S04E11: Three's a Crowd

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Re: Let's Re-Watch Week 28 : Three's a Crowd!

Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Fri Nov 21, 2014 7:01 am

This is probably on of my favourite episodes of the season. Discord is absolutely hilarious throughout it ( I never thought I'd see a Risky Business reference on MLP), it gave some good characterisation to Cadence and the song was pretty fun.
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Postby PaulloDEC (?) » Fri Nov 21, 2014 11:43 am

I find it hard to have any strong feelings about this one, which is kind of a bummer as I'm a huge fan of both Cadance and Twilight.

Maybe I need to rewatch it. I'm literally sitting here trying to think of things to say about it and drawing a blank.
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Postby Durandal (?) » Fri Nov 21, 2014 2:53 pm

Ha! I just rewatched this one like 2 says ago, so I'm set! :dwi:
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Postby TheNegaverser (?) » Fri Nov 21, 2014 5:10 pm

Dexanth wrote:Sometimes I put this up early on Friday cause it's still Thursday as far as I'm concerned.

Lazy chestnut! :twonk:

Fizzbuzz wrote:First off, I'd like to repost this video, since I'm a literal 13-year-old who thinks overwrought dubstep edits are hilarious

I see you have excellent taste is comedy as well! :twasnothin:

I remember this one being a lot of fun. Discord being a hoot (as usual), shooting lazors at colossal sand worms, Cadence having the pimpin'est ride this side of the Everfree, Twilight acting just as much of a dork as ever, etc, etc. Great episode! :yay:
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Postby Just Scuds (?) » Fri Nov 21, 2014 8:42 pm

:excellent: :"Our little excursion was such a delight, but you must admit Princess Twilight Sparkle has a bit of a short fuse, doesn't she?"
:allright: :"The actions of present company notwithstanding - She does!"

:shock:
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Postby Durandal (?) » Fri Nov 21, 2014 11:22 pm

Homeswirl wrote:I haven't rewatched it yet, but this is one of my favorite Discord episodes. He genuinely does not understand friendship, and this episode plays that part of it extremely well.


I still love the idea that Discord had caught on to the Key Items thing before everyone else did, so all of his behavior in this episode (Finding himself in trouble, having a friend help him and prove the strength of their friendship, which he symbolizes in a medallion that he gives Twilight) was just a huge plot to try and wiggle his way into being one of, I dunno, the keybearers or something. He figured there would be something good in that box which he wanted to be around to manipulate if he could. The problem with his plan, of course, was that there was no genuine friendship shown at any point :gotcha:
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Postby Angel Beat (?) » Fri Nov 21, 2014 11:52 pm

Twilight's whole :spoiler: was adorable as heck.

That, and the big fight at the end is a nice visual prelude to the Tirek battle.
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Postby Dexanth (?) » Sat Nov 22, 2014 12:35 am

TheNegaverser wrote:Lazy chestnut! :twonk:


I posted this on Thursday at 10 PM! I've been really good this last month or so about not waiting past midnight :-P
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Postby Bremen (?) » Sat Nov 22, 2014 12:40 am

Durandal wrote:
I still love the idea that Discord had caught on to the Key Items thing before everyone else did, so all of his behavior in this episode (Finding himself in trouble, having a friend help him and prove the strength of their friendship, which he symbolizes in a medallion that he gives Twilight) was just a huge plot to try and wiggle his way into being one of, I dunno, the keybearers or something. He figured there would be something good in that box which he wanted to be around to manipulate if he could. The problem with his plan, of course, was that there was no genuine friendship shown at any point :gotcha:


I never thought of it this way, but I like this theory :awesomedash: . TK certainly shows he was aware of how the keys worked.

Though he also seems to be jealous about Twilight's relationship with Cadence, given how he reacts to her saying it was fun at the end.
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Postby Marioland1 (?) » Sat Nov 22, 2014 5:00 am

I'm in the boat that loved this episode, although it's mostly because of that song. After about 5 minutes, I was singing it word-for-word, keeping up with the mad draconequus to the crazy lyrics. I was suspicious of it straight off the bat, but once he started singing, I knew it was gonna be fun. Then again, this is Discord! Fun is practically his middle name!

His antics and sheer ineptitude when it comes to friendship is downright hilarious at times, and when it all climaxes at the end, I was just left stunned. This rates quite highly on my favorite episode list. Just did it have to come up again shortly after I got sick myself?
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Sat Nov 22, 2014 7:18 am

The Spanish version is just as catchy and I'd have to say that Glass of Water is a pretty good song. :allears:

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Postby Marioland1 (?) » Sat Nov 22, 2014 8:11 am

I don't remember who, but I know I heard a brony reviewer say that "Glass of Water" was a really bad song and that John DeLancie had no singing capability shortly after the airing of the episode. Whomever that was, I am disappoint.
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Postby Conred (?) » Sat Nov 22, 2014 3:27 pm

