S04E14: Filli Vanilli

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Re: S04E14: Filli Vanilli

Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:07 pm

PictishBeast wrote:
Does the sweater actually look bad on Rarity or was that just a pun?

It's okay on Rarity, but most anything looks nice enough on her white coat. That was more a pun on a certain S1 episode that also starred a certain yellow horse. :dreamworks:
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Postby citric (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:21 pm

Pinkie Pie wrote:We can't prank Fluttershy! I mean, she's so sensitive, it'll hurt her feelings - even our most harmless prank!

:pinkieshrug:
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Postby ShieldedDiamond (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:45 pm

Aramek wrote:Nothing looks bad on Rarity.

Even in Magic Duel when she had the ugly dress poofed onto her. Looked good.
Even in Boast Busters when she had the ugly green hair poofed onto her. Looked good.

:vogue:


Nothing looks bad on Rarity. Ever. I issue a challenge to find one point where Rarity looked bad in an outfit. :wink:

She even could make. :heehaw: look good. :vogue:
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 8:01 pm

I have to agree with you there. Rarity could pull off even the most garish outfit. :vogue:
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Postby The Doctor (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 10:21 pm

Rarity's dress last week was kind of ugly. It's a leotard and a throw rug...

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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 10:30 pm

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Everyone bow down to this perfect early expression of "I really like this a lot but I just can't for now." :-D
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Postby Kitsune (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 10:53 pm

I really liked this episode! I didn't really watch certain parts of it, though, I was a little too afraid of something embarrassing happening so I kinda just listened to some parts.

...But Pinkie's 'you sound like a dude' comment means I'll probably never watch/listen to this episode again :fluttersmith: A lot of Pinkie's behavior seemed kinda bad, but for me that just went too far.
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Postby Space Ghost (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 10:54 pm

After rewatching the episode, my thoughts on it are better then after the first watch. I still want to strangle Pinkie, but this time she didn't ruin the episode. So yeah, good episode. I would say great, but Pinkie is just irredimable for me and drags it down. Her behavior is terrible and cruel.
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Postby SoundMonkey44 (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 10:55 pm

Most animation errors this season have given us Alicorns, this one took one away.

Yes for a second Twy was A unicorn again. XD


Also pinkie stole Twys Cutie Mark, XD

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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:01 pm

Foxfyre wrote:I really liked this episode! I didn't really watch certain parts of it, though, I was a little too afraid of something embarrassing happening so I kinda just listened to some parts.

...But Pinkie's 'you sound like a dude' comment means I'll probably never watch/listen to this episode again :fluttersmith: A lot of Pinkie's behavior seemed kinda bad, but for me that just went too far.

If it helps, remember that Fluttershy's voice had been straight-up magically changed. As I saw it, Pinkie Pie was just pointing out the obvious for whatever reason, not trying to make fun of Fluttershy for it. Is that the way it felt to you?
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Postby The Doctor (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:04 pm

citric wrote: :pinkieshrug:


While Pinkie was still a jerk this episode, I don't know if this is a fair thing to bring up. Fluttershy is made of much stronger stuff than she was in season 1.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:08 pm

The Doctor wrote:
While Pinkie was still a jerk this episode, I don't know if this is a fair thing to bring up. Fluttershy is made of much stronger stuff than she was in season 1.

And like I mentioned earlier in the thread, Pinkie thought she was actually being helpful here. A prank is different; that involves tricking the victim and getting that person to laugh at his or her own foolishness. Pinkie knew that something with slightly mean motive like that would just make Fluttershy feel bad about herself, but here Pinkie just wanted to do what she thought was the right thing.
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Postby londonarbuckle (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:10 pm

Foxfyre wrote:I really liked this episode! I didn't really watch certain parts of it, though, I was a little too afraid of something embarrassing happening so I kinda just listened to some parts.

...But Pinkie's 'you sound like a dude' comment means I'll probably never watch/listen to this episode again :fluttersmith: A lot of Pinkie's behavior seemed kinda bad, but for me that just went too far.



I'll admit, I didn't like that either. I was pretty disappointed that they went there. :/
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Postby Space Ghost (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:12 pm

Yeah, that line was terrible.
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Postby Tears (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:15 pm

Just on the music front, I think the Smile song and the reprise of Flutters' song both had a similar little key shift right at the end (I don't know what you'd call that because I am not Octavia), on "from these happy friends of mii-iiine" and "you gotta find, you gotta fii-iiind".

