“Gee, Twilight! I thought you were just spoutin’ a lot o’ hooey, but I reckon we really do represent the elements of friendship!”

Episode written by Lauren Faust

Entirely unofficial reflections by sixcardroulette

This is a full-length Ponywatching essay. For a condensed review

of this episode, check out The Shorter Ponywatching!

Here’s a thing. Unlike most sports, which tend to have evolved gradually over many years from various informal games until an agreed set of rules finally came together, basketball was actually invented by one person: Dr James Naismith, a YMCA instructor, who sat down in his office one day in the 1890s and sketched out the entire game. What he came up with doesn’t look much like basketball as we know it today, but it’s recognisably the same game, the basic structure is there. And yet when Dr Naismith’s creation took off across America, and he accepted a job offer from the University of Kansas to become head coach of their new basketball team – a team playing a sport he himself invented – he actually ended up with a losing record, to this day the only Kansas coach to do so. The guy who actually invented basketball is, statistically, the least successful basketball coach in school history.

Why am I talking about this on a My Little Pony blog? (Other than reminding people I’m a sports geek, rather than a comics one?) Friendship is Magic Part 2 – or Elements of Harmony, to give it its more descriptive and less confusing alternate title – is the last time we’ll ever see a sole writing credit here on Ponywatching for the great Lauren Faust, the creator of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. She has one more co-writer credit coming up (for episode 3), and then that’s our lot, as she withdraws into the clouds as Executive Producer for the rest of the first season, to keep a watchful eye on what other writers are doing with her characters, her stories, her world.

While “success” is kind of a fluid concept when we’re talking about TV – I mean, what constitutes a success? Ratings? Widespread critical approval? A 40% surge in toy sales? Whether me and my family liked it? – generally, in terms of its reception by the brony community (in my own limited experience of it anyway), Elements of Harmony seems to get a pretty rough ride.

This is the second half of a two-part episode, which I suppose makes going back to revisit it in isolation a faintly artificial process. But I think it’s the right thing to do. Even the people who have nice things to say about the opening two-parter as a whole (and that’s by no means a whopping majority in itself), or those who are less hesitant to recommend it as a starting point for new would-be bronies, do broadly seem to confine most of their praise to the first part.

Now, I really enjoyed Mare in the Moon, and not just sentimentally because it’s what ultimately hooked me into becoming a brony – I’ve thoroughly enjoyed rewatching it with the kids, and I had a blast watching it back again to write that essay. This second part, which has a very different tone and style, is (for me) a bumpier, less satisfying ride for a number of reasons, all of which were developed before I ever went online and discovered there were such things as bronies, or indeed that there was any dissatisfaction at all. That’s kind of the way this blog works, really – a mix of my initial reactions on first and subsequent viewings, and my reactions now having seen what’s popular and what isn’t. And, apparently, this one isn’t.

Of course, this being My Little Pony, there are still some brilliant bits. Let’s get to them.



Difficult Second Album Syndrome

This was the second episode we ever watched, although I didn’t really think of it as being a separate episode in its own right at the time.

On the whole, I enjoyed it. I really did. I think it’s important to emphasise that here, before I get into some criticism – I know some people don’t like it when essays like this (or analysis videos on the same theme) are full of criticism, sometimes just laundry lists of complaints and nit-picking. I don’t want to get all Pollyanna on everyone, but I’ve found something to like every time; personally, I don’t feel there have been any outright bad episodes yet. After watching 90-odd episodes of the show in less than 4 months, I don’t think there’s been a single one where the things I didn’t like comprehensively outweigh things I did like, or even love. And that includes this one.

So if I seem a bit critical here, bear in mind it’s because I want the show to be great, and Elements of Harmony feels like it’s within arm’s reach of being one of the best episodes of the first season, even if it actually ends up one of my least favourite.

It did take me a while to work out why I found it less satisfying than the first half. Just saying “easy, it’s not so well-written” seems simple enough at first, but I think there’s more to it than that. It’s true the episode follows a structure that affords the opportunity to mirror the first part, with each team member getting an individual scene, affording a ready opportunity to compare and contrast, and it’s true that for me, none of those scenes are as sound, or as sweet, or as funny, as their counterparts in the first, but there are plenty of good moments too; it’s true that for me, the plot seems kind of flimsy and contains a lot of what feels suspiciously like handwaving, but then the actual overarching story is fine, built on a fairytale quest model that hits all the points the show needs to hit. It’s the little details and the execution of that story which are a little “off”, rather than the central concept.

No, I think the problems in Elements of Harmony – if you accept there are problems at all, of course! Maybe it’s safer to say issues? – are to do with the show’s uncertain and malleable sense of identity in these early days. If that first part felt, on the whole, like a show which knew what it wanted to be, this second part is much less sure of itself. My Little Pony is a show that’s partly about six friends all with their individual foibles getting to know each other, and partly about magical horses saving the world from awful fantasy threats. The show has to deal in both the domestic and the epic. Having dealt so comfortably with the domestic half of the equation, helped by the fact that the tropes are simpler and more universal (friends meeting each other, bookworm forced to lighten up, shy girl moving to new town etc.), giving more room to add a special pony spin, we now get the epic half.

But that’s much shakier ground; the oldest tropes here are myths and fairytales, open-ended and with an expectation of mythos-building, far easier to get wrong. As a result, the quest stuff is really a change of setting to do more groundwork, lay more foundations, rather than being an end in itself. So, this episode (for me!) ends up more successful when it goes back to what was great about the domestic scenes, the characters and the interaction between them, even when our ponies are battling an eldritch evil who wants to blot out the sun forever. And on that basis, what’s being set up as an epic plot ends up more as a device to get those ponies from A to B, from set-piece to set-piece. The result is still absolutely worth watching, but – again, for me – more so for the purpose it serves and the story it tells, rather than necessarily being something I’d put near the top of my list to watch and watch again for its own sake.

Me me me me me, though, right? This blog isn’t just about me. There were four of us watching this episode for the first time. Two of them absolutely loved it: the youngest two. So that’s worth bearing in mind as well: if Lauren Faust conceived of the show generally, and this episode specifically, as recreating the spirit of the epic adventures she used to take her own My Little Pony toys on of a rainy afternoon back when she was eight, it’s hard to argue she didn’t succeed. The broadly-sketched, freewheeling, focus-shifting, perilously-close-to-handwaving feel of the bulk of Elements of Harmony, the quest and its resolution, is exactly the sort of story a good My Little Pony cartoon should be telling, rather than the giggly tea party crap 80s girls ended up saddled with. Playtime, validated on the big screen. And on that level, this is a rip-roaring success.

