Help My Heart is Full of Pony - Sleepover · 6:03am Dec 3rd, 2019
LOOK BEFORE YOU SLEEP
I just rewatched "Look Before You Sleep." In this episode, a thunderstorm forces Applejack and Rarity to sleep over at Twilight's treebrary.
Twilight is so excited to have her very first slumber party that she follows a sleepover itinerary from one of her books to optimize her experience.
The trouble is that Rarity and Applejack can't stand one another. They pretend to get along for a little while out of mutual respect for Twilight, but they just can't keep it up all night. Applejack is crass and bull-headed and "uncouth." Rarity is obsessed with minutiae - a "fussbucket."
"Look Before You Sleep" is one of the classic personality-driven conflicts that were common in the first season. However, it is also a stand out episode because here, the characters behave the most child-like they've ever been, even by Season One standards.
Many of the problems that the Mane Six faced in the early seasons were adult situations codified to be relevant to children's social situations. (The emphasis on confessing to Celestia in "Bird in the Hoof," for example, is really telling kids to get an adult when appropriate). In "Look Before You Sleep," however, the situation is childlike in and of itself.
It astounds me to watch this and look back, and compare these ponies to who they would eventually become. Everything the Mane Six went through over the last nine years started with their learning to overcome a series of relatively minor conflicts.
Some people rewatch Season One, and have difficulty connecting with it because it feels "small" by comparison, but in my view, these old classics still hold up. Season One focused on telling quaint stories - moral lessons for children - but simple as they were, each episode had impeccable internal logic. As "small" as everything may seem, there's something truly enchanting about these stories. It's as though they take each take place in a bubble.
The storm in "Look Before You Sleep," for example, seems legitimately menacing because of that bubble. When everything is quaint and intimate, and none of the characters have had unicorn laser battles with demons, the world outside their immediate control actually feels quite large by contrast.
Take "Ticket Master." You can actually see Canterlot (off in the distance) from a vantage point at Sweet Apple Acres in that episode, but it still feels like it's a thousand miles away because none of the Mane Six have traveled far (physically or emotionally).
Everypony's aspirations are for distant goals. None of them have a realistic assessment of what achieving those goals would actually entail. Rainbow Dash's dream of joining the Wonderbolts, for example, seems far fetched and out of reach. Like if I were to dream of joining the Wu Tang Clan. (She actually thinks that jumping in on the Wonderbolts aerial show at the Gala will win their admiration and respect).
The point is: in a world as insulated as this, seen through the eyes of characters as inexperienced as the Mane Six, the simple thunderstorm in "Look Before You Sleep" is a deeply plausible threat. The storytelling is so immersive that it's downright mystical.
That's part of the magic. The premise of this episode is inherently quaint and inherently silly, but it left me smiling the whole time. Back in 2011, when I first discovered pony, I would watch episodes like this and think to myself "I can't believe I love pony so much." It was a truly surreal experience. Now that nine years, and 222 episodes have passed, and words like "everypony," and names like "Twilight Sparkle" no longer seem strange to me, I find that the magic in these tales is still as potent as ever. The innocence in them - the purity - it's just plain profound. I can't believe I got to watch it evolve in real time.
-Sprocket
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It is amazing, looking back on it. :)
Well the show will always be there to look back on, and we can always enjoy the magic it created
It truly was magical and special to experience the show and the community it helped foster. Though things have evolved and changed the magic for me hasn't faded. I'm still smiling at every episode and amazed by how wonderful everypony still is.