Episode Re-Review: Slice of Life · 6:25pm Apr 25th, 2021
With the show having outlasted even the original G1 Transformers as the longest lasting Hasbro animated property and crossing the 100th episode threshold, something truly special was called for. Especially since in the 2010's making it to even half as many episodes was never a guarantee no matter how good your work was. But Hasbro was going all in on, promoting the heck out of this episode and tapping M. A. Larson to write it as his first solo episode since "Magical Mystery Cure" (which by now most people had forgiven him for it). But considering what this episode chose to focus on, being a love letter to the fandom that helped at least in part make the show so successful, was it truly a worthy celebration of such an important milestone? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with Matilda gluing pictures into a scrapbook of her and Cranky having toured various places all around Equestria. Meanwhile, Cranky is complaining about how everyone in town won't stop asking if he's nervous about his upcoming wedding to Matilda. It's then that the old couple find out that the wedding invitations have the wrong date on them and everything will have to be moved up a day since everyone in town got them (kind of odd that no one would catch this, but then again considering how far in advanced weddings get planned small mistakes like that can sometimes slip through the cracks). And who was it allowed for the invitations to be sent out with the incorrect date, Derpy Hooves who officially makes her speaking re-debut here. Of course, the show itself never refers to her by name and the credits only call her Bubbles as a way of getting around the controversy. But she'll always be Derpy to us.
It turns out that Derpy was using Featherweight to print the invitations cheaply (and I guess that meant using the printing presses used for the Foal Free Press. But I have to ask, does that mean Equestria has no laws regarding child labor since Derpy never mentions payment?), and he had no experience using a printing press. And she's telling all this to Time Turner who as of this episode would be renamed Doctor Whooves owing to fans noting his similarities to the tenth doctor (David Tennant).
It just so happens that Doctor Whooves was working on time travel in a different kind of way. Rather than go back in time he thought of a way to speed up the clock and make time come to you, which is nice but in this case it won't help Derpy. And of course Doctor Whooves laments that a magic spell already makes time travel possible, so I guess Twilight or somepony else tipped him off about the spells in the Starswirl the Bearded wing.
Derpy then reiterates the problem of having sent out wedding invitations with the wrong date on them, and Doctor Whooves realizes that he needs to get his suit tailored by Rarity. He rushes to Carousel Boutique to find her and meets Vinyl Scratch who can't hear him over her headphones. Interestingly, she never talks which may be due to fans being so used to having Nowaking voice her in fan projects. But I think they could've found a way to make Vinyl talk while still leaving it so that her official voice could be similar to Nowaking. Maybe something like Soundwave where they use vocal filters.
Vinyl does manage to sort of understand what Doctor Whooves is saying and leads him to the Ponyville bowling alley where he meets the three ponyfied Big Lebowski ponies. Since their fourth bowler didn't show, Doctor Whooves agrees to be on their team in exchange for getting his suit tailored by them. And he opts for the simple strategy of just throwing the ball straight down the lane (if only it were that easy to get strikes in actual bowling).
Meanwhile, Matilda is looking for Pinkie Pie since she agreed to be the wedding planner. But Pinkie Pie is being called away to help her friends deal with a problem. Sweetie Belle makes a meta joke about it being a friendship problem that will get wrapped up in half an hour, but it turns out to be a monster attack. More specifically, a creature called a bugbear that's a cross between a bee (or maybe a wasp or hornet since bees will die if they sting something for any reason) and a panda bear. A joke about them "throwing pandas" or just pandering in general. So Matilda has to look elsewhere for a back up and settles on Sparkler, who claims that she used to be the best organizer in Ponyville before Twilight showed up (even though Sparkler could never get winter wrapped up on time). Still, Matilda accepts her help while Derpy comes along to apologize for messing up and asks if there's anything she can do to make up for it. Upon overhearing Matilda mention flowers, Derpy decides to go pick up the flowers only to learn from the flower trio that the order didn't come in. And admittedly, this scene with them is fairly weak even considering the fandom made jokes about their dramatic overreactions in episodes like "Bridle Gossip".