Here we go.

In which we recap what were apparently the most

important moments of the first episode

Even though these two episodes were (presumably) broadcast back to back – that’s how it usually works, right, American viewers? – and even though they appear back-to-back on the show’s digital and DVD releases (including the crazy British DVD my daughter got, the bonkers sequencing of which meant we otherwise watched all the other episodes in a wacky new order almost completely different to what was meant to happen), I’m guessing there’s some kind of situation out there somewhere – TV syndication, maybe? – where they end up being separated from each other, necessitating this second episode starting with a little recap of what you missed from the first half and need to know in order to catch up. Either that, or Hasbro’s opinion of their target market’s attention span is really low.

Anyway, Elements of Harmony starts off with a little summary of Mare in the Moon, and it’s (briefly) interesting to see what the editors thought was important for people who somehow missed the first half to see in order to get them up to speed. It’s Friendship is Magic, Part 1 Redux – The 30 Second Edit! Drum roll:

‘Elements of Harmony – see: Mare in the Moon’ ?!

But that’s just an old ponies’ tale!

“She will bring about night-time eternal…”

Um… okay, that wasn’t what I was expecting as the opening salvo. Makes sense to put the nature of the threat front and centre here, I suppose, but then that was only a tiny part of the first episode. Still, the first half did start with mythos before cute pony friends, so maybe it’s fair enough.

It’s imperative that the Princess is told right away!

See? I knew she would want to take immediate action!

In this recap, this line feels more like the setup for an obvious joke than it did in the actual episode!

“Ny dear Twilight… There is more to a young pony’s life than studying… Make some friends.

Yes, now we’re cooking – that’s pretty much the first few scenes, plus the relationship between Spike, Twilight and Celestia in a nutshell. Also, it gives me a chance to show Twilight’s reaction face:

Grumble.

So, on to Ponyville. How does the recap show us all the new friends Twilight made?

[GAAAAAASP!]

OK… I’m sure that makes lots of sense to anyone who’s not watched the first part. And that’s the only evidence of Twilight’s (crucial) friend-making mission we get. If it was me (yeah, I know, one whole episode in and I’m telling the editors how to do their jobs), I’d have included a tiny snippet from each of the “meeting” scenes, just jump-cutting between the five ponies giving Twilight their names before moving on. But hey, I’m not in charge.

All the ponies in this town are CRAZY!

True enough. Maybe this is the message we’re meant to take from that first episode: Twilight met a bunch of ponies and (from her perspective) they all seem to be nuts. Perhaps Pinkie’s float-and-GAAASP is actually the best representation of Twilight Sparkle’s first experiences in Ponyville?

I hope the Princess was right…!

One of the really smart things I liked from the first episode, one of the many little touches which made sense in hindsight but whose significance I didn’t clock at the time, was the ambiguous nature of Celestia’s response to Twilight’s concerns – “you really must stop reading those dusty old books!”, taken at face value by Twilight as an admonition, when actually the Princess (isn’t it weird being able to say “Princess”, singular, and not have it be ambiguous?) was really providing her with the way to defeat Nightmare Moon. The recap loses that subtlety, which is a pity, as I’m not sure Twilight’s callback (as quoted here) makes sense otherwise. Again, though, I doubt anyone is really starting with Part 2 without seeing Part 1.

She’s gone!

Nice read, Velma.

OH NO! Nightmare Moon!

MWUA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

(Fade to black, followed by rocking upbeat theme music)

I am not certain that did what you meant for it to do, Twilight Sparkle DHX. At least all the other cold opens from here until Season 2 are actual scenes, so we won’t have to do this again for a while.

And… on with the show.

In which our equine heroines (heroequines?) embark upon a dangerous quest

By far the best parts of the first episode, for my money, were the introduction and initial interactions of these seven amazing characters, characters who – even if nobody realised it at the time – we’d be following for more than a hundred more episodes. Nonetheless, the recap effectively snips out all of that stuff in favour of bringing us up to speed on the Nightmare Moon story, the fantasy epic/fairytale adventure part of the plot.

Which is fair enough, except I think the episode still works best as a slice-of-life sitcom, even in the middle of the quest scenes. Future quest episodes, largely confined to series-opening and closing two-parters, have the luxury of concentrating on the quest itself. Here, the ponies barely know each other and Twilight barely knows them, and more to the point we barely know them, and so the point of this quest actually becomes for them – and us – to learn more about each other, to get to like each other. With that in mind, I’d maybe have shifted the focus of that recap towards Twilight meeting the rest of the mane six, in whose company we’re about to spend the next 22 minutes. But then, it’s not my call; best not get me started randomly rewriting scenes to fit what works best in my head. Not even recaps.

Where’s Merryweather When You Need Her?

An interesting thing: this episode picks up exactly where the previous one left off, right there in the town hall amid the chaos and confusion of Princess Celestia’s disappearance and Nightmare Moon’s return. The stand-off tension from the first part is broken almost immediately as the Mayor gives the classic Saturday morning cartoon adventure “start your engines” line:

SEIZE HER! Only she knows where the Princess is!

First viewing, I didn’t question the logic of the Mayor’s assumption. (Actually, to this day we still don’t know exactly what happened to Princess Celestia during the events of this episode.) Anyway, Nightmare Moon isn’t in the mood for this nonsense, and although she doesn’t really punish the ponies for this show of defiance, she still shows she means business with a couple of well-placed lightning bolts across the bows, and she also gets in the first great line of this second part:

Stand back, you FOALS!

Made me laugh, anyway.

Even better, if you have young children (or a good memory), you might recognise this scene is actually almost a shot-for-shot and line-for-line remake of the equivalent scene from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (where Maleficent crashes the party), right down to Applejack having to restrain Rainbow Dash in the style of Flora grabbing Merryweather’s skirt (Merryweather being the short-tempered blue one!) to hold her back. (I’d put up a picture, but I think Disney might be a bit less tolerant than Hasbro when it comes to some random idiot blogger using their screencaps…)

There’s no way that’s accidental, the Seize her! / Stand back, you fools foals! exchange sets it in stone, and I’m not sure it’s even meant to be taken as a little tip of the hat – I believe once you take Sleeping Beauty (the film and the actual fairy tale) as a kind of base model for this episode, all kinds of things fall into place and a lot of interesting questions crop up. A quest through a dark enchanted forest to get to an abandoned castle, you say? But with six independent women playing the part of Prince Charming? Awesome. But who is Sleeping Beauty in this analogy?

