Mini Re-Reviews: "Keep Calm and Flutter On" - Season 3 Episode 10 · 8:02pm May 10th, 2020
DISCORD: "I'm back!" [laughs] "Speaking from the shadows is very good, don't get me wrong - I like a good challenge as much as the next draconequus - but being an actual character in the show again just gives me so much more room to work with for these! Wouldn't you agree, Fluttershy?"
FLUTTERSHY: "Oh! Um, sure, Discord. It is lovely to have you back. Though, um, could you deliver the punchline? We have to start the review."
DISCORD: "Oh, right, yes, of course. Ahem. You might say that I was... crumbling, to get out of that stone prison!"
MANE 7: "..."
DISCORD: "Oh, what a terrible audience. It's going to be a long six seasons to follow..."
More so then any other episode to this point, it is so tempting to want to discuss "Keep Calm and Flutter On" with full knowledge of how the rest of the series plays out. Mostly about whether bringing back the oh-so-impactful guest star character from "The Return of Harmony" and making him a recurring character was a wise idea, though other notions like its effect on the character and arcs of other characters, namely Fluttershy, factor in there too. But despite the fact that the episode exists primarily to setup Discord coming back, to monopolise this episode review with only its future effects would be unfair. But neither can they be ignored either. Thus, such discussion will be towards the back on the review. Don't think I'm not choking on it.
So, ahem. Bringing Discord back. It's easy to see why: both to this point and by the time the show finished, he remained the best villain (in his initial episode) that the show gave us. It's not an automatic victory: Chrysalis was very effective and has him beat in scariness and being sinister, given Discord is usually played as a chaos goofball. But much of everyone else has one notable thing holding them back from ever reaching his pedestal: Sombra's non-personality, Nightmare Moon's blandness, and so on. More importantly, he was always fun and entertaining to watch due to the wide variety of verbal and visual gags he supplied. It's no surprise many a fanfic wrote him him returning, and it's not the most surprising thing the show decided to bring him back either.
Still, they could have, and should have, had a better reason for bringing him back beyond a vague non-explanation from Celestia that Discord can be useful if he can be reformed to use his for magic for good rather then evil. I don't envy the job the writers on this one had (Story Editor Meghan McCarthy, Script Writer Dave Polsky and Story Writer Teddy Antonio - the latter only 15 at the time), as it's known this episode's story and script had to be pounded into a produceable form in a shorter schedule then usual (makes you wonder if this episode was only added to the season after the events on the season finale and the choice of more seasons was made - what would be the point of bringing Discord back once like this in the 4th last episode?). And while Celestia's claim isn't false - a good Discord would be very handy to have around in Equestria - it peels back the transparency of why the episode exists even if you ignore it. It would have been so much better if there was a confirmed threat/reason to bring Discord back for, and this episode was all about getting him on their side before going off to that (the threat doesn't even have to be revealed within this episode). But alas, no. Oh well.
Once you can work around that, the episode itself is highly entertaining and satisfying, for the most part. It's just that it loudly announces its reasons for existing and that it is a setup episode at every turn (drinking game: take a shot every time someone says the words "reform" or "reformed"). Also apparently the Elements of Harmony have a spell cast on them now that prevents sabotage. Makes you wonder why that didn't exist before.
Thankfully, given the rickety premise of "Discord is released so the Mane 7 can reform him to be on their side for the future", the episode makes many smart decisions in carrying that scenario out. To whit, whatever its effects on her in the future, having Fluttershy be the one to primarily turn him around pays off lots of dividends here, both for her kind demeanour being best suited to getting through to him, and of course because of how much of his gruff she resisted last time. And the moments where it is revealed that, no, she wasn't being all dense and naive, she knew exactly what he was up to, and she calls her friends out on thinking that is very satisfying, as is the followup of her calm, quiet, yet firm disappointment at him breaking her faith (it's easy and right to read this as another thing building from her run-in with Iron Will in "Putting Your Hoof Down"). By and large, this is Fluttershy at her best, and it's not hard to be totally with Rainbow Dash's "You go, Fluttershy!" at every point of her approach and strategy throughout. The 'more flies with honey than with vinegar' approach is strong with this one.
Staying on Discord himself, there's no denying there's plenty of entertainment from him throughout this one, with the sight gags ranging from the expected (clones rating his skiing 10 out of ten) to the well-timed (the big liar zoom-out) to the surprising-but-you-should-have-seen-it-coming (him rolling his eyes). All of that being the case, he's not quite the same: even given the threat of the Elements reigning him in, his range of chaos feel smaller and slighter then is justifiable then before, and even before reformation he feels different enough and detached from him "Return of Harmony" incarnation that he doesn't register, exactly, as the same character. Or, well, he does, but there's a tiny, yet perceptible off-ness about him. I won't deny future knowledge about what they did, or more accurately, didn't do, with him is bleeding in there. Regardless, it sets a standard for pretty much all Discord-centric episodes to follow, that there's always something amiss about the execution regarding him. Just worse in some cases then others.
