S04E21: Leap of Faith

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Re: S04E21: Leap of Faith

Postby Wayoshi (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 6:27 pm

So...

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... since when are Parasprites fashionable, Rarity? :v:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 6:46 pm

That's not the only weird background pony from this episode.

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Granny Smith's father was sent into the future to watch over his now-ancient daughter.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 6:49 pm

Well, there's only one conclusion. The parasprites were stuffed and mounted. :gotcha:
:plonk: Image :)
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Postby Wylie (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 7:23 pm

Fizzbuzz wrote:That's not the only weird background pony from this episode.

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Granny Smith's father was sent into the future to watch over his now-ancient daughter.


He actually resembles the Donny pony from Cutie Pox, and he even has a bowling cutie mark. Might just be a reused asset.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 7:26 pm

Huh...that's true. So Granny Smith's father has a acorn cutie mark. It must mean that his skill was farming...this leading up to the Apples becoming farmers!
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 7:31 pm

One underrated part of this episode is that AB & Granny had an interesting dynamic going on in the background. AB is genuinely excited when learning about a new side of Granny, predictably exploring if she could try it [as a CMC crusading perhaps, but this is not explicit] but is not entirely carried away - she respects why it's pretty dangerous right away and backs off. Later, both of them are caught by the music and decide to head into the tent - they were both the most confrontational/open in Squeezy 6000 too, so that maintains their full family dynamic. But even after Granny gets the tonic, AB considers AJ's wisdom and listens to her, even going so far as to head to the tent with her to uncover things. It's only when AJ gives the go-ahead under FF's manipulation that she goes full-fledged joyful on bonding a bit with Granny.

In short, I thought AB showed off that recently found maturity pretty well.

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The Hub didn't just lie in that tweet pic today... :v:

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This is as close to the obligatory cute Fluts :allears: pic of the week as we can get today.

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gg Granny, gg. Even a "deep dish pie pan" of water isn't quite enough to save ya.

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:eenope: : I'm waaaaaaay ahead of you, little sis. NOPE.
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Postby Angel Beat (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 7:37 pm

AJ's key is a Bitcoin? :smirk:
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Postby Discord (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 7:44 pm

Pretty good episode. The dilemma was really interesting to me, because it's not necessarily a question with a clear-cut answer in all circumstances. It was definitely some good character building to see Applejack struggle with the answer, and I don't think we've had an episode that's dealt with that supposed side of her character this well before.

Flim and Flam were pretty fun. I agree that the concluding bit with the new pony was awkward.
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Postby ScionVyse (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 7:47 pm

Angel Beat wrote:AJ's key is a Bitcoin? :smirk:

Oh gee. The plot of the penultimate episode this season: MtGox loses AJ's key and the mane 6 have to go searching the interwebs to find it. :gotcha:
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Postby SlateSlabrock (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 7:52 pm

Wylie wrote:
He actually resembles the Donny pony from Cutie Pox, and he even has a bowling cutie mark. Might just be a reused asset.

Here's a better shot:
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Postby Sailor Yue (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 7:58 pm

it looks like Hub deleted the tweet and facebook posts with the picture that said "Its never to late to give up on your dreams"

Jokes on them since im sure many of us saved it. If not, here it is again :gotcha:
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:04 pm

Yeah, the Hub hasn't learned that once you put something on the Internet, it stays on. Forever. :excellent:
:plonk: Image :)
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Postby Highbrow Dash (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:15 pm

sailoryue wrote:Image


That's too perfect :smirk:

This episode felt a little boring. Kinda wish I had watched it live with the chat, it probably would have been more entertaining :-P I did like AJ's reactions and it had a fun moment or two, but nothing too exciting.

It probably would have been better if they had come up with a fun new character instead of bringing back Flim&Flam, to be honest.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:21 pm

SoundMonkey44 wrote:Nitpicking over keys now too are we!?

Yea today's a good day to do yard work and ignore the internet. :-I


Emptyquotin' this.

Man, these guys are on a tear with Applejack this season, aren't they? The moment I saw her confront Flim and Flam and them shift seamlessly into Plan B mode ("So what if it isn't technically real? The placebo effect can be worth real money. Are your principles so important that they trump other ponies' happiness?"), I knew I was up against some next-level shit compared to " :hilarious: Just let go, that'll show you how important honesty is".

