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Here’s your not-so-regularly-scheduled dose of content™ to tide you over. Let’s wrap this two-parter up, shall we?

PRAWNCIS TWEEN SPLEEN, PART TOO

0:00 – 0:38
‘kay, thanks for the recap. All caught up now.

2:05 – 2:25
Ooh, an aerial battle with magic lasers? It’s a decent way to get right into the action, I guess. (+1)

2:30
Oh, she’s going down. Mayday!

3:10
“I’m sorry, but you have given me no choice but to use THESE!”
The Godzilla treshold has been reached, I take it.

3:28
“The past... this is the night you banished her.”
Took you long enough to put two and two together, Book Horse.

3:55
Wait, but... I thought the whole point of those Elements was to represent DA POWAH OF FREMDSHEP and all. But Celestia’s wielding them all by herself. How and why is she able to do that? They seem to be inadvertently implying that she does not have any friends. (#rekt) And isn’t loneliness the implied reason why Luna went looney? This is kind of an important detail to just gloss over. (-5)

4:00
Oh man, are they about to go full Dragon Ball Z up in here? Last episode was a whole lot of nothing and now they’re going to tee off with horses going super saiyan four minutes in? “YOU AREN’T DEALING WITH AN ORDINARY PRETTY PONY PRINCESS ANYMORE, CELESTIA! I HAVE REALIZED THE LEGEND!”

4:12
Ah, nope, it’s just a boring ol’ beam-o-war. Whatever, I guess.

4:17
“NOOOOOOO!!”
Oh God damn it, they just couldn’t help themselves, could they? (-1)

5:15
One good flashback deserves another, aye?

6:15
And now Celestia and Luna need to work together to use the Elements. These Macguffins’ relevance to the plot is that they create a reason why Tweedledee and her friends need to work together: it lets them nuke bad guys. The idea is that it’ll only work if they’re being good fwiends, so that gets the narrative focused on their relationships with each other.

But the thing is, they’re showing here that that premise is bogus. The Elements work however the writers need them to work at the moment. Hard to buy into narrative tension when there aren’t any rules. (-5)

6:23
“You should see the expression on your faces! So intense, so sure of yourselves!”
Oi Discord, if you wanna take over my job for the day, just say so, yeah?

6:50
“The Tree of Harmony...”
“The Tree of Harmony?”
The Tree of Harmony! Of course there’s one of those.

7:03
“My cutie mark!”
Wow, self-important much? If this is that far into the past, then this thing must’ve been around since long before you were born, Twinkle-Twinkle-Little-Star.

7:55
“The Tree of what-now?”
Why so surprised? It seems par for the course, really.

8:03
“Well, alright then! Let’s go save the... tree.”
Yeah, doesn’t sound very exciting, does it?

9:00
Everybody gangsta till the stepping stones start speaking alligator

9:04
“A cragadile!”
Oh, so it’s a crocodile made of--
...
You had...
YOU HAD THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY TO CALL IT A CROCODILE ROCK AND YOU DIDN’T. (-5)

9:30
“That was close...!”
“A little too close if you ask me!”
I guess crocodile rock really is something shocking.

9:50 – 11:00
So they’re leaving Twisty Straws behind as a sort of contingency plan in case anything goes wrong... but uh, aren’t they probably going to need her Element and all? ...Then again, we’ve established that there actually aren’t any rules with those things, so.

11:34
“I never thought you’d be the kind of pony to think she was better than everypony else...”
Well, she clearly thinks she’s smarter and wiser than those around her.

11:50
Ah, I remember seeing that scepter around in memes several years back.
...Heh, it does look a bit goofy. (+2)

13:00
“Take the stairs, silly.”
We Dutch do have a saying: If you fall down the stairs, you’ll reach the bottom quickly.

13:40
“Nice try!”
She says that with a condescending tone, all like, “yeah, of course just rushing in wasn’t going to work!” ...And then she rushes in herself. Impressive how you can get *this* close to being self-aware and still miss it completely.

