She just spent the previous episode making birds go through plants with giant thorns, and put gorge eels in their flight paths. Who would expect her to be anything other than a jerk?

Just finished it.

Well, I don't really like how RD continues to be a bigger jerk in this episode, but even considering that, I don't quite see why they really needed to humiliate her in every way possible to prove their point. And wow, when did Ponyville go frm "normal town" to "ACME designed the roads"? Yeesh. Despite that though, I liked the tons of superhero references, and the music (specially the batman nod) around 18 minutes.

Still though, this does feel like the weakest episode in this season. Still good, but it's not containing the same feel I usually get. Also, did anyone else get a lesson Zero esque feel when RD was looking for problems but couldn't find them? "If I can't find a problem, I'll MAKE ONE!"

edited 26th Nov '11 7:43:29 PM by mailedbypostman

Boxy Brown is the name for the foreman who was overseeing Derpy and another pegasus when they dropped all that stuff on Twilight in Feeling Pinkie Keen. Though I believe I've also heard him called Burl, or something like that.

Also, didn't you say you don't like hetero pairings? But then, here's me expecting someone called Random to be consistent.

It's the sport of nerds - Derpwatching.

Derpy was cheering around the time Dash made her first save.

Yeah, I think it's to her credit that she didn't decide to go all Major Man and make problems to solve.

And... I'm not getting the whole "cruelly humiliating her" thing. All they did was show her up. They didn't sabotage her efforts or anything else. Heck, in each case, Rainbow Dash was there first, and the Mysterious Mare stepped in after she tripped over her own swagger.

Quite. The Mane 5 technically didn't do anything to Rainbow Dash. She basically screwed her own self up with hr own swelled head and they were picking up the pieces with grace and humility.

Yeah, if they deliberately rigged things so she would fail, there'd be a problem. As things stand, all they did was basically what she would have tried to do anyway. They basically wanted to make her realize that she was only doing the heroic acts for the recognition rather than out of a desire to actually help. I.e. she was helping people not because they needed help, but because she wanted recognition for it. If she had a heroic attitude, she wouldn't care who saved the ponies as long as they got saved.

I'm still not sure that that's the most logical approach to the problem (and it seems a bit heavy handed compared to previous episodes), but I don't think that her friends were being jerks by doing that.

And I still don't think she was a jerk in the past episode for setting up a voluntary competition in which she didn't subject the entrants to anything she wouldn't do herself. But let's not have that argument again.

edited 26th Nov '11 7:57:52 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Catching up with the thread.

On Applejack, I concur that she doesn't have a lot of time to shine really. I feel she doesn't get as many memorable moments, and that's why she's the lowest on my appreciation of hte mane 6

edited 26th Nov '11 8:01:44 PM by mailedbypostman

I don't think that RD's jerkishness was completely her fault. It was also the fault of the townsponies for playing along and pumping up her ego. At the beginning of the episode, she wasn't acting arrogant at all.

there's only one thing to do now. Hug Scootaloo

Well, I just finished the episode. Definitely the weakest of the season so far, and in fact, I might go so far as to call it the weakest of the series to date (though that might be a bit of a stretch). This episode had a few good character moments, some good expressions from Applejack and Twilight (and some Appledash fuel, as previously mentioned, when Dash 'immortalized' Applejack), and some other stuff... but I don't know. Maybe it's just that I'm not a huge fan of this sort of slapstick/action - or of the intimation that Scootaloo is just as much of a bandwagon freak as Snips and Snails.

I'm also not a fan of adding in unnecessary things for the sake of a gag. Since when does Ponyville have a huge bloody mountain with a hydroelectric dam on it? Or a cliff? I could've sworn the place was on flat ground. Anyway, more discontinuity, I suppose - but with a very specific brush. Just the elements that annoy me. =)

Maybe when RD gets too much spotlight, things can take a turn for the worse.