This is the only song analysis i found.
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Postby Applepie (?) » Sat Nov 22, 2014 6:29 pm

Good to see Cadence and Discord again.
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Postby Discord (?) » Mon Nov 24, 2014 1:25 am

This episode is still a lot of fun to me. It's not particularly deep, but Discord is, as usual, very funny and creates a lot of amusing situations, and this episode is one of the best examples of that. I get a sense that the animators and staff just had a blast spitting out things they could shove in with a full episode about Discord shenanigans. It's just a bucket of laughs seeing Discord trolling everybody in a believable situation. The song is excellent; it's lovably crazy and nonsensical. And the concluding action scene and counter-troll is a nice way to cap it off. One of my favourites in S4.
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Mon Nov 24, 2014 7:15 pm

When looking at this in the context of Discord's S4 arc, it's an absolute failure. Discord shows up in the season premiere, this episode, and the finale. He's an ambiguous semi-jerk in the premiere, an ambiguous semi-jerk here, and finally a clear "touched by the magic of friendship" ally, corrupted by Tirek but nonetheless still touched, in the finale. There's no development at all shown on-screen when it should have been here. Look at some lines in Twilight's Kingdom part 2, in particular:

(Twilight contemplates trading her friends for her powers)

Rainbow Dash: [muffled] Don't do it, Twilight!
Fluttershy: [muffled] We aren't worth it!
Discord: [muffled] Oh, but you are, Fluttershy. You're the pony that taught me that friendship is magic. I had magic and friendship, and now I don't have either.


(Twilight gives up her powers, and everyone is freed)

Discord: Thank you, Twilight. [to Fluttershy, hushed] I'm sorry.
Fluttershy: I know.


This Fluttershy-Discord dynamic is very interesting, but since Keep Calm, there was no development until this point, none. In Three's a Crowd, Fluts is off to the Breezies as a plot device to let Discord act with impunity for the episode, and Discord mentions there's common letter correspondence between the two - that's it. All the major development is offscreen and it's a disappointing footnote despite Discord's excellent role in Twilight's Kingdom that we don't get to see it.

I think it's pretty clear they tried to do too much - getting both Cadance and Discord some character development in the same episode, and then somehow managing to largely fail at both. This should have been the episode to bridge the Fluts-Discord dynamic from Keep Calm to Twilight's Kingdom. You could have kept Discord faking sick to get attention from Fluts, you could have had the same crazy song too. Hell, I bet Cadance could have been the third wheel too if they really wanted and it wouldn't have felt any worse.
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Postby Just Scuds (?) » Wed Nov 26, 2014 8:48 am

:notgonnadoit: :"Hey, uh, am I even mentioned in this episode?"
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So u should - never, ever go by the letter
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Wed Nov 26, 2014 12:21 pm

Scuderia Ferrarity wrote::notgonnadoit: :"Hey, uh, am I even mentioned in this episode?"

For someone who got hyped up so much in the leadup to ACW, Shining Armor has gotten a surprisingly small amount of time on-air since. He honestly feels like a bigger character in the comics than the show.
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Postby Mr. Big (?) » Thu Nov 27, 2014 1:56 am

Fizzbuzz wrote:For someone who got hyped up so much in the leadup to ACW, Shining Armor has gotten a surprisingly small amount of time on-air since. He honestly feels like a bigger character in the comics than the show.

Shining Armor appeared in more episodes in season 3 than in 4 :-I

Season 3: The Crystal Empire (Parts 1 and 2), Games Ponies Play, and Magical Mystery Cure.
Season 4: Equestria Games and Twilight's Kingdom (Part 2)
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Postby Marioland1 (?) » Thu Nov 27, 2014 2:23 am

We really needed a Shining Armor mention in this episode. Seriously. That's one of the only failures in this episode that I care about.
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Postby Just Scuds (?) » Thu Nov 27, 2014 6:47 am

:spoiler: :"Sooooo - How are you and shiny getting on?"
:allright: :"He's great ... mostly."
:flattered: :"Mostly?"
:allright: :"Well it's a few tiny little quirks that I'm starting to notice in him - just the other day he told me he was allergic to feathers ..."
:excite: :"Oh my gosh that's so - so uh"
:allright:
:shock: :"That's ..."

:-I
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Baby there ain't nobody better
So u should - never, ever go by the letter
U're so cool - Everything u do is success
Make the rules
Then break them all cuz u are the best


(Or just be making the best of this sloppy dog's breakfast of a situation. Damn Pinkie.)
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Postby Marioland1 (?) » Thu Nov 27, 2014 7:49 am

Well, that would be a problem then.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Thu Nov 27, 2014 3:13 pm

Despite some really clumsy bits (like the cold open—c'mon Pinkie, if you're going to burst in on two ponies who are both going on about how something is the BEST NEWS EVER, the least you could do when gushing about your used patio furniture ad is use the same dumb line they did), I find myself really enjoying this on rewatch.

