Eyup.

Apparently she is the moral paragon of the group.

You know I wonder what Tank does when he is not hanging out with Rainbow Dash. Is there just some helicopter tortoise flying around Ponyville without a care in the world? Hmm, I wonder how the flower sisters would react?

I always figured he lived underneath RD's cloud home, and only wears the heli-pack if he's with RD (which wouldn't be all the time)

Yeah, but in Sisterhooves Social, Rarity at least has that moment of "Oh crap, I've been a terrible sister". She realized that she had screwed up and went to Applejack for advice on how to fix her relationship. The initiative was on Rarity's side. In this episode, RD seems to be totally oblivious to the problem until the cast spells it out for her. If she would have realized "Crap, I've been being an egotistical jerk" before the unmasking, I think it would have worked a lot better.

I would have thought Twilight Sparkle would be the moral paragon, what with her being the protagonist and all...

EDITED IN: That and how Applejack was utterly in denial of needing help with farming when it was causing harm to others. The closest to that I can think of for Twilight within the first season is Swarm Of The Century, and even there the problems weren't exactly caused by Twilight's actions.

edited 27th Nov '11 6:54:41 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

Honestly I would expect her being the protagonist would mean she has the most to learn. Also did you forget Twilight's actions in Lesson Zero.

That is why I think it would have been much better from a storytelling perspective if we had gotten to see the full consequences of RD's actions. It would have given her a nice My God, What Have I Done? moment and worked well as a catalyst for her character development rather then her just saying "Oh I get"!

edited 27th Nov '11 5:58:50 PM by Mio

Um... Lesson Zero? When Twilight basically went all Discord on the CMC.

edited 27th Nov '11 5:56:54 PM by gingerninja666

I would think twilight is the one who has the most to learn about friendship. Since Return of Harmony 2 though she seemed to have the core element down- oh wait lesson zero.

I'm real happy for you all, and Imma let you finish, but I'm going to talk about what I thought of the new episode.

I have to say, this was probably my least favorite episode so far. Not just 1, but 5 of the Mane 6 are carrying the Idiot Ball. Why are they suddenly so bothered by Rainbow's arrogance? It's one of her main character traits, and when you've known someone for as long as the Mane 6 have, you'd get used to it. And of course they couldn't just tell Rainbow to tone down the ego a bit, they had to try and destroy her reputation. I've always wanted to see a plot like this or Party of One, except in the end the character in question storms off angrily. But because this is a kids show, that's not going to happen.

I find this episode a lot easier to handle if you imagine that the ENTIRE MMDW thing was orchestrated PURELY to give the cast a chance to talk to RD. As she was, she was NEVER going to listen to anyone.

All she needed was to hear someone call her out on it (as the mane cast did at the end), but the problem was GETTING her to listen in the first place

RD doesn't listen to anyone unless she's suffered some kind of humiliation, though.

edited 27th Nov '11 6:03:57 PM by gingerninja666

But that requires imagining.

2hard.

Before "May the Best Pet Win" I would've agreed with you, because I hated Rainbow like you hate Pinkie. But now I think she's alright. She's not so egotistical that she wouldn't have listened to her friends. The thing that bothered me more was the Mane 6 suddenly being bothered by one of Rainbow's biggest traits. That would be like them trying to get Twilight not to be studious.

edited 27th Nov '11 6:05:29 PM by SkyStrike

FUCK!! I'm the ONLY FUCKING GUY WHO LIKED THIS EPISODE!!

and in a genuine way, not in a "I'll enjoy anything" way

I like RD too. Also, in MTBPW she was humiliated before her revelation as well. This is also the WORST I think RD's ever been

edited 27th Nov '11 6:08:34 PM by gingerninja666

It really aggravates me when Rainbow, or Pinkie in Party of One, just make up with their friends after that massive debacle. I just can't imagine being such good friends with someone to do that. But, friendship is magic.

Just to reiterate: They didn't humiliate RD in any way. They didn't set her up for failure or make her look like an idiot. They just did the same things that she had been doing. Any humiliation she suffered was the result of her own actions. They never impeded her or prevented her from doing anything. I agree that it's weird that they jumped straight to this plan rather than trying to talk to her about it, but I don't think that's enormously stupid of them.

The problem was that RD was far and away more arrogant in this episode than she's ever been before, to the point that it's endangering ponies.

I can see your point concerning this episode, but I really don't think that throwing someone a surprise party is a deal-breaker. The problem was totally on Pinkie's end for that one.

@Ginger: I enjoyed the episode, just not as much as most of the others.

edited 27th Nov '11 6:11:29 PM by JapaneseTeeth

We have NEVER seen RD take criticism without being humbled first. never. At the height of her egotism she wasn't listening to shit

I would imagine the exchange would go like this:

"Hey Rainbow? Can we talk?"

"Yeah yeah, one second, gotta sign these autographs."

-20 minutes later-

"Done yet?

"Nope."

edited 27th Nov '11 6:13:52 PM by SkyStrike

Suddenly, fire, fire everywhere! Everybody stand back, your friend neighborhood Rainbow Dash is here!

The other thing is that from day one, RD's self worth has pretty much always been determined by how others view her. I mean look at Sonic Rainboom: She had a total nervous breakdown when faced with the possibility that she might look like an idiot in front of a lot of ponies. It really makes sense that when she gets praise heaped on her, she'd never want to give that up if she could help it.

But yeah, it's weird that her friends jumped right to the plan that they did. If I had been in their position, I'd have faked some sort of disaster that resulted in one of her friends being (not really) hurt as a result of her posturing. Cue "What have I done!?" moment at which point she connects the dots.

Another thing that bugged me was the scene with the Mane 6 talking about MMDW to RD. A good thing to do would've been to say "MMDW is better than you because she's humble and modest" so RD would emulate that to be the best. But they decided to rub it in her face, which was pretty mean.

Also, when RD was out of problems, I was so surprised she didn't decide to pull a Twilight and make some problems.

edited 27th Nov '11 6:16:59 PM by SkyStrike

Well, it was brought up that they were trying to show RD how self-praise and such can be annoying.

Still though, it feels pretty roundabout to me.

I expected Rd to do that too, good thing she didn't.

edited 27th Nov '11 6:17:27 PM by mailedbypostman

Can you imagine Rainbow making problems? She could nuke the whole town.

Maybe it would have been better if Mare Do Well and Dash had to team up on something.

But I liked this episode enough. MUCH better than last week's.

Actually, AJ DOES mention that the MMDW was humble and modest

"She lets her actions speak for themselves"

edited 27th Nov '11 6:20:53 PM by gingerninja666

Well, you liked the song right? Right?

She should've emphasized that was why MMDW was better.

Egad! I haven't changed my avatar in almost a week! Could someone convert this◊ to avatar form for me please?

And so the new supervillain is born.

Hm, this whole set up could work for that too. Hero feels unappreciated, wants recognition more than actually helping people? Seems familiar.

edited 27th Nov '11 6:22:06 PM by mailedbypostman