Season 3, quick reactions, pt 2 · 5:34pm Oct 2nd, 2018
Apple Family Reunion: I liked how this emphasizes that old people have friends they like to hang out with, too; their lives aren't centered around their children and grandchildren. And the moral of "don't overschedule people if you want them to have fun" is one our society desperately needs. I do think that this episode makes the "first three seasons are 1 year" idea really damn implausible; it's 4 -5 episodes since One Bad Apple, and for 65 episodes to be 1 year, each episode has to be less than a week apart on average, but Apple Bloom does not behave like someone who last saw her cousin less than a month ago.
Spike At Your Service: ...well. That was ... a thing. I can certainly tell why it is everyone hates this episode. The premise of Spike wanting to serve Applejack isn't completely terrible, but the fact that Spike, who cooks and cleans for Twilight and is always assisting Rarity at stuff, is so incompetent that no one wants him helping, is both OOC and a terrible message to send to children. The best I can guess is that he was subconsciously sabotaging himself because he didn't really want to serve Applejack for the rest of his life, he just thought he had to (and what book did he get this Noble Dragon Code out of anyway, because when we see how actual dragons behave it seems completely made up by Spike.) What I don't get is, if this is the episode that got people thinking about AppleSpike... why? What about this episode suggests that Spike is more appropriate a partner for Applejack than for Rarity? Yeah, Rarity freely uses the help Spike offers in the rest of the series, while Applejack refuses his help... but this isn't because Applejack is nobler than Rarity, it's because she's more stubborn, convinced only Apple Clan ponies can help out, and in this episode he's incompetent anyway so why would she want his help? There's no romantic implication in this episode at all.
Keep Calm and Flutter On: I'm assuming anyone reading my blog has probably read my story "Negotiating Terms", which more or less sums up what I think of this episode. Like everyone else, I agree, it happened too fast and was barely believable, but unlike a lot of people at the time, I didn't think Discord giving up being completely unregulated in exchange for friendship was at all implausible. In Return of Harmony it was obvious he wants ponies to pay attention to him, he thinks chaos is awesome and he wants ponies to agree, although if they don't he'll just laugh at them. Where anyone who saw a guy make pies float and ponies knock down houses by sneezing got the idea that he's Pony Satan and irredeemably evil, I don't know. (Yes, screwing with people's personalities to make them the opposite of what they are is horrible, but in the very next episode Twilight mind controls ponies to fight each other over a toy, and gets no punishment outside of a lecture, so it wasn't as if Discord's actions are shown to be utterly beyond the pale in pony society.)
Games Ponies Play: Unfortunately, this episode sort of depends on Idiot Plot. The fact that it never occurs to any of the ponies that more than one mare might have a floral bag, the fact that Peachbottom consistently is completely out of character for what they've been told to expect from Harshwhinny, and the fact that no one ever calls her by name... I mean, when you first meet someone, wouldn't your natural inclination be to address them by name? Oh, but then the episode couldn't happen. If I were Harshwhinny I'd have rejected them on the grounds that plainly the Crystal Empire doesn't have its shit together if they could make a mistake like that. Also, the Crystal Empire is back from being in limbo for 1000 years, so if Cadance decides to wear her mane differently, who the hell would care? One sentence about "I know it's not tradition, but for the Crystal Empire to move forward into the current century we've decided to make new traditions" and no inspector would have given a damn.
Just for Sidekicks: This episode is better. Spike is greedy, no surprise there, it's practically his only character flaw. Angel is a bastard but surprisingly competent for a bunny. Spike actually has no idea how to take care of pets and didn't research it because he was just thinking it was easy access to gems; also the eating all his gems and therefore having none for his cake is surprisingly relateable. It's not a really interesting episode but it's not terrible.