Honesty is not a difficult theme to build a kids' show around. What's kind of incredible in retrospect is just how little this show has made hay of it. This is the first time they've really made it the centerpiece of an Applejack story, and up till now I've been coming up with all these convoluted and needlessly congratulatory theories about how the intervening seasons of Pony have created character development stories about ponies' coming into conflict with their Elemental traits. Rarity has had episodes about greed and ambition, Fluttershy has gone overboard with her repressed rage, and Applejack's stories have frequently involved her hiding the truth or being diplomatic to spare someone's feelings—but it's never come right out and said "Here is a lesson about Honesty, starring Applejack". It's kind of amazing that the show has avoided being so direct about its basic premise for so long.

And I'm not sure whether it's a change for the better or for the worse, either. It just seems like this is the kind of episode the show should have been doing all along—or at least the kind I would have expected it to do, based on how everything was set up in the pilot episode. Seeing Applejack wrestling with the moral implications of allowing her likeness to be used in endorsement of something she doesn't actually believe in is kind of like if we were to see Hasbro suddenly flood the toy aisles with Twilight's Tree Library Playsets and Cutie Mark Crusader figurines with Magic Warm-Water-Activated Cutie Marks. Season Four seems like it's been about the show finding its footing again, and I've felt that way ever since Princess Twilight Sparkle and its return to the Celestia/Luna mythology after all this Crystal Empire diversion stuff.

And in any case, throughout this episode I was just giddy about how well and relatably Applejack's inner struggle was being presented. Sure, the show had to be a bit heavy-handed in scenes like the reveal of Silver Shill (" :aghast: GASP! You were in on it!" when it was obvious to anyone watching over the age of 12 that this was the case, and in a realistic scenario AJ and even AB should have declared the jig to be up the instant they saw him come out the tent door). But everything from the abovementioned confrontation scene onward was deliciously subtle, and even a target-audience kid would have been totally sucked in to the quandary. How will Applejack get out of this? I know she's lying. She knows she's lying. And now every pony in town is taking her at her word! What'll happen when she gets found out? What would I do if I were Applejack? Shit Moooooom the TV is making me thiiiiiink

And it's fascinating how the episode danced around the very real possibility that Granny Smith would severely hurt herself doing what she's doing. It was the unspoken subtext behind all of Applejack's worry about her, and behind the tension of the climactic dive scene. Every little stunt she pulled, I could just feel spontaneous sympathetic osteoporosis fizzing through my bones. :-I I'm not even going to point out the ridiculousness of AJ snatching her out of the air with a lasso, however that was physically supposed to have worked. But there's no way it's lost on kids either what the danger to Granny is of believing in the tonic. They have grandparents. They know it's not just because they're plagued by bad memories that they're not diving off the high board at the public pool.

Flim and Flam? They're as cornily likable as ever, and if we're really going to carp about whether they've been changed (whether for better or worse) by making them into snake-oil salesmen versus the more morally ambiguous "just good businessmen" role they played in SSCS6K, man I just don't even know how we ever got involved in this show to begin with. Is that the kind of consistency we're going to demand? They had a marvelous song (drawing more on calliope-driven carnival barker/circus music than 50s showtunes), they were joyously self-possessed and able to turn on a dime tactically, and they had a plan with which to set up a business that (unless someone like Applejack came along to spoil everything) they could have kept going indefinitely, just like their real-world antecedents did. And they weren't redeemed into oblivion either. What's not to like?

So yeah. Great episode rich in essential AJ-ness, excellent song with real ambitious lyrics and musical interplay, and wonderful horse texture. (Love those Granny Smith-isms: "Nothin' to it but to do it!" "Hold your horsefeathers!" etc. —Not to mention "Leave the flyin' through the air to the pegasi!" :granny: ) I was constantly giggling through the scene of Big Mac and AJ desperately trying to save Granny as she kept swimming around all their efforts. (The yoke can be used as a flotation device :iamapony: ) And just in general it felt like exactly what this show has always wanted to be.




...Shit, I suck at emptyquotin'.
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:24 pm

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How can mummy pony be cured if he can't drink the tonic? :v:

Man, this song... one lyric that kinda kills it is "we've got the thing for you" / "you've got the thing we need". The generic word choice sticks out as lazy when otherwise it's fairly solid.

I was able to figure all the horse puns out of everything except this: "Saunter sitz and gallop plop won't give your tail some heft." ... Why would either of these possibly help a tail? What is a gallop plop supposed to be?

EDIT: That was the worst emptyquote ever. :v:

EDIT2: hahahaha

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Postby PictishBeast (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:32 pm

ShieldedDiamond wrote:What's the point of a bathing suit in Equestria? The cap I can understand, but the rest of it?


