Mini Re-Reviews: "A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1" - Season 2 Episode 25

TWILIGHT: "Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake. Clap your hooves, and do a little... what's wrong Cadence?"
CADENCE: "...nothing, Twilight. Just remembering how cuter you were as a unicorn. They only made you, like, half an inch taller, right? It's like they couldn't decide whether to keep your the same little pony size or give you my body proportions."
TWILIGHT: "...Cadence, I love you as a sister-in-law, but we need to have a serious talk about how to inject some energy into these cold opens. That was just... drab. Also, do I really look that weird these days? This is almost as bad as that time Rainbow Dash draw me as super tall."

I was all set to review this episode separately and give it its own judgement before doing the same for Part 2. But after watching it, I find that very much harder then I did with the Return of Harmony. The very nature of how Part 1 ends here makes it very, very difficult to think of the two episodes on their own (it's fitting that this was the first they aired back-to-back; the Series Premiere and Return of Harmony aired on separate weekends). Those episodes still sort of functioned standalone; with this, it's very much a single episode split for production/airing purposes, and right at the divide between setup and payoff.

Both inside the show and outside it, A Canterlot Wedding is a notable milestone. It's the first two-part season finale, for a start. It's the episode where Hasbro took the show to absurd marketing heights by putting a wedding announcement in the New York Times, a true nod if ever there was one that the show's impact among adults was worthy of note. It introduced the first alicorn to the series after the two sisters of Celestia and Luna - the introduction of Cadence was an overblown can of worms stemming from fans having build up an insurmountable interpretation of alicorns as gods that, really, the show didn't codify nearly as hard as all that. But most of all, to these eyes, having watched all the two-parters since, A Canterlot Wedding is very much the template for them through to the end of Season 5.

Consider the Series Premiere and Return of Harmony; both follow a formula of, to a degree, being very much focused on the relationships of the Mane 6 with one another and, giving them all, if not arcs, then at least individual subplots or parts tied specifically to them. They are Mane 6 stories that still very much trade in on their individual personalities the way a normal episode does. They still feel like normal FiM episodes, just two of them, and as the only two-parters done under Faust, I tend to think of them as her style. A Canterlot Wedding, and the two-parters to come after it for a long time, are very much not that - they're the Meghan McCarthy style, and not just because she wrote them all through to "Twilight's Kingdom". The new formula is very much that of an epic story that is not really focused on the individual characters of the Mane 6 at all, and thrusts them into an adventure story, with Twilight as the clear lead. It usually means a lot of new lore and exposition, often to the extent that despite double the screentime, they feel a bit overstuffed and rushed in some aspects. This formula would persist until Season 6, at which point two-parters turned into overstuffed plots laden down with all the supporting characters the show had built up over the years.

Small wonder this formula stuck, because A Canterlot Wedding basically perfects it right out of the gate. Some of the problems are still there, sure. But something about how the episode pulls it off brushes them aside to the degree where they almost don't matter. The Mane 5 don't matter hugely individually here, but the episode still finds some scenes that play off their personalities to speed it along right (as well as one action scene next time - you know the one). There are some retcons and surprise introductions, but the episode makes them not really offences through a few lines of dialogue (or, in one case, a tender song about siblings). And this early in the series, it's still playful and loose enough that it's not weighed down with all the lore and exposition. With those future issues not a problem here, the two-parter is able to fire on all cylinders instead. Catch me in a good mood, and I might say that these two episodes, as a whole, are the peak of Friendship Is Magic. Return of Harmony may be marginally better, but this is by far the easier and more outwardly entertaining to watch.

All this time and I haven't delved into the episode itself! It's hard to say a lot about Part 1 without Part 2, as it's mostly setup, but if you've read this far, you've seen both parts. Without that second Part, aspects of it can seem frustrating or tedious, like the lengthy passages spent on Twilight observing Imposter Cadence's behaviour and venting about it to her friends. It helps that Twilight is in top form here; her frustration comes from an honest place that makes it always fun and endearing to watch, all while steering clear of Lesson Zero zaniness (a wise decision, it wouldn't suit the episode's tone at all). As mentioned, there are a few things to handwave here - the vague notion of a "threat to Canterlot" means nothing in this episode alone, and the episode does, it should be said, try to pull a fast one on us by introducing a brother for Twilight out of nowhere. Thankfully, we're at a point in the series where it's believable, given how few times we've been to Canterlot, that we haven't seen him yet (that the others don't react with "you have a brother" hints Twilight mentioned him to them offscreen at some point, if not in detail). And The B.B.F.F.F. song is able to wash away all of those worries once it starts.

Other things of note here are the sense of scale; there are a lot more wide scale shots of the environment then in any previous episode, with most being used as transitions showing Celestia and Luna monitoring the situation from inside the Canterlot dome. And while this episode is somewhat incomplete on its own, it does have at its centre an arc for Twilight where she goes through jealously and resentment, they cost her everything, and she comes to question everything. Had the final scene between her and Cadence been a heart-to-heart, it would have been a resolved storyline. By cutting the episode off where they do, they not only leave us clueless what's happening next, but also sever the arc right at its end in a way that it doesn't need to be directly continued in the next episode, thereby making the transition from low key slice-of-life setup here to a red-blooded action episode next time work.

Kind of running out of thing to say for this episode alone, so next time I'll wrap up with both Part 2 and the two as a whole. Unlike before, I cannot give this episode an actual score right due to how connected the two parts are. On its own, it would be a 8.5/10, but when considered as the first part of the two parter, it fares higher. See how much higher next time.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS
- I used to blindly buy into the whole "a third alicorn contradicts everything" mindset of most of the fandom myself. But I never really thought about it; there simply isn't enough concrete about alicorns to this point in the show that makes Cadence being one an issue. Thanks to a friend of mine for pointing this out; the perception comes largely from the fandom interpreting every show detail to the point where, given Celestia and Luna were so, every alicorn was interpreted to be an immortal god that walked Equestria and controlled celestial bodies. Alicorns being basically gods is such an ingrained part of how we fans think, it's easy to forget it was, at first, a fandom thing (the show did loosely bow to this way of thinking in later seasons without ever confirming it).
- The building divide between Twilight and her friends throughout (their gaping shock at their outburst, Rarity's expressions especially, are a killer) is one reason why I'm not too upset at them leaving her at the end. From their point of view, she's been losing it. They don't know what Cadence was like originally. Her demands are mostly excusable under wedding stress. It being an animated show, most of the obvious hints to her not being the real Cadence are ones visually accentuated for the viewer's ease (it is for kids, remember), or which Twilight is tuned to due to her knowing the old Cadence.