Horse Play Review · 7:20am May 2nd, 2018
Due to my writing in general being slow, this'll be an easy one to review as I already have one complete. The others I will jumble together as the week goes on.
I find it funny that Celestia's foalhood dream was to be in a play, because that's the set-up for this episode about learning to... not... do stuff outside your comfort zone? Not be dishonest to your friends? Not... make plays because they'll always go bad?
So yeah, turns out in the one thousand plus years Celestia has been alive, she never once, in all that time, found out how to star in a play or get acting lessons. Except as a Princess of a large country who has faced existential threats and tutored volatile demigod children, wouldn't she in fact be well acquainted with saying and doing things she doesn't actually mean, and emoting what she does not actually feel? Commonly known as, oh, I don't know...acting?
But that's just one of many leaps of logic we're expected to take in this episode. Not only did Celestia never learn to act, she is bad at acting in general with no talent for it at all. It's not a joke. She is actually, legitimately bad at acting. Twilight is upset by this, because in the play she wrote, Celestia is the star. But Twilight wants Celestia's dream to come true, so she hides her true feelings on the matter and pushes forward with the play anyway. To quote, she says that if she tells Celestia she's a bad actor, then that means she's a "bad friend."
What the fuck? Are you for real right now, Twilight? You honestly believe that telling Celestia she might not be able to be in the play makes you a "bad friend?" Not uncomfortable, maybe? What about just rephrasing it to "I've spent so long looking up to Celestia I can't stand talking down to her!" You know, something an intelligent person would say. Why isn't the conflict of this episode something like... Celestia's ego gets in the way, instead?
I mean, she was enough of an egomaniac for Luna to go insane with loneliness, right? Why not have her start to take over the play Twilight originally just wanted her to star in, and Twilight bends over backwards because she loves Celestia too much to tell her no? And it can turn into something like "don't compromise your vision even for the advice of those you care about, because you can lose sight of what you were doing before." And then Luna swoops in and says something like "Celestia, you always do this!" And then the episode is actually emotionally affecting because we'd remember the Nightmare Moon incident, and Celestia realizes that without meaning to her commanding presence has led to ponies giving her what she wants instead of fulfilling themselves and decides to cut back on all the up-close intervention. Bam, instant classic.
Edit: in the final minutes of the episode Twilight does in fact say she looks up to Celestia so much she can't stand saying anything bad about her. Points for that. But now we're stuck with the fact that after eight freaking seasons and Celestia showing up on-screen for like two of them, not to mention constantly subverting her presence as a regal, majestic creature by making sure to act like a goofball every time she opens her mouth, Twilight is still so obsessed with Celestia's favor that we get sub-par episodes like this.
I've seen people say that "Well, this is play acting, which is completely different from acting as a head of state." And they would be mostly right, except for the fact that they are wrong. The mere idea that Celestia is so absolutely brain-dead that she has no idea how to even begin projecting her voice, affecting accents she lived through and probably spoke herself, and apparently can't even dance, or even remember when she's supposed to say her lines, is childishness far and away from what I've come to expect from the show.
Yeah, I know "it's a little girl's cartoon." Nobody cares. There's such a thing as being too childish for children. And childishness is about all we get from the characters. Celestia doesn't act like someone unfamiliar with acting, she acts like... well, a brain-dead absolute moron. Like she's trying to be bad. And uh, if she is, that just makes it all worse.
AJ actually points this out after Twilight and everypony else starts flipping their wig about the mere possibility of Princess Celestia starring in their show. "Why in tarnation are ya'll getting so star-struck?" she asks. "We've met Princess Celestia plenty of times before."
Not only that we've seen her get her ass handed to her too! Ahem.
But it's Starlight who really nails home how recursive the atmosphere of this episode is. "Those were formal things! Galas, world saving, this is different! Imagine doing sweaty warm-ups with the Princess, blowing your nose in front of the Princess, talking to a Princess!"
Yeah, I get it Starlight. You've never done anything embarrassing with a Princess or ever once seen them in a vulnerable position before.
Never once at all.
The "humor" is supposed to come from how Celestia is both awful and enthusiastic about acting, but it's just a few chuckles and reaction gifs here and there, nothing special. The conflict, such as it is, is Twilight getting more stressed out because things keep going wrong with the play, and no matter how many lessons she sends Celestia to, her acting remains awful. Over 22 minutes we watch Twilight get increasingly flustered until she finally snaps, and yells at everypony about how the play is all wrong, and Celestia's acting is bad. This causes Celestia to run away in a huff because Twilight freaking lied to her.
Another tangent: pure, unabridged cringe humor? It's not funny. It's just cringe. Watching Celestia continuously and absolutely fail at anything even closely resembling acting for the entire episode while Twilight waffles over something as mind-numbingly simple as saying "You're not good at acting" is... I dunno. I've seen the show do better. I mean, more than once we see the other ponies just scream in Twilight's face "THIS IS THE SOLUTION" so, like... what's the point of watching? We know we're just waiting until Twilight does the thing, then she does the thing and it's over.
Also they explicitly show that if everything else went right with the play, Twilight would have allowed Celestia to go on-stage and completely embarrass herself. But it's okay because Twilight apologizes, and then Princess Celestia shows off her real talent: delegating!
Yeah, she stays behind the curtain telling everypony what to do. That's her huge revelation. The Princess is really good at... being a Princess. She goes from princess to actress and then princess again, and...what?
I don't get what this episode was going for here. Celestia just kinda goes... nowhere? She doesn't develop as a character. She learns she was good at... doing the job she was already doing. Twilight learns that LYING IS BAD, with the extra wrinkle you shouldn't lie even to protect someone's feelings. But that's an extremely basic lesson, and it's attached to such a miserably boring and nonsensical story it's not really something to applaud. Also I'm pretty sure this lesson has already been in like... pretty much the entire show already, in some form or other, or at least attached as a corollary to other lessons.
Can we talk about the part where Celestia stormed off in a huff like some five-year-old throwing a tantrum? Is that really what the Princess of Equestria is reduced to now? A vector for cringe humor and "ha ha look at the big important princess she actually acts like a doof it's funny because it's a reversal of expectations?" Pure irony isn't funny, it's just... ironic.
One final niggle: if Celestia is bad at acting... why is she suddenly good at acting when she advises Fluttershy on how to get in touch with her inner Princess?
The only semi-interesting part here is the potential for uh... "lore." But we already knew the lore, so that's a bust. The play is about how Starswirl and other unicorns kept having to raise the sun, but when they did, everyone except Starswirl (for no fucking reason except he's special I guess) would lose their magic forever. They were running out of unicorns which is a problem. Then Celestia came along and boop! Everything was fine forever.
Except, who was raising the sun before the unicorns took up the job? If the unicorns used all their magic, and they needed to do it every day, and the show explicitly states they did it so much they almost had no unicorns with any magic left whatsoever, how long did they have to keep doing it? Is there a story about the tragic "Magicless Generation" of unicorns that were just oh well unlucky enough to be born before Celestia swooped in?
. This is a thing she did not overcome in the last finale, looking up to starswirl so much she overlooked starlight's friendship and solution. This is her comeuppance.
I agree that the cringe humor in the middle was the weakest part, but it doesn't really bring the episode down.
Celestia's development was pretty explicit. She outright says that even though she's not good at acting she enjoyed working with them to do something creative and put on a show. So now she has a hobby, which is cool. I tend to put aside the "how has she not done X in over a thousand years" thing. Then she'll never be allowed to do anything fun.
Celestia ran away because she wasn't being respected. Sure it was a bit immature to leave everyone hanging, but if I was a powerful ruler, being used and lied to for my position when I thought I was being included out of friendship would be one of my pet peeves.
9/10
Why don't you get droves of commenters telling you you should stop watching the show if it causes you so much pain every time you post an episode review? <.<
I completely agree. It was – for a show episode – rather amateurish fanfic level writing. It’s also a very clear demonstration of how the show increasingly is talking down at its intended audience. Being a dad twice over I can categorically state from direct experience: grade school age children are far smarter than most adults credit them. This would simply not have been tolerated in the Faust era.
4852047
Dude, with all the reviews you’ve done you haven’t minced words, whereas the SA group posts recommendations for stories it likes. You’re in a much more controversial position and attract followers who are looking for “straight-shooter” opinions. So you shouldn’ be surprised your followers shoot back when they disagree. If anything, you should take it as a compliment that they are honestly voicing their opinions, and if they really object to your posts then they would just unfollow you, but they stick around so obviously they want you to continue.
4852065
It's just not fun anymore, y'know? :/
4852086
Then you have to look at what brings you joy, and focus on these. Maybe it's also time to look into other aspects of participation in the community and try a few things until you find something that fires your passion or tickles your funny bone. Much harder to do, but, hey nobody is forcing you to do them, maybe drop those things that have become a chore instead of a joy.
4852111
This is what I done. <.<
4852047
Possibly because I'm too lazy to post it on the day the episode comes out or soon after, so people aren't actively looking for reviews on it. Or maybe I just have a lot less clout in ponydom than I thought.
Do you think I'd get more attention if I get naked when I write the reviews?
4852227
...All I know is it wouldn't work for me. <.<
Sorry, but I'm going to pull hard against you on some of this.
Wrong. It was jealousy, something Celestia is far less capable of addressing. The tendency of many to blame Celestia for Luna's fall is based on sheer fanon presumption.