Not that I noticed any of this on first viewing, of course, other than to note the scene seemed familiar without being able to put my finger on it.

So, anyway, amid the ensuing chaos and screaming (and just like in Sleeping Beauty, the panicky, disbelieving crowd reaction makes this feel genuinely dark and real for a moment, though, really, on paper it’s no more than any Saturday morning cartoon viewer has seen in the last 30 years), Applejack can’t keep on both holding Rainbow Dash by the tail and restraining Pinkie Pie, and she loses her grip:

It was a valiant attempt.

…whereupon Rainbow – underlining she’s not just a jock, but a hothead – immediately flies straight in for a fight, only for Nightmare Moon to escape with ease. During all of this chaos, Twilight Sparkle, the only pony in the crowd who was even slightly expecting this turn of events, turns tail and bolts for the library, immediately raising Rainbow’s suspicions.

Now, There Are Six Steps To Friendship

I really liked, and still like, this next part; having quickly assessed the situation, Twilight does what she thinks is the best possible course of action and tries to hit the books.

(Another interesting thing – Spike is written out of this second half almost immediately, really before the action proper begins. Almost pre-emptively, as the writers have so often shown themselves ready to do, a potential awkward viewer question is shot down before it’s asked (in this case, “Why would you take a baby dragon on a dangerous quest?”) When talking about Part 1, I called him the heart of the show, a vital window casting new light on Twilight’s personality as her only link to the past. Here, he’s essentially absent, and doesn’t feature in the rest of the episode with a speaking role – not even at the end, when his closest friend, mentor, protector and effectively stepmother announces she’s permanently moving to Ponyville.)

Right behind her, Rainbow bursts in and (quite reasonably) accuses the weird newcomer of being the cause of the problems, before being restrained by Applejack:

Elements, elements, elements… Nghhhh! How can I stop Nightmare Moon without the Elements of Harmony?!

And just what ARE the Elements of Harmony, huh? And how’d YOU know about Nightmare Moon? Are you a spy?

Simmer down, Sally. She ain’t no spy!

And then AJ calmly takes control of the situation, at once getting Rainbow (who she seems to already know) to cool her jets, while putting Twilight (who just had five ponies barge into her house uninvited and accuse her of all sorts) at ease. I like her already.

But she sure knows what’s goin’ on.

[softly] Dont’cha, Twilight?

And there’s a telling little pause while Twilight weighs up her battling natural instincts: the impulse to shut these annoying ponies out and deal with it herself (rather than have these five inevitably mess it up), versus the feeling she’s reached a dead end… and also a strange new feeling, that part of her, deep down, might actually quite like to have some friends. It’s only a tiny pause, but it feels like Twilight took several minutes to come to her decision; it might have felt that way for her, judging by the expression on her face as she reluctantly decides to spill the beans.

The voice acting here is genuinely first rate.

It’s tempting to assign a lot of significance to this moment, retrospectively: the moment Twilight first lowers her emotional barriers and lets somepony else in. She could have told them all to leave, and set her life on a different path. But I don’t think they’d have let her. I don’t think Applejack would have let a new friend face her problems alone, I don’t think Rainbow would have passed up the opportunity to find out more about how to kick Nightmare Moon’s butt, and I don’t think Pinkie – for whom Twilight right now seems to feel the least affection of all her new “friends” – would have left without some assurance that she and the mysterious newcomer were going to be best buddies.

Anyhow, Twilight’s decision is immediately vindicated because Pinkie helps her out straight away, whether through her weird, fourth-wall-bending status as a character who exists slightly outside the structure of any given story (and, indeed, the laws of physics), or simply through having actually been in this library before, unlike Twilight herself; either way, it’s funny:

I read all about the prediction of Nightmare Moon. Some mysterious objects called the Elements of Harmony are the only things that can stop her. But I don’t know what they are, where to find them… I don’t even know what they do!

‘The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide’.

How did you find that?!

It was under ‘E’!

Check out the music sting while this is happening.

Another interesting thing: the following scene is missing, lost in a transition. The ponies set out, together, on a quest to retrieve the mysterious Elements, the structure of which ends up mirroring that of the first episode, with each pony getting a chance to show Twilight an aspect of their personality which illustrates what makes them a good friend. But we don’t get the actual discussion leading up to this quest – we smash cut straight from the library to the outskirts of a dark and mysterious wood. Even on first viewing this felt a bit strange, although it makes more narrative sense later on since the discussion – and the ponies persuading Twilight they were coming along too – probably covered material that would only have to be duplicated, making this next scene irrelevant. But, still, following Nightmare Moon’s sudden appearance at the end of the first half, this is the second moment where the show’s pacing really noticeably jars.

Quest For Six

So, much like the opening episode, on this quest each character will get a spotlight scene. The idea is that the Mane Six come up against a series of obstacles, each of which needs to be solved by one – and only one – of the team, thereby advancing the quest and in the process showing the other five (and us!) a little something extra about their personality.

That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, we’re left relying on the theory to carry some of the weight, or else plot holes and questions aplenty begin to suggest themselves. But then, my children didn’t notice. (On first viewing, not really knowing these characters yet, I didn’t really notice, or more accurately I didn’t mind, at least not to the extent I’d do so on subsequent watchings – first time out and this far in, I wouldn’t yet have called myself a big fan of the show, rather a dad who was pleasantly surprised/impressed with it as a cut above the usual Saturday morning fare.)

While I’m no fan of excusing shoddy writing on the basis that it’s for kids, I don’t think that’s quite what’s happening here; it’s that the episode needs an epic, challenging quest which doesn’t really have time to become epic or challenging, since it also needs to build up the bond between the six new friends, and also further introduce them to us and to each other.

