Mini Re-Reviews: "Hearth's Warming Eve" - Season 2 Episode 11

RAINBOW DASH: "'Unicornia?' The name is Pegasopolis!"
RARITY: "Whoa, hold it, stop! Director, this play already takes liberties with history to compress it into this runtime. All the narration summary, removing the groups the leaders brought with them for simplicity, the exaggerated dialogue... After all that, surely it's not too much to ask to change these throwaway lines the Tribe Leaders use for this land? Preferably to something that's less of an... aural assault on the ears?"

Strangely enough, despite the titular Equestrian Holiday being a Christmas analogue with all religious elements removed, its debut episode, "Hearth's Warming Eve", isn't really about the holiday at all, in stark contrast to the past "Luna Eclipsed" and the future "Hearts and Hooves Day" where the Earth holidays they repurposed were very much pivotal plot points. In a sense, this episode still is, given the play is hinted to be, but not stated outright, to be for the Hearth's Warming Pageant (Rarity also mentions that putting the play on is a tradition for this day all over Equestria). But make no mistake, though the episode is positioned as a holiday special, it's really a pony history lesson disguised as a holiday-themed episode. And for the series' first episode where the intended main goal is pure lore, I think we could do a lot worse then getting it in pantomime, pageant form - given it's a story everyone within Equestria would know, it remains a realistic reason for telling it once again.

"Hearth's Warming Eve" is the second episode written by Merriweather Williams, and while this episode doesn't suffer even remotely from the same issues that affected "The Mysterious Mare Do Well", it is still an early episode of hers, one where aspects of the characters are sometimes pushed slightly outside of where they might normally go in a way that can make them seem a little mean-spirited and off. Since that episode, I've reflected on it and concluded that perhaps part of this is she is best suited to Status Quo Is God cartoons (she's a Spongebob and Camp Lazlo veteran, among others) where slight character, lore and continuity breaks were permitted for great jokes, but because she wasn't on FiM from the start like all the other writers to this point, she never got this cartoon's attitude regarding that as fully ingrained into her as the others who were there since Day 1. By Season 3, Williams largely shifted out of this phase ("Wonderbolts Academy" alone is proof enough of that; most people seem to forget she wrote that one). But fret not: here, "Hearth's Warming Episode"'s very concept of a story-within-a-story allows for this off-ness to the main characters and how they act to have the in-universe explanation of them acting the part as over-the-top tribal leaders and their overly-cautious assistants. The slight off-ness becoming a positive defining quirk to this episode a a result, possibly by happy accident; with all the characters the Mane 6 play having the personality traits of the Mane 6 cranked up over 9000, and plenty of intentional lapses in their acting reminding us every so often that they are, indeed, non-professionals putting on a play, there's isn't a single moment of the play that isn't pure enjoyment. The catch is that the pre-play stuff and the brief denouement scene after a forgettable carol of a song are still written in the same Merriweather Williams style, and while much of it passes by unscathed (the cold opening is a joyous Christmas Card of a delight, for instance), some of it dabbles in that character regression for the sake of plot progression we saw in "The Mysterious Mare Do Well" and which came to be so prevalent in the show's last few seasons (too much?). They're rather dopey and childlike here, but their non-pageant screentime is short enough for any pain there to be easily shaken off.

It has been pointed out that the play raises almost as many questions as it answers, and if one interprets it as a factual version of history, that is true. But it's not: it's a compressed, stylised and abbreviated version of history, no different to your local nativity play except that the events depicted within did actually happen. It takes artistic liberties to be able to tell the story succinctly and with as few roles as possible. It is still, of course, a mountain of tasty lore if one wants that; our first hint at unicorns collectively raising and lowering the sun and moon; most of the unicorns being poor and peasant-looking much like the Earth Ponies; the pegasi being something of a strict military; the Windigos, and so on. And if one runs with the idea of the play in it's current form being a twisted form for the purpose of allegory, one can have all sorts of fun about what actually happened. Surely the Tribe Leaders ventured forth with more then their assistants? Is the three-way cave bickering representative of a more nuanced conflict altogether? Are the Windigos a metaphor for a much darker explanation? People can have, and have had, plenty to work with here.

Not that any of that gets in the way of the episode; most of its plays out as a successful rhythm back and forth between the Mane 6 slightly over-acting (slightly as it it's only there if you're looking for it) and a compressed but still true version of crucial Equestrian lore playing out before our eyes. There's plenty of gags befitting these exaggerated Mane 6 (Rarity getting Twilight to carry her across the river, Pinkie's name of the new land as Earth), and lots of side fun in paying attention to the acting differences the Mane 7 put on, from Spike's old-timey accent slipping as it would with a amateur actor like that, to Rainbow Dash's voice being slightly more raspy in her overt harshness, befitting her overacting. This is also the only environment where Applejack making so many borderline-cynical side remarks could fly without reflecting poorly on her character, so amen to that.

Other then the off-ness during some of the non-pageant scenes, and the forgettable closing carol, there's not much else wrong about this episode. While it probably is a case of the facts of the story it tells being absorbed far more then the actual episode itself, it's still another minor gem for Season 2 to this point. Not one I go back to rewatch frequently (it's a good thing that pageant framing device was never used again), but a real winner all the same, and worthy of an 8.5/10.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS
- This is our first instance of the Friendship Express pulling itself. I, of course, am so used to it that the horse-drawn versions up to now felt far weirder, a textbook case of Early Instalment Weirdness. Still, if one wants to be pedantic, this is the first time continuity had been nudged to make way for a merchandise plug. Compared to what was done years later with the School of Friendship that had no playsets to plug anyway, mind, it barely registers.
- Hearth's Warming Eve need not feel left out as its holiday episode not really being about of using the holiday itself - it has plenty of episodes in the future for that, especially Season 6's "A Hearth's Warming Tale", going all Christmas Carol-style on us.
- One must assume Spike was already in Canterlot, as he's not with the group when they disembark from the train.
- The characters the Mane 6 play have had some details revealed about them elsewhere, including their genders! Commander Hurricane, Clover the Clever and Chancellor Puddinghead were stallions, while the other three were mares. Thought that was worth sharing.

Comments

[hawthornbunny]

This is also the only environment where Applejack making so many borderline-cynical side remarks could fly without reflecting poorly on her character, so amen to that.

Oooh, I never picked up on that before. :) Yeah, I really enjoyed the way they had this dual-level story going on - they could have just given us a whimsical holiday story that happens to feature the Mane Six, but they actually took careful effort to show that the Mane Six are actually performing the story, as themselves, giving a bunch of great bonuses for people paying attention. My favorite is the part where Rainbow Dash, in character, prompts Fluttershy for a line that she's clearly forgotten to give. :D

[Ghost Mike]

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Too true with all these “they’re acting” bonuses. Many a cartoon will have “the characters playing other characters in older setting with no explanation”-type stories all the time. As it happens, Craig McCracken said on Powerpuff Girls he valued character enough to not be for that type of story much (though a Season 6 episode after his departure did do a Western episode in just that style), and both on that and Foster’s, it’s undoubtedly something Lauren Faust picked up on and subscribed to herself. Kind of surprising but also fitting she’s use that here but subvert it to have all these layers, as MLP doesn’t dabble in the kind of winking humour those stories normally employ - this would probably fall flat on its face otherwise.

I suggest that none of this layering dominates if the viewer does not want it to. Always the mark of good episodes, when they can be enjoyed on multiple clever layers and the viewer is free to choose whichever one they like.

And yeah, that’s a great moment on Rainbow Dash’s part. She would be the most likely to forget a line.