I once read a line that went something like, "Cartoon Logic: Donald Duck doesn't wear pants, but he does wear a swimsuit to the beach, and he would be embarrassed if his swimsuit came off when he jumped off the high dive." :twiright:

I liked this ep a lot but will catch up on the thread first.
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Postby Venusy (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:33 pm

Wayoshi wrote:Image

How can mummy pony be cured if he can't drink the tonic? :v:

Osmosis. :-I
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Postby Perpetual Lurker (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:39 pm

:flimflam: Didn't you know? Our elixir also functions as a topical ointment!
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Postby Minty (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:50 pm

That's not a tonsil :gonkity:
Interesting episode about placebos and stuff.
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:50 pm

As I rewatch now, another :granny: I liked: "but a competition is a pony of a different color."

Also, this AB cute image:

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EDIT: Oh :granny: , your mouth...

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Changeling Lyra (remember she's judging) spotted:

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Postby Space Ghost (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:56 pm

Alright episode.
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Postby TheNegaverser (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:57 pm

Headless, thank you. Thank you so much. Don't ever stop being awesome. :allears:
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Postby PonyHag714 (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:59 pm

Only Big Mac can rock a yoke and PFD at the same time. :eeyup:
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Postby PictishBeast (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 9:03 pm

Loved this one, mostly because Flim and Flam are just the best. The whole "traveling medicine show" thing is a perfect textural detail for this show, and who better to run it?

I don't follow this "honest businessmen" argument; the two of them were clearly modeled on Professor Harold Hill from The Music Man. They're not necessarily bad guys, but they are out to make a quick buck -- not on the strength of their product, but on the quickness of their wit.

Best part: AJ admits it's a fraud and Flim & Flam immediately pivot. "Why, she just said it gives ponies confidence, folks! And that's not all it can do!"

Goddamn I love these guys. So happy they stayed in character throughout and made it out of town with most of their profits intact. :flimflam:

Nitpick: How do crutches work on a pony? Humans use crutches to basically become four-legged creatures, taking some of the pressure off our rear legs. I can't see how Silver Shill's crutches in that first disguise would help at all. :ponder:
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 9:05 pm

Image

I've liked the Mane 6 rainbow, but this is a bit much, isn't it? Kinda hard to buy there's such a flag and that the Mane 6 aren't heralded as celebs in Ponyville. And no, AJ's importance this episode isn't really Mane 6 saving Equestria related, it's AJ being so important to Ponyville's economy.

On the other hand, I wonder what the tower art is supposed to represent.
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Postby PonyHag714 (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 9:11 pm

They look like they represent different aspects of nature--the sun, plants, water. I don't know what the purply picture is, unless it's storm clouds. Possibly they also symbolize different regions of Equestria, like the desert and the sea.
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Postby Sailor Yue (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 9:14 pm

Rewatching, and couple things i noticed:

AJ bucks a perfectly healthy tree right off its roots into the river to save Granny O_O just how strong IS she!?

When Granny asked Big Mac if he wanted to join her for Apple Buckin, he winces and says "uhh NOPE" in disgusting, almost like she asked him to give her a kiss :smirk:
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Postby PictishBeast (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 9:31 pm

Looks like they researched actual synchronized swimming moves for authenticity. So glad they didn't do that "people lined up at the edge of a pool all dive in one after the other followed by an overhead view of them making geometric shapes." You know what I'm talking about. It's movie shorthand for synchronized swimming and has been parodied so much nobody can remember what it's parodying (a movie from the 1930s I was surprised to learn once).

Also the "high dive into a pan of water" reminded me of Bugs Bunny in High-Diving Hare.
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Postby Dee Cee (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 9:33 pm

Wayoshi wrote:Image

How can mummy pony be cured if he can't drink the tonic? :v:


Note the sunglasses: that's no mummy, it must be The Invisible Pony! :twiright:
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Postby Stuff (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 9:41 pm

Great episode. Great lesson.

Fake medicine pisses me off.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 10:02 pm

PonyHag714 wrote:Only Big Mac can rock a yoke and PFD at the same time. :eeyup:

Judging by how he tossed it, the yoke is also a floatation device.
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Postby fenster (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 10:36 pm

Headless Horse wrote:


...Shit, I suck at emptyquotin'.


Get gud at postin. :help:

For serious, you saved me a bunch of words, because that's all pretty much what I felt as well. I completely loved this episode because of, to take your description, how it "found its footing again" and I felt this episode did so more so than most/all Season 4 episodes previously for how smart it felt with AJ's conflicting emotions. I want to say, "this has been one of the best episodes of the season", but I feel like that's something I could say about any of the previous 8 or so episodes of the season so I can't make any solid judgements yet. But certainly this episode really dug into my heartstrings with what seemed to be an obvious plot; the kind of surprisingly deep and touching quality that kept me on the show in the first place. Josh Haber knocked it out of the park for this episode, especially as a newer writer.

