Niels Olof wrote:Behold the power of the earth pony:

(Why yes! I
do have a new toy)
Is that... JJ Abrams style shaky-cam?
This was one hell of an episode. It's "disruptive" in that way that only a new writer can really pull off apparently, and funny as heck to boot. What's interesting to me is the
texture of the humor—as others have said, it's not laugh-out-loud comedy the way most of the show is, but it's all awkward pauses and interpersonal discomfort: the kinds of things you find in more traditional sitcom humor. "Dry humor" is one way of describing it, but I think another way is that it's the kind of thing you get by trying to mash up Pony's traditionally gag-oriented style with the sort of character interaction humor that happens in live-action when GUEST STAR JOHN MALKOVICH or whoever shows up for a week. I don't know if one of the regular writers would have been comfortable enough with the idea to really go all-out with it.
I'm honestly surprised at how well it worked, because I've always been sure that what makes the show go is its unique brand of cynicism-free optimism and positivity, which sets it so far apart from so many other shows out there. Really maybe what it boils down to is that whatever kind of writing they decide to apply to a given episode, the things we can always count on are there—Rarity's there at the picnic making little self-deprecating tutting noises whenever she tilts her head down and another giant diamond falls off her hat, as just one example of a detail that other cartoons simply wouldn't even bother to brainstorm, let alone script and board and voice and animate.
The music continues to wow me this season. I love that they seem willing lately to just do a nice long slow scene with an extended music cue, like the train station scene here or the establishing shots of the farm in Somepony to Watch Over Me, or all the lingering panning shots in Filli Vanilli. (Oh god now that I list these out, it really becomes apparent that there's one
hell of a lot of great episodes this season that I'm going to love rewatching.)
One thing I couldn't help but think about, though: they've kind of crossed a Rubicon of sorts with the "rock farm" concept not just being a crazy nonsense joke that was thrown into a flashback so the CMCs can be unsure of whether or not to even believe it. I'm not too sure how I feel about it, honestly. Part of me wanted it to remain something so ludicrous
in-universe that there wasn't any way in hell that was Pinkie's
real backstory. Having it become unequivocably real does take away a little bit from the out-of-left-field nature of the joke in Cutie Mark Chronicles, and I think it detracts a bit from that episode's rewatchability, which is a shame—because I distinctly remember that the very words ROCK FARM were sort of at the center of my incoherent garbled gibbering about why the second half of S1 was such a revelation to an entertainment-starved 2011 me. And the more times they repeat the words ROCK or ROCK FARM, the more of that spontaneous, uncut magic seeps out of them.
That said, I think they've handled it as well as they possibly could have, given the decision to have crossed that Rubicon in the first place (which really happened in Magic Duel I guess). They've carefully kept from answering too many questions about the nature of rock farming, and they've left open wide new avenues for speculation, what with Maud chowing down on a rock with nary a complaint, and all her crazy earth-pony physical abilities (pictured above). Okay, so she writes poetry about rocks sleeping in the ground. That doesn't demystify rock farming, it only makes it weirder. And I love it.
Okay, so yeah, this ep does feel "laundry-listy" in the sense that all the ponies are there and they have to do a scene with each of them. But it's not like that hasn't been a marquee feature of half the episodes in S1 and quite a few afterwards. Most of the comedy comes from those scenes, though the trick in laundry-list scenes like those is in keeping from from being predictable. If you ask me, they did that admirably, what with the dishrag thing, the "smash the apples with a rock" thing, the spider, and all the rest. If there's a centerpiece to the episode's dialogue and character, though, it would have to be the scene at Pinkie's door where they each, one by one, confidently launch into an attempt to break the news to Pinkie that they're not all clicking as friends—but each one loses her nerve a few words in and can't bring herself to finish. It's heartbreaking in its own way even before we see deflated-hair Pinkie putting on a brave face and dragging the door shut with her teeth. In some ways that's even more intense than any of the past Pinkie sad-breaks we've seen in the past, because now we're seeing her handling it maturely and self-consciously, to the point where she tries get in a little bit of a passive-aggressive jab via what she tries to make sound like a conciliatory statement of understanding. That line about "200 pounds of rock candy" has the weight of 86 episodes of aggressively-cheerful Pinkie behind it, and knowing that she's probably matured enough that she
really means that's the only difficulty she'll have to deal with (as opposed to flipping out and disowning her friends for their betrayal of her or whatever, as she might have in the past) would make me feel all the more terrible if I were Twilight or Rarity or Fluttershy.
The only other niggling feeling I have is that the "rock candy necklaces" thing felt almost like one of those G3 specials, didn't it? Like the episode was flirting with doing a "Hey kids, here's how to do a fun activity with your friends! Get some paper plates and dry macaroni and white glue and glitter, and..."