Of course, there is a lot of stuff that was later revealed to be planned but got cut. There was going to be a scene involving Octavia engaging in a duel against King Sombra in a nod to "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" and there'd be a scene of Flash Sentry (pony form) asking Cranky why no one likes him. Much of it I can understand being cut, the episode was covering a lot as it is. Anyway, the next plot of focus involves Lyra and Bon Bon decorating town hall for the wedding as they mention how close they are and how well they know each other. However, upon learning that the monster is actually a bugbear Bon Bon reveals that she's been keeping a secret. Her real name was Sweetie Drops and she was a secret agent for a monster hunting organization, an organization that shuddered after the bugbear escaped from Tartarus and Princess Celestia more or less had to make it so the organization never existed.
The Sweetie Drops line is a reference to Bon Bon originally being called Sweetie Drops in the toyline (and Lyra originally being called Heartstrings), with early fans noting her similarities to Bon Bon from previous generations. Kind of a shame they don't mention her constantly changing voices from earlier appearances.
So Bon Bon runs off to go hide in the crowd, convinced she's put Lyra in danger. And Lyra insists that they're going to have to talk about the secret agent stuff (but they never really do). Then we cut back to the bowling alley as Doctor Whooves is tasked with picking up every bowler's worst nightmare: The seven/ten split. And we see a fourth way for ponies to bowl, a Flintstones nod by having them walking on tiphooves (kind of a shame we never got a pony bowling game of any sort). But Derpy interrupts him by proposing to "borrow" his flameless fireworks that he mentioned earlier (he never could figure out how to make them ignite). Doctor Whooves not only doesn't pick up the split (which was supposed to be what led him to his pursuit of math and science, not being able to pick one up as a child) but he in fact runs off and violates the deal since he's worried about Derpy using something so unstable as a flower replacement. But hey, it can't be any worse than what some people are doing for these gender reveal parties as of lately.
With all that going on, we have Matilda getting pampered at the spa as she meets Stephen Magnet, the sea serpent from the pilot. He reminds her of how Cranky searched endlessly for her for so many years, though he then points out that most of the wedding guests will in fact care more about the wedding itself (and to an extent that's true. The wedding is a big deal, though not necessarily something that needs to a big production). Then we cut to Octavia (who does speak, voiced by Kazumi Evans in the same vein as her human counterpart from Rainbow Rocks) who lives with Vinyl Scratch (a nod to the many fan works involving the two).
Octavia finds herself bored of the "standard" wedding songs and longs for something a bit more original, ultimately getting into a bit of a mini musical duel with Vinyl before realizing that she's going to be late for the wedding. Vinyl Scratch comes prepared, however. She launches out of the house with a huge, mobile musical system that subsequently goes through town and picks up all the various ponies working on tasks for the wedding (the mane six have been busy dealing with the bugbear off and on in the background).
Eventually, one pony happens to drop the Twilight Scepter from "Princess Twilight Sparkle" and everypony flies into the air. During this time, if you pause at just the right frame you can see some of the DHX staff dressed up to resemble the four horsemen of the apoycolpse. Then we have an inner monologue from Gummy that kinds of sounds like Snoopy's thoughts from various Peanuts productions. The moment wears off soon enough though, and everypony thankfully lands safely inside town hall. But due to the commotion, Cranky ended up losing the wig he had on from "A Friend in Deed". Fortunately, Stephen Magnet cuts off a part of his mustache to mold into a makeshift toupee in a nod to Rarity doing something similar for him back in the pilot.
