Make Your Mark: Growing Pains Review · 4:38pm Sep 27th, 2022
For now at least, this and all the other episodes are only on Netflix. I imagine we'll be seeing pirated versions of those episodes popping up before long. Or who knows, maybe Netflix will release one episode a week to YouTube? Anyway, if you haven't had access to Netflix and haven't been able to see any of Make Your Mark: Chapter 2 yet, you know what's coming.
Now, something I found out about the writers for these first eight episodes, it's the same four writers with each writing two episodes each and in the same order: The one who writes the first episode writes the fifth episode, and you can get the pattern from there. Maybe more writers will join later on, but then again they could possibly be going for a quality over quantity approach by having fewer writers (if they're all on the same page). I still don't know if they've ever written for any kind of media before this, they could be veterans or newcomers. Anyway, with our first episode having focused on Izzy and Pipp, now we have our first Hitch focused episode. Hitch has been mostly written well outside of the Make Your Mark special, so did that carry over to this episode? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with Hitch making his usual morning rounds, only to find that his office has been blocked off by vines because an earth pony was trying to open the door for him. But Hitch hides his displeasure, especially when he realizes he's late for his patrols. He soon comes across three foals tied up in a tree that they made appear with their earth pony magic. Hitch rescues them and is shocked to learn that they were apparently holding back.
Interestingly, we have a small cameo from Sprout as we see him doing what appears to be community service. And he has a new voice actor, which actually debudded in the video game A Maretime Bay Adventure, though I don't know if that means that game is canon give its continuity issues.
Sprout claims that his magic is really powerful, and when he stomps his hooves down a few times he makes a giant plum tree appear. Then one of the plums detaches and runs loose through the streets, and the citizens of Maretime Bay are apparently competent enough to actually run away from it instead of just running in a straight line. But Hitch trips on a cart and after falling out of it he just stands there as the plum lands on top of him with a splat.
Fortunately, Hitch is unharmed, but he is rather upset. He starts to complain about earth pony magic being a problem, and even starts to feel guilty for having helped to bring it back. Sunny, however, tells Hitch to stop complaining and try to understand the magic. Hitch promises to think it over, but soon enough he reveals that he's going to basically ban earth pony magic. And Sunny frowns at this, telling Hitch they should try to understand it through some experiments. All these experiments, however, involve the same demonstration of earth ponies stomping their hooves and making plants grow. And each time, Hitch plants a sticker on the pony and tells them not to use their magic. Sunny, of course, points out the folly of this when all any earth pony has to do is stomp their hooves. Yet at no point does anyone call Hitch out for singling out earth ponies.
They do try to play it up as Hitch fearing he can't protect anypony if earth pony magic is around, which is a valid concern. But when we see how easy it is for ponies to defy the "no magic" law, Hitch loses a lot of points for immediately resorting to the nuclear option without even trying to see if the magic can be controlled. Heck, he decides that the only solution is to remove the unity crystals and take away all magic. Sunny begs him not to do it, but neither she or any of Hitch's other friends do anything to stop him from doing it. They even accompany him up to the Crystal Brighthouse despite him announcing his intentions to go through with it. Sunny had no trouble standing up to Hitch before when she thought she was right, so why isn't she trying harder to stop Hitch this time?
However, when Hitch touches the crystals to try to separate them, his hoof gets stuck. Then, suddenly, a projection of Twilight Sparkle appears. It soon turns out to be a recording akin to one of those "If you are hearing this" messages.
The projection of Twilight strangely shows her looking like she did prior to "The Last Problem", but that could suggest that the recording was made before that time skip where she turned herself into a Celestia recolor. Anyway, the projection mentions earth pony magic being activated "for the first time in Equestria", which is a contradiction because earth ponies had magic before. It wasn't mentioned all the time, but it was a plot point in some episodes, particularly "Twilight's Kingdom" which many say was FiM a its peak. If it's that easy to fact check your lore, then you know you have a problem.
The recording goes on to warn the ponies to beware of somepony, but in typical fashion the message cuts out before it can rel who it's trying to warn about. But it seems like the message is enough to make Hitch see sense more or less. Meanwhile, there's been a subplot about Izzy being a dragonsitter for Sparky so Hitch would have time to do what he's been doing. It goes about as well as you'd expect. But hey, at least Izzy doesn't have to change diapers.
