/pony/ - The Show

>>401356
>The Elements of Harmony Parts 1 & 2
The two-part pilot was actually called "Friendship is Magic." Separately, the two episodes are titled "Mare in the Moon" and "Elements of Harmony."

>What did you liked about the episode?
Twilight's snarkiness. The implication that she drank under stress. Everything about Fluttershy's introduction. Pinkie's "It was under EEEEEEE!" Little details like Nightmare Moon briefly appearing in the hourglass. An overall tone that told me right up front, "This is not yo mama's My Little Pony."

>What didn't you like and wanted to change?
In hindsight, and considering the rest of the first season, I think Lauren should have abandoned the whole "Magical Girl" aspect. I've read that she originally intended the story in the pilot to be spread over a season-long arc, but for various reasons (air dates not necessarily matching production order, episodes played out-of-order in syndication, epics taking longer to write and animate than stand-alones, the possibility of Hasbro throwing a wrench into the works by changing any detail, etc.) it just wasn't feasible. So, she compressed it into a two-parter, and the rest of the season dropped the "Magical Girl" aspect almost entirely.

It might seem strange to say about a series that's built around the "Friendship is Magic" concept, but for the most part, the series doesn't need it. We don't need to be hit over the head with the advantages of having friends. The "Magical Girl" routine has produced the most predictable shtick of the series. Slice-of-life has worked much better. They could have lost the lessons, the hammering of friendship with a twenty-pound sledgehammer, and the "Magical Girl" bit, and the ninety percent that was left would have been stronger without it.

"Friendship is Magic" has turned into a tail that wags the dog. It could have been a core concept in the writers' bible without the audience being told anything so blatant, but to be fair, Lauren didn't know how things were going to go yet.

Okay, this bullshit:
>

What an oversight. This ruins the episode for me. I mean, are we going to see Pinkie and Gilda hanging out in the background somewhere? Christ.

This is too happy a coincidence to go unacknowledged. They could have at least had Applebloom say something like, "Oh, you're those two fillies I was cowering in fear with when Nightmare Moon appeared!" in CotC. Or maybe had one of the cowering fillies be someone not in the CMC–like Twist, or maybe that blue Scootaloo. That would be a big fix.

>>401356
This is a Great Idea. I am definitely going to Climb aboard this ride.

>>401436
Rainbow dash was very cute on the first part of the pilot. Her words were calm and I felt like she really wanted to befriend twilight instead of how she would act in a more recent episode, "Allow someone to be her friend".

>>401430
Wow. that is pretty silly Didn't catch that when I went through before either. You could easily blame it on fear though. It can blind you.

>>401385

Thanks for the info! I've corrected the title.

Hoo boy. I gave MLP a rather dubious try by starting where it seemed most logical, right at the beginning. It overcame my considerable reservations and sucked me in, so it still holds a special place for me.

I watched the first part with a mindset of daring it to annoy me so I had an excuse to shut it off and say I'd given it a shot and it failed. Part 1 neither annoyed nor impressed me, though I had to admit I liked Dash, and Twilight got a few good lines in that felt like subtle pokes at MLP stereotypes. Then a magnificent dark creature appeared near the end. I, uh…not that I liked the show or anything, but I couldn't just leave a story half told and not know how it ends, right? Right. So I convinced myself to watch part 2. Just one more episode, then I'm done with this silly show.

Eternal darkness. Spooky forests. Ruined old castles. This isn't the MLP I remembered from the commercials in the '80s. Pinkie's song was a bit annoying, but the show had enough of my attention by that point to keep me from shutting it off. Most of the obstacles were silly, in a fun sort of way, up until the bridge. Dash managed to slip in a smartass comment, then showed herself to be awesome in a non-shallow way (and the Shadowbolts were pretty cool too). Then the laughing beauty returned and was glorious right up until they defeated her, leaving her a cowering wreck. What the fuck. All she wanted was a little appreciation for her work, and they reduce her to being the one apologizing? Wait, why am I even concerned about… Shit. I do care about these characters.

