[Cartoon] My Little Pony Talkback Thread

[Pixelphile]

I hate to say it, but this week's episode has plummeted Pinkie Pie to the bottom of my list.

The moral appears to be "don't judge things you can't see with your own eyes or explain with personal knowledge." I'm all for that. But the execution was--much like the early-season moral episodes--pretty extreme in its approach and as a result it almost comes off looking like a religion versus science thing. Or rather, logic vs. faith. As someone who puts equal stock in both, I was sad to see one of them coming out ahead in the end.

Also due to the fact that the episode revolves around Twilight learning to tolerate a bouncing ball of fast-talk and vague vibrations, Pinkie actually manages to mildly look like a freewheeling ditz (something this show deftly avoided until now) and Twilight comes off as needlessly badly as Gilda did in her episode. I liked it at first that it appeared Pinkie had actually learned to master randomness, but somewhere along the line, the ep just sort of... derailed?

Even the worst FiM episode is enjoyable than most episodes of other shows, but after the last four we had, I was a little let down.

Welp, there's always next week!

 

[Dark Heart]

Note: Forgot about Friday

Tonight's episode was "Feeling Pinkie Keen"

Twilight Sparkle learns that Pinkie Pie has an unusual ability to sense happenings in the immediate future, known as a "Pinkie Sense". Not willing to accept that all of the events her friend had predicted are anything but a mere coincidence, Twilight sets out to find the truth behind it all.

 

[MaraJade]

I hate to say it, but this week's episode has plummeted Pinkie Pie to the bottom of my list.

The moral appears to be "don't judge things you can't see with your own eyes or explain with personal knowledge." I'm all for that. But the execution was--much like the early-season moral episodes--pretty extreme in its approach and as a result it almost comes off looking like a religion versus science thing. Or rather, logic vs. faith. As someone who puts equal stock in both, I was sad to see one of them coming out ahead in the end.

Also due to the fact that the episode revolves around Twilight learning to tolerate a bouncing ball of fast-talk and vague vibrations, Pinkie actually manages to mildly look like a freewheeling ditz (something this show deftly avoided until now) and Twilight comes off as needlessly badly as Gilda did in her episode. I liked it at first that it appeared Pinkie had actually learned to master randomness, but somewhere along the line, the ep just sort of... derailed?

Even the worst FiM episode is enjoyable than most episodes of other shows, but after the last four we had, I was a little let down.

Welp, there's always next week!

I agree with most of this but I think their mistake was combining two things in a mishmash that are two different things. There were like 4 morals mashed into one and that was messy and the moral, "don't judge things you can't see, without eyes/understanding" isn't really the moral they were pushing here. They had the logic (empirical evidence) vs. supernatural. AND the judging without understanding. While all these things do effect the outcome of any one of these, they mashed both together and it came out messy. And the ep didn't accomplish distinguishing the differences. Oh well, I like PP the least anyways.

 

[Dark Heart]

Here's to a better next episode.

 

[KouAidou]

Dear Princess Celestia,

Today I learned that it's not worth trying to scientifically quantify unexplained events if a solution doesn't present itself immediately. Even phenomena that consistently demonstrate a reliable correlation between prediction and result should be declared mysterious and faith-based if I can't easily quantify them via a series of highly biased, non-rigorous pseudo-experiments.

I also learned that tinfoil hats are a good way to keep out the aliens.

Sincerely yours,
Twilight Sparkle

PS: Magnets, how the **** do they work?

 

[Lynxara]

atriotic:

Man, that episode sucked. Let us never speak of it again.

 

[Undrave]

Lauren Faust had an interesting response to that episode... to make it short, the letter at the end sucked and didn't explain correctly.

The point was that sometimes you can just fail to find an answer and at that point you have to decide whether its worth it to be stubborn or to just accept failiure and take a leap of faith, in this situation Twilight Sparkle didn't really need to understand Pinkie Sense. In a sense she was being a bad scientist because she couldn't accept the idea that a phenomenom would be beyond her capabilities to explain. In the end it wasn't really worth damaging her friendship with Pinkie over it.

The writers thought they had an hilarious episode, they just didn't explain their idea right.

True point of the episode: ANVIL!

 

[Lynxara]

The writers thought they had an hilarious episode, they just didn't explain their idea right.

Yeah, I read her explanation. I can believe the script was in the ballpark of a good idea-- of several good ideas, really.

The episode they actually made, though? Not very good. Well, aside from the animation of Pinkie Pie spazzing out, that was great.

 

[Blue Saint]

Remember when I was talking about the moral mandate, this is the downside to it I was talking about. Clearly the production staff faced some difficulties with this episode. Honestly the problem as I see it is that moral component seemed like an after though, since a good part of the episode felt like a tribute to classic cartoon violence. The "safari" sequence in particular was great with Twilight Sparkle & Pinkie Pie taking on a hunter & prey dynamic. The problem was anything related to moral, I mean look at Applejack and Fluttershy's involvement in the episode. They were completely absent from the plot save for the parts that were setting up the moral.

Also I find it a bit unsettling that Ms. Faust put out a response to the episode so soon. Overall the staff has produced high quality stories, I would hate to think that they start to become influenced by the online community over a perfectly acceptable misfire.

 

[KouAidou]

I dunno, I don't think you can blame the "moral mandate" on this one. You could have gotten any number of perfectly reasonable morals out of the episode with very few changes. Just have Pinkie Pie's last spazz-out be related to something completely trivial: "oh my gosh, the big doozy was referring to -- Fluttershy stubbing her foot at the end of this whole chase!! Whew, good thing I predicted that!"

Moral: "Superstitions and omens can be a fun thing to add a little spice to life, and sometimes they even have a little merit behind them. But it's not worth seriously changing your life over things you can't reliably read or predict." Good moral!

Alternatively, have Pinkie Pie's spazz-outs have a completely reasonable and testable solution behind them, since apparently they have a 100% prediction/result rate anyway! Just have it be revealed that, I dunno, the froo-froo flies of the evergreen swamp like to bite people to warn them of imminent falling, and Pinky Pie is the only pony with skin sensitive enough to detect that when it's happening.

Moral: "There are things in this world that seem mysterious and unquantifiable, but always it's worth working and working until you get to the bottom of them. Even if you don't get all the answers right away, investigating a mystery can reveal new and beautiful things about the world that you never knew before." Good moral!

If Faust's statement that the episode was supposed to be about "someone's knee tingling when it's about to rain" (a "strange" phenomenon that has a scientific explanation behind it) was true, then this seems like it would have been the way they should go.

Either of those morals would have been totally acceptable and would have required nothing but a slight tweak to the end of the episode. The problem is that the moral they ended up sending appears to be "Don't bother with science because it's hard, some things just work and you should accept that." This is just a freaking godawful moral to send to anyone, especially to young girls, and I'm frankly astonished that it happened in a show that is usually very careful about that kind of thing.