Hitch is forced to discard his earlier suggestion as Sunny tells the earth ponies to start using their magic, but control it and learn to use it properly. However, the three foals from earlier end up stuck in another tree as Sprout makes another giant plum come rolling down the hill towards them. Pipp actually calls them "My pippsqueaks!" and joins the others in rushing to save them, showing that she does actually care about her fans. It also seems like they're trying to make her into a friend to all children, which is weird when you have Izzy as the Pinkie Pie expy and Pinkie Pie seemed to occupy that role in G4. That aside, the five ponies all stand together and join hooves as their cutie marks glow. And together they summon a huge true.
The plum still splatters all over them, but thankfully nopony is hurt. Zipp then records an observation about how one of the flowers on the new tree looks strangely familiar. Hitch apologizes, before learning that Izzy left Sparky to take a nap. He runs back to the sheriff's office to find that Sparky can shoot magical fire from his mouth, which goes on to be called dragon fire magic. And it's capable of transforming things. Hitch is in full dad mode at this point, even giving Sparky a pet name in the form of Sparky Sparkarooni. Yet as he and everypony else celebrate this new development, they're unaware that Opaline is watching them through the locket Sunny obtained in the previous episode. However, the episode ends with everypony laughing as Sprout ends up making a fool of himself.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Well, I really wish Hitch had been written and that they had played up more of his concerns about trying to keep everypony safe instead of inexplicably turning him into a control freak. Hitch was reasonable and rational minded in the movie. Yes, he didn't automatically agree with Sunny, but he also was willing to be proven wrong. We saw he was actually competent at his job, especially in comparison to Sprout, and that he was somepony everypony in Maretime Bay looked up to in a time of crisis. Here, Hitch might as well be a different character all together. He's acting like a flanderized Applejack whenever they tried to make her act like Twilight Sparkle, desiring to control things just because he thinks it's out of control.
Hitch's fears about not being able to protect anypony were very briefly shown here, but only after we spent time watching him be a control freak whose only solution was to just tell other ponies not to do things. And instead of his friends wisely holding him back and trying to stop him from doing something rash and stupid, they just plead with him not to take away magic all together even when he goes all the way up to the Crystal Brighthouse to do so. It's only a dues ex machnia from the crystals themselves that persuades Hitch not to go through with it. Far as I'm concerned, that Twilight recording could've been put into any episode and nothing of substance would be lost. We do also see Sparky interacting with the tree later on, suggesting he has some kind of magical connection to all that's happening, but it's a blink and you'll miss it kind of moment. The Izzy subplot feels like it was just tacked on to pad out the run time, it could've easily been thrown into Tell Your Tale because it feels ripe for the kind of wacky, throwaway antics you'd expect from a typical babysitting plot. Sprout's return, even if it was brief, was definitely the best thing about this episode. In fact, the last few minutes feel like they were the best thing about the episode, but it almost felt like I was watching a completely different story with how quickly Hitch changed his mind. This episode ultimately gets a C-. I'm not saying Hitch always has to be the only sane one, but you can't just make him do things for the sake of comedy. He's a comptent character and should be treated as such. Sprout is the kind of character you're supposed to have for a buttmonkey, not Hitch. If there were Sprout's episode, it probably would've been perfect. But I guess since the video game already had Sprout do what Hitch tried to do here, they couldn't do it in the series proper.
Well, next episode should hopefully be better. So come back tomorrow for "Portrait of a Princess", an episode starring Zipp and Pipp as they prepare to have their picture taken alongside their mother.
Good review! I agree with you on the rating
I agree with you 100%.
You know, Dr. Wolf did a video 2 years ago discussing about how Tara Strong apparently said in a livestream that Twilight may not be a part of G5 MLP. You don't think she made up that claim in order to keep Twilight's appearance a secret, do you?
Like I said in yesterday's review, given how very few episodes there are this season, the writers are no doubt trying to fit in as much foreshadowing as possible.
IMO im really glad we get to see the serious hitch we saw in the movie because in tell your tale and make your mark i find him acting goofy and silly. Now this happened and im actually glad he’s acting the hitch at the movie
Posey: “Earth ponies deserve magic! The unicorns and pegasi should be banned from using it!”
Hitch in Growing Pains: “But it’s opposite day.”
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