by Discord (?) » Sun Jun 05, 2016 5:10 am
So I have a deadbeat half brother that is not unlike Zephyr, in a broad sense. More malicious, but I suppose the biggest difference in trajectory was he hit the rock bottom, kept on going the way he was and didn't care enough about avoiding rock bottom to apply himself.
I was expecting to hate this episode as a result, but I actually got a surprising amount of enjoyment to it. Perhaps my perspective is tilted, but I thought the episode played things well - with nobody taking Zephyr's shit, so as to prevent the whole situation from getting grating.
Fluttershy really shines here. I don't think we've ever seen an episode where she actually gets to be assertive start to finish. I really enjoyed that side to her after all these years of development and I hope it continues, to some extent at least.
Rainbow too was pretty sweet in a supporting role and had a lot of funny bits.
I can see the point about the kind of rushed ending, but I thought it was relatively reasonable. Hitting the bottom can make people desperate and be a bit of a wake-up call, depending. Time skips help the rest as best could be managed. And the song was nice with a good message, though perhaps not universally applicable to the scenario.
On that note, I can see concern about the message as valid too. I don't think the episode is trying to be universalistic; Zephyr is one person and one kind of scenario, but there are many reasons why people stay with their parents and/or struggle to get work for other reasons.