The result is the quest plotline being simplified out of necessity, not because kids are dumb and can’t tell the difference (one of the things I love about this show is that it never takes the attitude “who cares, it’s only for kids!” – anyone who’s spent any amount of time with children knows they’re both difficult to please and sensitive to when they’re being patronised), but because there’s only so much content you can pack into 22 minutes and still have it remain comprehensible for the widest audience possible, without getting bogged down in the semantics of universe-building, or repeatedly stopping to give us long explanatory or expository speeches. Elements of Harmony stretches that to the absolute limits.

This, of course, is how plot holes happen, but honestly, and considering they really don’t make a habit of this sort of thing, I readily forgive them.

Into The Woods

What’s more confusing, given the amount of pressure everyone was apparently under to bring this thing in on time and have it make sense, is that having introduced the town of Ponyville as a key ingredient (along with Twilight facehoofing at the collection of dysfunctional oddballs she meets there), almost establishing the town as a character in its own right, the second half of the episode then promptly abandons that setting (note it’s even missing from the cold open recap!), in favour of a trek through a dark and mysterious forest.

I’ll be honest, I found this slightly bewildering on first watch, especially when it’s introduced with the classic Scooby-Doo read, practically complete with exaggerated gulp – “THE EVERFREE FOREST!:

You really don’t want to go in there unless you have to.

The Forest is an unusual place, in terms of its use as a setting; the clear inspiration from Sleeping Beauty makes it more understandable, but it’s initially set up as a location the ponies are terrified of entering, governed by what they see as strange violations of the natural law (like the weather changing by itself, rather than being manually altered by magic!). A lot of the awe and wonder and terror associated with the forest has been gradually hacked away over the course of the ensuing four seasons, much helped by the introduction of a popular character who actually lives there, though it retains some of the mysterious and frightening power of the unnatural other.

So the ponies set off to reach the ancient castle rumoured to contain the Elements. The slog through the deep, dark forest never quite feels like a quest in itself, because we never really get any kind of indication of progress; for us, it’s all about the bonding experience, a team-building exercise for magical hero ponies.

As I said before, by and large it’s the domestic scenes that work best in both of these episodes, not the epic fantasy or fairytale stuff, and so one of the more touching moments of this first act occurs right on the edge of the forest, when Twilight wants to go it alone, but is overruled by her new friends (or at least can’t do anything to stop them going with her!) Once again, it’s Applejack who assumes the lieutenant’s role, as well as explicitly stating she and the others consider Twilight their friend:

Look, I appreciate the offer, but I’d really rather do this on my own.

No can do, sugar cube. We sure ain’t lettin’ any friend o’ ours go into that creepy place alone! We’re stickin’ to you like caramel on a candy apple.

Aww.

And so into the woods we go. I’d be more annoyed by the way Pinkie Pie “does a Pinkie Pie”, coming out with a non-sequitur that seems inane even for her, if it wasn’t completely validated by Twilight’s immediate reaction.

Especially if there’s candy apples in there!

…

What? Those things are good!

(You know, I’m friends with Princess Celestia. I can get you the help you so obviously need.)

I still don’t think these two are actually friends yet. Well, they are as far as Pinkie is concerned, but I fear the feeling isn’t exactly mutual.

In which our heroines each face a test of their friendship,

and prove themselves to each other in unexpected ways

This section of the episode, the least successful for me, is – not coincidentally, I think – the part which deviates most from both the character-driven “ponies meet each other” plot and the Sleeping Beauty fairytale quest plot; left to come up with a convincing way to get our ponies from the outskirts of the forest to the ruins of the castle while also demonstrating all of the five key elements of friendship, the show comes up with a series of five mini-quests to halt the story and block their progress, video game style, and it seems common consensus is that pretty much all of them could have been handled better.

(Others have also legitimately asked whether, from a plot perspective, Nightmare Moon would have been better off not trying to stop them, since it seems to be the bonding experience of solving her obstacles that eventually brings our team together as friends, and thus gives them the power to use the Elements against her. I don’t think this really works, since she also doesn’t seem to be aware of how the Elements actually work anyway, believing them destroyed when she breaks their temporary physical form, despite Princess Luna having wielded them back in the depths of history. But that’s a discussion for another day, I suppose.)

The idea is that the group are tested in turn, and that for each task, each hurdle, the group would have been stopped in their tracks (or worse), without one key member being able to overcome that specific difficulty. However, in practice it doesn’t really work that way – there are usually actually multiple solutions to all of the hurdles, and the ponies don’t always choose the most obvious or efficient way forward.

So, here is my interpretation, and it’s the interpretation I took from this sequence in this very first two-parter and have stuck with ever since. The Elements are extremely powerful in their own right, but they need the right ponies to wield them – note that even Celestia herself wasn’t able to destroy Nightmare Moon and restore her sister, instead only temporarily banishing her to the moon.

As the series goes on, it seems more and more likely Celestia actually set things up this way – that Twilight couldn’t have done the same thing with five random other ponies she’d just met, no matter how quickly they became firm friends for life; that the magic of the Elements, still sketchily defined even now, five seasons in, specifically needed these six ponies to be friends with Twilight (if not necessarily with each other just yet). By the end of Elements of Harmony, they all still have a lot of work to do to build their friendship – this is its beginning, not its culmination.

The complex web of who knew who before Twilight came to town is still largely incomplete (Fluttershy and Rainbow grew up knowing each other, if not necessarily as friends per se, Rarity and Fluttershy are (later) revealed to be friends who enjoy a regular spa date, Applejack and Rainbow Dash are seemingly each well aware and mutually respectful of the other’s athletic prowess with a kind of bromance thing going on, and of course Pinkie Pie explicitly says she knows everypony in town but the others’ attitudes toward her here speak more to tolerance than love). Still, these six are about to become the best of friends, and they begin with a friendship obstacle course.

Faithful and Strong

The first one kind of sets the theme – some of the ponies are scared, Rainbow takes the opportunity to be an idiot by scaring them even more –

Not helping, Rainbow Dash.

– and then, thanks to Nightmare Moon’s intervention, a rock face collapses, leaving Twilight hanging over the cliff edge and Applejack struggling to hold her up. Here’s the first test of character, the first opportunity to show an element of friendship that Twilight really knows nothing about: a variation on the old trust exercise, “you fall back and your partner will catch you”, but ham-fistedly executed.

