Tag Archives: childhood friends

Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 74: Top Bolt

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Introduction / Navigation

< Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 >

Season 6, Episode 24

I feel bad that I’ve missed so many weeks when going through season 6! Though my love of this show is as strong as ever, my motivation for writing these posts has decreased over the past few months. That’s how it always is with my ambitious projects: motivation comes and goes in waves, leading to months at a time of hiatus. Once I am done with season 6, I’ll take a break during which I’ll scratch an itch to start a brand new blog post series—I’ll announce what it is later today. (It wouldn’t be quite as long as my Homestuck or MLP post series, but longer than my Regular Show post series.)

Season 6 Episode 24: Top Bolt

In five words: Bookworms discover well-intentioned lies.

Premise: The Cutie Map sends Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash—the Mane 6’s bookworms—to the Wonderbolts’ flight camp, where they encounter two childhood friends in training who have unknowingly been holding each other’s flight skills back by secretly giving boosts.

Detailed run-through:

Going by the position of Rainbow Dash’s shadow, it looks like her locker is fifth from the right, on the bottom row.
This will be important later.

The start of this episode is a clever bait-and-switch. As she prepares to go back home, Rainbow Dash banters with her fellow Wonderbolts. Spitfire grumbles that she has to run trials week, then admits she loves putting on her aggressive act. This seems like it’ll just be a quick reminder that Rainbow Dash has fully established herself as a member of the group, making viewers think the rest of the episode will take place somewhere unrelated.

Indeed, when her cutie mark starts glowing, she flies right to Twilight’s castle and excitedly asks where the map will take her. It turns out she needs to go back to Cloudsdale, much to her annoyance. Twilight Sparkle could have easily gone there earlier to find Rainbow Dash, but instead she waited for her friend to show up and waste time flying. Maybe this was a deliberate prank on Twilight’s part? Maybe she has a skeevy, trickstery side that she normally hides? Or maybe Twilight was a bad friend and forgot where Rainbow Dash was over the past few days.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 57: The Hooffields and McColts + The Mane Attraction

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Introduction

< Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 >

Season 5, Episodes 23-24

This is it, guys. I’m at the second last post of season 5, and after I finish this season, I am definitely taking a break. Between this blog post series and a fanfic I am working on, I’ve been grinding out pony-related content left and right. As much as this show means to me, I will need a breather once I reach a stopping point, perhaps to focus on other projects or real-life matters.

Also, you should know in advance my review of The Mane Attraction is one of my longest in season 5. I had way more to say about that episode than I expected!

Season 5 Episode 23: The Hooffields and McColts

In five words: Ancient village rivalry gets resolved.

Premise: The Cutie Map sends Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy to the Smokey Mountains, where they must settle a generations-long conflict between two rivalrous families: the Hooffields and the McColts.

Detailed run-through:

This episode begins with Fluttershy hosting a book club meeting with her animals, which is cut short when her cutie mark starts flashing and she has to leave. Despite this, her animals continue discussing the book on their own. This scene cleverly reminds us of something that will become important later in the episode: animals in this show are highly sentient, but they can’t communicate with most ponies.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 49: Amending Fences

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Introduction

< Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 >

Season 5, Episode 12

We have quite a spicy lineup of episodes for the next month and a half, most of which will get their own individual, lovingly crafted posts: Amending Fences, Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?, Canterlot Boutique, Rarity Investigates!, Made in Manehattan, Brotherhooves Social, and Crusaders of the Lost Mark. All seven of these episodes have something cool and special about them, whether it be the Cutie Mark Crusaders accomplishing something huge, Twilight Sparkle’s backstory getting fleshed way out, or Coco Pommel being heart-meltingly adorable. The rest of season 5 will be the usual paired episodes, and when I finish the season, I will decide if I want to make single-episode posts the rule instead of the exception.

Season 5 Episode 12: Amending Fences

In five words: Series’ first few minutes revisited.

Premise: Twilight Sparkle reconnects with her old friends from Canterlot who we saw in the first few minutes of the first episode. Most of them are eager to hang out with her, but there’s one who bitterly swore off friendship after Twilight moved out: Moondancer.

Detailed run-through (aka the tangent about this episode from this Homestuck post but much longer and completely unrestrained):

Imagine you’re making a TV show that has become wildly popular among a far older audience than expected and need to come up with episode ideas for its fifth season. By now, you’ve gone through all the simple and obvious ideas for a show about friendship, so what can you do? One such thing is look back on the first episode with all its early installment weirdness, take something that was never elaborated upon, and flesh it WAY out. I find this sort of thing to be extremely delightful and cool and fun, especially in a show that I find extremely delightful and cool and fun.

This episode starts on an un-season-1-like note with Twilight Sparkle sitting on a fancy crystal couch, needing some time to relax after attending three events as a princess in one week. This makes an appropriate time for her and Spike to reflect on how much she’s been through since she moved to Ponyville. Spike remarks that back when she lived in Canterlot, Twilight wasn’t a very good friend to others. While Spike intended only to reflect on how far she’s come, Twilight panics when she realizes how much she’s been neglecting her friends from Canterlot. This leads her to leap into action and go on a journey to reunite with her friends whose names she doesn’t remember and expects Spike to remember for some reason.

Actually, I can sort of buy Twilight expecting Spike to remember names she can’t. She puts a lot of duties onto her dragon sidekick, like the dishes he complained about at the start of this episode, and she sometimes forgets which ones he can feasibly do. (Though Spike does later recite all her friends’ names.)

Spike: Come on, Twilight. You’re getting worked up about nothing.
Twilight Sparkle: The only logical place to start is at the beginning.

One thing this episode has in common with Slice of Life is that it leans on the fourth wall at times. An example is when Twilight Sparkle says to start at the beginning, referring to her old house in Canterlot. While this is obviously a reference to where the show began, I’d also like to think of it in in-universe terms. The day Twilight Sparkle moved to Ponyville is clearly an important day for her, because it started the current chapter of her life. Although her first onscreen moment in the show was right outside this castle, the day presumably started with her waking up inside it.

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