Discord is great fun as always, and this time around he gets to emote in ways he never has before—that wheedling-for-sympathy thing with a tinge of manipulativeness. And not to mention, of course, singing. That song gets a lot less recognition than I think it deserves, quite honestly. It's one of the best pieces of lyrics-writing the show has done since S1 (and I'm not saying S1's lyrics were all great, mind you, even in the best songs). And animation-wise there's all those great gags that keep zipping by in the background. Kinda hard to believe it took them this long to do a Harry Potter joke, but now that they did, I'm glad it was such a fleeting one.

And really the whole "I was just doing this as a test of Twilight's commitment to this 'being my friend' thing" bit, while it seems cheesy—well, you know, I buy it anyway. You really do get the feeling that Discord is that much of a newbie at sincerity that of course his first impulse upon being offered it is to test its boundaries and find out what Twilight's angle is. He's so used to treating every relationship in his whole existence as a battle of wits and an attempt to out-bluff one another that he had to spend at least an episode exploring on his own recognizance whether or not such a thing as genuine friendship could actually exist for him. And when he finds out it does, his reaction (giddy triumph, rather than chastened warmth) is pretty off-putting, but it's kinda supposed to be. He's not reformed yet, not really. He still thinks that out of this exchange he got his cake and gets to eat it too.

There are enough little flubs and annoyances in the episode to drag it down out of the top tier for me; like I wish Twilight and Cadance didn't have to keep harping on phrases like "quality time" and so on, and the sandworm was clearly defanged in its design from something that probably looked a lot more threatening in initial concepts, but now it just looks dorky and bad. But for each of those there's something cool, some little zinger that makes me appreciate the episode way more than if it were just some gimmick: Cadance revealing that she likes a bit of action once in a while, the bit with the two of them pulling the chariot through the air and where you realize that both of them suck at flying and for different reasons, and even the Flash Sentry cameo where he just sort of gives Twilight the side-eye. :-I I'm sorry, I like those things quite a lot. They're what make this show what it is; they're the little details that they writers didn't have to put in in order to meet the "kids' cartoon" bar, but they did anyway because they love the universe they're creating and the characters they're putting in it. Even the new ones.

One random thought is that I hope they manage to develop Star Swirl's role carefully enough in future episodes that it doesn't retroactively make Luna Eclipsed seem implausible. He's supposed to be this totally obscure figure that nobody but unicorns (and even then, unicorn history nerds) would know about. But they've already gone on to establish that there's a wing named after him at the Canterlot Library, and now there's a traveling museum exhibit? Maybe I'll buy that there's actually increasing interest in history and in Star Swirl just in the past couple of years in-universe since Luna's return, but if that's what they're going for I hope they think to point it out so it doesn't look like a continuity problem. Not that Luna Eclipsed didn't already introduce a few of its own, but... you know.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Thu Nov 27, 2014 3:46 pm

They did an extremely subtle joke in Luna Eclipsed with Starswirl being the father of the "Amniomorphic spells".
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Thu Nov 27, 2014 5:39 pm

Yeah, no, I'm not buying that one. Has anyone ever asked M.A. Larson what that was about? Because unless he cops to it (which I doubt, I imagine he'd just burst out laughing helplessly), I'm treating that one as just a weirdo word he made up. (And even if he did have some specific meaning in mind, the chances that he meant it to translate to "Harry Potter" is pretty well beyond plausibility for me.)
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Postby Bremen (?) » Thu Nov 27, 2014 6:04 pm

Headless Horse wrote:Yeah, no, I'm not buying that one. Has anyone ever asked M.A. Larson what that was about? Because unless he cops to it (which I doubt, I imagine he'd just burst out laughing helplessly), I'm treating that one as just a weirdo word he made up. (And even if he did have some specific meaning in mind, the chances that he meant it to translate to "Harry Potter" is pretty well beyond plausibility for me.)


Yeah, I've always been pretty skeptical about that one myself.

Now, using a "deceptive cadence" to end the reprise of B.B.B.F.F. was a masterstroke of subtlety, and one I think the composer admitted to.
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Postby Big Boss (?) » Fri Nov 28, 2014 3:24 pm

If anyone did any kind of word study on "amniomorphic" they would not have gotten anywhere close to "Hairy potter."
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Postby Marioland1 (?) » Fri Nov 28, 2014 11:39 pm

Bremen wrote:Now, using a "deceptive cadence" to end the reprise of B.B.B.F.F. was a masterstroke of subtlety, and one I think the composer admitted to.

Some guy with a really musical ear caught it and asked, and Daniel confirmed that it was indeed intentional and correct. As of yet, it remains the best hidden episode spoiler yet to be seen heard.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Sat Nov 29, 2014 7:28 am

I think it was on this very forum, if I remember correctly. :allears:
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Postby Marioland1 (?) » Sun Nov 30, 2014 5:22 am

It wouldn't surprise me. This forum's got a fair bit of activity and some fairly clever shitposters.
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