Whatever that is I am a total sucker for it, because I get all :D from those parts of both songs.

Just like if you put a repeating melody live over a changing chord structure (i.e. Debaser by the Pixies) and I am basically putty.
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Postby Venusy (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:16 pm

Fizzbuzz wrote:If it helps, remember that Fluttershy's voice had been straight-up magically changed. As I saw it, Pinkie Pie was just pointing out the obvious for whatever reason, not trying to make fun of Fluttershy for it. Is that the way it felt to you?
I can imagine why hearing those specific words might be distressing to Foxfyre. A lot of the things Pinkie says in this episode don't make me :nnngh: because of how cruel she's being to Fluttershy, they hit too close to home in terms of things that I've previously said to myself. To me, "you kind of sounded like a dude" is the kind of thing I would have said to discount any positives from a situation - "well, you maybe did alright there, but anyone could have done that, stop celebrating it like it's an achievement". But for many members here, that particular knife can cut a lot deeper. :fluttersmith:
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Postby Highbrow Dash (?) » Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:31 pm

I thought it was a funny line, just Pinkie making an obvious observation without a deeper meaning. But now I kind of feel bad about it :fluttersmith:
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Postby londonarbuckle (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 12:11 am

If I'd heard that line two years ago, I'd have thought it was hilarious. Which kind of led me to want to let it slide. But yeah, it definitely bugged me.
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Postby PonyHag714 (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 12:25 am

I found the line funny at first. But I can see now how people would find it hurtful. :-(
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Postby Weird Autumn (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 12:31 am

It's kind of funny to me that Fluttershy has to tell everybody she has stage fright and it's not just taken for granted. I mean she might as well have been saying "I... I'm.... shy."

Really the weirdest thing about this episode to me, even aside from the Flutterguy callback that I'm sure people have discussed to death by now, is how little conflict there actually is. This is honestly kind of a structural weakness in the narrative, I think; in the vast majority of the episode the only real obstacles the characters have to overcome are really minor things that pretty much immediately get settled. There's an initial conflict between Fluttershy and Rarity that they come to an understanding about by the end of the first scene, and then there's no real conflict until Big Mac loses his voice and Fluttershy has to face her stage fright, which also gets worked around in about two minutes. Afterwards we get a good 7-8 minutes or so, basically a third of the episode, where nobody really has any competing interests or internal dilemmas: Fluttershy wants to sing, the other Ponytones want her to sing, Big Mac eventually starts to look a little flustered but nothing really comes of it. The central conflict of the episode only appears with Fluttershy's terrifying searchlight-eye pony heads during the climax, and at that point the show's only giving itself five minutes to address it.

This script is pretty continuity-heavy as far as pony show goes, not just in how it makes a callback a central part of its narrative but in how it portrays the character. There seems to be a real emphasis on how much the characters have grown as people and in their understanding of one another; in particular, Rarity comes off really mature in how she recognizes and accepts Fluttershy's reluctance to go on stage and doesn't push her like you get the feeling Season 1 Rarity would have. The episode really wants to impress on you that these characters are actually learning the lessons at the end of each episode, which is both a noble goal and what I think is ultimately its downfall. With the two major exceptions of Fluttershy's irrational stage fright and the silly sitcom substitution scheme that puts her behind the curtains, this episode is basically full of reasonable adults acting reasonably, and that doesn't lend itself to drama.

Also this is one of the first times I think I can say Pinkie's really gotten on my nerves. I normally appreciate a little bit of cynicism, but it really doesn't become her.
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Postby Dexanth (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 12:47 am

SoundMonkey44 wrote:Also pinkie stole Twys Cutie Mark, XD


Perhaps she didn't steal it. Perhaps she's been concealing her REAL cutie mark all along. After all, if her special talent is magic, it explains Pinkie Pie :-P

As for the line in question, I get why it can bother people, but because of where & why it occurs I found it funny and still do, though I can get why it would sting some.
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Postby doodlesplat (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 12:49 am

If the poison joke effects are reliably activated and de-activated by a brew and a bath, every pony ought to want to have themselves tested to see what special secondary abilities they might get.
:v:

Also, 6 catchlights might be a record.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 12:50 am