The idea is sound, but the way it’s implemented makes very little sense – Applejack thinks for a moment and tells Twilight to let go, trust her and she’ll be safe. Fair enough – but she’ll be safe because Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy are getting into position to catch her, and it seems like AJ could have just told her that in the time it took to go through their little argument over whether it was safe to let go. (Although it does give Applejack the chance to directly refute Twilight’s most common criticism…)

Let go.

Are you CRAZY?!

No, I ain’t. I promise you’ll be safe.

That’s not true!

Now, listen here – what I’m sayin’ to you is the honest truth. Let go, and you’ll be safe.

It’s touching – it made an impression on me and my family, and certainly it makes an impression on Twilight too – but it doesn’t make a lot of sense, all told.

But then, each of these five tests is almost like a fable, a fairytale moral rather than a coherent, self-contained plot; think of each of these little lessons in what it is to be a friend as the equivalent of the rainbow flashes in the fourth series. My theory is that the five friends each represent the particular element of friendship that they first taught Twilight about, not that they necessarily epitomise that part of friendship – much like Twilight, who (spoiler alert!) ends up representing the Element of Magic, isn’t automatically the most powerful unicorn in all of Equestria.

(That last sentence is a pretty big indicator of how far I’ve come in four months, that I can write “Twilight Sparkle isn’t the most powerful unicorn in all of Equestria” and it doesn’t look weird to me any more. But I digress.)

Also, points to Applejack for making her own way down the cliff-face unaided in spectacular style:

And on we go.

Sharing Kindness Is An Easy Feat

This is my favourite of these little “friendship test” scenes. The moral is simple enough: the six encounter a manticore, everyone tries to get past with – of course – excessive physical violence, and gets their asses handed back to them, whereupon Fluttershy instead solves the problem by showing kindness, noticing the beast has a thorn in its paw, and taking care of it by getting her Androcles on. Perhaps because here the old-as-the-hills story is so rock solid (just as in part 1!), the execution has more room to breathe, and it’s just superb.

Even if the manticore itself isn’t particularly frightening (apparently Lauren Faust wanted to make it look more scary and intimidating, but was overruled):

D’awwwww.

…well, it’s still kind of impressive that the show, which began rebooting My Little Pony‘s dubious history with a dark two-minute mythology dump, is keeping up the epic theme by introducing actual mythological animals from Graeco-Roman antiquity, throwing the watching kids in at the deep end without any kind of audience explanation, trusting them to do the reading if they’re that interested. They may be kids, it says, but let’s not assume they’re stupid.

And even though the decision to resort immediately to fighting the manticore feels rather out of character for the five who take up the challenge (Fluttershy, in another neat mirroring of the first part, repeats her one line:

Wait.

– but instead of getting quieter, this time she gets increasingly firm and increasingly loud, as the others ignore her)…

…well, that fighting is really quite beautifully choreographed, the animators having all kinds of fun with their new character models, mapping out the moves for a spectacular four-legged fight scene. First up, Rarity – Rarity! – tries to kick the manticore in the face:

Take that, you RUFFIAN!

Then Applejack rides it around like a rodeo bull for a while, is thrown off, and tags in Rainbow Dash whilst still in mid-air:

All yours, pard’ner!

Then Rainbow and Twilight each have a turn, culminating in the whole gang charging cavalry-style before Fluttershy throws herself in their path and shouts at them to stop. And they all learn their valuable lesson, and Fluttershy again strikes a chord with Twilight when she pulls another old trope out of the bag:

How did you know about the thorn?!

I didn’t. Sometimes, we all just need to be shown a little kindness.

But even if the whole feel of that scene was reminiscent of (I’ll say it again) a Saturday morning cartoon, it also felt a cut above, just in terms of its choreography and the deft way the show handled what could have been a hoary old moral. And it underlines another aspect of Fluttershy’s character: she’s not only more comfortable with animals than other ponies, she seems to have a greater-than-usual affinity with them too. Both her guts and her magic leave an impression on Twilight.

Another really nice touch which made a big impression on first viewing: how did Nightmare Moon persuade the manticore to attack our heroines in the first place? Ability to control mythical beasts? Clever (possibly magical) manipulation of scary but ultimately harmless wildlife? Nope – Nightmare Moon, or some part of her, actually was the thorn in his paw, provoking him into confronting the ponies.

On to the next challenge.

Tons Of Fun

This is a controversial one, I gather.

So the lights go right down, and we find ourselves in a genuinely unsettling “dark woods” setting, for the first time justifying the fear the ponies showed on the way in here, not helped by the fact they physically now can’t see where they’re going. Nightmare Moon’s latest trick is to make the trees contort themselves into grotesque scary faces; while what the ponies are feeling is, I’m guessing, meant to be scarier than what’s appearing on screen, partly because Hasbro have already warned Faust to keep it light-hearted and partly because the unseen is so often scarier than the reality, the animators still seem to have had a lot of fun putting together a nightmarish world:

Fair play, I’m 36 and this would unsettle me in a forest at 4am.

…Between that and the sudden dark, panic quickly sets in among all of the ponies. All of the ponies except for Pinkie, that is, whose giggles cut right through the screams to the point where everyone stops to look at the manic pink pony, who now appears to have had some sort of mental breakdown:

It’s finally happened, she’s lost it.

Thanks to offbeat British DVD sequencing, I watched these Season 1 episodes for the first time in completely the wrong order (as you’ll see in the coming weeks), and so I totally missed the changing way the show uses music, and in particular narrative songs. It was only when I later sat with my kids watching one of those Youtube “all songs from Season 1” compilation job videos that I realised the approach even changed over time at all: that for a while to start with, Pinkie Pie is the only character to sing, that her odd propensity to break into song is acknowledged in-universe, and that her (inexplicably diegetic) songs are meant to be regarded as bad, again in-universe.

Musicals – even musical episodes of non-musical TV shows – are commonplace now, but even if the characters themselves react in the way a mildly cynical adult (or at least a parent who’s had to sit through one too many half-arsed cutesy musical numbers) might do when the brightness meter is shoved right up, a bouncy backing track strikes up, and a dancing Pinkie bursts into song:

# When I was a little filly, and the sun was going do-o-o-wn…

Tell me she’s not.

