Growing Up is Hard To Do Review (Spoilers for American Fans!) · 2:43am Sep 5th, 2019
Just when you thought the leaks were done, they come roaring back with a vengance! Portugal got Episodes 22 through 26 with English subtitles, denying any possibility of the end of Season 9 being spoiler free. But then it seemed like English fans would be in luck after Australia and China both pulled their planned early airings of the remaining episodes. Until a few days ago when an outright hack caused the episodes to pop up in full English. However, I'm only reviewing this episode and the next one early, because the last three episodes are going to be different. Episodes 24 and 25 are the big two parter, the season finale. And Episode 26 is an official epilogue for the show, the series finale. Because of that I won't watch them early, even though I'll have to wait a long time to see them. If you're waiting until the official American airings though, you know what to expect.
This episode was written by Ed Valentine, the same Ed Valentine who was last seen in Season 6 when he wrote "The Cart Before The Ponies" which while it handled the CMC well and gave Cheerilee her biggest role in a long time saw the CMC's big sisters sink to lows you didn't even think were possible. Kind of a surprise that he would choose to come back now, but I suppose he wanted a chance to try and redeem himself considering he used to have episodes like "Flight to the Finish" under his belt. And much like Nicole Dubac, Ed always seemed comfortable writing for the CMC. But did this episode allow him and the CMC to go off into the sunset on a high note, or did it drag both of them into the curse of the season not knowing when to leave well enough alone? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with the CMC planning for a county fair in Appleloosa, everything is ready for them except for somepony to chaperone them to Appleloosa. I can kind of buy them making that mistake, but at the same time it does feel like a big contrivence for the sake of the episode. We soon get what might be a continuity error caused by Ed's lack of experience with the show in recent seasons. The CMC ask all of their big sisters, who are too busy with their own obligations and refuse to let the CMC go off by themselves. Twilight and Fluttershy are also too busy, because they're tending to a rare magical plant sent by Starswirl. At no point do the CMC consider other possible candidates like Starlight, the Cakes, or even Scootaloo's aunts who now live in Ponyville. The last one is probably only excuseable by Ed not knowing of their existence and no one bothering to tell him. I guess the in-universe explanation is that Scootaloo's aunts are still busy moving into Ponyville, or part of their move to Ponyville had them take up jobs that keep them busy (we never did learn what their professions were).
For some reason the CMC suddenly aren't allowed to go on their own to Appleloosa, even though it's a settled town and has been for a long time. And despite them already having bought the train tickets (if they couldn't go without an adult why would they be allowed to buy train tickets in the first place?), plus there's the detail of Scootaloo going by train to wherever her aunts lived in "The Last Crusade". Twilight and Fluttershy leave, and the plant turns out to be a plot device that grants the CMC's wish to grow up. They get bigger bodies and their voices are lowered pitched, but Scootaloo doesn't fly which more or less confirms her disability (it was already confirmed for most in "Flight to the Finish" and "The Washouts" but this is as close as we can get to it being official).
They run to get to the train station and board, and it leads into the song "Being Big Is All It Takes". It's enjoyable, but it languishes in the shadow of superior CMC songs and suffers from an unfortunate lyric about how "Facts are wrong".
The train ends up in the wrong place though, a junction near Froggy Bottom Bog. And we get a rehash of the scary ticket window attendant from "Sounds of Silence". Sweetie Belle suggests they just wait for the train instead of going through the swamp, but of course we know that if they did that there wouldn't be a plot so they don't do that. They get separated and lost. But they're saved by two kids named Blooper and Biscuit, who are arguing about whether to take their pet to the Appleloosa County Fair. The CMC huddle together and decide to tag along, which harpens back to them huddling together in "Twilight Time".
They go to the fair and ditch Blooper and Biscuit to ride rides and eat snacks. Meanwhile, Blooper opts to enter his pet in a contest even though Biscuit is worried about it not being around so many ponies before. The pet turns out to be a fur creature with a monkey face, and Scootaloo tempts fate by asking what could go wrong.