So then after building conflict with different characters for 15 minutes, Luna swoops in unheralded, guilts her sister for the time *Luna* tried to murder Celestia and the world because being a horse princess demigod national co-ruler wasn't good enough, then because she is the author's mouthpiece she is Right and all is well.
And I'm just gonna dissect this a moment here: the Celestia as you wrote-
1. Lacks empathy by bullying others with her commanding presence
2. Doesn't let others fulfill themselves
3. Does too much "up-close intervention"
These things are the opposite of Celestia. If anything, she's too willing to subvert her own command, too willing to delegate, and too eager to let someone else do the talking or make the decision. This would be one of those shitty episodes where someone acts completely OOC for no reason just to generate the conflict.
It is different, and I can speak with some authority on that. Every time a customer service person is cool and professional to a client, they are probably acting to hide their boredom or annoyance. My own job requires telling a fair quantity of evasive or half-truth answers (I am a government inspector who is often asked questions of things I cannot answer fully, but have to respond to). The difference between these and stagecraft are very large - play actors have to over-react in order to convey themselves to an audience, and convincingly become another person in another place and time while on stage. My skill in bluffing bureaucrats does not translate into an ability to drive someone to tears with a role as Romeo.
Less forgivable is Celestia's blindness (I, conversely, am well aware I am no Romeo), but there are reasonable explanations. Maybe its a blind spot for her - how many shitty fanfic authors delude themselves of greatness? Maybe she just thought Twilight would tell her if she sucked. Maybe she didn't have a lovely third-person view to tell her that she was actually sucking.
This. This is my problem with the episode, here. Celestia explains it away with "Oh, I don't need to act, I just like to participate." Which really sounds like the thing I tell my friends before running home to eat ice cream and cry.
Leaving a situation is exactly the right thing to do when pissed off.
My own fix for this episode would be to skip the whole "Rainbow tells the world" angle and just have Celestia be amateurishly hamming every line and loving the whole thing. Twilight freaks for a while and eventually comes down to a point of decision of whether to boot her or not. Some voice of reason - hell, it can be Luna if you really want - tells her "Bitch, I don't care if she's good, this is the most fun Celestia has had in centuries, don't rob this from her." So they do the play and Celestia's terrible and it's awful and fun and it don't matter if you're good at something so long as you like doing it, that's the moral kids.
4852425
Maybe? Should Celestia really be the one to be doing that, not only leaving the situation but apparently going on a beeline back to Canterlot over what's honestly a pretty minor slight, instead of just going to some back room to wait for Twilight's apology? Yeah it's nitpicking, but I feel a lot of picked nits could have at least improved the overall tone of the episode.
I think a major issue the fandom has is that almost everything we know about Celestia is fanon. We have virtually no concrete information on either her history or her mannerisms when she's not ruling, and I shudder to think Royal Problem and this episode are all we get. I mean, we're clearly on both sides of the fence here; I actually thought this episode was the one where Celestia was acting completely OOC given the points I made. As for my alternate version, I mean, yeah, it depends on the fanon that Celestia was partially to blame for Luna... and isn't she? How does someone who is so empathetic they would not stoop to the behavior I described not notice their own sister going nuts? Like I said, Celestia's character is pretty much all fanon whatever angle we look from.
4852425
I always figured that Celestia has the innate power to get her subjects to bow down to her. But she has held that in check, especially since the Luna incident. And this play could be her letting loose and getting to do what she wants to do, even if it means taking over everything. For the most part Celestia lets ponies govern themselves.
4852491
There are a lot of potential reasons. Maybe Luna didn't let it show - how many times has a caring, loving family member been shocked to learn their loved one was depressed or suicidal? Maybe there were signs, but Celestia missed or misread them - a "temper tantrum" that proved to be more, or a "sisterly squabble" that would come to involve attempted genocide. Close family members are often blind to the flaws of their loved ones. Maybe Celestia tried to comfort Luna, and failed - it can be no small task to placate another who is mad with jealousy for you.
All of these are far more in-character than "I know my sister is going murderously insane with jealousy for me and do nothing to protect my subjects or myself or placate my sister."
Hm, there's been enough to get a good glimpse, both in word and action.
We see multiple times that she is enjoys breaks from pomp and circumstance. She does not mind being mocked or joked upon, and she will act to lighten the mood if ponies are too uptight or scared of her. Also, the first thing she did on Luna's return (Celestia's first appearance) was cry, ask to make up, and offer to co-rule the kingdom again, so I've always viewed claims of her indifference, evil, or cruelty as pretty hollow character assassination.
Late. but I kind of like somewhat silly Celestia. She's been proven to troll before, as she does at the end. Heck, she could have even pretended to be bad at acting. Also, its possibly a form of stress relief due to acting all regal and shit