And then I sought out the online hangouts, read about some details I'd missed in my initial reluctant viewing and gave it another, more attentive watch. It was rather impressive just how much they put into what was at first glance a rather simple show. It made me want to look again to pick out what else I might've missed before, which in turn lead to piecing bits together in search of subtexts, or at least plausible explanations. Maybe what I teased out from these exercises wasn't what the writers had in mind, but it's hard to not like a show that pulled me in so much that I was actively engaged in creating (obviously unofficial) extensions to the given stories.

I could pick at bits of it, like Pinkie being a bit grating (I got used to her after a few episodes) and her element being a bit ridiculous, or certain scenes where the pacing seemed to drag a bit, but I don't really want to. It got enough right to make me fall in love with the show, and that's enough for me to call it good.

>>401501
>Pinkie's song was a bit annoying, but the show had enough of my attention by that point to keep me from shutting it off.
It didn't bother me because they hung a lampshade on it:

TWILIGHT: Tell me she's not…
RARITY: She is.

Initially, most of the songs were intentionally bad, and they lampshaded them. In "Over a Barrel," Pinkie's song was allegedly so bad (by that point it really wasn't), it started a war.

I don't know how or why they shifted away from that, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was a combination of things. The joke got old. Daniel Ingram got tired of intentionally writing bad songs. The staff realized he had more talent than that. They could do it well, so they did. It was probably all of the above.

>>401514
>TWILIGHT: Tell me she's not…
Yeah, that was one of the lines I mentioned appreciating for making fun of MLP stereotypes. It helped distance the characters from the saccharine-sweetness of previous gens by both giving them a little attitude and in making commentary. Plus it showed the writers weren't taking things too seriously. I still didn't like the song, but everyone else rolling their eyes at it endeared them a bit to me.

In my opinion, these two episodes are one of the most generic ones. Their plots are very straightforward and, I even say, dull: look for the magical items that will defeat the villain and move on. Okay, this is true if you group both episodes together. Part 1 misled me to believe that the search for the Elements of Harmony to defeat Nightmare Moon was the central plot of the whole series rather than something that got solved in the next episode which is why, plot-wise, the second part was a letdown.

Their importance lies in the fact that they're the pilots and serve to introduce the main characters and their purpose for the rest of the show.

Even when I saw it the first time I found the characters to be kind off constrained. Off course in hindsight it all makes sense now for a social hermit like Twilight Sparkle to act overly modest meeting new ponies.

That being said there were some elements that allured me to check more of the show.

When I saw Rarity on the first part, I thought of her as another girly-fashionista type character which over-saturates the girl market. But the way she charged at the manticore without hesitation to a close combat and sacrificing her tail without a cinch to Steve Magnet proved that she's a box full of surprises.

Like mentioned before in >>401514 and >>401569, the way the other ponies reacted to Pinkie's song was one of light humor that only people of older age would get it. Had it been another casual little girl's show, the would have sung and dance straight off the bat instead of being dubious to Pinkie's sudden reaction to laugh and sing.

Over all I give these episodes a 4.5/10. Had it not for the subtle factors mentioned before, I would have drop it from the second part. I don't recommend anyone who wants to see MLP to watch these two episodes first unless they're the type who wants to see stuff from the beginning.

>>401569
>I still didn't like the song, but everyone else rolling their eyes at it endeared them a bit to me.
I'm not sure we were supposed to like it. They didn't seem serious about the music until S1E11, "Winter Wrap Up," but as far as I'm concerned, Ingram his his stride here…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSbXGsysAAk
…S1E14, "Suited for Success."

>>401636
>In my opinion, these two episodes are one of the most generic ones.
I don't know if I'd call them generic, since any epic two-parter is relatively rare, but the overall plot is kinda by-the-numbers.

>>401891
I knew it was an homage to that, but my hat's still off to Ingram for making it significantly different.