Maybe that's why the last two eps weren't as good?

edited 26th Nov '11 8:08:53 PM by mailedbypostman

Watched the episode. Honestly, I thought it was pretty good. I think Rainbowdash can be a bit arrogant at times and it is nice to see her knocked down by a few pegs.

So all the deeds Mare and Dash did came from accidents. Yes, in a world of pretty ponies, God forbid anyone should commit a crime.

I might have just missed something, but I don't think that Scootaloo ever disowned RD as her favorite pony; she just got caught up in all the hype surrounding the Mare Do Well. Her reaction to RD wasn't so much "the MDW replaced you" as "the MDW is cool!", without much indication of how her feelings for RD had changed.

And I agree that RD's arrogance wasn't entirely her fault, but there's really no way that she isn't mostly to blame. When you start reciting your catchphrase before actually doing the rescue, and stuff like that, there's no way of shifting the blame. I can't really fault the townsponies for cheering RD; when a pony does something heroic, it ought to be recognized. Yeah, they went a bit overboard with it, but the fault is mostly on RD's end.

Anyway, yeah, I'm tentatively going to call this the weakest episode of the season thus far; all the other ones have been either "awesome with a few minor flaws", or "solid but not awesome". This one is a "good". I don't think there are any truly glaring flaws, but it just felt a bit off for some reason. I think it's because it was sort of trying to hard; there's so much ridiculous stuff going on that it almost feels unnatural.

edited 26th Nov '11 8:35:36 PM by JapaneseTeeth

They were pretty enthusiastic, but people are like that in real life anyway I think.

Huh, you're right, I did not realize that. Perhaps Hasbro didn't like the idea of a little girl's show depicting actual crime, which is a shame in my opinion, because I totally want to know what a criminal pony looks like, Cutie mark and all.

Also, it's not exactly the townspeople's fault generally in most situations people will praise the hero. It's RD's fault for letting it get to her head.

edited 26th Nov '11 8:34:05 PM by MousaThe14

That's true. I have an image of criminals being like the Home Alone villains anyways in this series though.

I'm sure if we got a criminal pony, it'd be laughably obvious - stubble (which never looks right on ponies, another reason I'm not terribly fond of this episode - too many construction worker ponies), giant-money-bag cutie mark, et cetera. Archetypal, and thus dull.

Ah! That's what's wrong with the episode. Most of the segments are very linearly 'set up incident-show Dash nearby-incident-incident resolved by Mare-Do-Well'. It's predictable, and again, something any other show could have done.

Not quite as clever as what I think of with Fi M.

I think my issue is a combination of that, and the excessive sort of slapstick/schizo tech thing you mentioned. It felt like there was too much going on in Ponyville. In almost every other episode it's a much more low key town. Kinda like the setting itself is kinda OOC. It didn't feel like Ponyville for some reason. I don't know. When I watch it again tomorrow when I'm not dog tired I'll probably be able to relay my thoughts a bit better.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the episode, but I don't think it's quite as good as what we've had so far this season.

edited 26th Nov '11 8:53:11 PM by JapaneseTeeth

^No, I think you've got a decent handle on the problem right there. At first I thought it was that everypony seemed a little out of character, but that wasn't the case - it was that Ponyville itself felt wrong, and the characters were looking off-color in comparison (if that makes sense).

edited 26th Nov '11 8:57:28 PM by RedSavant

Luna Eclipsed was pretty formulaic, too. That's why Rarity's segment was cut, actually, because it served no purpose in that episode except to extend the formula a bit longer.

After a second viewing, my biggest issue with the episode is that it sort of tripped over its own aesop. Sure, Rainbow needed to be taken down a peg (and it seems like it was getting excessive even for her, but it's too early to start screaming about Flanderization and Ruined Forever), but...if the moral was to not be a braggart about your accomplishments, why did they spend the Sugarcube Corner scene talking about how great and humble the MMDW is, then laugh at Dash's obvious distress?

All in all, still a decent episode, but I'd say it's the weakest of the season.