# The darkness and the shadows, they would always make me fro-o-o-wn…

She is…

… well, the thing is, I actually quite like this, the show’s very first song (other than the theme music, of course). It’s catchy, the melody is interesting, for me it falls just on the correct side of the cute versus annoying divide, and if it’s ever so slightly jarring to see the ponies acting so much like younger children, giggling at the ghostly (especially with that little display of world-weary disdain from Twilight and Rarity we just saw when Pinkie first started singing), at its core it’s a good enough song to break down a lot of defences.

(Though apparently plenty of bronies still don’t like it, and in that case the lampshade/disclaimer is crucial to keeping them on side until the show really finds its feet (and gets really confident in its use of Daniel Ingram and William Anderson’s music, confident enough to embrace it rather than treating it as a joke that the silly one keeps making up loads of awful songs).

So… Are our ponies meant to be 26, 16, or six?

For everyone else, however out of character it is to see our heroines act like the target audience, overcoming their fear of (essentially) the dark by singing and laughing like children, even though we wouldn’t then expect a bunch of eight-year-olds to save the world (me, I’m chalking it up to… I don’t know, the dark magic of the forest overcoming their more rational thoughts, or something), nonetheless we’re seeing those emotional walls come crumbling down, and it’s still kind of beautiful.

A Beautiful Heart

With the E/I portion of the show’s remit apparently now fulfilled, we get to the oddest of the five tests, something which kind of feels like a scene from a totally different show. Our heroines approach an impassable, raging torrent of strangely-animated water (likely just an effect of the relatively primitive Flash assets they were using at the time, but it gives the scene a surreal atmosphere, like watching an animated Japanese ukiyo-e woodcut or something), which turns out to be being caused by a ludicrously camp sea serpent with a quiff and a lop-sided moustache, weeping uncontrollable rivers of tears.

What a world! What a world!

Steven Magnet – as he shall henceforth always be known, thanks to some hilariously inept speech recognition on the part of Youtube’s automatic caption feature, a garbled rendering of Rarity’s line about his manicure – already feels like he doesn’t quite belong in this universe (he’s never been back as of the time of writing, though I can’t really see what more could be done with his character, and a certain draconequus has probably taken up a lot of the story roles he might have served); I think it’s also legitimate to ask whether the show would have included a broad-brush camp character like that today, given the show’s unanticipated but large and dedicated LGBTQ fanbase.

Nonetheless, this is Rarity’s time to step forward; while the other ponies are amusingly unimpressed by Steven being distraught at losing half his moustache, Rarity immediately and loudly sympathises. There are two ways to read it – that Rarity really is that obsessed with fashion and image that she feels Steven’s pain just as strongly as he does, or that she’s laying this act on for his benefit. Either way, we’ve already established she’s someone who will drop everything to help a fashion-afflicted stranger, and so here she comes again. First, getting him on side:

Oh, gimme a break.

That’s what all the fuss is about?

Why, of course it is! How CAN you be so insensitive! Oh, just look at him! Such lovely, luminescent scales!

(sob) I know!

And your expertly coiffed mane!

Ohhh! I know, I know!

All ruined without your beautiful moustache!

It’s true! I’m hideous! (bawls uncontrollably)

I simply cannot let such a crime against fabulosity go uncorrected!

…and then, in a shockingly dark sight gag (which really felt out of place, but in an “applaud their daring” kind of way!), Rarity plucks off one of his scales, wields it like a sword, violently slashes with it offscreen, Steven shrieks and swoons, the other ponies gasp in stunned horror, and we see… Rarity has cut her tail off.

I didn’t honestly think she’d stabbed Steven, but I really didn’t see this coming.

It doesn’t make Rarity the most generous pony in the world, it makes her the pony who taught Twilight a good friend should be generous. And it really is a big deal for her – despite the brave face she puts on it:

Oh, Rarity! Your beautiful tail!

Oh… It’s fine, my dear; short tails are in this season! Besides… It’ll grow back.

(sotto voce) …So would the moustache…

…she still all but jumps for joy when it regenerates later in the episode, so I think this really was a genuine sacrifice on her part.

It took me a while to put my finger on it, but again, there’s something else to this that I didn’t get on first viewing but which kind of gnawed at me until we see it happening again in the future. Rarity is initially presented as this vacuous, image-obsessed airhead, despite only really being one of those things, and it’s only when she’s sharing screen time with an actual vacuous image-obsessed airhead that we see just how very much that isn’t her, and just how great she really is. And she is.

So Steven gets his moustache repaired, and ferries our heroines across the stream, leaving Twilight – and, probably the audience, certainly me – marvelling at how Rarity was the last pony you’d expect to mutilate herself for the common good, or just to make someone feel better about themselves.

Friendship makes you do that? If you’re a good person, you bet it does. And she’d do it for you, Twilight, and you’ve just realised that’s true.

Big Adventure

From the strangest, we get to (for my money) the least sensible of these five friendship tests. Our party is now within visual distance of the castle ruins; they come across a broken rope bridge (which Twilight promptly almost trips over into the chasm below, prompting a great Rainbow Dash line that really shows where this friendship is at on Rainbow’s end at least:

What is it with you and falling off of cliffs today? 🙂

…and Pinkie laments they can’t get across, only for Rainbow to point out what the audience is already thinking:

Duh!

Rainbow’s expression as she gives a little wiggle of her wings is just adorable. Again. That’s one of the first things that grabbed me about this art style and these character designs, they’re all adorable. (Plus, Hasbro gives me a ¢35 bonus each time I say the word “adorable”. No, not really.)

So she arrives at the other side, and is confronted by a cooing voice echoing out of the mist, and it’s genuinely creepy – Raiiiin-booooow… And then three evil-looking ponies appear out of nowhere. Apparently, the Shadowbolts, the best aerial display team in the Everfree Forest (which… didn’t we just establish earlier on that nopony lives here?), want her for captain. She’s briefly tempted –

WOOOOO! Sign me up! Just lemme tie this bridge real quick, and then we have a deal!

– until the further condition is added that it means she has to stop the quest right now and leave her friends behind (and Equestria doomed) immediately. They even close in the mist so she can’t hear her friends’ protestations.

Now, this is just silly, and it didn’t even wash with my son. There’s no job offer in the world that should convince a rational pony to drop out of a quest of utmost importance, especially if it means leaving their friends in the lurch. It doesn’t even have to be someone’s lifelong dream – if I was sorting out a problem at court, even a minor one, and someone came up to me and said “oi, mate, do you want a new, highly-paid job?” but demanded I drop everything I was doing and answer them there and then, I doubt I’d give them the time of day. I wouldn’t then expect my current employers to give me a cookie for my loyalty.