We also have a brief scene of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna arguing about who was supposed to bring the gift for the couple, with Princess Luna stating that she handled the gift at Shining Armor and Cadence's wedding (I'm guessing that's a belated handwave of where she was during "A Canterlot Wedding" when Chrysalis launched her invasion). And we also see a lone changeling huddled in a corner, which it was later stated was just a friend of Cranky and Matilda's invited to the wedding (kind of think they could've come back to this for Thorax by making it so that said changeling was him, but most likely they weren't aware of that). And we have Shining Armor crying as Cadence says he apparently always does this at weddings (even though he never did it at his own wedding, but maybe Chrysalis played a role in stopping that?). The wedding is about to begin, but Derpy accidentally locks the mane six outside as Mayor Mare oversees the marriage ceremony. When the bride and groom kiss each other, the flameless fireworks ignite as Dr. Whooves is seeing hugging Roseluck as a reference to Rose, who was one of the doctor's companions.
Lyra also reconciles with Bon Bon after revealing that not only did she not blab about Bon Bon's "secret identity", but Lyra herself has been harboring a secret. She cooked up some expensive, important oats Bon Bon had been saving for a special occasion. An indirect reference to "Ponies with Hats" which was itself a ponyfication of "Llamas with Hats".
The episode ends with the mane six (now victorious) seeing the ceremony from inside and Twilight declaring how lucky they are to live in Ponyville, before hugging Rainbow Dash who complains about the bugbear biting her on the neck. But there are worse places to get bitten on.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Well, how much you enjoy this episode is going to come right down to how much you can enjoy focusing on these background ponies all episode and even to an extent how much you appreciate the nods to various fandom works. I quite like it, though I can see others finding it too over the top or too abrupt a shift since the mane six (and even Spike) don't really get a role all episode and even end up being locked out of the wedding at the end. Heck, at one point the episode literally jumps the shark (a plush shark but the intent is kind of the same), so it's easy to see how some might complain that this was the show's equivalent of doing so. It really reminds me of both "Twenty Two Short Films about Springfield" from The Simpsons and "Tales of Ba Sing Se" from Avatar: The Last Airbender in that it's a collection of short stories, though this one leans more towards the former in having a central framing device (in this case a wedding) whereas the latter was mostly just a filler episode (though one containing arguably the series' most iconic moment).
Of course, there are some things that were cut that I would've liked to see be resurrected (pony Flash could've been given a role woven into one of the other stories, even just having him try to prove himself by taking on the bugbear) and some other things that could've been polished or improved upon (I don't quite like how the mane six were locked out of the wedding even if it was by accident, though Twilight could've easily just teleported them inside to a balcony or something). But there's so many great things and such a great moral about how everyone is the main character of their own story every day that I can overlook what flaws there may be. And so this episode easily gets an A+. It's interesting to compare and contrast this to "Twilight's Seven" for the show's 200th episode, as that one focused almost entirely on the mane six and Spike.
But right as Season 5 seemed to be hitting its stride we had a Spike episode that, while not as quite as bottom of the barrel as the unholy trilogy of bad Spike episodes from Seasons 1-3, was still a far cry from the kind of episode he deserved. I'm of course referring to "Princess Spike".
This episode was clearly never meant to be taken seriously.
Before you start reviewing the next episode, would you like to watch Thespio (a.k.a DaWillstanator) rip it to shreds while MasterCode does his best to defend it?
This episode is insane and I love it.
And between this and episode 200, I definitely prefer this. Sparkle's Seven is mostly great, but man... the stuff with Zephyr in that is just pure cringe and drags the whole thing down a bit
5506361 I think my bigger problem is how all the ideas were woven together. It feels very disorganized. They did the best they could merging all the ideas together, but in particular Pinkie Pie, Applejack and Rainbow Dash's contributions felt very miniscule.
5506375
That's something I only noticed now that you pointed it out
This was a fun episode, the only thing I don't like is they made Vinyl Scratch a silent character, never was a fan of that.
5506604
Probably because they knew fans would throw a fit if it wasn't Nowacking voicing her.
5506817
Who's Nowacking?
5506828
Nowacking is a voice actor who's had roles in numerous fan works, often providing the voice of Vinyl Scratch.
5506897
Okay, thank you for explaining that to me. Even if she wasn't voiced by Nowacking, I still think she should at least been have a voice, you can not please everybody in the fandom.
5506968
I was mostly saying that as a joke because many fans associate her voice with Nowacking.