S04E16: It Ain't Easy Being Breezies

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Re: Let's Re-Watch Week 15 : It Ain't Easy Being Breezies

Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Sun Aug 24, 2014 6:53 am

I will say that the overall moral of the episode was good as well.
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Postby Marioland1 (?) » Sun Aug 24, 2014 6:59 am

Heh. It took me forever to even realize that Seabreeze was a guy, and since I rewatched it already (before work! Woot!), I can say it wasn't as bad as I remembered it. As Bremen said, it has its weak points, but it's not nightmarishly bad, or anything.
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Postby Stargazer (?) » Sun Aug 24, 2014 7:40 am

No. Not nightmarishly bad. But certainly one of their weaker ones. Rewatched it and I must say there are some moments that put a smile on my face. I love this show too much to really hate any one episode, I think. It still stands that this one just doesn't fit, to me... it's like a random distraction in a series of successful or at least relatable episodes of an arc. Like if Friends just had an episode about Joey fighting a toaster oven. Nothing about Chandler and Monica, some stale joke about how kooky Pheobe is, Rachel has two lines and Ross has one. And then Joey comes away with a powerful lesson that maybe if you spend less time on toasters and more on thoughtful reflection, your life will be more of a success! (This kind of sounds like a great episode and I think I'm losing my point here). FiM, like Friends, is about interpersonal relationships. Inter. Connected. With this one, everything just seemed like a rushed plot device, almost as if the producers wanted to hurry up and finish it too. "Hi, this episode is clearly about Fluttershy, look at her deal with this difficult lesson that plays extremely well to her characte- "Oh, hey I'm Twilight Sparkle, and even though I've had like 4 lines up til now, I'ma actually just save the day right here, mmk?"

It was touching when Seabreeze apologized (though he surely didn't need to.) I definitely agree that there are a few good, signature MLP moments. But it just didn't feel right. It just didn't feel like an episode. It felt like an attempt at one.

The Breezies' home land was really quite beautiful, though. I forgot about it completely. Reminded me of Hobbiton, with those tiny houses :allears:
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Postby SoundMonkey44 (?) » Sun Aug 24, 2014 2:17 pm

I thought SeaBreeze was a girl at first as well. :gotcha: That said, SeaBreeze is a very pretty man. :v:


But yea, as for the episode itself, I liked it well enough, my only compliant is that it felt like one of the mostly blatantly toyetic to me.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Sun Aug 24, 2014 2:19 pm

But it wasn't really toyetic in the end. There's hardly any Breezie toys out there. :pinkieshrug:
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Sun Aug 24, 2014 2:23 pm

There don't have to be for the episode to feel toyetic.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Sun Aug 24, 2014 2:31 pm

Ah...I get it. So as long as it feels like its pushing a product even when there isn't any, it's toyetic.
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Postby SoundMonkey44 (?) » Sun Aug 24, 2014 2:36 pm

ROBOT B9 wrote:Ah...I get it. So as long as it feels like its pushing a product even when there isn't any, it's toyetic.



Pretty much. Just like the end of MMC kind of has that, buy our princess Twilight toys feel to it, this entire ep felt like, BUY OUR BREEZIE TOYS WHEN THEY COME OUT!!

Not saying that's a bad thing, again I do enjoy the episode, I love SeaBreeze, he's a lil firecracker. XD, but yea, it felt more like a toy commercial then anything else in the show to me personally.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Sun Aug 24, 2014 6:04 pm

Even though there's been tons of stuff previous to it that felt like blatant toy inserts, like Twilight's Tree Library Playset and the Celestia/Luna Princess Chariot right in the pilot. They never came to anything either, even though they couldn't have been designed more obviously with the potential to be turned into toys if all of Hasbro had been involved.

Hell, I still can't believe they didn't make A Canterlot Wedding into a giant tie-in excuse to sell off duplicate stock. Now kids have the perfect excuse to buy 10, 20 Pinkie Pies and Raritys and everyone else, to build their own changeling armies! :-P
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon Aug 25, 2014 1:40 pm

You know what—I just rewatched, and it really was a lot more enjoyable than I think I had committed it to memory as being.

The animators really sold the Breezies and their plight well. Their at-the-mercy-of-the-wind mayfly-esque mode of flight, their clinginess that recalls the parasprites in a way... and what with the giant blobby eyelashes and the facial animation that seems like it's from another show, they really made them seem as much alien as cute, and I mean that in a good way. They knew better than to just draw tiny ponies with butterfly wings. Fluttershy has to keep saying how cute they are because honestly it's not the word that would have leaped to mind, and her saying so reminds me that this is a world with its own metrics of cuteness that don't necessarily line up with our own.