Opposing Farce wrote:Really the weirdest thing about this episode to me, even aside from the Flutterguy callback that I'm sure people have discussed to death by now, is how little conflict there actually is. This is honestly kind of a structural weakness in the narrative, I think; in the vast majority of the episode the only real obstacles the characters have to overcome are really minor things that pretty much immediately get settled. There's an initial conflict between Fluttershy and Rarity that they come to an understanding about by the end of the first scene, and then there's no real conflict until Big Mac loses his voice and Fluttershy has to face her stage fright, which also gets worked around in about two minutes. Afterwards we get a good 7-8 minutes or so, basically a third of the episode, where nobody really has any competing interests or internal dilemmas: Fluttershy wants to sing, the other Ponytones want her to sing, Big Mac eventually starts to look a little flustered but nothing really comes of it. The central conflict of the episode only appears with Fluttershy's terrifying searchlight-eye pony heads during the climax, and at that point the show's only giving itself five minutes to address it.

The conflict was definitely there, it's just that the episode was never very direct with it. All through the second act, as Fluttershy and the others sang, we were all just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think this structure really made for a great change of pace, with how it got all the usual stuff out of the way like that.
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Postby Passport Clean (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 12:54 am

Welp, late to the party thanks to the normal itunes delay. Late enough that I was somewhat spoilered by warnings that Pinkie was "a towering douche that ruined everything in this one."

So I watched in mild dread for those moments... only to see what appeared to me to be, well, cartoon humor. In a cartoon. Just the usual Pinkie stuff we've been seeing since the pilot, Swarm of the Century, Over a Barrel, Luna Eclipsed, etc. No intentional foul, no permanent harm*. The verbal equivalent of the old slapstick routine where Laurel isn't paying full attention when he swings a wooden plank around on his shoulder and slaps Hardy in the face with it... or the anvil to the head bit from Feeling Pinkie Keen.

I mean yeah, Pinkie was being flawed, but all the mane 6 have flawed moments, even (especially?) in their precious magic friendship interactions. Flaws are what makes it interesting and funny.

I've seen some befuddled chatter from a small group of folk who can't square that AKR wrote this and the Pinkie we saw in Pinkie Pride. They're tossing around terms like "flanderized" or "out of character" and coming up with convoluted explanations for "what went awry", but this just seems like overthink to me. I personally believe the simple explanation is this: AKR knows she's writing a cartoon with a fair dose of zany in it, she thinks it's a lark and we should just follow her lead. Personally, I find more peace in accepting the reality the writers present to me instead of "metagaming" every little event. I know that can't work for everyone, but well...

... I'm updating my season 4 rankings and putting this one on the upper end. Good work crew. :chillin:

* Sure Fluttershy cried, but we can comfortably bet she cries at the sight of autumn leaves falling. :roll: Anyway, she didn't end the episode on a shrink's couch cursing the name of Pinkie Pie, so it looks like it was all par for the course in their friendship... unless she still feels like she has to compensate for her truly atrocious behavior during the Iron Will fiasco...
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Postby Weird Autumn (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 12:56 am

Fizzbuzz wrote:The conflict was definitely there, it's just that the episode was never very direct with it. All through the second act, as Fluttershy and the others sang, we were all just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think this structure really made for a great change of pace, with how it got all the usual stuff out of the way like that.

I would argue the only reason we have to worry the other shoe's going to drop is because it's a story and we know that's how stories work. That's not really enough tension there to carry half the episode on its own, and while I did enjoy the Ponytones scenes they didn't really do enough in service of the central conflict to make relegating that conflict entirely to the last five minutes dramatically satisfying.
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Postby PictishBeast (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 12:59 am

Tears wrote:Image
And because it's rad to see Rarity so unselfconsciously enjoying something.


:allears:

brb, replacing my Rocky poster

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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 1:06 am

Fizzbuzz wrote:The conflict was definitely there, it's just that the episode was never very direct with it. All through the second act, as Fluttershy and the others sang, we were all just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think this structure really made for a great change of pace, with how it got all the usual stuff out of the way like that.


I agree with this. I thought it was a really refreshing little self-referential wink, the way that first act ended:

:vogue: Oh, yes. It is wonderful when a plan comes together without any sort of draaaaama, isn't it?

And then the fact that it was Fluttershy who suggested the lip-syncing scheme—rather than, say, Twilight coming up with it and insensitively forcing it on her (which would have been easy and obvious and probably the way some other straw-man cartoon would have done it). I thought it was actually the lack of a bigger, more overarching external conflict that allowed us to sort of peel away the layers and see the warring sides within Fluttershy herself being the source of the episode's real drama: she's willing to volunteer and self-sacrifice, even if it puts her directly in the line of fire of her own vulnerability. That's a remarkably grown-up thing for her to do.



