"Best Gift Ever" Review: Background Pony Gifts for Hearth's Warming Eve!

For my readers: My self-imposed break is nearing its end. It will still go a little longer, but I will return to my writing soon after taking care of a few more things.

HEARTH'S WARMING IS HERE (ONCE AGAIN)! Or, almost, at least..... But the Hearth's Warming season has officially begun and so, I finally went and watched the Hearth's Warming Eve Special "Best Gift Ever", now that the time is actually fitting for it! And it was an amazing watch! I was hyped for this special episode ever since I heard about it for the first time and even after having watched it six times already now, I am still in hype mode for it!

The special already starts with a new song. Twilight and her friends were in a hurry and under lots of stress to buy last minute presents, as Hearth's Warming Eve was already on the next day. Especially Twilight was freaking out completely because she had so many other things to prepare for Hearth's Warming Eve on top of buying presents and was also awaiting a visit by Shining Armor, Cadance and Flurry Heart. She even went so far to say sing that, if she doesn't finish it all in time, she has to wait with celebrating Hearth's Warming Eve until next year! Which is something I can relate to very well and where it shows again that Twilight is just like me; I also had holidays where I was under time pressure and behind my schedule with all the things I wanted to do, but was determined to do them in the order I had intended anyway, even though I knew that I will have to postpone some of it because of that and that Hearth's Warming will be stressful that way.
But also the others, while having been less freaked out than Twilight, were concerned about finding all the presents they need in time and so, they all sung about it. During this song, called "One More Day" (of which we have already seen a Sneak Peek at San Diego Comic Con this year) we see them in Ponyville buying presents in a hurry and that Pinkie's family has come from the rockfarm to celebrate Hearth's Warming Eve together with the Apple Family. Which came with a tragic revelation to one member of the Pie Family..... When Big McIntosh kissed Sugar Belle, Marble was there and saw it, which made her retreat with a very painful expression because she has still feelings for Big McIntosh.
This is something we have already seen in the animatic at SDCC (and due to that, I was suspecting that the Hearth's Warming Eve special would largely be about Marble and how she deals with her broken heart), but her expression in the final version of the episode was even more heartbreaking. In the animatic, Marble only looked mildly sad and more disappointed than anything else, but here in the finished animation, we see that her actual expression in this moment was so full of grief and pain that it really tugs at your heartstrings seeing her like that. There is one pony for which this Hearth's Warming Eve wasn't a joyful time.....

Right after this, though, there was an even bigger surprise..... The song consists of three parts and the second part is sung entirely by a choir of background ponies! Part two of the song is the first of two of my favourite parts of the episode. For a few years now, I wish for a background pony group song and even though it isn't the entire song that is sung by background ponies, it comes very, very close to this. And after that, it still got even better, as Daisy, Lily and Roseluck have their own little sing part at the very end of the song! This is the most overall attention background ponies have gotten in MLP: FiM ever since the 100th Episode in Season 5 and it makes me smile like I am high on pure, unfiltered sugar right now!
And that isn't even the only background pony surprise "Best Gift Ever" contains, there is a much bigger one later on in the episode.....

After the song, Twilight freaked out even more and almost started hyperventilating. Applejack managed to calm her down and then suggested to play Hearth's Warming Helper this season, so that each of them only has to buy one gift and they can reduce their stress. They all got assigned one of their friends by pulling notes with their cutie marks (and Spike's wings) out of Applejack's hat and then went their way, trying to find the perfect gift, which is where the plot started to kick off.....
Right at the start, Spike got unsatisfied with his draw, as it wasn't Rarity, and started to search for the one of his friends who drew her cutie mark out of the hat, to trade so that he can get a gift for Rarity. Which he later did when he could identify Fluttershy as the one who drew Rarity, leaving Fluttershy with the task to get a present for Rainbow Dash. From here on out, all of them stumbled into difficult situations that encompass pretty much all imagineable challenges that can happen while trying to get a gift for a friend.