The CMC do try to help a little but it's clear they're out of their league. And at that moment Twilight and Fluttershy happen to have come here following the plant plot device. They run into the grown-up CMC and instruct them to get Biscuit, Biscuit is then able to charm the creature and calm it down. And the CMC apologize for pretending to be grown-up and use the plant to wish themselves back to normal. Blooper and Biscuit are surprisingly okay with this. And we get the moral that admitting to mistakes is part of growing up, though it has the secondary moral of enforcing the idea that grown-ups are always right. Except if anything the intent of the moral for "The Cart Before the Ponies" about grown-ups not always being right was good. It's just the execution that ruined it, because the CMC's big sisters were NOT the characters who needed to learn that! Kids shouldn't expect the grown-ups in their life to have all the answers, they should be taught to figure some things out for themselves.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Well, it's just really predictable and suffers from a lot of continuity errors and character regression. This kind of plot is something I would've expected out of the CMC back in Season 1 or Season 2, not Season 9 when they've matured so much as to find out more about their family history or come to terms with a disability. Likewise, this kind of plot would've worked in either of those seasons, not after we finally got clarification on Scootaloo's family situation and who watches over her. All of this could've been fixed if Ed Valentine had anyone tell him what was going on, but for some reason no one did. It's just like the movie and "Best Gift Ever" where there are things that make you wonder if it's really taking place in the timeline when they say it's supposed to take place. And I really hope this is going to be fixed for G5, proofread and edit your scripts so these kinds of continuity errors don't slip through the cracks! The CMC aren't necessarily selfish here, but their characters seem to take several steps back for this moral to work. Twilight and Fluttershy are only there to kick start the plot and resolve it, Starlight could've worked just as well if not better (have her cast the age spell on the CMC, it would give her a chance to actually interact with them). And the song, as nice as it was to have something to break the drought, languished in the shadow of much better ones in both the show and the CMC's roster, on top of its inclusion of a lyric that never should've been written. And the plant is by far one of the most blatant plot devices of all time, it's just there because the plot needs something to age up the CMC without using a spell. Still, it's not really bad, it doesn't do anything offensively or majorily bad. It just doesn't do anything that you wouldn't already expect from the synopsis. In the end, I give this episode a borderline C-/C putting it just above "Going to Seed" which didn't seem to try at all, but below even "She's All Yak" which at least did seem to try but ran out of steam by the third act and fell apart as a result.
Well, hopefully the next episode can turn Season 9 around and stop its downward spiral into medicority (it seems like all the fanservice was front loaded), we have "The Big Question" which involves Big Macintosh and Sugar Belle. Take a wild guess as to what the episode involves.
I actually found this episode pretty fun to watch.
Sure, it's not the greatest CMC episode, but it's up there.
5116323 Eh, last week's episode was a better example of a fun episode to watch. This one was just predictable to a fault with little real humor.
It seems like Season 9's second half has a reoccuring problem of not knowing when to officially stop with certain characters. Pinkie's last spotlight out was "A Trivial Pursuit" that ruined her character, Rarity had to share the spotlight with Spike for her last episode, Trixie got ruined when her final outing was "A Horse Shoe-In", and now the CMC went from "The Last Crusade" as a great book end to something that could've been done with them several seasons prior.
5116331
I feel like Pinkie was fine in A Trivial Pursuit.
As for Rarity, I think it's only natural that her last episode deals with her relationship towards Spike.
After all, Spike noticing her was the first thing to happen in regards to her
And as for Trixie, when I saw it the first time, I thought she was written more or less how she usually was.
I could be wrong but i could swear their Adult Version is simliar to a Fan Animation i saw Once
5116339
I agree fully
Or at the very least, have this episode switch places with The Last Crusade so the latter can be the official send-off to the CMC. Speaking of which, do you feel this episode made up for what happened between Twilight and the CMC in Marks for Effort?
Yeah, I could see this being switched around with "The Last Crusade" AND being retooled as a "Whole Episode Flashback" in a "What If?" series (i.e. the Crusaders finding a kid who is a bit too much in a hurry to grow up and sharing a story of how they found out the hard way a few years earlier that being a grown-up isn't all it's cracked up to be).
5116386
I really don’t think so. That episode just made Twilight forget that CMC were better than to make Cozy get a failed test grade.
5129539 She still felt kind of condescending to them here. Surely she could've postponed her research just to chaperone them, there was no urgency to the plant Starswirl sent her.
5129545
True, but Twilight still forgot to hear the CMC's sides of the story of Cozy instead of just making assumptions and just kick them out of the school. It makes sense that the "Princess of Friendship" can makes mistakes, but she should've known better. I mean, Stygian was an example.
5129545
Hey, it could've been worse. Twilight could've kicked the CMC out immediately after denying their request and told them not to bother her again. Also, I think it was meant to be implied that she needed to get her project done for Starswirl as soon as possible.
I agree that this probably could've been done back in seasons 1, 2 or 3. I did like how this episode played on those two morals, plus not rushing growing up.
I would get mad for Scootaloo not being able to fly as a grown up but there is the point that she would most likely need to learn how to fly but nopony has taught her yet. All in all I would love to get a confirmed answer if she can or can not fly as their are only so many stories I can read that have her not being able to fly and being adopted by Rainbow Dash and trying to figure out how in the world she would get up to the house, but since the show has ended their goes that dream. She does have a family, I knew that she had parents that appeared for maybe a minute in one episode but I always thought of her as an orphan so she could get adopted by Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy.