Frenemies Review

I'm normally not much in the business of doing reviews, but given how negative my previous one was, I thought it would be nice to do a positive one. In fact, an extremely positive one. Let's go over "Frenemies." Also, for those wondering about Friendship Is Absurd, the next chapter should be up sometime in the next several days.

Anyway, the review. Unfortunately, it's harder to write a positive review than a negative one... or perhaps more accurately, it's harder to dissect it in as much depth. The jokes are good, the song is good, the plot is a bit predictable but still works, and Cozy Glow, Chrysalis, and Tirek had great chemistry. Not much else to say.

So for more in depth, I want to compare it to Rollercoaster of Friendship. So many things that did wrong, this does right. Let's take a few examples.

First, the villains. Rollercoaster of Friendship was incredibly poor in the villain department; I stand by my statement that Vignette was the weakest villain in Friendship Is Magic history. This episode, however, did something quite impressive: It actually took villains I didn't care that much about and made me like them. Tirek was extremely disposable to me before this point; yeah, School Raze and The Beginning of the End raised him slightly in my eyes, but this episode made me actually like the guy. Granted, this was mostly accomplished by making him a bit goofier ("Don't you dare bring Gram-Gram into this!"), but I don't feel like that went far enough to actually remove the menace from him. Not to mention, that "change" made sense. It makes him, for lack of a better word, more human as a villain. I can't really give too much of an "improved" mark to Chrysalis, given that I already liked her. But her newfound obsession with the log was a bit amusing.

But the real highlight was Cozy Glow. The dissonance of her trying to do cheerful teambuilding, all to accomplish evil, was just plain hilarious, as was her abrupt shifts when she was extremely annoyed ("This is NOT the real me! I'M CUTE AND LOVABLE!"). She was easily the most entertaining of the group. I still feel her character doesn't make all that much sense (and her motivation in School Raze was downright confusing), but now she's entertaining enough I can overlook that. Not to mention that those problems are the fault of preceding episodes, not this one, so I can't really hold it against this episode. It should also be noted that I appreciate the amount of attention they paid to her various facial expressions, which made her work even better.

Okay, so perhaps that's not a pure opposite. We didn't end up with the best villains of the series in this episode, as none of them are the Dazzlings (who, incidentally, seem like they're finally going to show up again). But they were thoroughly entertaining, and taking villains I previously didn't care about and turning them into ones I suddenly had affection for is certainly a a contrast with having the weakest villain in the series.

Next is plot. I complained that Rollercoaster of Friendship was just Mirror Magic repackaged. This one? Well, obviously, "individually you fail, with teamwork you win" is a plot done previously on the show. But having the villains be the ones to learn it (and then partially back off from it) is a new and intriguing twist. In fact, setting aside the "lesson," have we ever have a "villain episode" of the show before? That alone is sufficiently new to warrant its existence. So instead of being a dull retread, this actually did something the series hadn't done before as its premise. For that matter, I complained previously that Rollercoaster of Friendship "furthers no narrative and introduces nothing that isn’t at best superficial." I already noted this introduced something new, but it also furthered the narrative of Grogar and the other villains.

Also, songs. I mentioned how the one song in Rollercoaster of Friendship was one of the weakest songs in the entire Equestria Girls franchise (at least in the specials, I haven't seen all of the shorts). This episode, in contrast, has a great song--one of the best in the series, in fact. "Better Way to Be Bad" is fun, catchy, and funny--the last of which actually doesn't apply to that many songs in the series, now that I think about it. It's a fun song to listen to on its own merits, but seeing it in the episode itself is even better.

The only real "weak link" in this episode is Grogar himself. He's just not really that interesting, and he brings up some questions; he's clearly very powerful (able to free both Tirek and Cozy Glow from Tartarus and outright resurrect Sombra), so why does he need Chrysalis/Tirek/Cozy Glow anyway? And it's confusing that he says at the start he doesn't trust anything they say, but then he trusts them enough to go after his bell? His motivations for bringing them together don't really make that much sense, unfortunately. That said, it is possible that a later episode will put these into better light, and he's a small enough part of the episode he can be excused.

All in all? I'm going to just come out and say it. This is my favorite episode of the entire TV series. It's still behind Rainbow Rocks, but that's a special, not an episode; in terms of episodes, it's #1. It probably goes without saying at this point, but this is an episode I really recommend watching, especially if you like Friendship Is Absurd (which the episode actually reminded me of at times).