Dethroning Moment of Suck (Darth Wiki)/Western Animation/My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Difference between revisions

* [[Tropers/Termina Est|Termina Est]]: Doubt anyone shares the same view, but oh well, for me, it was [[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S1 E6 Boast Busters|"Boast Busters"]]; the Mane Cast's (mainly Applejack and Rarity) reaction to Trixie's stage show. I don't view Trixie as having done anything that was actually wrong, and I personally don't see it as any different from Rainbow Dash's bragging (As awesome as she is).

* [[Moe Dantes]]: I know I'm in a minority, but ''[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E1 The Return of Harmony Part 1|The Return]] [[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E2 The Return of Harmony Part 2|of Harmony]]''. Just the whole arc. I've written lengthy texts on its problems, but the short version is the whole premise is just off. The show is about these cute little ponies who get into and out of hijinks and come away learning valuable life lessons, most of their stories involve things that could conceivably happen in everyday life (if you make large allowances for Looney Tunes logic). And then all the sudden we have a two-parter where the mane cast are Celestia's private little superhero team, and they're being tasked with stopping the Equestrian version of Loki? The massive [[Genre Shift]] this episode does is just off-putting and it feels like it derails the characters and setting too much for me to find enjoyment in it.

* CCPrime: I realize a lot of people will disagree with me, but I found "[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E3 Lesson Zero|Lesson Zero]]" to be the absolute worst episode of the entire goddamn series. As for why...well, there are a lot of reasons. First off, the very premise itself is rather flimsy-- Twilight has gone a week without solving some kind of crisis and preparing a lesson on friendship? So, let me get this straight...she's honestly expected to find crazy shit to solve every single week? [[Fridge Logic|What the hell does she do in her spare time?]] Does she even have any? However, that part is nothing compared to my main complaint about the episode, namely the "characterization" of Twilight and the rest of the Mane Cast throughout...or rather, the lack thereof. Practically every joke relies on either [[Flanderization|Flanderizing]] the hell out of characters until they're reduced to nothing but ridiculous caricatures or themselves (Twilight's extreme OCD and descent into psychosis, Rarity's one-note couch gag, Big Mac speaking in nothing but "Eeyup"s and "Nope"s), or making them do insane, exaggerated shit that reads like something out of a book of brony cliches and in-jokes (the "Rainbow Nuke" scene, Fluttershy going all Spetsnaz-CQB on the bear). I enjoy watching this show because it usually entertains me with its witty writing and likable characters; this episode, on the other hand, resorted to falling back on a bunch of cheap, crass gags that would not look out of place in an episode of ''[[Invader Zim]]'' or ''[[The Ren and Stimpy Show]]'', not at all like the cute, optimistic series I'd come to love. And that doesn't even cover the ridiculous jumps in logic that showed up later in the episode, like having a bunch of random characters like Mayor Mare and Big Mac just happen to be hanging around the same park as Twilight. And, no, I did not find "friendly Twilight" funny at all; the disturbing behaviour and fucked up facial expressions just made her look like some kind of deranged stalker, and the latter simply increased the aforementioned resemblance to ''Ren and Stimpy''. Overall, I'm not sure if the episode in general was some kind of hamfisted attempt at appealing to the older brony crowd or something, but if it was...I sincerely hope that future ones attempt it in a different way. MLP should stick to its strengths, rather than try to be "edgy" or whatever.

* Oddlyweird: I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned this one. For me, ''[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E4 Luna Eclipsed|Luna Eclipsed]]'', left a real bad taste in my mouth for a few reasons. It seems everyone in Ponyville has forgotten that Luna isn't evil anymore (or forgotten they had a huge celebration to honor Luna for turning good again) because they're all scared by her (except for Twilight and Pinkie). This includes the main cast too, as if they weren't at the celebration themselves! Then there is Pinkie, I know she is just trying to scare the kids but she's doing it right in front of Luna when she doesn't want to be seen as scary. She knows Luna isn't bad too which doesn't make her reasoning behind scaring people any better. Also, the fact Luna uses the [[Royal We]] way of speaking bugs me some. It was funny but even then, why would she speak like so even though Celestia doesn't use it herself and they are around the same age. As a Luna fan, this episode disappointed me.