PictishBeast wrote:Looks like they researched actual synchronized swimming moves for authenticity.


I also wanted to point out this segment, because I thought in general it looked great even though I had expected it to look bad. Not only because of what you mentioned, but I loved the new angles the played with in the scene and I especially like the motions. I'd thought that getting the ponies to swim like that would look really awkward, like revisting some MLP Tales territory, but I didn't mind the segment at all.
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Postby PictishBeast (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 11:02 pm

fenster wrote: Josh Haber knocked it out of the park for this episode, especially as a newer writer.


Yeah I love Josh Haber so much I want to marry him. Castle Mane-ia, Simple Ways, and this ep are among my favorites for the season.

Last year it was Charlotte Fullerton with Sleepless in Ponyville and Just For Sidekicks, but then Rainbow Falls left me kind of :-/
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Postby Mr. Big (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 11:11 pm

PictishBeast wrote:Last year it was Charlotte Fullerton with Sleepless in Ponyville and Just For Sidekicks, but then Rainbow Falls left me kind of :-/

Corey Powell wrote those eps. Charlotte Fullerton only did one episode this season ("Power Ponies"), and even then it was with two other writers.

Corey has one more episode this season: "Equestria Games", co-written with Meghan McCarthy.
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Postby ZamuelNow (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 11:12 pm

I was going to reply to some of the incorrect con men comments but Headless and Pictish already handled that exceptionally well. So instead, I'm just going to gush and fanboy over Applejack effortlessly kicking down a tree.
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Postby die Fledermaus (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 11:16 pm

I really, really, loved the episode. It may be one of my favorites period. I like the conflict between AJ's honesty and her family loyalty, both are very strong parts of her and it makes sense that she'd have to address the conflict there that pops up at times. She wanted her granny to be happy and, for a bit, that required lies, and then she got kinda exploited and realized the problem, that was a realistic arc for that that felt satisfying, if a little rushed at the end.

I kinda am with Doctor in being a little bummed that Flim and Flam went from being like, genuinely more advanced and legitimate inventors who were just kinda dicks to being more to the side of con men, but honestly they work great either way so its hard to care. Also I agree with other posts saying that's a bit of a shallow look at them regardless. They're still super over the top Music Man con artist ponies and that still rules. I loved that the town keeps falling for their catchy songs. Goddamn, Ponyville, stop listening to anyone with a catchy tune :gotcha:

Yea, really fun, considering I usually am fairly meh on AJ episodes this was a huge surprise for me and I loved it.
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Postby Dexanth (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 11:18 pm

This episode was pretty decent. It's not a top tier, but it is a solid episode. A good 'B', I would say!

On the + side :

Placebo effect episode is hilarious and utterly true rendition of the placebo effect. The psychologist in my squees on that.
Old timey stuff was hilarious.
Lyra getting one of her first moments of doing things beyond leaping and smiling for the camera!
The Doctor Whooves joke during their presentation.
Flim & Flam doing a very good snake oil job.

And plenty of other stuff I'm forgetting!

On the - side :

Song was a little weak; it wasn't bad, but compared to SSCS6000, it doesn't swim in the same waters.
This episode -really- played up the Mane-6 patterned objects. They're littering the background everywhere in this episode. I imagine there's a point to it - likely a toy tie-in - but the sudden presence of them everywhere seemed a bit odd. Previously it's been somewhat more muted.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 11:19 pm

I think part of why I'm generally so bullish on the show this season in particular (I always feel like I'm boosting for it even when the general tide of opinion is "Eehhh :pinkieshrug: ") is that I'm always trying to think of it from a kid's perspective.

