MLP Marathon Bonanza S6 E7-9 · 12:40am Nov 22nd, 2017
Newbie Dash
Well, I’ve heard a lot about this episode, mostly how divisive it is. The episodes people reference as being similar to this one in how they are hated lead me to believe that I’ll probably find this to be totally acceptable. I don’t like to get into all the drama surrounding controversial episodes, so I’m just gonna try and review this on its merits alone.
With all that being said and having watched it now, I can say that, yep... I think it’s totally fine. On a certain level, I can understand why people would hate this episode. I keep hearing that everyone says the Wonderbolts are big assholes, and they kinda are? Sure, they mercilessly haze Rainbow Dash and it drives her a little bit crazy, but the Wonderbolts are a highly competitive and prestigious group of ponies who got where they are by being, well, the best. It’s understandable to me that they’d all have egos and be kinda dickish.
All of Rainbow’s impressions are cute to an extent, but her Rarity hair is the most adorable.
The problem I have with this episode is not that Rainbow gets really self-conscious when they call her Crash, or even that she still idolizes ponies who are basically dicks to her. Again, it’s to be expected I think, and RD kinda fits in with their group. The thing that bothered me was that RD’s response to getting a bad nickname was to come up with her own and emulate her friends. Sure it’s funny and all, but why would that be what she does? It doesn’t sit well with me because it feels a little nonsensical. I can’t hate it though, and it’s pretty far from my least liked episode. I think there’s a good lesson in here about being able to take a hit and not let it keep you down. The Wonderbolts are kinda mean, but it’s part of being the team, and not everyone has to be sugary sweet all the time. I still think the Wonderbolts make good friends.
A Hearth’s Warming Tail
I think every show at some point ends up doing a Christmas Carol parody of their own, so at least it’s good to see that MLP did it really well. It’s really great, I think, that Starlight Glimmer is a character now because she ends up fitting really perfectly into the alternate dimension-Scrooge character that they write for her. Going into this, I just assumed it would be a standard Christmas Carol story but with ponies in place of all the characters. While it was about half of that, I was pleasantly surprised with how they changed quite a bit of the story.
Don’t worry Luna. I’m gonna post your song at the end of this episode’s review.
Changing the Scrooge character from someone who just hates to Christmas Hearth’s Warming to someone actively trying to destroy it is pretty genius. This gives the double whammy of not only teaching Starlight a lesson about Hearth’s Warming generally, but also serves as a reminder of what she tried to do in her little village, actively trying to destroy differences. On top of this, we also have quite a few good songs in this episode as well. Like Crusaders of the Lost Mark (but nowhere near as tear-inducing), this episode is basically a musical, and I’m always okay with that. In fact, I’ll probably be listening to these songs a lot as Christmas gets nearer. All in all, quite a good episode.
Good shit, yo. Luna’s singing VA has a pretty incredible voice.
The Saddle Row Review
Well dang, that was really great. There’s a lot to like about this episode, and I can’t even begin to imagine how many memes it spawned (there’s so much meme-able stuff here). I liked that the episode is framed as Rarity reading a review, and that it’s told through flashbacks from each pony’s point of view. This set up allowed for a lot of really great jokes where the punchline came in by cutting back to one them being interviewed. Hell, the interviews themselves were consistently funny as well.
As of this season and season 5, I’m liking Pinkie Pie so much more than I ever did before.
On top of all the great gags and silly jokes, I think there’s a pretty sweet message in here about all of Rarity’s friends realizing that she would want them to help in their way, not hers. It’s not a particularly complex moral, but it’s quite a good one. Aso, I haven’t mentioned it yet, but I was thinking about it during the Maud episode from earlier. I think it’s really great and kind of interesting that Rarity is really successful. She’s kind of the only one of the ponies who has a real job, and she’s really good at it. It’s not something kids could really relate to, I don’t think, but I can, and I’m kind of envious of her. Perhaps this is why Rarity has always been one of my favorite of Twilight and Co.
This chair? Not clothes.
To end this review off, I’m just going to list some of the things that I enjoyed about this episode in no particular order.
