I think I’m back to normal now. Sorry, someone threw powder in my eyes and at the same time an eyelash got stuck in my eye so I had to go wash my face.

Okay, what’s next? Twilight is back at Celestia’s private school to give a speech and a recurring villain is back and is doing some time travelling bullshit to fuck up her life?

…………. Fuck me!

Okay, I’m going to review this in the same way that I viewed this; with a (approximately) three hour break in between to calm down.

Okay; part one. So Twilight is practicing a lecture for a class at Celestia’s private school; neat. She’s learned enough that Celestia believes that she is ready to teach and share her knowledge. Only problem is an old enemy has returned to fuck shit up. I actually had to rewind and compare two shots when they reshowed the classroom. Fucking Starlight Glimmer is sitting there with a shit eating grin on her face. Ooh, I hope we kick her ass harder than the last time, because last time we didn’t even get to kick her ass!

Going back to the castle we find her sitting at the round table with an even bigger shit eating grin. Someone hold me back because I’m about to smack-a-bitch and choke-a-bitch out. She pulls out some time travelling magic that would put Starswirl to shame because she managed to make his time travelling spell better.

After going through the time portal, we come out to find the castle gone, Ponyville in the dumps, and Applejack’s family mass producing canned apples for the war effort. Wait, what?

Somehow they are at war with king Sombra? WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!

Holy shit we are at war! So they are capable of having wars! Have to say, the Pegasus flight suits look pretty damn awesome. And seeing everyone in wartime outfits was testing our preconceived concepts of the main six to say the least.

And king Sombra! Damn, bringing back an old villain and he actually looks like a good evil villain! I thought we were going to have another fight with him in this war torn world. Nope! We’re heading back in time to try and fix this. But Twilight gets slapped back by Starlight and is sent back into the present in rapid fire succession and now we are in a tribal setting with Fluttershy done up in body paint threatening that all Chrysalis followers must be destroyed and WHOA, WHOA, WHOA!!! Hang on, slow down; what?! We have Chrysalis back now?

At this point I had to stop and go to college class and thank god that I did. I needed some time to comprehend the events that just went down in less than five minutes at the end of episode 25. Sombra and Chrysalis making a comeback with everyone going into full blown war production and hiding in secret villages from changling attacks? Shit is getting bad really quick.

So after about two and a half hours later I come back to see part two. Zecora is now the point of contact in this time stream and it’s nice to see her come back with a speaking role. I enjoy Zecora a lot as she always has some kind of wisdom to speak of, no matter how big or little it is.

After finding the hidden village of the swamp, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Applejack show up saying Ponyville was attacked and they barely escaped with their lives. Zecora comes back and calls them out as fakes and Applejack/Chrysalis admits to her attempts at the ruse. So Zecora tells Twilight to bail under the cover of the fight and to fix this time line mess.

A quick fight with Starlight again (which yields the same results as the last time) and we get sent back to present time EXCEPT (!), it’s overrun by Nightmare Moon. Wow, we are just bringing back all the villains, aren’t we? Seeing a world where Nightmare Moon won was disconcerting to say the least. Seeing Rarity as the head stewardess and Rainbow Dash as part of Nightmare’s royal guard was disheartening to me as well. But Twilight pulls the wool over Nightmare Moon and uses her to get back to the friendship table and go back in time to continue fighting with Starlight.

I would like to note that the world ruled by Nightmare Moon should have been more deselect than what was shown. In the well-known story, ‘Past Sins’, the author brought up a good point that after only a couple of weeks to maybe a month or two the world would have become a cold and barren ice land with little to no wild life or plant life because the sun provides enough heat to support life and maintain a good balance of optimal weather conditions. Anyways, back to the episode; most of you don’t care about the science behind things.

Now we get the montage of Twilight’s multiple attempts to stop Starlight Glimmer and what happens each time when she gets sent back to the present. I was surprised that we were bringing back all the villains of the show like Tirek, the Flim & Flam brothers, and Discord and how they all would have ruined to world.

After several attempts of trying to stop Starlight Glimmer, it looked like Twilight gave up and wanted to just show her the outcome of her actions at least once. Our last version of the present was a wasteland of a world barren of all life, save a few dead bushes and trees. Twilight tries to go the diplomatic route of stopping Starlight and still she refuses to change her mind.

So to make us all feel bad or to give some backstory behind her decision, she takes Twilight to her home when she lost her first friend when he got his cutie mark. And of course, this is a life changing experience and she vows to remove all cutie marks in the world; or something like that.

Now, there are few things in life where I will condemn the person for their actions with no chance of reappraisal. However, one of those few things that I instantly condemn is messing with time, a time line, or the time stream. Despite how much I would love to go back in time to fix a few things in my life, I believe that you should not go back as I have seen too many times where you fix one thing in the past and the future is irreparably changed or you alter yourself in a way you did not predict. If you somehow get time powers, one should only be able to slow down, pause, or fast forward time; not be able to go backwards for long periods of time.

When Twilight somehow managed to convince Starlight to give up and let past events happen, I did not want to forgive her. She had too much power over others with the ability to go back in time and I wanted her executed to make sure this kind of catastrophe never happened again. It’s harsh, but necessary. Time is one thing, I think, that no one should mess around with without absolute predictable outcomes and precision.

Another thing, during this whole battle with fighting Starlight through time, I was thinking outside the box of beating her like going back in time to when Starlight found the scroll and stopping her there so this whole thing never happened. All you have to do is get a pattern going so the enemy predicts you to always come back and try to stop them, but you outsmart them by going back in time to the point when they first find the time travelling scroll and stop the enemy before their current fight even began. And I would not have limited myself to less-than lethal tactics. Plus, I still think Twilight could have beaten Starlight in a straight duel no matter what.

So what do I think about the season ending?

All in all, pretty good but are they making it a theme to end each season like it’s going to be its last? I hope this isn’t the end of the series because we have done some awesome stuff and I would like to see more on what the creators and the fandom can do. We will see where this goes and hopefully there will be another announcement about where the series as a whole will be going in the future. In the meantime, I’ve still got some writing to do, plus write up a little one-shot story about Starlight Glimmer getting some well-deserved justice from some universal council or something.

I will see you all in the next chapter.