Twilight realized, thanks to some advice from Spike, that the present for Pinkie Pie needed to be something very special, because all of them will get only one present this year and she struggled with finding just the right gift for Pinkie Pie until she settled on cooking a pudding with an ancient recipe by Chancellor Puddinghead. Flurry Heart, after arriving with Shining Armor and Cadance, messed with the pudding by mixing all sorts of ingredients into it, however, which led to some unexpected reactions of the pudding.....

Pinkie Pie was clueless what to get for Twilight at first, then got the idea to ask Prince Rutherford for the right gift because Yona made her think that yaks are best at everything, including gift-giving. She went on a long journey to Yakyakistan and then, after Prince Rutherford revealed the secret that yaks are not good at gift-giving to her, even to the grove of some mysterious gift givers Prince Rutherford told her about to find the perfect gift for Twilight. After a long trek through the frosty tundra of Yakyakistan, Pinkie Pie reached the grove of the gift givers and got greeted by them, three magical reindeer entities going by the names of Aurora, Bori and Alice.
Alice, who is gifted with the ability of seeing the future (while Aurora can see what happened in the past and Bori can only see what happens in the present), gave Pinkie Pie a little package as a gift for Twilight, saying that she will understand why this gift is the right one.....

Rarity ordered a special hat for Applejack from a fashion designer called Fedora Felt, then had to hunt down the package that Derpy accidentally delivered to the wrong address. Arrived there, on a farm called Sweet Acorn Orchard, she heard from the couple that lives there that their son Pistachio thinks the hat is a gift Rarity sent him and, upon seeing how much Pistachio admires her and that he and his family are poor, was conflicted about clearing up the misunderstanding and taking the hat with her.
When Pistachio attempted to give the hat back to her because he had figured out that the hat wasn't meant for him, Rarity refused and let him keep it and even invited him to come as her guest to the next fashion week, but she had to return without a gift for Applejack.....

Rainbow Dash unsuccessfully tried to find out what Fluttershy likes, as Fluttershy only gave her cryptic responses of liking everything because she wanted that Rainbow Dash figures out what she likes on her own, leading to her buying some generic gift in the form of a candle, before Discord intervened and suggested Rainbow Dash to catch a fast animal named Winterchilla, with the goal to make Rainbow Dash get a proper and worthy gift for Fluttershy.
Rainbow Dash succeeded in catching the Winterchilla, but once the sun set on Hearth's Warming Eve, she had to realize that Discord wasn't telling her the whole truth about the Winterchilla.....

Fluttershy travelled with Applejack to Rainbow Falls to find good gifts and got tricked by Flim and Flam into buying a crappy Hearth's Warming doll that they presented as the "must-have gift of the season" for all the money she had with her and she and Applejack found themselves trying to end Flim and Flam's newest scheme instead of being able to focus on finding the right gifts.
After the first, unsuccessful attempt of stopping them, they managed to end their shady business by making the other customers realize that the dolls Flim and Flam are selling can't possibly be the right thing for everypony and that they should search for other gifts because of that.
However, when they left Rainbow Falls with the train, they still didn't have gifts for Rainbow Dash and Spike, other than two of the crappy dolls that Flim and Flam imposed on them.....

And Spike, after initially being eager to get Rarity something, realized that he had no idea what to get her and even after finding stuff she would like, couldn't decide what he should choose for her because he thought that nothing is special enough for Rarity. He then settled on crafting something, because it's more personal and because Rarity loves things that were made with effort, but ended up falling asleep on the crafting materials after searching for a gift for so long.....

