Top Bolt Review S6E24 · 5:18pm Oct 10th, 2016
Time to wrap up the season (for me, anyway)
So, on the one hand, I take back my statement from my blog about Season 6 being poor. They used the characters well here. Rainbow was in-character, Twi was in-character, both were funny and played off each other well. I liked seeing Rainbow interact with Spitfire more casually, and remember about her days in training.
A pity that the episode actually focused on a completely insufferable jackass.
I said my problem with Stranger Than Fanfiction was how arrogant Quibble Pants was that made it difficult to stomach him in the second half, but he remained funny because of the set-up. Sky Stinger is even more arrogant, spends two thirds of the episode that way, and is not funny. I want to punch this jackass in the face. His thirty-second backstory did nothing to make me sympathize with him or endear him. What a lazy backstory, he had a lot of siblings and didn't get much attention as a kid. His one redeeming trait is his concern for Vapor Trail, which is buried under lots of arrogance, condescension, and just generally being a jerk.
And that's not even getting into the mountain of unfortunate implications between him and Vapor Trail. This is basically an abusive, neglectful relationship here. She puts aside her own dreams and her own wellbeing to support him, he confidently boasts about how good he is with her help, and looks down at her as not as good as him. Vapor Trail clearly has self-esteem issues and he is ignorant of them. With how she discovers her love for doing tricks and gains enthusiasm for being at the academy, you don't have to squint very hard to see a story about a battered woman getting the confidence to pull her life together and escape her abusive spouse. The fact the two are obviously a couple and not just friends makes it even harder to ignore the comparisons.
When Vapor snaps and tells Sky the truth I cheered, then booed when he accused her of being a bad friend. I know I should feel bad he's angry at finding out he's a crappy flier, but they played up his jerkness too much. He was lazy, had no interest in practicing or studying. He just assumed he was the best from natural talent and ignored any outside input. Yeah he came around at the end of the episode but for me it was too late.
Overall, decent episode. Good showing from Rainbow and Twilight, and Vapor Trail is a very good new character, but Sky Stinger was a jackass and his relationship with Vapor Trail left a thin coating of icky on every scene with both of them.
I agree that there is a STRONG subtext to this episode of domestic abuse and a morality play about a battered woman empowering herself, and originally that's exactly how I saw this episode playing out, but after thinking about it, I'm not entirely sure that's how the writers meant this story to look. I think it's really just an unfortunate turd the script laid on the way to the car.
Didn't really like Sky Stinger, though, I'll give you that. He's a jerk. Maybe he'll mellow now that he got the wind knocked out of him a little? At least he's not Lightning Dust.