Magical Mystery Cure: This episode is terrible. Wow, I can see where some of the hate comes from. I always thought from the description of the story that it sounded really interesting and cool, why do people have so much hate for it? Just because they're freaked at Twilight becoming an alicorn? But no. Making the episode a musical was the worst idea ever; song numbers almost never move the plot forward, and putting so many of them in 22 minutes means the plot has to rush forward in the few minutes where there are no songs. Nothing has emotional impact, everything is like a music video, cut cut cut here's a new scene! Here's something else! But the music and visuals aren't good enough to hold the attention of a crack ferret so exactly who is the audience here? Man they were phoning it in. Did they have a music budget they were rushing to spend all of? The worst part is the idea, the outline of the story, is still great. But the handling is so phenomenally bad.
Overall, Season 3... you kind of sucked. Crystal Empire was good, Magic Duel was good, Too Many Pinkie Pies, Sleepless in Ponyville and Wonderbolts Academy were good. Keep Calm and Flutter On had a great idea but mediocre execution. Magical Mystery Cure had a great idea but abominable execution. Every other episode either had a plot that was meh, or in the case of Spike at your Service, a plot that was actively terrible. 6 good eps out of a 13 ep season is less than half. What the hell happened with Season 3?
Is the consensus these days that MMC is bad? Back when it came out you couldn't really have a discussion about it without it just devolving into being another twilicorn debate. I agree it's pretty bad though.
Y'know, I never considered the "how it could happen" angle on Games Ponies Play. Granted, I never liked it anyway, but you've given me a more nuanced reason not to. :V
Yeah, about what I expected. Season three seems to hold a special kind of infamy in the fandom. Aside from being the only half-length season to date (most likely due to the first Equestria Girls being developed simultaneously), it was also the most divisive. Twilicorn and Discord's reformation were the big base-breakers, obviously, as well as the fact that season three was the first one developed without Lauren Faust, but Crystal Empire was also controversial at the time for its own reasons, and I think Spike At Your Service did a lot to drag down the season as well. One awful episode in twenty-six is forgivable, but one in thirteen (or even two in thirteen for those who really hate Magical Mystery Cure) is a much greater proportion of awfulness.
It's no surprise really that most people rank season three as their least favourite of the series. Or at least they did last time I saw people debating it. Personally, it was my least favourite as well until seven came along.
Yeah, the timeline has always been really implausible to me. Applejack and Rarity at least are probably working way more than 40 hours a week at their normal jobs, plus all these wacky adventures happening that seems to divert all their time for several days, happening once a week, yet somehow their businesses thrive? And then in later seasons they make everything worse by making them teachers on top of everything else.
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Regarding Games Ponies Play, I actually think it makes sense, because this is clearly based off the Olympics, where everything is political. I feel like Harshwhinny or her bosses was probably pressured by Celestia to give the Crystal Empire the games no matter what, since they need the tourist revenue to modernize their economy. Cadance and the Mane 6 weren't told this, so they went all out.
As many times has been said. MMM should have been a two parter. They should've thrown out spike at your service and just gone with a stronger finale.
MMC is one of my favorite episodes. :c
4947192 Juxtaposing those two makes me wonder if Spike At Your Service would've worked better as one of the AU's that Twilight fixed.
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To be fair, I quite like MMC too. It definitely would’ve been better as a two-parter, but overall I liked everything in it. Think it has the same issue as Keep Calm and Flutter On, which I also really liked; the idea needed a little more care and attention to work properly, but it’s still enjoyable in its own right. You just kind of have to fill in those gaps yourself - which isn’t ideal storytelling, but it is meant to be kids tv after all.
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I assume Spike at your Service was meant to be an episode in an earlier season, before they'd really hammered out his character. Honestly, between that and the fact that Magic Duel was reportedly supposed to be a season one or two episode it feels like a lot of season 3 was dumping grounds for story ideas they'd wanted to do earlier but never got the chance to before realizing "Crud, we are about to make Twilight an alicorn. Use it or lose it for the idea bucket guys!"
Honestly, that might explain some of the later season weirdness too like why Twilight was initially not fond of Starlight and Trixie's friendship. Crystal Empire, Keep Calm, and MMC aside it's kinda like the writers just got their rocks off then went "Eh, everyone's more angry about Discord and Twilicorn. Let's just say the rest of the season didnt count."