There are a ton of great little moments, mostly (again) thanks to the animators—I liked seeing all of Fluttershy's animals looking askance at the interlopers in their house, and Fluttershy gingerly stepping around the floor, and Pinkie clopping her hooves on the tree trunk in excitement, and an awful lot of really heartfelt emotion on Fluttershy's face throughout the whole thing.

And as dumb as Twilight's spell is as a narrative point, at least they did do their best to set it up as being necessary—by explaining how the breezies all have to be clumped together in order for the breeze-riding thing to work, though it doesn't make a lot of sense physically, at least it gives them a reason to try to shore up their numbers (I guess six is fine).

I dunno, I really think they gave it a heck of a try. I can't dislike this one.
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Postby Wylie (?) » Mon Aug 25, 2014 4:31 pm

A bit of a tangent off Headless' comments here- notice how much exposition is given over to banging the audience over the head with how cute the Breezies are. And the thing is- they're really not. They're more alien than cute, like Headless said. But: I wonder if the average Equestrian's idea of "cute" is somehow fundamentally different from our own.

Remember, these ponies walk around in their pony town all damn day long seeing other ponies that look exactly like them- we see them all as generally adorable, but to themselves- maybe not as much, or even not at all? Maybe their idea of what's cute is like our own, in that we both think our own babies are cute- they fawned all over newborn Pound and Pumpkin, after all, and there's a rather large contingent of folks who think baby ponies are abominations.

Is there a point here? I dunno. But I thought it was an interesting idea and wrote words about it. So there.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Mon Aug 25, 2014 6:31 pm

On another tangent, I was rather amused that in delivering her grand multi-level insight, Fluttershy made a tone argument. :gotcha:
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Postby The Doctor (?) » Mon Aug 25, 2014 9:41 pm

I didn't find the Breezy design bad, but I didn't find it cute either.

They were just kind of there.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Aug 25, 2014 10:00 pm

I thought it interesting in that it was an insight into what ponies thought was cute, as Wylie said. In that same vein, I'd really love to see an Equestrian depiction of aliens, like if Spike were reading a comic book about an alien invasion or something. Equestria already has so many different species of both civilized peoples and monsters that, if they ever turn their eyes to the stars and wonder what lives out there, their ideas of aliens must surely be even crazier than ours.
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Postby Homeswirl (?) » Mon Aug 25, 2014 10:13 pm

Humanity's popular notions of "weird" aliens are usually just mashups of reptilian and insectoid motifs with some human skeletal flavors added for extra uneasiness. I think an Equestrian depiction of fantasy aliens would likewise reflect what we've already seen in the show.
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Postby InsertAuthorHere (?) » Mon Aug 25, 2014 11:29 pm

Plus, Twilight has met aliens. They're furless bipeds with strange wiggly things on their limbs.

Truly they are hideous things.
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Postby Dexanth (?) » Tue Aug 26, 2014 1:47 am

Headless Horse wrote:On another tangent, I was rather amused that in delivering her grand multi-level insight, Fluttershy made a tone argument. :gotcha:


Tone arguments may be invalid in terms of the actual -content- of an argument, but they are completely correct in terms of the -persuasive power- of an argument.

In other words, tone arguments are a totally valid issue to raise if you agree with someone and your goal is to convert more people to the cause :plonk:
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Tue Aug 26, 2014 5:51 am

I'm glad relatively few here are in full hate mode. This is by no means close to the bottom of the barrel.
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Postby RainbowDoubleDash (?) » Tue Aug 26, 2014 5:56 am

InsertAuthorHere wrote:Plus, Twilight has met aliens. They're furless bipeds with strange wiggly things on their limbs.

Truly they are hideous things.


Not that hideous - she found Human!Flash to be attractive.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Tue Aug 26, 2014 6:11 am

Wayoshi wrote:I'm glad relatively few here are in full hate mode. This is by no means close to the bottom of the barrel.


Honestly, I don't think any episode is that bad. Sure, there are some that are weaker than others but it's never terrible.
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Postby Skipper (?) » Tue Aug 26, 2014 6:29 am

RainbowDoubleDash wrote:
Not that hideous - she found Human!Flash to be attractive.

Although horses are rather intelligent, I guess this goes to show they shouldn't really be considered "smart."
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Postby RainbowDoubleDash (?) » Tue Aug 26, 2014 6:33 am

Skipper wrote:Although horses are rather intelligent, I guess this goes to show they shouldn't really be considered "smart."