* Rahkshi500: I know many people will really disagree with me on this, but I found "[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E8 The Mysterious Mare Do Well|The Mysterious Mare Do Well]]" to be horrible. First of all, I fully agree that Rainbow Dash was full of herself and I am all for her learning a lesson in humility. However, I strongly disapprove on what was done to achieve that. Her bragging at the beginning was relatively harmless and Ponyville didn't mind it, let alone not being bothered by it. They wanted to take pictures and interview her for crying out loud. Her friends are the only ones bothered by it, but they don't talk to her, console her, reason with her, or even warn her of the consequences. Instead, they decide to take her down a peg just because they were annoyed. All of the following events can be traced back to this fact. If they tried to reason with Dash and she doesn't listen, then the other 5 would be more justified in what they did and Dash would've definitely deserved what happened to her, but that's not what happened. While their actions and interventions did save lives, they're also what made Dash progressively become more frustrated and desperate into doing stuff like breaking the dam and bothering other ponies over trivial matters. After all of this they still think they're showing Dash how to be a real hero and not brag, yet their motivations were not hero-like at all and [[Hypocrite|they were bragging about Mare Do Well's (aka their) accomplishments]] for no reason other than to hammer it into Dash's head that she should be more like Mare-Do-Well. The whole thing was completely unfair to Rainbow Dash and it made the other 5 into arrogant and self-righteous jerks.

* tvtroper98: ''[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E9 Sweet and Elite|Sweet and Elite]]'' was a very funny [[Two-Timer Date]] episode with some memorable moments, like Twilight's fail at dancing. That is, until the [[Ass Pull]] ending. Basically, Twilight openly reveals to everypony at the Canterlot garden party that Rarity is from Ponyville, and it looks like she is about to be a huge laughingstock...but Fancypants says to her that they loved the party and are honored to have someone like Rarity among them. So, basically, Rarity got out of the whole thing without having to move a muscle. [[Big "What?"|WHAT?!?]] That's like the same kind of ending you would find on any [[Nickelodeon]] sitcom currently running.

* [[Piothe Pony]]: In ''[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E13 Hearths Warming Eve|Hearth's Warming Eve]]'', there is the plot hole of Equestria's flag when it is first founded. The flag depicts Celestia and Luna circling each other with the moon and the sun. The main problem? At this point, the Princesses may not have even been born or seen Equestria yet. It's implied that they didn't come into power until after they defeated Discord for the first time, either. Perhaps, because it is a play, it's the modern flag, but if that is true, it would be nice to get some kind of confirmation.

* InTheGallbladder: "[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E14 The Last Roundup|The Last Roundup]]." The premise, as well as several gags and plot points, pretty much required the mane 6 to act wildly out of character, Applejack especially. Everyone but Fluttershy was either unsympathetic or obnoxious. The ending seemed last-minute, even down to the cheesy dialogue. The [[Something We Forgot|closing scene]] in question felt like an afterthought. For all I've heard in this episode's defense, it's the only one that made question the friendship of the protagonists.