Oh, and

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The more I think about this the more it cracks me up. Somewhere in town there's a pony who has a deer as a pet. :gotcha:
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Postby doodlesplat (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 1:15 am

The thing with the lip syncing and revelation were, to me, just a stage on which to build the rest of the episode. The larger conflict I saw in this episode was how Fluttershy's love of singing and her fear of performing in front of others were to be reconciled. It's not a conflict that lent itself to much direct visualization. At the end, when Twilight asked "How do you feel?" and she responded "Surprisingly, okay!". In the pause between those two words, she changes tone as if she had an internal realization. That moment was essentially the resolution to that conflict; up till then, she's only made some progress but had not yet reached a milestone significant enough to resolve that conflict. Then she digests this realization some more and then elaborates on it in the pony journal.

preview edit: "I thought it was actually the lack of a bigger, more overarching external conflict that allowed us to sort of peel away the layers and see the warring sides within Fluttershy herself being the source of the episode's real drama"... Beaten. :-P
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 1:19 am

Headless Horse wrote:Image

The more I think about this the more it cracks me up. Somewhere in town there's a pony who has a deer as a pet. :gotcha:

I guess that's another hoofed mammal we can cross off of the "sapient in Equestria" list, then. :wat:
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Postby Weird Autumn (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 1:23 am

Headless Horse wrote:I thought it was actually the lack of a bigger, more overarching external conflict that allowed us to sort of peel away the layers and see the warring sides within Fluttershy herself being the source of the episode's real drama: she's willing to volunteer and self-sacrifice, even if it puts her directly in the line of fire of her own vulnerability. That's a remarkably grown-up thing for her to do.

See, I might agree with this more if I had gotten the sense that Fluttershy was grappling with an internal conflict once she started getting into the Ponytones thing. I don't really think that's what the episode is presenting, though; she's really just doing it because she enjoys it, and framing it as an act of self-sacrifice is how she avoids admitting to herself she enjoys doing it (because once she admits she wants to perform she can't be happy living in her safe little bubble anymore). Up until the curtain gets knocked over, Fluttershy is getting what she wants (to sing) without having to confront the thing that would otherwise stop her from getting it (stage fright) and she seems perfectly happy with the arrangement.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 1:33 am

Fizzbuzz wrote:I guess that's another hoofed mammal we can cross off of the "sapient in Equestria" list, then. :wat:


Then again, as stiff as it looks, maybe it's just a porcelain deer.



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Postby PictishBeast (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 1:40 am

Headless Horse wrote:Image

The more I think about this the more it cracks me up. Somewhere in town there's a pony who has a deer as a pet.


At one of the Comic-Cons, Jayson or Meghan said that "hoofed mammals" were like the "people of Equestria" in the sense that they were all relatively normal citizens with regional/cultural differences. The deer in this scene implies that deer are animal-intelligent (like Angel, Harry, Tank, etc.) instead of pony-intelligent (like buffaloes, donkeys, zebras, cows, etc.)

Probably just an animator adding an asset without really thinking about it, but I can't help reading into it anyway.

PREVIEW EDIT:Like what Fizzbuzz was saying.

EDIT: That Universal video that Headless linked above was fucking hysterical. :golfclop:

EDIT2: That Universal video was SO hysterical I researched it and it turns out it was written by Matt Stone and Trey Parker long before they did South Park.
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Postby Wylie (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 1:44 am

Tears wrote:Just on the music front, I think the Smile song and the reprise of Flutters' song both had a similar little key shift right at the end (I don't know what you'd call that because I am not Octavia), on "from these happy friends of mii-iiine" and "you gotta find, you gotta fii-iiind".

Whatever that is I am a total sucker for it, because I get all :D from those parts of both songs.


I'm not Octavia, but I don't have the Orchestra tag in my sig for nothin'. It's called "modulation", and it is scientifically designed to make you go :D at that point in the song. So, it works. :golfclop:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 1:50 am

PictishBeast wrote:
At one of the Comic-Cons, Jayson or Meghan said that "hoofed mammals" were like the "people of Equestria" in the sense that they were all relatively normal citizens with regional/cultural differences. The deer in this scene implies that deer are animal-intelligent (like Angel, Harry, Tank, etc.) instead of pony-intelligent (like buffaloes, donkeys, zebras, cows, etc.)