- Russian mob horse (and spoon loving daughter)
- Sweep, sweep, sweep
- Pinkie Pie saying that cloning yourself always sounds like a good idea
- Twilight begging to be allowed to organize
- Pinkie’s shoulder devil/angel Rarity
- Rainbow Dash’s contest to pick a salespony
- Locking Rarity in the window display
- Racoon waiter
- Pinkie getting the check for all her pancakes and handing it to the interviewer
- SPOONS!
Saddle Row Review was my personal favorite of the season, and there were so many moments that made it stand out among other episodes. It's one of the funniest episodes in the series, and they way each of the characters played off each other was just amazing.
As for Newbie Dash, while I wouldn't call what Rainbow Dash went through hazing (given that it doesn't snugly fit the definition, as all she received was a callsign and something that all worth flyers of the day have to do regardless of seniority), I will say it's an okay episode. Rainbow Dash was my least favorite part, especially the imitations, and I can't say I'll ever like the Wonderbolts outside of their sleek designs and potential. Luckily, they're much more tolerable as characters in future episodes, even though I never found them to be absolutely horrible in Newbie Dash. After all, they complimented Rainbow Dash in a few small scenes and ensured her ego wouldn't run out of control on the team, which I guess counts for something.
And yes, Luna's Future is a wonderful song, and I love the parallels between A Hearth's Warming Tail and Starlight's character arc thus far. It certainly adds more to the story in my opinion, and it was just a fun way of reworking A Christmas Story into one that fits MLP.
I remember hearing about this after I watched the episode. I think my thought at the time was, "Have any of these people been on a sports team? C'mon."
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I was pleasantly surprised by A Hearth's Warming Tail. I fully expected to enjoy it but found it much better than I had anticipated.
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I don't sport, so I don't really know how it feels, but that's basically what it seemed like to me watching it. It just felt like normal sports things joking around with each other.
Starlight's outfit in the Christmas carol episode is pretty cute.
Within seven hours of "The Saddle Row Review" airing, there were remixes of the sweeping song on YouTube. As there should have been.
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Yep, basically. Friendly trash talk is super common.
The Wonderbolts have always been dicks. Newbie Dash sucks because Rainbow acts like a complete moron because she's fucking stupid, and that's the episode that taught me I shouldn't expect anything more of her, just like I shouldn't expect Spike to have good episodes.
Fun fact: There is, to my knowledge, exactly one story with mister Stripes on this site.
Newbie Dash is great. It proved that Rainbow Dash fans are just as whiny and ridiculous as Spike fans when they're the ones finally getting shortchanged. Spike fans just happen to be the ones who have more shit to put up with.
And on a completely unrelated note (like, stupendously unrelated in any way), I hate Saddle Row Review. I hate how it is perfect in every way. Only the most perfect episodes utilize all six ponies while keeping Spike the fuck out of things.
I enjoyed all three of these, but especially the latter two.
Reading through these makes me feel like I should really rewatch S6 again. So many of the episodes were marred by my intense dislike of Starlight Glimmer. I hated how quickly and easily she was "redeemed" in the last 5 minutes of S5 and that tainted my view of any episode that even featured her, much less the ones where she was a prominent character like A Hearthswarming Tail. Perhaps now that those feelings have lessened I might get a lot more enjoyment out of rewatching the episodes.
I thought the problem with Newbie Dash is how it was framed for the viewers and Dash. It was supposed to be a story about the new guy getting hazed, but because of the emotional baggage associated with Rainbow Crash, it became a story about someone reliving their childhood bullying through their idols.
I kept waiting for RD to actually explain why she hates the name and the Wonderbolts apologize because they never knew. But we don't get that. The episode could have been a good show of bow bullying and hazing are different, and how to let go of bad childhood experiences. But it didn't have that critical reveal of what the name means and so fell short.
My problem with Newbie Dash wasn't the hazing. People seemed to have a problem with it just... being there. In the way they hate that sometimes Rarity is vain or Rainbow is a jerk sometimes. But that's not the episode's main problem. It's that it was completely nonsensical. Until someone can tell me how that scene where Rainbow Dash freaks out and crashes into the exact same cloud that she specifically told Scootaloo to throw in front of her makes any sense at all, I maintain it was an extremely poor episode. I mean, on top of the friend imitating and everything else.
Saddle Row Review and Hearth's Warming were great showcases of creativity, though.