...

...okay, now, before I go any further and for the sake of clarity, this was shown in the movie itself and so does not count as shipping and so no forum rules are broken by discussing it as long as the topic remains PG-13 rated or whatever one's local country's equivalent is, yes?
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Tue Aug 26, 2014 7:01 am

ROBOT B9 wrote:
Honestly, I don't think any episode is that bad. Sure, there are some that are weaker than others but it's never terrible.

That's probably true, but WOW was Daring Don't Watch that close.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Tue Aug 26, 2014 7:08 am

Eh, even that had some fun moments... :pinkieshrug:
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Postby Skipper (?) » Tue Aug 26, 2014 7:14 am

Only thing wrong with it was that Daring Do and her adventures were suddenly real.

(So, like, the whole episode. :gotcha: )

I still enjoyed it, but I wasn't wowed.



RainbowDoubleDash wrote:
...

...okay, now, before I go any further and for the sake of clarity, this was shown in the movie itself and so does not count as shipping and so no forum rules are broken by discussing it as long as the topic remains PG-13 rated or whatever one's local country's equivalent is, yes?

I guess so. But please don't read too much into my silly joke about how being attracted to humanoids is dumb.
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Postby Big Boss (?) » Tue Aug 26, 2014 2:30 pm

RainbowDoubleDash wrote:
...

...okay, now, before I go any further and for the sake of clarity, this was shown in the movie itself and so does not count as shipping and so no forum rules are broken by discussing it as long as the topic remains PG-13 rated or whatever one's local country's equivalent is, yes?


People may actually have the opinion that the romance was poorly written and/or that Flash was a cardboard cutout. Quit the persecution complex.
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Postby RainbowDoubleDash (?) » Tue Aug 26, 2014 3:13 pm

...now to make my point since I've covered my bases.

Yeah, Flash was a cardboard cutout with basically no personality beyond stereotypical "good guy cool high schooler;" that's basically indisputable, certainly at least it's not something that I'll ever dispute. That wasn't what I was going to say.

Rather, I find it interesting that Twilight doesn't seem to mind that she's not really a human but still finds Flash Sentry attractive - this being before she actively remembered Pony!Flash.

I wonder if that's just Twilight, or if it's a general pony thing in the vein of humans in Doctor Who once we get out into the universe and start meeting nonhumanoids - that is, ponies live in a ridiculous world of magic populated by countless creatures of all sorts of shapes and sizes, and so simply don't care about species and instead judge by the Captain Jack Harkness rules of romance - "is it an adult?" "is it intelligent and can I communicate with it?" "does it consent?" If ALL THREE are "yes," then going on a date with the thing is just fine.

(Jack Harkness rules paraphrased in order to comply with forum rules).

Spike may help prove that idea, but given that he was raised around ponies he doesn't really provide an objective example.

(In actuality Twilight finds Flash attractive because someone at some point mandated a romance sub-plot and so they had to include one, but I like to find in-universe explanations for things whenever possible)

...

...entirely unrelated note: I just realized that we both live in the same state, Kefkafloyd, at least assuming you mean Boston, Massachusetts, and not Boston, Lincolnshire. Though I live nearer to Worcester than Boston.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Tue Aug 26, 2014 3:30 pm

While I still think Twilight's interest in Brad is just a crappy thing that they changed about her for EqG (since in FiM she's never shown any romantic interest in anyone), I also think it's clear that race and species don't matter quite so much to Equestrians.

To use the other side of your second example, back when Spike was obsessing over Rarity, no one ever told him off on account of the fact that he was a dragon and she wasn't. Instead, everyone else saw it for what it was: a crush that, while sweet, was ultimately hopeless, and was something that Spike would have to learn on his own.
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Postby RainbowDoubleDash (?) » Tue Aug 26, 2014 3:46 pm

Fizzbuzz wrote:Brad


Much as I don't like the romance subplot myself due to how extraneous and unnecessary it was, I also don't like the "Brad" thing...it was fine as a stand-in when we didn't know what his name was going to be (/vp/ over on 4chan does the same thing for English names of pokemon that thus far only have Japanese names), but now that we know his name is Flash Sentry, we really should call him that.

If they want us to buy a romance sub-plot for Twilight, they do have to sell it much better than they did in the movie. Having said that, though, I'm not opposed to it simply because it's not a side of Twilight we've never seen before. After all, we only see her life in 22 minute windows once a week during certain portions of the year; just because she's not interested in romance that we've seen doesn't mean that she never has been and never will be.