You could argue that some dark magical brainwashing is involved (that creepy voice? Rainbow being prepared to countenance joining a team she’s never heard of based in a place she hates?) and that Rainbow shows great mental strength and loyalty to overcome it for her friends’ sake, but that’s not in the script, and I don’t know that it’s even implied, although it would have pretty much instantly made everything better.

Or you could argue that Rainbow isn’t needed to show exceptional loyalty here, just an amount of loyalty in order to show Twilight a good friend is loyal. If you subscribe to this interpretation, then the most important part, almost unnoticed, is Rainbow’s declaration to Twilight at the end –

I’d never leave my friends hangin’!

– which not only reaffirms they’re friends, but which teaches Twilight another little lesson about friendship, vital to her upcoming revelation. But then, why set up a situation where Twilight couldn’t see or hear what Rainbow’s temptation was, thanks to a cloud of thick fog? As far as Twilight could tell, Rainbow had no great challenge to overcome, she just took slightly longer than normal fixing the bridge before coming through for her friends. This one, I’m going with “badly written”, final answer.

In which Nightmare Moon is defeated by the Magic of Friendship,

and lifelong relationships are made

And so the quest is over and the final battle begins. Getting to the ruined castle, we encounter the Elements in a strange form: five big stone balls with symbols on them, and no indication as to where they’ll find the “spark” to call forth the required sixth. Twilight, commendably, freely admits she has no clue what she’s meant to be doing, but has an idea. She starts to do a spell, at which point everyone else backs off nervously:

She probably knows what she’s doing… right?

Applejack takes the lead again, realising Twilight has probably never had to do high-pressure magic and worry about an audience of gawping ponies before, quietly leading the others out into the corridor –

C’mon now, y’all. She needs to concentrate.

…and the others follow, before Twilight’s spell apparently backfires and she and the elements somehow end up blasted to another part of the castle, coming face to face with Nightmare Moon herself. The friends’ terrified reaction, as much as anything else in the episode, underlines how deeply they already care for her, or at least believed in her as their best hope at sorting out this mess and saving the world.

And Now, The End Is Near

Finale time!

Nightmare Moon is an unsatisfying villain, because we hardly get to find out anything about her – not in terms of her motivation (which is pretty well covered!), or her background (which will form a significant part of the show’s mythology in later years), but because we barely get to see her do anything. Following her monologue in Mare in the Moon – which is scary because it feels like she’s an unstable hostage-taker waving a gun around, rather than because she’s doing the pantomime villain bit – she then disappears from the action, forming a hole at the centre of Elements of Harmony. Without whipping out my stopwatch again, I’d guess in this second half, Nightmare Moon gets maybe three minutes of screen time, tops, and most of that is her cackling maniacally.

So it’s a fantastic little moment when Twilight does that adorable “she’s a horse” thing, head down, eyes and horn up, snorting, pawing the ground, ready to charge, preparing to joust (even though Nightmare Moon is perhaps four or five hands taller than Twilight!), and Nightmare Moon reacts with baffled derision:

You’re kidding. You’re kidding, right?!

There’s more characterisation in that one line than in all of her time on screen so far in this second part put together (though, okay, the “you foals” thing is still funny), and it also adds to the menace; she’s not just a hammy, sociopathic loon, she actively holds the ponies in contempt as lesser beings.

And then a moment of absolute awesome: Twilight Sparkle and Nightmare Moon charge at each other, Twilight is about to be either gored through or at least violently shoulder-charged out of the way, and then a split-second before their collision –

It says that they liked jousting…

– Twilight teleports out of the way and over Nightmare Moon’s head, up to the dais where the Elements are now unguarded. Both Nightmare Moon and the audience acknowledge their stupidity in not seeing that coming, and also Twilight’s cleverness, her resourcefulness in a pinch; we’ve not seen a lot of evidence for her being The Smart One, but it’s starting to pile up now, along with her obvious magical ability, and I found her more and more likeable each time she backed up her nerdy arrogance with smarts and acumen.

…And Magic Makes It All Complete

This climactic battle seems to be the result of much thinking as to how to integrate an epic “Western anime” cartoon battle, the traditional preserve of Shows For Boys, with the friendship ethos of My Little Pony, traditional preserve of Shows For Girls, remaining true to what’s good about both (the epic qualities and need to sometimes fight for what is right, while maintaining the importance of friendship as a more powerful force than hatred) while discarding what’s bad (wanton lunk-headed violence for its own sake, versus cheesy deus ex machina “stop being bad, let’s all have hugs and cake!” resolutions which will get your head kicked in if applied to the playground). I think it works really, really well. My kids – a boy and a girl, for those joining us late – absolutely loved it.

When Twilight gets to the Elements and starts trying to produce that spark – really, really trying, to the point I almost scrunched up my face willing her to do it – I like that Nightmare Moon seems uncertain, initially, as to whether it’s going to work, because if Twilight can pull this off, she knows she’s probably going back to the moon. As soon as it becomes obvious that it’s not working, she takes the opportunity to twist the screw, not just mocking Twilight Sparkle for her failure –

You little foal! Thinking you could defeat me?! Now, you will never see your beloved princess, OR your sun! The night will last FOREVER!

– but for good measure, and this really was a genuine surprise given the amount of buildup we’ve had to finding the bloody things, smashing the Elements to bits right before Twilight’s eyes.

In classic epic fantasy fashion, just as all hope is lost, we hear Twilight’s friends coming up the corridor – not just coming up the corridor but calling out to her –

Don’t worry, Twilight! We’re here!

Don’t worry! We’ll be there!

…and in that moment, Twilight feels it, and the audience feels it: these are her friends, and it’s going to be okay. Spark ignited.

However cheesy this next part is, it still gets me pumped up every time, even now watching it back knowing it’s being clumsily manipulative compared to later episodes. First time out of the box, it near enough had us all off our seats cheering her on.

But you still don’t have the sixth Element! The spark didn’t work!

But it did – a different kind of spark!

[turning to her friends] I felt it the very moment I realized how happy I was to hear you, to see you, how much I cared about you. The spark ignited inside me when I realized that you all… are my friends!

Still hung up on the fact you’re watching My Little Pony?