A little while ago I went back into the archives and looked at some of my first posts here, from back when I was just discovering the show and looking for some place online to rave about it. I found that even way back then the perspective I seemed to have was "Damn, if I were a kid, I'd wonder just what kind of Shangri-La of giveafuck I'd stumbled into when I found this show". It's just so bent on overachieving, for its target audience, that it shames every other show on the market that's aimed at the same age group. I distinctly remember being ten years old and wondering just how the people making shit like Super Friends and He-Man and pretty much everything pre-Disney-Afternoon could sleep at night, with all the dreck they were mixing up and dumping into our Saturday mornings like so much half-treated sewage. Alvin and the Chipmunks with its droning voice acting and its fat-kid-with-food-obsession jokes and its "according to my calculations". Heathcliff and Friends with writing so half-baked I'm surprised I didn't get salmonella. That's what "kids' TV" was to me. And so when I started watching Pony, I honestly thought it was some kind of elaborate prank. Who the fuck decided to pay for this? Who managed to pull the world's most insane troll on a toy company by taking the budget they'd earmarked for two years of Taiwanese sweatshop animation and turned it into six months worth of the most incredible Flash work I've ever seen, and spent all the surplus on some kickass writers who apparently wanted to give this current generation of kids something they'd never had themselves growing up—respect?

And then when I see an episode like this, all I can think, once again, is just how enthralled I would be if I were ten years old and knew that this show was being produced for me and not for adults—and yet that it had humor that wasn't afraid to aim over my head, writing with deep character-driven conflicts instead of cheap interchangeable cookie-cutter plots like "Supporting Character got conked on the head and now has amnesia" or "James Bond Parody Episode", and animation that was so gorgeous to watch that it brought tears to my eyes. Above all I'm not thinking about how well the episode holds up for me as a 30-mumble-year-old nerd who's used to watching stuff like Breaking Bad and Mad Men. I'm not trying to judge the show's success on how well it maintains the implied motivation of a couple of minor villains or whether the gimmick shiny MacGuffin is or is not "epic" enough. What I care about is that ten-year-old kid inside me who is still watching this show with an expression of disbelief that someone cares enough to make this show like this, that it's this entertaining, this inspiring, and this respectful of me as a person even though I've barely begun to be one.

I guess in short I feel like people who want to dissect the show on the basis of how well it adheres to its established canon or how overtly it acknowledges its Very Unexpected fanbase have become highly detached from the mental time-warp that they fell through upon first discovering the show. Maybe that's the only way a lot of people can really relate to it at this point, because the joy of discovery only lasts for so long, and people get used to things scary-quickly—even completely unprecedented things for which we have no frame of reference at all. We're almost four years done with this pony ride—nearly half a decade. Some fans are at an age where they've been fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic for the bulk of their post-adolescent life. It's passé to be blown away by Pony on the merits of its mold-breaking nature. It's not going to catch anyone by surprise anymore, especially once they've determined that to catch them by surprise means the show has taken some sudden hard left turn into the weeds and become something new and different and no longer what they consider the safe status quo.

And I guess that's why I still look at it from that same "If I were ten again" perspective, whether consciously or as a matter of reflex. Because from that perspective, this phenomenon is still as refreshing and as fulfilling as it ever was—and as unique. Every "look an episode about the placebo effect" or "shit they brought back Flutterguy and made it awesome" or "holy christ it's Weird Al" is just another reason to go :-D —just like I was doing back in the spring of 2011.
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Postby Star Platinum (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 11:41 pm

Man, I didn't feel this episode at all. Maybe it's because I'm slightly intoxicated and my brain doesn't work right but Applejack's reaction to finding out the tonic was fake was all kinds of :psyduck: to me. Or maybe I just need to accept that some of the key episodes require the key character's personality to seemingly regress in order to deliver the contrived videogamey rainbow effect and remind us of who and what the main characters are. I just feel like AJ should have seen from the start what kind of danger the events would eventually lead to, or been stubborn enough to insist on being truthful. I understand how you could argue that this episode (and the other key episodes) show that the main characters are not perfect despite being associated with these virtues and they still make mistakes and learn from them, but after seeing them learn the same kinds of lessons several times before it just feels like they're being deliberately dumbed down in order to accommodate the so-called 'arc' of this season. The very idea of bringing back the FlimFlam Bros. struck me as unoriginal from the get go, like they were a sort of a "go-to adversary" for an episode about Applejack and honesty, and I was disappointed to see there wasn't any kind of twist to it.
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Postby Mr. Big (?) » Sat Mar 29, 2014 11:42 pm

Headless Horse wrote:I distinctly remember being ten years old and wondering just how the people making shit like Super Friends and He-Man and pretty much everything pre-Disney-Afternoon could sleep at night, with all the dreck they were mixing up and dumping into our Saturday mornings like so much half-treated sewage.

"When I first came down [to Hollywood], I was naive, I thought, 'Well, they're going to welcome me with open arms, because there's nobody with any talent down there." And it turns out there's tons of people with talent; it's the system that's all screwed up.'"
-John Kricfalusi in an old late 1980s interview
Last edited by Mr. Big on Sat Mar 29, 2014 11:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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