Deconstruction is Magic: A My Little Pony Retrospective (S1E8)

Grrrrrrrrrrrrreetings everypony, and welcome back to Deconstruction is Magic, my Retrospective/Review/Analysis of every episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is magic ever. Today, we have the episode that launched a thousand ships (the other way), Look Before You Sleep. Without wasting any more time, let's get on with the analysis! I am the Mage of Mind, reminding you, as always, that even a cheeseburger can be deconstructed to its source.

I'll be honest here, I'm not overly fond of this episode, but I will try to be as fair as possible. This is episdoe is a classic odd-couple sitcom arrangement, with both Rarity and Applejack portraying polar opposites in terms of feminine personalities. And with a storm schedules to last all night through Ponyville, they must try and work through their differences for the sake of Twilight's slumber party.

I emphasise the word "try", because they don't actually do very much to get along, instead using almost every opportunity to twist Twilight's plans in order to spite the other. This goes on for almost the entire episode. I do like that neither of them is being portrayed as wholly correct, as they both have qualities which do make the slumber party enjoyable for Twilight. Rarity compliments the more delicate, traditionally feminine activities (such as makeovers and making smores), while Applejack's rugedness helps her seriously bring some force to the pillow fight!

(War... war never changes...)

The rest of the episode is focused on Twilight ticking off all the "by the book" activites for a slumber party, which is cute, seeing as she's so excited to finally have friends to partake in. It's not until the third act when Rarity and Applejack at last start listening to one another, working together to fix the mess they created. There is some subtext about the rigidity of gender roles, being that both AJ and Rarity are so stuck in their ways, they don't seem willing to accept that they can be more than this one shade of feminine. But this doesn't really take centre stage, as it's used more as an excuse to keep them arguing on and on and on.

But beyond that, there really isn't all that much to talk about. It would've been nice to see Rarity and Applejack gradually loosen up, instead of it happening all at once in the final few minutes. What we got, regardless, is just okay. Not terrible, but definitely a meh episode.

(I can see, forever...)

Conclusion

Look Before you Sleep is one of the blandest episodes so far, relying entirely on its conflict to give the plot any sort of momentum. Any character development is shoved toward the last five minutes, and though the final message of understanding differences is good, it could've been portrayed with greater overall finess. This episode gets 5/10. What did you think of this episode? Do you have more to add where I didn't? Feel free to let me know in the comments of this blog! until next time, take care all~.