Eventually, Fluttershy, Applejack, Rarity and Pinkie Pie arrived at Twilight's castle on Hearth's Warming Eve, greeted at the door by Spike who was covered in glitter and glue, only to see Twilight, Shining Armor, Cadance and Flurry Heart fleeing from a gigantic mass of pudding that flooded through the corridors of the castle towards the exit. As they tried to leave the castle in panic, they found their way blocked when Discord and Rainbow Dash rushed inside, chased by a gigantic monster. The Winterchilla Rainbow Dash caught turns into a monster known as the Winterzilla at sunset, something that Discord didn't tell Rainbow Dash until the very end.
Stuck between the out-of-control pudding, that had even become alive and tried to pull some of them into its mass, and the Winterzilla that had broken into the castle, Fluttershy, after some prodding by Discord, scared the Winterzilla into submission, which led to the monster breaking out in tears and revealing that it is alone because its family left for the holidays.
The pudding still attacking them, Twilight explained Pinkie that the pudding is the Hearth's Warming gift she made for her, that Flurry Heart messed with the ingredients and that she doesn't know how to fix it as she didn't see what Flurry Heart put into the pudding. Having triggered something in Pinkie Pie while she listed the ingredients written in the pudding's recipe, Pinkie Pie thought back on Alice's words and realized what the package contains.
Revealing to Twilight that she is her Hearth's Warming Helper, she jumped with the package into the pudding dramatically and brought it under control that way, because the package contained the ingredients needed to fix the pudding, as Alice could see that this would happen in the future.

The episode ended with them all sitting in the castle and eating the pudding, together with the Winterzilla who Fluttershy allowed to stay after he calmed down, and talking about their adventures while trying to get the right gifts. Fluttershy and Applejack could only gift the crappy dolls to Rainbow Dash and Spike, while explaining that they ran into Flim and Flam. Twilight apologized to Pinkie for the mess with the pudding, but Pinkie countered that it is okay, because if that wouldn't have happened, her gift she got from Alice wouldn't have made any sense. Rarity confessed to Applejack what happened to her gift, making Applejack reminisce on her dad and telling Rarity how he said that a hat sometimes chooses the pony when he gave it to her, finally revealing where she got her hat from. And Discord confessed that he made Rainbow Dash catch a Winterchilla because he wanted to make Fluttershy a special present, by bringing her into a situation where she would stop the Winterzilla and become the hero who saves their Hearth's Warming celebration, and that he used Rainbow Dash to make his plan work.
Their gift exchange culminated in Spike telling Rarity that he couldn't finish all of her gift and then playing on a self-made guitar and singing a love song for her, before Twilight broke into one last song the episode ended with after all the others joined in..... A great song by Twilight and a great way for the episode to end, but what was really special there was Spike singing a love song for Rarity, he definitely stole Twilight the show there!
And I loved all the different problems Twilight and the others had to encounter while trying to find gifts. This special episode is a lot like these typical holiday movies that center around the challenges and the stress the holidays can bring while trying to prepare for them and to make everything perfect, but much more original and with so many unique challenges Twilight and the others had to encounter.

The truly best thing in this episode, though, is something that we haven't gotten since Season 5..... For the first time since the 100th Episode, Derpy has finally gotten a speaking role again! While Rarity tries to get her gift for Applejack, she and Derpy have a long conversation about the lost package and where it has gone to. And what makes this even better, is, that Derpy's voice sounds a lot more like we got used to it from the uncensored version of "The Last Roundup" again.
In "Slice of Life", while Derpy's role in this episode was fantastic, you could hear how Tabitha St. Germain was holding herself back and doing her best to give Derpy a "normal" voice, but here, Derpy sounds distant and absent-minded a lot, which suits her much better than when Tabitha St. Germain had to force herself to make Derpy sound "normal" by mandate of Hasbro.
We don't know whether this means that Hasbro is finally becoming more comfortable with letting Derpy as her true self be in the show again and slowly recovers from the traumatic experience during Season 2 or if someone at DHX hit the right chords and convinced Hasbro of letting Derpy sound like this in the special, but either way, that we could hear Derpy being really "ditzy" again, is the best present we could get for this year's Hearth's Warming Eve.
Seeing the amount of attention background ponies got in this episode with Derpy's new speaking role and the background pony vocal part in "One More Day" warms my heart this year and hearing Derpy like this again is truly the "Best Gift Ever".