* [[RA 2]]: So Applejack "didn't learn anything" from the events of ''[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E15 The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000|The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000]]''? That hardly sounds like something to brag about given what happened today. They claim to value customer relations over getting rich, and yet they let Pinkie Pie buy out a very large portion of their stock. Do the not see the correlation between that and losing the support of the whole town (the Element of Loyalty included)? It's a shame that Applejack abhors "fancy mathematics" so much, because otherwise she would have noticed that the Flim Flam Brothers' offer was actually quite generous. Sure the Apples only keep 25% of profits, but if that machine can more than quadruple their sales (and there's no question it can), they still come out ahead. Not to mention the hundreds of mare-hours that are suddenly freed up. They can go on all day about how machines are evil and all that, but when the alternative is angry customers and barely making ends meet, it's hard to sympathize with their plight. And the economic follies continued in droves, the Flim Flam brothers' threat to compete should ''not'' have scared them - were they not just a second ago bragging about their superior quality? If they're so confident, why not let Ponyville vote with their hooves? Granted it's a dangerous move, but think about it, it makes no sense logistically for the Flim Flams to make good on their threat; between costs of imports and machine maintenance, they'd never be able to undercut the ones who A, can boast "locally grown," B hold a virtual monopoly on Ponyville's apple supply, and C, are already charging exponentially less than what ponies are willing to pay <ref>I think it's reasonable to assume that, seeing as demand far exceeds supply, and ponies camp out for days on end to secure a place in line</ref>. The only "competition" they can do is to pick up the deadweight loss from the Apple Family. With that in mind, wagering their only leverage is just about the worst move they can make. They almost lost the farm because they foolishly agreed to challenge the Flim Flam brothers on sheer volume rather than quality - we had already established they couldn't win on that. And the only reason they still own Sweet Apple Acres is because the Flim Flam brothers [[Idiot Ball|screwed themselves over thrice]], first by not realizing that their lead was probably wide enough that they could still win without sacrificing quality, second by allowing Applejack to change the terms from her family competing to all of Ponyville competing, third by serving the ponies cider from one of the bad barrels made late in production rather than the good barrels made earlier. And her argument about having superior quality is moot, they never actually discredited the machine's quality-control mechanism. How can she be so smug when everything worked out by luck?

* [[Don East]]: I used to like Pinkie Pie, my second favorite pony overall behind Fluttershy. But as Season 2 progressed, I started to dislike her, namely how she was Flanderized from being a silly pony to hyperactive [[Man Child|Mare Foal]] who won't shut up. The moment that solidified my disdain for the character was in [[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E18 A Friend in Deed|"A Friend In Deed"]]. The episode started out good, with a really good musical number in the first act and the events in the second act seemed to make this episode into a deconstruction of Pinkie's character as Cranky Doodle Donkey was repelled by Pinkie's usual antics. And then in the third act, Pinkie just so happens to know that Matilda, a donkey introduced in the opening scene is [[Contrived Coincidence|Cranky's lost love who has NOT moved on from him despite not seeing him for years,]] [[Ass Pull|just so happen to live in Ponyville this entire time,]] [[Deus Ex Machina|and because of this, Cranky accepts Pinkie's friendship.]] What. The. Fuck? Seriously, what is this bull crap. You just can't set up this episode with a more mature than usual moral yet give some ultra-contrived happy ending. And no, even though she wrote a letter to Celestia at the end, that doesn't justify the fact that she got her way in the end. I'm now convinced that the writers like Pinkie Pie too much to put her in any real crisis, anything that might lead her to develop away from being the one-dimensional [[Genki Girl]] of the group, and an overall [[Creator's Pet]]. Way to waste a perfectly good story by giving it a crappy ending, Amy Keating Rogers.

* [[Psi Basilisk]]: There are a lot of problems with the episode "[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E19 Putting Your Hoof Down|Putting Your Hoof Down]]", but for brevity I'll focus on the set up. The episode starts off with Angel the bunny slapping Fluttershy in the face because he was unhappy with the salad she gave him. Angel has been impatient before and even bratty at times, but he was never a domestic abuser. Anyways, Fluttershy has to go out and get ingredients to make this insanely complex salad Angel wants. What follows is basically a cringe worthy Humiliation Conga for poor Fluttershy, as literately all the background ponies become jerkasses for no reason and push her around, cut in front of her, jack up prices for ingredients to a ridiculous extreme (10 bits, and later 20 for one cherry!) and insult her. This results in Angel throwing Fluttershy out of her own house because she couldn't make the damn salad perfectly since she couldn't buy the overpriced cherry (please note that everything else about the salad was perfect, it just didn't have a cherry). This horrid scenario was probably done so that Fluttershy would be motivated to go to an assertiveness training class but honestly it seems that the writers forgot what show they were writing. Why is Angel such a violent Jerkass to Fluttershy when he has been protective of her in the past? Why does everyone hate Fluttershy all of a sudden? Fluttershy has never been the most assertive pony but she was never tormented to this extent by so many characters at once. There have been mean characters on the show but they were the exception not the rule.