You see, Nightmare Moon… When those Elements are ignited by the… the spark that resides in the heart of us all, it creates the sixth Element. The Element of MAGIC!

Orbital friendship cannon: deployed.

I mean, what show has this??

It’s just wonderful, the sort of thing 8-year-old Lauren Faust imagined happening when her plastic ponies got together to defeat their foe with love and kindness, translated to the screen in a way that gets it.

Even the little bursts of the old My Little Pony theme, reworked into epic accents as part of an epic score for the epic climax of what feels like an epic battle, bring out goosebumps. I reckon this is where a lot of bronies who went in with the intention of either mocking, or enjoying it on an “ironic” basis, first started to feel conflicted. A purple cartoon unicorn has made friends, and the feeling is being visually depicted right there on screen. Why am I starting to tear up here?

Memories Of The Way We Were

And then, while the team reflect – mostly unspoken – on what they’ve just been through, both the quest and the magical spell that just briefly connected them all in ways we can’t really yet comprehend, plus some natty new magical jewellery (depicting their cutie marks, and again suggesting these specific six ponies had to become friends in order to use the Elements), the sun rises, and Princess Celestia appears.

I really like the Princess as a character; throughout the whole first season, she spends most of her time as an indistinct, off-screen presence, but her subjects all clearly have the deepest affection for her, and whenever she’s shown on screen she comes across as kind and caring, eminently sensible, serene and authoritative without ever taking herself too seriously. I don’t know, maybe it’s just because I’m British, but I like the idea of the good queen as a just and popular ruler. We won’t even see her feathers ruffled until season 2.

And here, whilst – if you’re anything like me – you’re only now starting to unpick what just happened and wonder why “friendship” was such a potent weapon, especially as wielded by these six who after all have only just met each other, Celestia drops another bombshell:

I saw the signs of Nightmare Moon’s return, and I knew it was you who had the magic inside to defeat her, but you could not unleash it until you let true friendship into your heart!

Now, if only another will as well. Princess Luna! It has been a thousand years since I have seen you like this. Time to put our differences behind us. We were meant to rule together, little sister!

As Luna clambers from the wreckage of Nightmare Moon, the ponies stand astounded – “sister?!”

Which feels like maybe the biggest plot hole in the whole episode – we began with Twilight reading about the magical pony princess sisters who raised the sun and moon, and (as the Mayor herself confirmed on stage) everypony knows Celestia is responsible for raising the sun and moon, and yet everyone is shocked to connect the two and realise that those princesses were Celestia and her sister. Eh?

…This? No, no, that’s, um, liquid pride.

The reconciliation is real enough, though, and Luna is (again) absolutely adorable. While I didn’t really see her adoption as a fan favourite coming (the show hits its stride so quickly in the next few episodes we saw, I pretty much forgot about her, and later on I was perfectly willing to accept the creators had simply written her out as an early-instalment wrinkle, a one-shot character the show would never reference again on the assumption the watching kids wouldn’t notice – this, of course, was before I really appreciated just how much care and attention is lavished on the show!), equally I’m not at all surprised at the amount of love she gets, even if we won’t see her reappear until the second season.

Never Leave Me

And after we have a beautiful little scene of reconciliation between the sisters, capped off with Pinkie’s bursting into spectacular (and completely out of step with the rest of the animation style) cartoon tears –

TVTropes calls this specific type of animated crying “Ocular Gushers”.

– before immediately turning off the waterworks and spinning on a dime:

Hey, you know what this calls for? A PARTY!

Oh, Pinkie.

So, we head off to a celebration party, where Luna is garlanded with flowers and feels the adulation and forgiveness of her subjects and her sister, and it’s very sweet. Then, as everyone had surely predicted by this point, Twilight – who feared losing her first ever friends just as she’d made them – is stationed in Ponyville permanently, tasked with exploring the magic of friendship and reporting her findings back to the Princess. Cue much rejoicing, everypony’s happy, fourth-wall breaking Pinkie cameo in the iris-out, what a nice ending.

And yet the questions keep on churning around, calling to mind another TV Tropes favourite: Fridge Brilliance, the idea that while considering what felt like a plot hole, you realise what was going on, and how clever it was, long after you’ve left the sofa and gone to the fridge. Not only things like realising what a dark subtext the writers just slipped in there – Celestia had to banish her own sister and then miss her for a thousand years? – but also potential answers to unanswered questions. Questions like… Where was Celestia during this episode? And why did friendship defeat Nightmare Moon?

The former, we still don’t know, but it’s open to multiple interpretations. The latter is simpler: because (and Lauren Faust explicitly says so) Nightmare Moon was conceived as a villain whose evil behaviour could specifically be undone by friendship. Luna’s jealousy and bitterness, caused in part by a lack of friends and an overwhelming feeling of rejection, coupled with some unexplained dark magic, consumed her completely. Feeling the true power of friendship, real friendship in its purest, unconcentrated form, was enough to break the spell and free Luna for good.

Nightmare Moon’s defeat meant Luna’s redemption – so, was Twilight being sent to Ponyville by Celestia to make friends not a “stop the baddie” quest, or rather not only that (since the stakes were still pretty high), but a rescue mission, and one set up a thousand years in advance? Is Celestia in fact a cosmic puppet master who, from episode 1 to episode 91, knows what she’s doing? Is she omniscient?

Does that mean the betrayal itself was pre-ordained, like something which had to happen in order for the Elements to find their full expression? Does it mean Celestia hid herself away on purpose for the duration of this episode, so that she could get her sister back? Weighty questions arising from what originally felt like it was going to be a fun but not especially mind-blowing upgrade on the standard Saturday morning cartoon romp.

Well, my mind is officially blown.

Watching it again just now to write this, it was actually better than I’d remembered; but also, I remember how deep it got its hooks into me and the rest of the family, combined with the first part. We were all eager to keep on watching.

Even if retrospectively it feels like one of the weaker episodes, and even if I think all the criticisms about pacing and nonsensical plot developments still stand, this was enough to make me a future brony; never mind what else was good about Elements of Harmony, for that alone I’ll be forever grateful.

I’d love to hear your own thoughts and comments below – all opinions are welcome and dissent is encouraged! Alternatively, there’s a lot more discussion and comments on the Reddit post for this essay: Reddit – /r/mylittlepony on Ponywatching 1.02