Monthly Archives: April 2021

Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 8: A Dog and Pony Show + Green Isn’t Your Color + Over a Barrel

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Introduction

< Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 >

Season 1, Episodes 19-21

Season 1 Episode 19: A Dog and Pony Show

In five words: Rarity subverts “damsel in distress”.

Premise: While mining for gems, Rarity gets abducted by the Diamond Dogs. Her friends have no idea how much she’s not a stereotypical damsel in distress.

Detailed run-through:

This episode begins with famous pop singer pony Sapphire Shores visiting Rarity’s boutique and recognizing her name, much to her shock and then nervous delight. Sapphire Shores sees a gem-filled dress Rarity made and asks her to make five more of them, but to do this, Rarity needs to find more gems. It’s clear from what we saw in Suited for Success that Rarity won’t refuse such a request. Rather, she’ll follow it to the letter, which sets the stage for this episode’s plot.

Rarity repeatedly reminds us how ladylike she is in this scene, which sets up this episode’s moral.

I love how Spike uses his tail as a shovel and then a drill. Creative cartoon physics right there.

And so, Rarity takes Spike along on one of their many journeys where they hunt for gems. This scene demonstrates Rarity’s skill in persuasion and sweet-talk, because she’s the only one who can get Spike to not greedily devour every gem he comes across. Though this may have something to do with the fact that Spike has a gigantic crush on Rarity, which he outright states in the next episode to nobody’s surprise. Still, though, this is some good establishing of Rarity’s strengths.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 7: Sonic Rainboom + Stare Master + The Show Stoppers

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Introduction

< Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 >

Season 1, Episodes 16-18

NOTE: I am very busy with final exams right now! I just happen to have this post (and the next one) queued from a few weeks ago.

Season 1 Episode 16: Sonic Rainboom

In five words: Rainbow Dash triumphantly demonstrates loyalty.

Premise: Rainbow Dash hopes to perform a [insert episode’s title here] at the Best Young Flyers’ Competition and is more nervous than she lets on, so her friends try to provide her moral support; mishaps occur on both ends.

Detailed run-through:

yay

This episode begins with a memorable scene where Fluttershy practices cheering for Rainbow Dash. She understands the instructions conceptually, but because she’s Fluttershy, her concept of a good cheer is a soft-spoken “yay”, even as Rainbow Dash continually asks her to say it louder. Fluttershy’s final “yay” is longer but hardly louder than the previous ones; she ends the scene by asking “too loud?”

This scene is by far the most memorable part of this episode, and I don’t know whether that means this scene is extremely memorable or the rest of the episode is extremely forgettable. Either way, I hope we can all agree that Fluttershy’s soft-spoken expressions of joy and cheer are hilarious, as is her severe overestimation of how loud she is.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 6: Suited for Success + Feeling Pinkie Keen

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Introduction

< Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 >

Season 1, Episodes 14-15

Season 1 Episode 14: Suited for Success

In five words: Started “good Rarity episode” pattern.

Premise: Rarity makes dresses for her friends to wear at the Grand Galloping Gala, but they all feel that their dresses leave something to be desired. Not one to leave her friends dissatisfied, she takes a second shot at them.

Detailed run-through (even more detailed than Call of the Cutie):

Before we get started here, I’d like to acknowledge that a rather large portion of my favorite MLP episodes are Rarity episodes. I’m not quite sure why her episodes are so consistently good—maybe because she brings out her best and/or worst self in every single one of them? Maybe because you can always tell she puts so much love into what she does, and thus it’s crushing when things don’t go her way? Maybe because it’s satisfying when the episode ends with Rarity getting her way? In any case, Rarity is a great character and I won’t let anyone try to tell me otherwise.

Glasses Rarity is like Rarity: Supreme Ultra Mega Deluxe Edition.

This episode starts us off with the debut of Glasses Rarity, who, as her name may suggest, is Rarity wearing glasses. There’s a strong ethereal aura that female fictional characters with glasses emit, and that aura carries over even when that character is a horse. Whenever she’s wearing her signature red glasses, you can tell Rarity is hard at work in her artistic craft. Her cat Opalescence (or Opal for short) is introduced too, and she’s basically a lazy and grouchy cat who doesn’t hesitate to show her disapproval of her owner’s situations.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 5: Call of the Cutie + Fall Weather Friends

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Introduction

< Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 >

Season 1, Episodes 12-13

Season 1 Episode 12: Call of the Cutie

This review will contain spoilers for up to season 8! The reason why is because this episode introduces the Cutie Mark Crusaders and thus makes for a good one to analyze in light of what they do in later seasons.

In five words: Cutie Mark Crusaders’ introductory episode.

Premise: Apple Bloom goes on the first of many quests to earn her cutie mark and meets two new friends who also don’t have their cutie marks at the end. Those three dub themselves the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

Detailed run-through (and by detailed, I mean DETAILED):

This shot near the very beginning of the episode has quite a bit to unpack—one silly thing and one less silly thing.

The silly thing is that two of the ponies in the front row are just recolored versions of Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, which is lazy even by season 1 standards. Well, the Scootaloo recolor does lack wings, but that arguably makes it even lazier. While the pony in the middle of the front row is a minor character named Twist, the other two are total enigmas—almost as enigmatic as the three sitting in the back, who all look about the same aside from coloring and don’t have names as far as I know. Early installment weirdness is clearly at play here.

The less silly thing is that Apple Bloom is seated in the middle row between Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, and I can take a guess at why that is. Cheerilee probably noticed those two were giggling to each other in class constantly and thus decided to put Apple Bloom between them as a buffer of sorts. To Cheerilee, Apple Bloom is probably the “oh yeah, that one” of the class, since she hasn’t met her two best friends in the world yet and thus is kind of lonely, not helped one bit by the two classmates she has to sit in between always picking on her for not having her cutie mark.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 4: Bridle Gossip + Swarm of the Century + Winter Wrap Up

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Introduction

< Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 >

Season 1, Episodes 9-11

Season 1 Episode 9: Bridle Gossip

In five words: Basically just Zecora’s introductory episode.

Premise: The Mane 6 get inflicted with various curses and get to the bottom of the mystery by confronting an irrationally feared zebra named Zecora.

Detailed run-through:

Oh look, it’s an accurate depiction of the world in March through May 2020!

This episode begins with Twilight Sparkle and Spike taking a walk through Ponyville on a pleasant, sunny day… except everyone has secluded themselves in their homes. Twilight remarks it’s odd to do that on such a nice day, which is an early hint that the town’s residents have a strange misconception about a certain zebra. Spike brings up the possibility of a zombie apocalypse, which seems laughable at this point, but just you wait until the various two-part episodes where the entirety of Ponyville is brainwashed and essentially becomes zombies. But that’s off-topic and teetering into spoiler territory.

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