* [[Storm Requiem]]: I'm probably in the minority here, but I really, really disliked ''[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E20 Its About Time|It's About Time]]''. Why? Because, just my opnion, but the episode seemed like a totally pointless rehash of old Twilight-centric episodes. Where was the character development? I mean, Twilight Sparkle walked away from that whole time-travel thing learning ''not to worry about stuff''? [[Aesop Amnesia|Isn't that, like, what about 50% of her episodes focus on anyway?]] Ticket-Master? Lesson Zero? The episode had a really good potential premise, and instead it's wasted on some totally pointless, wacky hijinks. I feel guilty for even writing this because I am a Brony/Pegasister/whatever, but seriously, that episode has got to be in competition for my least favourite of season 2. The episode was hyped up to be really cool, because you know, time-travel, guys, and I even thought it might contain some foreshadowing for the series finale. But I feel like they're running out of ideas for Twilight Sparkle if the best thing they could think of to do with her in an episode about time-travel was to teach her to not worry about things. Why did they feel the need to use a time machine for that? Not only that, but several moments in the episode ''did'' go wrong, and some of it was much more interesting that the episode's conclusion. Talk about [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot]].

* fluffything: ''[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E21 Dragon Quest|Dragon Quest]]'', has a huge DMOS for me in the form of a major [[Broken Aesop]] / [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]]. In the episode, Spike feels like he's not in-touch with his dragon heritage and wants to go on the "Great Dragon Migration" to learn more about his heritage. His friends are reluctant to let him go at first, since they fear he could get hurt, but decide to let him leave on his journey. The problem occurs when Spike has to perform a bunch of "tests" (IE: Rowdy teenage dares) by a bunch of rowdy teenage dragons (Including stealing a Phoenix egg to smash). Spike discovers the other dragons are [[Jerkass|jerks]] and that he really belongs in Ponyville. Notice a problem? Spike didn't learn anything about dragon culture. Abso-freakin-lutely nothing! We get that Spike's not like other dragons. But, did it really require the use of one-dimensional teen dragon villains to drive the point home? Couldn't of the episode of just shown Spike learning about his heritage and his ancestry before returning to Ponyville and learning a lesson about being able to embrace both one's ancestry and who one is currently rather than "Anyone outside the culture you grew up in are complete jerks!"? [[Sarcasm Mode|What a great lesson to teach the kids.]]

* Calamity2007: I normally don't agree with some of the entries, much less ever thinking I would make one but "[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E23 Ponyville Confidential|Ponyville Confidential]]" has a serious problem with it. The episode starts out good enough with the Cutie Mark Crusaders looking for another way to get their cutie marks and deciding to join the newspaper, who is headed by [[Jerkass|Diamond Tiara]] who after writing about an embarrassing incident involving Snips and Snails wants them to write gossip stories under the guise Gabby Gums, eventually the townspeople gets upset when the privacy is invaded. This all goes downhill when Rarity finds out the truth about Gabby Gums, and suddenly everyone in Ponyville treats the CMC like outcasts! This goes to ridiculous proportions when Applejack refuses to talk to even her own sister (besides for "yeps" and "nopes") while Big Mac literally tells her to "Go away!" and Rainbow Dash literally putting a raincloud over their heads! This was horrible to see three children go through this stuff and also jarring since earlier the three have shown that they're starting to regret gathering these stories and are mostly because of peer pressure and blackmail. Sure everything ends fine in the end and it didn't ruin me from enjoying the episode but it's still shocking that the "adult" ponies could treat children this way.