Doctor Perseus Reviews: "No Second Prances" *SPOILERS* · 9:19pm Apr 30th, 2016
In this week's episode of MLP, Starlight is tasked with making a new friend for a dinner with Celestia. When Starlight ends up befriending Trixie, who is visiting Ponyville for her apology tour, it causes a rift between her and Twilight...
This was an episode I looked forward to more and more with each new detail I learned about it. A Starlight-centric episode? Awesome! A Trixie return? Awesome! And the end result? In my opinion, a pretty damn good episode.
First off, it's great to see Starlight get some focus again. She sort of disappeared after the premiere but her return is very much welcome. I have a feeling that Starlight is becoming a divisive character this season. Fans mostly liked her as Season 5's villain but her role as Twilight's student this season has either been met with open arms or furious Youtube comments. Personally, I'm loving the development Starlight's receiving this season and I'm very much enjoying the student/teacher bond being gradually formed between her and Twilight. Though, I will admit that I do agree that Starlight was probably the main series's answer to Sunset Shimmer. Though, upon closer inspection, Sunset was never really Twilight's pupil but more so a friend who received some valuable lessons from Twilight. By the end of the third EG film, Sunset pretty much found her spot as the leader of the EG universe with Twilight 2 as her pupil. So it's fitting that Twilight now has a pupil of her own to put her on equal ground with Sunset. I very much loved the struggles that Starlight and facing and overcoming this season.
But, of course, I must talk about the long-awaited return of Trixie! It was great to see Trixie return and be properly redeemed. While I liked Magic Duel, the ending resolution felt somewhat rushed. This episode felt like a much-needed epilogue to that episode. And with Trixie's new friendship with Starlight, we may very well end up seeing her again at some point. I liked how Trixie and Starlight bonded over their shared regrets and pasts and I liked seeing the more genuine side of Trixie. Now, I'm sure some people will complain about Twilight's attitude towards Trixie (heck, I'm already seeing people say that Twilight was OOC in this episode). I personally totally understand Twilight's attitude. Heck, it'd be OOC for Twilight to not be suspicious of Trixie. It's not like she and Trixie became friends at the end of Magic Duel. But, as I said earlier, this episode felt like a very welcome sequel to that episode and it allowed the conflict between Twilight and Trixie to finally come to a close.
Speaking of sequels, this episode also (oddly enough) felt like a follow-up to Slice of Life. I mean, the references and fanservice were all over the place. Cranky Doodle Donkey. Derpy. DJ Pon-3 (who I believe has not been referred to by that name in-canon prior to this episode). Cranky asking Celestia about her mane. Bulk Biceps at the spa. Starlight making Big Mac enter a continuous stream of talking and articulation (and AJ's angry reaction). Rainbow Dash's priceless expressions in response to Starlight not knowing about the Wonderbolts. Angel Bunny apparently being attracted to Starlight and Fluttershy's disappointment at Starlight not joining her (don't worry, Fluttershy, you'll get your first Season 6 episode soon). This was a very fun episode with many great moments that I'm sure to watch again and again.
Now, as far as flaws go, the only real flaw that sticks out to me is a nitpick. Why didn't Starlight mention to Trixie that she was supposed to come to the dinner as well? It felt kind of forced for Starlight to choose between Twilight and Trixie based solely on that. I think it would have been better if Starlight had mentioned the dinner and Trixie revealed that she only had the stage for that night or something. At least give us some proper ground for Starlight being forced to choose! But, aside from that, there's nothing that really bugged me about this episode.
Overall, I really liked No Second Prances. Great Starlight episode. Great return for Trixie. Lots of fun fanservice. And, yes, I am totally shipping Starlight and Trixie now. Maybe MLP will pull a Korra on us and have them hook up at some point. 
Next week's episode is Newbie Dash!
Rainbow Dash finally achieves her dream of becoming a Wonderbolt, but makes a disastrous first impression with the team and gets saddled with a mortifying nickname she is determined to change.
What did the rest of you think of No Second Prances?
Sounded good from the summaries, and you actually seem to be the first person on here as far as I've seen to say that Twilight wasn't OOC from her suspicions of Trixie. I mean, she does have good reason to be worried in some ways.
3908260 Indeed. And now that i think of it, Twilight does seem to have quite a lot of Problems with dealing with reformed characters, even the ones she herself reformed: In the second movie twilight hesitated to take sunsets Hand after she came through the mirror, and she only seemed to tolerate discord, cause she had to, well, everyone besides fluttershy did, but twilight was the last one to accept him. And she treats starlight more like a social Experiment, than a friend. But on the other side, she was the first Pony to accept Luna...
I kinda like where this is going. Having more character development for twilight, and stuff, Like UFP once lampshaded, Twilight hadnt had much character development in the earlier seasons besides the first Episode, except maybe toning down her arrogance in Feeling pinkie keen, but in Season six, we have now two episodes about twilight learning to be a better teacher (and given insight in celestias teaching methods) and Season five had the whole subplot where discord and the map conspired to teach twilight a lesson about jealousy and swallowing her pride...
Right....
As you know, I also enjoyed this episode and feel that Twilight's suspicions of Trixie are somewhat legitimate. All in all, it is great to see Trixie back.
There is no doubt when the synopsis for this episode came out, people were dreading that it would turn out bad considering the subject matter. I mean, think about it. Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship, is trying to keep Starlight Glimmer, her student in learning about friendship, from being friends with someone she doesn't trust. Based on that description alone, there were fans who were worried this episode was going to vilify Twilight in a blatant attempt to build sympathy in Starlight for people who weren't too happy with her reformation, as well as her backstory being considered the weakest out of all the series' main antagonists, in the Season 5 finale. There were also others who were afraid this was going to be a rehash of one of last season's least popular episodes, What About Discord?
However, once the episode premiered, almost everyone seemed to have changed their tone about it. Not only did they say they liked it, but there were some who even declared it to be the best episode of Season 6 so far. I think William Shatner from "Airplane II: The Sequel" put it best:
Fun fact: The writer for this episode was Nick Confalone, who previously wrote Party Pooped and Hearthbreakers last season. If you remember correctly, both of those episodes centered around Pinkie Pie (though the latter episode was shared with Applejack). I guess Nick was chosen to write this story because he didn't want to limit himself to just writing episodes focused on her.
You know, I just thought of something. What if it's possible that Starlight's reason for ditching the dinner to help Trixie instead of just talking to Twilight about it was because she was trying to spite her teacher for not trusting her to make friends on her own?