Too much Disney growing up, I think. Plus my favorite movie is and always will be Beauty & the Beast, and it's difficult to not draw parallels between Belle and Twilight.

To use the other side of your second example, back when Spike was obsessing over Rarity, no one ever told him off on account of the fact that he was a dragon and she wasn't. Instead, everyone else saw it for what it was: a crush that, while sweet, was ultimately hopeless, and was something that Spike would have to learn on his own.


True enough.
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Postby Just Scuds (?) » Wed Aug 27, 2014 7:27 am

Skipper wrote:Only thing wrong with it was that Daring Do and her adventures were suddenly real.

(So, like, the whole episode. :gotcha: )


Yup. The book could have been delayed because A.K. Yearling could have been struggling with writer's block. Rainbow comes to the 'rescue' with some of her story ideas, while all the while Twilight is saying things like
:-/ :"Daring would never say a thing like that! You can't just evolve a familiar character into an entirely new direction out of nowhere like that!"
:v: :"Aww sure you can! It's a story! It can be anything we want! I mean heck, if we don't, our characters will get old and stale because they're running around doing all the same things over and over!"
:-I :"Wait. What?"
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Wed Aug 27, 2014 10:14 am

I thought the idea could have been good if it was revealed at the end. Like, say, all of the other ponies go home and then she suddenly reveals herself to be Daring Do to the audience without the rest knowing...make it sort of ambiguious.
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Postby Applepie (?) » Wed Aug 27, 2014 12:14 pm

This is not my favorite S4 episode. But, it was great to see the Breezies again.
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Postby Niels Olof (?) » Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:34 pm

I have never had much of a problem with a show whose sole raison d’être is pushing toys occasionally actually trying to push toys (even if said toys never materialized (and I would absolutely buy a Rarity breezie if it was pretty)). That said, the episode is not without its problems (all of which has been listed above), and certainly among the weaker of the key episodes (I’d rank it with RD’s episode). Still, I found the Breezies’ design cute (I also find insects cute and beautiful in general), and their voices, especially Sea Breeze, adorable. What’s more, this episode begat
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:51 pm

Flutterbee is indeed awesome and still makes me laugh.
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Postby Discord (?) » Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:53 pm

After re-watch, I stand by my initial positive perception of this episode. It has a multiple really sweet and surprisingly mature moments (quick Spike forgiveness, Seabreeze's frustration, Fluttershy kicking the breezies out, Seabreeze's family), the characterization is good, and the main part of the story flows well enough. Even the breezy transformation scene doesn't feel bad to me now that I expect it, since I think their arrival in the breezy home is a strong enough scene to justify the transformation.

I'd say the episode's worst flaw is actually the poorly delivered exposition in the beginning- any explanation that starts with "as you know" tends to be awkward, and even the bit of exposition with the cakes feel kind of weird. But I can forgive this for a well done second/start of 3rd act.

Far from the most engaging episode for the most part, but it stands well enough.
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Postby Homeswirl (?) » Wed Aug 27, 2014 11:55 pm

ROBOT B9 wrote:I thought the idea could have been good if it was revealed at the end. Like, say, all of the other ponies go home and then she suddenly reveals herself to be Daring Do to the audience without the rest knowing...make it sort of ambiguious.


There was too much of that already in S4.
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Postby RainbowDoubleDash (?) » Thu Aug 28, 2014 2:37 pm

Homeswirl wrote:There was too much of that already in S4.


I would have been okay with it if they had included stuff like that as background elements, without necessarily following up.

Like, for example, Fluttershy still has some small fangs at the end of "BATS!" It would have been a fun background gag if, say, we saw Twilight and Applejack talking. When the camera's on Twilight talking we see Fluttershy in the background getting an apple and opening her mouth to eat it. Camera cuts to Applejack 'cause she's saying something. Camera cuts back to Twilight and the conversation continues as normal, but in the background we see Fluttershy holding an apple that's been drained of juice and so is a withered husk.

That kind of thing.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Thu Aug 28, 2014 3:02 pm

Eh...I think it was good enough as a one off gag. I wish they did something with the Pony of Shadows though... :pinkieshrug:
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Postby RainbowDoubleDash (?) » Thu Aug 28, 2014 3:17 pm

ROBOT B9 wrote:Eh...I think it was good enough as a one off gag. I wish they did something with the Pony of Shadows though... :pinkieshrug:


There's a theory that it was Tirek. Which doesn't make sense for a few reasons, but the theory exists nevertheless.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Thu Aug 28, 2014 3:36 pm

...Nope, the shape looks too much like a pony to be him. It might be Starswirl but they said it was just meant as a silly joke...
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