As luck would have it, this is still a Season 3 episode, and so we get plenty of touches that make it fulfilling in the moment, whatever reservations I have about the direction it later established. Discord's gags were already mentioned, but the dinner party scene, with its vague yet obvious allusions to Disney's Beauty and the Beast with all the animated objects, deserves a special mention. Little character moments like Rarity primping herself in Pinkie's polished hooves amuse greatly. The evil beavers, Angel getting abused by Discord and his charades later, the rotating house, this episode has no shortage of things like that. Even the irritation of the others towars Discord here is played out in a way that isn't as grating and repetitive as it would often be in the future. DHX acquits themselves very well with this newer Discord (physics during the rotating house operates more realistically then it needed to, props for that), and on both the script and timing level, Discord's realisation at the end that he would be sad at losing the only friend he had is really well done. The dramatic pause as it sinks in and he looks at the discarded ice skates, and his simple "oh... huh... Well played, Fluttershy. Well played." hits home far more then any exposition would. Crafting a character arc for Discord is always tricky - and in the future, would stumble frequently - but within this episode, it's very smoothly developed, and it touching in its own right, and all that.
Like a lot of Season 3 episodes, this falls in the in-between category of being quite good and enjoyable on its own rights, you're just keenly aware that it's not fully living up to the standards set by its precursor. Of course, its precursor was a fantastic two-parter, and this one, though very good, isn't fantastic, it cannot be denied. But most of that is in the scenario, not the execution, so we should still praise all those involved for taking a decent-but-wobbly idea and pulling it off really well. If only they'd had more time at the script stage. Regardless, "Keep Calm and Flutter On" barely scrapes a 8/10. The particular future things done with Discord don't really pin any of the blame here, beyond the concept of bringing him back in the first place, so I won't hold it against this episode.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
- This is all explicit about future episode: like a lot of things on Season 4, them furthering Discord from a soft reformation into a hard one was a slow process that had less to it then it really should have had. But for the most part, the ingredients there were satisfying, if nothing to write home about. It's with "Twilight's Kingdom" that it starts to unravel; firstly, they missed a key opportunity to have Discord's returned powers be weakened enough by Tirek's theft to have him reduced to only slightly stronger then Twilight. It would have been an easy out to the overdone-but-true complaint everytime he didn't pop up for a major threat in the future - "why wasn't Discord there?". During Season 4, the way the events of the Premiere and Finale played out got around him not fixing the problem for them. But in the future, they either ignored him altogether, or came up with some contrived reason for him to be depowered.
More importantly, any arc he seemed to have undergone in "Twilight's Kingdom" was, if not forgotten, then neutered going forward, with most of his episodes positioning him as a troll and framing other character as bad for not liking him, or some weird inverse. Discord is not unique in having his arc fall the shambles in Season 5 onward - he's no worse then Twilight in this regard. But it doesn't make it any less dispiriting. And of course, there are some true stinkers with his name - "What About Discord?", "A Matter of Principles" - to say nothing of the brainfart Grogar twist in Season 9 that virtually no one, not even fans of those seasons, liked.
Lastly, Fluttershy. Tying Discord to her so strongly like this would eventually rob her of some agency. When you think of a character and often think of them and another, which is the case with Discord going forward, it weakens them from a writing purpose (in a sense, Spike has always had elements of this, as an assistant to Twilight and with his infatuation for Rarity, and it wouldn't be wrong to say that partly the reason for some common structural problems in his episode).
To sum up, while bringing Discord back was a unwise idea in the long run, it was one with potential at the same time. It's just that that potential, like a lot of the show after Season 4, went to heck, in a pervasive but complicated way.
- Have you ever stopped and thought about the fact that it's evening at the dinner party, but it's the daytime again when everyone heads to the mess at Sweet Apple Acres? Not a complaint, but something amusing all the same.
I did dislike this episode when it came out, since I was very much against Discord being reformed. He was such a great villain for the show that I felt like they were just throwing away one of their greatest assets by making him good. But he did eventually grow on me and I came to really love the Fluttercord dynamic, so I'm more appreciative of this episode's qualities these days. I particularly like that the Mane Six have to be in Elements mode the whole time, which gives the episode a level of tension that others don't have.
I never noticed that!
Actually, the weird thing I noticed about the dinner party is that Angel Bunny somehow has enough of an understanding of the Equestrian language to be able to communicate the phrase "Sweet Apple Acres" in charade...
That's entirely valid, and I feel I probably showed my lack-of-age within the fandom by not touching on that. Given, for me, it was just under two weeks between "The Return of Harmony" and this episode, as opposed to the year-and-four-months for most viewers. It wasn't until I rewatched Discord's debut episode that I became properly reacquainted with him as a villain, I got so used to him as a recurring antihero.
Another reason is, well, there's no non-convoluted way to have Discord become recurring if he's still a villain. In a two-parter it was fine, but if he's back all the time, that he doesn't just make himself win, now they bested him once, would beggar belief. Of course, that didn't stop the show staff from letting an immortal god fo chaos on the heroes' side mess up future dramatic conflicts, but.
More importantly, MLP wasn't the kind of show with recurring villains, not the way the writers wrote it and the way Hasbro approved it. Discord couldn't be brought back without being reformed, eventually. The alternative is not bringing him back at all (as M.A. Larson said alongside myself, that would have probably been for the best). And given this episode's rushed writing indicates it was only conceived of once Twilight's ascension and the next season were confirmed, he was being brought back to contribute in Season 4, even if they didn't know how at the time.
And yes, the Fluttercord dynamic, whatever its faults, is charming and likeable. It's always got that going for it, as long as we keep romance out of the picture.
Well, you can say many things about Angel - and the very next episode is a prime place for them - but one thing he is not is unintelligent.