14:45
“LISTEN ‘ERE, YOU RABID RHODODENDRONS!”
*snrk* (+1)

15:30
“Equestria may need its princess...”
“But we need our friend!”
Well congratulations, you managed to somehow cram a plot about friendship into this two-parter... And it’s resolved about five minutes after it’s introduced.

16:40
“But it isn’t the Elements that will keep us connected. It’s our friendship! And it’s more important and more powerful than any magic.”
But I... But I thought friendship is magic! It’s the goddamn subtitle! You gave me instant stomach ulcers by having Discord recite it! So friendship = magic but also friendship > magic?! And I thought the Elements were supposed to represent concepts that do keep friends together? Did the writers of this show attend the Kingdom Hearts School of Getting Lost in Your Own Allegories? I’m so confused about what they’re trying to say here. (-10)

17:15
Ah, but before we leave, here’s Twitchy Sputnik getting constricted by tentacle-like vines. ...Now that I think about it, she was being assaulted by vines spewing sedative gasses earlier, wasn’t she? Who the hell designed this plant villain thing? And can they keep their jollies to themselves?! (-5)

17:39
So they plug the Elements back into the goddamn tree thing, it charges up, H4rm0ny 7r33 is back online, hooray.

18:14
Ah, so this is where those two have been. In a dark cave, covered top-to-bottom by those vine things.
Yeah, I have nothing to say about that.

18:17
Is it intentional that Luna immediately folds her wings while Celestia keeps hers spread to appear grander? Self-important jackass...

18:50
The tree sprouts a flower, and the flower contains... some kind of lockbox.
*Zelda “item get” sound*

19:00
“Six locks... Six keys.”
“I do not know where they are.”
Well, take a wiiiiild guess. Six locks, six keys, six main characters.
Obviously Satan has them.

19:08
“...But I do know it is a mystery you will not be solving alone.”
Ah! I think I found the hidden meaning of this episode!
“Watch the rest of our toy-advertising show,” is what it means.

19:26
“Bravo, ladies, bra-vo! However did you save the day this time? Blast the beastie with your magic necklaces, I presume?!”
Damn it Discord, leave some for me to snark at! (+5)

19:50
“And if you wanna remain friends, you’ll stop thinking whatever it is you’re thinking and help us clean up!”
“Fine. But I don’t do windows!”
Yeah, this still feels like a really wonky relationship to me. Doesn’t seem healthy that they feel the need to browbeat him into submission constantly. This show has strange ideas of what friendship looks like.

20:35
Wait, so... that’s it. All this mystery about where these vine things came from and the answer’s just Discord going “oh, did I do that?” *sigh* whatever.

20:55
“You realize that this is information that we could’ve used hours ago?!”
“And rob you of a valuable lesson about being princess?”
Yeah, about that—what was the lesson, exactly? The whole thing was kind of muddled. I mean obviously the conclusion was always going to be “Fremdshep is important and shit,” but...

21:56
And so, we close on Celestia T-posing on her subjects to remind them of their rightful place.

22:02
...And Twilight can’t help but steal the show. I thought showing off with aerial displays was Rainbow’s thing.

22:05
Y’all are gonna go blind staring directly into the sun with them big ol’ eyes, by the way.

Final score: -22

Minus 22, huh? That's the highest score I've given so far. You judge whether that's good or bad.

It's worth noting that approaching zero does not necessarily mean the show is more fun to watch. It just goes from "I loathe this" to "this doesn't feel worth my time," which is what GuP felt like to me. You really gotta score a good few plus points to actually be fun, it's not just about cancelling out the negatives.

It's worth noting that approaching zero does not necessarily mean the show is more fun to watch. It just goes from "I loathe this" to "this doesn't feel worth my time," which is what GuP felt like to me. You really gotta score a good few plus points to actually be fun, it's not just about cancelling out the negatives.

Yeah... that's what I used to say, too.

I must be almost 20 episodes into this in total by now. I think I would know if I liked it at this point. I enjoy taking the piss out of it (and you all seem to enjoy reading me taking the piss out of it), but I feel like it can't stay fresh forever.

Oh, we're titrating a more concentrated acid solution... but the pink blips are last longer and longer before being swirled away.

...I... I have no idea why I made it a titration analogy, but there we are.