Gloomy Rube wrote:Rainbow Dash spoke with Applejack's voice during the end of the apology scene

Walter White did nothing wrong
So I'm enjoying these extreme Dutch angles they're doing lately:

Really neato staging. Ever since the beginning this show has taken advantage of HD in a way that was very new at the time, by pulling back for a wide shot with a tiny little bit of detailed action in only a small part of the screen (the town-wide argument in Winter Wrap Up comes to mind); but a shot like this really takes it to a new level, with the off-kilter camera lending some interesting drama to the situation.
I also really enjoyed the montage at the end. That's one of the first ones of those that felt, like, the way Pony is "supposed" to since perhaps the Horse Wedding reconciliation montage. Great music with a novel tune; didn't sound like another generic CMC theme variation.
(And on a similar note, Pinkie's almost-song sounded like it was going to be hysterical, with a wacko voice and everything—and then she got interrupted, which I think is the show's way of lampshading that Pinke never bursts into doggerel songs at random anymore.)
(And on the Pinkie note, I did love how Pinkie's part in the ensemble rose to the level of subplot; she
really took that cake thing personally.

)
But at a higher level, I think the only really big problem I have with this episode is that Starlight just feels
wrong as a character somehow. I don't mean she's a
bad character, or that she isn't well developed or organic in her interactions with others; I just feel like there's something very cockeyed about her entire conception. She's Pony Stalin who has been assigned to take lessons in friendship from a 19-year-old grad student, someone she can for all intents and purposes equal in magical ability and whose only real advantage is that she got into Celestia's good graces first. Twilight
assigning friendship lessons to her feels patronizing and infantilizing. Isn't Starlight supposed to be at
least the same age as Twilight? And certainly more seasoned in real-world experience? She might not have saved Equestria a bunch of times, but she's been in charge of her own little city-state and run a planned economy and an empire of fear, and if nothing else that puts her squarely into a position in life where her rehabilitation ought to be less about remedial playground exercises and more about, like, community service or something.
There's an interesting dynamic to be found in here if we accept that she and Twilight are both about the same age and Starlight's stint as a dictator was brief and all but accidental. But even given that, I have trouble understanding who the intended audience is for these stories. Are kids supposed to find it relatable that an "adult" becomes the protege of a "teenager"? Or even that two people the same age enter into this kind of tutor-student relationship centered around explicitly prescribed "friendship lessons"? Maybe it feels natural to kids, but it seems really weird and artificial to me, and I think I'd have rather they had either a) come up with a completely different and more appropriate way to punish and rehabilitate Starlight, or b) had her chafe under Twilight's bumbling tutelage and threaten to relapse.
Maybe they're building toward the latter; the reminder that she's every bit as good at actual magic as Twilight is, as well has her complete lack of natural empathy toward other people (manifested in her not seeing anything wrong with turning her "friends" into puppets), might be a sign of that. But it doesn't seem like that's where all this is headed, really. Seems like the show would be dropping more ominous hints if that were the case. Right now it's all just lighthearted gags, of the "Remember that time you enslaved a whole town? Haha, good times" variety.
Upshot is, the whole basic idea of Starlight confuses me, but other than that I pretty much liked this episode a lot. It was hecka funny, plenty of

moments (e.g. quenching the ovens with friggin' stormclouds), and had a nice ending. "How long do we have to sit quietly?" Yeah, Starlight still doesn't understand the concept of doing something for its own sake and not as a task on a checklist. They could do something dramatic with that if they want to, but I'm pretty skeptical that they will.