vice [vahys]
noun
1. An immoral or evil habitt or practice; fault, failing, foible, weakness
2. Immoral conduct; depraved or degrading behavior; depravity, sin, iniquity, wickedness, corruption.
3. Sexual immorality, especially prostitution; wantonness, degeneracy,or licentiousness.
4. A particular form of depravity.
5. A fault, defect, or shortcoming; flaw, blemish, imperfection, foible, weakness.
EX.Alright folks I know this is a
vice that some of you're not terribly interested in allowing others to have; mostly because most of the "depraved" bronies out there try and shove this down your throat, but that not my goal here. All I want to do is what I always do on this blog; share things that I found entertaining, interesting, and/or worthy of discussion.
Today, we're talking about an episode of Lauren Faust's
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic that not only sums up everything that is interesting about the show but, also, the cornucopia of insane problems in the universe of Equestria; our subject is the two-parter that kicks of the second season, "The Return of Harmony" (guest-starring John de Lancie). Hit below for the first part of the review, the next part will be posted this wekeend.
RETURN TO HARMONY PT. 1 REVIEW/ANALYSIS/RANT
Our epic return to the series starts of with a hefty chunk of exposition that exposes, right off the bat, one of the effed up parts of this world's mythos and Princess Celestia's many logical failings to rule the kingdom with wise decisions. The Cutie-Mark Crusaders, a trio of younger ponies (most of the main characters are young teenagers), are on a field trip in Canterlot. They discover a "really interesting statue" of a chimeric being that their teacher explains is a Draconequus. The teacher asks the three arguing ponies to explain what it represents and they argue more about it represents chaos, evil, etc. The teacher explains that it represents Discord, "which means a lack of harmony between ponies". She decides to punish them for arguing but, its worth noting, that simply arguing in front of the statue....undoes the petrification curse.
WAIT! So, Princess Celestia, the most powerful being in all of Equestria (more or less) with centuries of experience came up with this imprisonment scheme... A curse that could be broken by some ponies arguing within hearing distance of the thing is enough to free the being within and she allows children to go on field trips in this park?! That's just begging for the curse to be lifted and, even more ridiculous, are we led to believe that over the centuries no pony has ever argued nearby this statue in the prominent parks and gardens of Canterlot. This is just another example of the idiotic, hypocritical, and often disjointed logic of Equestria.
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| GO TEAM PONY! |
Anywho, we then get to see the intro for season two, which is a little more jazzed up and packed with characters we've come to know over the first season. Its pretty decent. This is quickly followed by a montage of strange phenomena; cotton candy clouds with chocolate milk rain (that's a meme), the corn starts popping into popcorn, apples grow so large the bend trees, bunnies grow super long legs and begin horrifying everyone, and Twilight Sparkle tries to use her magic to fix it...and fails. She then uses her big greasy brains to have her friends reign in the problems.
This scene is actually a pretty funny one and re-introduces the main characters within a couple of minutes by showing off their various basic character traits in an active way. Rainbow Dash gets aggro with the clouds, Applejack is established as a farmer pony, Pinkie Pie acts spastic and eats everything, Rarity shows up under a fancy umbrella in a fancy raincoat, Fluttershy tries to deal with the animals and gets flustered and then Twilight Sparkle shows up to try and "fix everything". It ends with the cliche, especially within the show, moral speech from Twilight, but is cut off when the girls are commanded to show up at the castle to cooperate in, once again, saving Equestria.
The Princess reveals that "an old foe" has returned...
WAIT! Let's think about this a second; as we're soon to discover that the statue is in fact a trapped demigod, named Discord, that was trapped in stone by Princess Celestia, and already that makes my head hurt with the injustice involved. Celestia punished another "god" by turning him into stone...considering she trapped her sister on the moon for making it eternal night (for like a day) its easy to see that Celestia is kind of evil. Can you imagine being trapped in stone form for hundreds of years? How is that a reasonable punishment? Couldn't we come up with a more responsible way to deal with the embodiment of disharmony (he is basically pony satan, so you know, since Celestia is represented by the elements of harmony)? How does freezing him in stone teach him anything?!
This is just another example of the broken code of ethics, a terribly flawed system, that dictates morality and law in the land with the literal clause of Celestia basically doing what ever she wants.
And now that I've pointed out how terrible Princess Celestia is, lets get back to the plot... She reveals that they need to use "The Elements of Harmony" to defeat Discord and basically undo all of Celestia's incompetence. Before we get into Celestia, it should be noted that out of the six elements, two seem to be kind of confused; "laughter" I suppose is our emasculated version of "courage" as the previous times it has been shown to have the power to be used to overcome fear (and bravery/humility are tied together) so I'll give that one a slight pass even though its confusing. But the only way that "magic" fits is a bonding agent...which is pretty lame. Might as well have glue...cuz they're ponies. Anyway, lets get back to Celestia being a failure...
Discord has already hidden away the Elements of Harmony and proceeds to explain his revenge scheme; turn the ponies against each other to show that the champions of Equestria, a bunch of teenaged girls (I'd feel the same way if they were boys, just to get that out of the way), lack the willpower to overcome temptation. They have a day to find the elements and defeat him-- if they fail and their friendship falls apart, he wins. He takes their magic and their wings before they head into a nearby maze to find the elements and, after he tricks them into being separated, Discord proceeds to pick them off one by one. After each of them "goes mad", they rejoin Twilight Sparkle...
First, he terrifies Applejack with imagery straight out of Greek literature with three pile of apples representing the three Fates (apples also being her symbol). They tempt her with the opportunity to ask a question about the future and so she asks about how this "mission" will turn out. She looks into a pool of water, sees a vision of her friends fighting, and pretty much breaks down. Unable to accept the truth, the pony representative of Truth is consumed with lies and becomes a liar.
Next, Pinkie Pie is tricked into believing that rather than "laughing with her" that they "laugh at her" driving her self-esteem from the lightest of light side to the grumpiest of the grump side. The scene uses Pinkie Pie's party imagery, in the form of horrifying balloons, as part of her vision of humiliation to great effect. She becomes a grump and a sourpuss.
Then, we discover something interesting; some of the first truly great moments with Rarity revolving around her going crazy-- Discord makes her blinded by greed (she is supposed to be generous), so much so that she is willing to weigh down the party with a big boulder, that she thinks is a diamond...which poor Twilight helps her carry. There are a lot of funny lines involving Rarity and the rock, or as Rarity calls him, "Tom".
After that, we get one of the most meta and simultaneously depressing moments in the history of the show; Discord tries to goad Fluttershy by telling her that her friends think she is weak, helpless, etc. and SHE AGREES! WTF!? And people think she is a good character? Don't get me wrong, I like all the ponies, but agreeing to a main villain that you're pathetic is a pretty low low. She is pitiful, he has to break her with magic, which is cheating (but hilarious).
And finally, Rainbow Dash gives up her loyalty to try to save Cloudsdale; Discord basically gives her two choices; stay and Cloudsdale (her hometown) falls to ruin or get her wings and go save it...she goes with the latter because he fools her into believing his threat that (because he is more of a trickster than a monster) he probably wouldn't commit to.
With Rainbow Dash abandoning the quest, gives up in exchange for wings, Discord claims victory and we leave on the cliff-hanger of our evil laughing Dracoequus villain.
How does it all end? Is it contrived? Does it get darker? See my thoughts on the second part next time...