Probably just an animator adding an asset without really thinking about it, but I can't help reading into it anyway.

PREVIEW EDIT:Like what Fizzbuzz was saying.

To their credit, it ain't the first time we've seen a less-than-talking hoofed mammal. Pigs have always been dumb and goats, in their sole past appearance, were only seen as Iron Will's assistants and never really seemed to speak.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:01 am

Wylie wrote:
I'm not Octavia, but I don't have the Orchestra tag in my sig for nothin'. It's called "modulation", and it is scientifically designed to make you go :D at that point in the song. So, it works. :golfclop:


Because I'm apparently in "illustrate everyone's point with a video" mode:



:yay: Modulation and I hold a high nooooooooooooote
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Postby ShieldedDiamond (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:02 am

I really liked this one! Washed the taste out of my mouth from last weeks episode, nice pull back up. I'd love to take part in the Roundstable review of it. :vogue:

I'd give it a solid 9/10.
Emote to describe how I felt about the episode: :allears:

Fluttershy episodes haven't usually been ones I've been too fond of. Not that I didn't like them, oh no, they're good episodes. Just not ones I've entirely enjoyed, except for a couple. I mean take Dragonshy for example. Good episode, yes, but not one so high on my "rewatch" list. Going into this episode, I was a bit concerned. The premise seemed "eh", I hated how Pinkie was acting during the preview clips, and it just seemed like it would be a forgettable episode.

Amy Keating Rogers has never been a writer who I've seen at the start of an episode, and have been 100% happy. What I feel her problem is that when she writes a good episode, it's one of the best. (Pinkie Pride, for example) But when she writes a bad episode, it's one of the worst. (MMMystery, for example.) So seeing her name at the beginning of an episode someone makes me go :yikes: "How is this one going to go?"

Fortunately, we got one of her better episodes. With the exception of Pinkie Pie, everyone seemed very in-character and was enjoyable to watch. In fact, I was very, very pleased with the way Rarity was handled in this episode. A common criticism I've seen made by people is that Rarity often forces ponies to end up doing what she wants, and pointing to Castle-Mania as a reference. But looking at this episode, I hope those people who have referred to her as self-centered think otherwise. Because throughout this episode, she was always very supportive of Fluttershy, and was actually concerned for her doing this, constantly saying "You know we don't have to do this, we could always cancel." But it was Fluttershy who kept pushing Rarity. So of course this does show her caring side, and she played an excellent role in the episode.

But let's of course talk about the "mane" pony of the episode, Fluttershy. Fluttershy I felt was also done very well in this episode. Her motives seemed in character, and so the episode felt natural. It was good to go back to the slice-of-life kind of style of episode, as opposed to what we've been getting before. It was fun to watch her in the episode, and I really enjoyed it.

The songs were great, the story was great, I just have one complaint. As I mentioned before, Pinkie Pie was acting terrible in this episode, and it just seemed like one of those moments where Rogers writes these ponies out of character. However, it was good that she really only appeared in a minimal amount, and didn't cause too much damage.

Overall, great episode, one of the best of the season alongside Rarity Takes Manehattan and Pinkie Pride. :yay:
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:13 am

Passport Clean wrote:I find more peace in accepting the reality the writers present to me instead of "metagaming" every little event.

If this was the case, everyone would like every show ever. You have to call BS when the moves are bad sometimes. :pinkieshrug:
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Postby Ransom (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:15 am

Fizzbuzz wrote:I guess that's another hoofed mammal we can cross off of the "sapient in Equestria" list, then. :wat:

They are sentient. He's an Equestrian immigrant looking for a roommate :yay:
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:17 am

PictishBeast wrote:EDIT: That Universal video that Headless linked above was fucking hysterical. :golfclop:

EDIT2: That Universal video was SO hysterical I researched it and it turns out it was written by Matt Stone and Trey Parker long before they did South Park.


Surely you recognized Trey's voice. :smirk:

(I still say "modren" occasionally in certain circles, just to see if anyone does a double-take)
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Postby SoundMonkey44 (?) » Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:19 am

Ransom wrote:They are sentient. He's an Equestrian immigrant looking for a roommate :yay:



I imagine the Deer being Russian for some reason. :v: No idea why, my brain is weird like that. :pinkieshrug:
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