[Cartoon] My Little Pony Talkback Thread

The problem with a moral mandate (and it is mandate since FiM is being used for the E/I requirement) is that honestly sometimes the staff doesn't care about the moral and it shows. If they cut out the framing pieces and re-dub a few lines then I am positive everyone would love it. The problem wasn't just the summation, it was everything that set-up it, too.

I am willing to wager that what everyone was focused on for this episode was the slapstick, which was honestly rather funny. From what I can see is the moral aspects came later to justify all the pratfalls that Twilight Sparkle suffered. Again notice how the initial ones were realistic but then they soon turned zany, there was a movers gag with both a piano and an anvil.

Well yeah, it's dumb when a show tries to cram in a moral where it doesn't belong. I have enough memories of "Sailor Says" and "Knowing is half the battle" to know how lame it can be when it's jacked in.

The thing is, I don't get that feeling from MLP. 95% of the time I feel like the moral is something that arose organically from writers going around saying "what would be nice to teach kids about this week, and how can we tell a story about that?" Which is not to say that they aren't being asked to put it there, just that most of the time I feel like they are more than happy to embrace that "limitation" as a genuine part of the creative process rather than letting it stick at odd angles to it. (A similar example would be to compare, say, the approach to the "toy mandate" as taken by Kamen Rider W's writers to that taken by Kiva's.)

Perhaps you're right, and the issue this time was that they were focused on how to do the slapstick humor and decided to just tack on whatever moral came to mind. The issue I have with this is that, as I think we both acknowledge, it wouldn't take all that much effort to give this episode a good moral. You can still do all the exact same slapstick stuff with a slightly different payoff and turn it into something that is not morally reprehensible to show to small children.

To say that because the moral of this episode was bad, that the moral mandate as a concept is bad, is just all kinds of flawed to me. It's like saying "This episode sucked because Rainbow Dash was written out of character; this proves that it's a problem for kids' cartoons to have distinct characterization."

A moral mandate is bad for the same reason as toyetic/toy tie-in concerns, it limits what the staff can do. Since they always have to set time and effort aside to deal with that element. That is my issue, it restricts the creativity of the people involved. It maybe a reality the staff (and the audience) have to contend with, and some do certainly rise to the occasion, it still sucks though. Now this episode is an extreme example since something somewhere along the line went horribly, horribly wrong with the moral.

I just can't feel the same way. I don't think it necessarily "sucks" to give a writer a challenge that they have to rise to. Challenges do not just limit; being forced to do things they wouldn't normally do can help to break creators out of their own self-imposed limitations and bad habits.

Furthermore, I don't see any evidence in the episodes as we've seen that the MLP writers have been limited in what they can do by the moral mandate, or that they would be telling better stories if that mandate wasn't in place. I only have the work to go on, but the work speaks for itself.

If this episode had lacked a moral (or any kind of moral guidelines, the "here's what I learned today" aside), then the entire thrust of the episode would merely have been "let's watch as a bunch of terrible stuff happens to Twilight Sparkle while Pinkie Pie looks awesome." Is that what you would have preferred? I certainly wouldn't.

Blue Saint said:

Remember when I was talking about the moral mandate, this is the downside to it I was talking about.

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No, it wasn't. You were talking about something you arbitrarily found less sophisticated than serialized plotting. That's your opinion, I don't agree, that's fine.

This episode was just poorly-written by any standard. I mean, the show's creator came out and said as much. Nobody realized it was bad until the episode aired and reactions weren't what they expected. This happens all the time in the TV industry.

Writing format has nothing to do with it. If anything, it would be more damaging to a show that was serialized to let an episode this poor air, because then the later episodes would have to acknowledge it.

Like... I know you're a big fan of Mystery Inc, but I find the Velma/Shaggy/Scooby plot completely unbearable. I like the rest of the show, but I can't really enjoy episodes of it. Pretty much every episode has at least one tedious sequence about the stupid Velma plot.

Pinkie Pie's contortions are probably never going to be mentioned again. So I can just lump the episode together with other bad episodes of otherwise-great shows, like "That's Lobstertainment," and never think about it again.

I just can't feel the same way. I don't think it necessarily "sucks" to give a writer a challenge that they have to rise to. Challenges do not just limit; being forced to do things they wouldn't normally do can help to break creators out of their own self-imposed limitations and bad habits.

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Basically every book on writing technique I've ever read says you improve the most by working on short stories and essays before you work on longer-format pieces, because short format writing forces you to tighten your pacing and learn how to self-edit. The TV equivalent of short story writing is the done-in-one and most books about TV screenwriting recommend it as a format you need to master. If you can write a good done-in-one, you can write anything. So I really don't think you can fault the show's format here, it's too well-respected.

KouAidou said:

If this episode had lacked a moral (or any kind of moral guidelines, the "here's what I learned today" aside), then the entire thrust of the episode would merely have been "let's watch as a bunch of terrible stuff happens to Twilight Sparkle while Pinkie Pie looks awesome." Is that what you would have preferred? I certainly wouldn't.

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Slapstick comedy always needs a set-up, or otherwise it would just be senseless violence. The set-up they needed here was a bit of problem for the show since we needed to see Twilight Sparkle in a negative light otherwise it wouldn't have been as funny when Pinkie Pie came out on top.

This is just me but I have rather low standards for what I find entertaining, in part since I know I have very little creative talent. I can easily like parts of otherwise lackluster productions. I actually liked the slapstick parts of the episode and will remember them fondly.

Also did I really make it seem like I was coming out for serialized plotting? I really need to work on my written communication skills.

That is how you came across. If that's not what you intended then I've misinterpreted you and I am sorry for that.

Well, yea. One thing that frustrates me about the episode is that there are some great gags in it. I loved the visual and personality of the hydra monster, in particular.

That said, I honestly didn't find the slapstick itself spectacular. I can watch Adventure Time or Kick Buttowski and get stuff that is a lot more inventive and crisply paced. This episode felt a lot more like "let's homage slapstick as a genre" more than "let's make some great slapstick for the folks at home."

Personally I think Ponies is at its best when they're doing character-based humor, visual gags with the worldsetting, and heartfelt lessons for little kids. I don't really enjoy them sacrificing the things they do well in the name of things they don't do particularly well, just to say they did them.

Anyway, I didn't think you were coming out in favor of serialized storytelling. You were (I think) coming out in favor of writers getting to express themselves however they want without restriction.

I'm just trying to bring my experience as a creator in here and say that total creative freedom is not always the good thing a lot of people think it is. There are a select few creators in this world who are brilliant enough that their unfettered braindumps will be completely fascinating on all levels. The rest of us seriously need editors and collaborators and guidelines to help us bring out our best.

Lynxara said:

Pinkie Pie's contortions are probably never going to be mentioned again.

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It's a shame, too. Terrible message/moral mishandling aside, we almost got a genius explanation about how and why Pinkie lives in her own little "random" world and manages to not only survive but control it. She has Equestria's best early warning system and thus can operate in a sort of... I dunno, zone. Up until this episode, the other core ponies were all shown to have innate powers (Unicorn magic (one powered by bookishness, the other by creative muse), Applejack's strength, Dash's speed, Fluttershy's way with animals, etc.) whereas all Pinkie had was parties and persistence.

...and then the overall execution of the episode just cocks the whole thing up. :\ Like Kou said, there's stuff in there to like, but... damn.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irQ_d78feMA&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - My Little Pony AMV Epic (7 Artists)[/ame]