EP 14: The Last Laugh
Rating: 3 3 4
So you know how I mentioned Pinkie wasn't really doing anything with her life? Well now she's questioning her life purpose ever since she got an invitation from Cheese Sandwich to go to his amusement factory he now runs. Because she thinks he's figured his life out, she wants to go to him for advice.
Pinkie arrives at the factory where guards tell her no one gets in or out so I guess the workers are just slaves. After she shows them her invitation, she's allowed in and it was at this point, I realized this is just Road To The North Pole. This is the third episode that has felt like a Family Guy Road To episode. Cartoons are a flat circle.
After meeting the vice president of the company, Pinkie enters the factory to find it's fitted out with the latest patented Worker Optimization Technology™ including the Wage Cage 6000™, the Mood Detection Drone Surveillance System™, and the latest in corporate innovations, the Worker Performance Calculation and Optimization Algorithm™ that combines AI, performance measurements from the Wage Cage 6000™, mood detection, and employee social media monitoring to predict an employee's future performance to know whether to give them short-term benefits like bonus pay and payed time off to increase their efficiency or to just fire them and hire a new employee who will be more efficient with less emotional needs.
After touring the wagie floor, Pinkie goes to Cheese's office where he explains he's depressed and can't feel joy anymore since starting the factory so she tries a bunch of shit to make him laugh.
Every CEO looks like one of these two.
While touring more of the factory after nothing makes Cheese laugh, the VP mentions there being no grand unified gag theory which reminds me of my comedic theory. So you know how people say time plus tragedy equals comedy? Well, I believe the actual formula is tragedy plus absurdity equals comedy. Take for example
After a boring sequence, Cheese's depression isn't cured and skipping to the point, Pinkie realizes he needs to see others experience joy to feel joy himself. This works and we get a song that's decent. At the end, Cheese puts the VP in charge of the factory and he fucks off to bring people joy. Pinkie doesn't find her life purpose and says "in-person". If you ever need to make someone laugh, tell them my Santa Claus hooker joke. If you steal it though, I will fucking find you.
Not actually that entertaining despite being about making others entertained so 3 EV. Not really any vibe. There's sort of a message about the right person doing the right job but it's overshadowed by the pseudo-message about making others laugh or something and I'm pretty sure we already had an episode about putting the right person in the right job. 3 VB. 4 DV because we see what Cheese has been up to.
EP 15: 2, 4, 6, Greaaat
Rating: 3 3 3
No notes for this episode and I forgot what it was about. Not a greaaat sign. So it turns out Celestia, like Big Kimmy of the Chosŏn who's weirdly obsessed with basketball, is obsessed with sports and in particular, buck ball. The friendship school students are facing Celestia's school in two weeks and Twilight wants the Ponyville team to train the students with Rainbow Dash coaching the cheerleaders.
Rainbow Dash thinks she's too cool to coach cheerleading and Snips wants to sell crap again and shmoozes on Rainbow Dash to get her to create demand for his shit. At cheer practice, Rainbow Dash just fucks off. Really though, why would you put someone in charge of coaching something they have no experience in? Oh that's right, if you can't do, teach. Anyways, Snails has achieved zen. I remember back when this episode came out, I tried to get this image to become a meme. Didn't work.
Anyways, here's Smolder in a cheerleader dress. She's really cute.
Yeah, I have nothing for the rest of this.
Not entertaining so 3 EV. No vibe so 3 VB. No development so 3 DV.
EP 16: A Trivial Pursuit
Rating: 3 3 3
Another fucking filler episode. Twilight's having another manic episode.
The next day, Twilight and Spike go to some shit called Trivia Trot and Twilight spergs about her chances at winning with each pony she could be teamed up with. There, Twilight states how everyone has their own area of expertise. Mine is ponies. You ponytubers with your advertiser-friendly sophistry think you can out-sperg an unhinged and deranged autist? Think again; I will fucking destroy you!
Then Pinkie appears as an unknown variable. During team selection, Twilight brings up one of the teams, Rainbow Dash and Applejack or "AppleDash" as being unstoppable. I fucking murder AppleDash shippers in my sleep. Horrible fucking ship. FlutterDash is the superior ship. FlutterDash maxes out on cuteness and opposite personality pairing. Applejack belongs with Rarity with RariJack being the second-best ship due to their vastly different personalities and opposite interests creating a wonderful romantic dynamic. AppleDash is generic, too similar of personalities bullshit with a cliche rivals thing going on. AppleDash shippers are mentally retarded idiots who only like it because it's the most popular and appeals to the lowest common denominator.
Twilight gets paired with Pinkie, ruining her calculations and Pinkie calls their team TwiPie. You know, I'm really getting the feeling the writer is trying to say something. At one point, one of the questions is what the word "reward" is in Old Ponish to which Sunburst responds with what I think is "hliet". "Hliet" is a conjugation of the verb "hlēotan" which seems to be a context-specific word for giving or receiving something. The actual word is for reward is "lēan".
Twilight lawcels Sunburst's partner Cranky out the game and therefore him too. She proceeds to lawcel more until she lawcels Pinkie out of the game and then lawcels Sunburst onto her team. This feels like another Common Ground. Stuff happens and at the end, Derpy is trying to get in but she's locked out.
Another uninteresting episode. 3 EV. Another episode with no vibe. 3 VB. Another episode with no development. 3 DV.
EP 17: The Summer Sun Setback
Rating: 4 4 5
Cozy Glow, Tirek, and Chrissy want to know how to use Grogar's bell against him so Cozy brings up Canterlot's restricted library from It's About Time which Twilight had apparently mentioned to students for whatever reason. At Canterlot, Twilight's planning the Summer Sun Celebration and calls back to Between Dark And Dawn and A Trivial Pursuit. Celestia and Luna tell her they want to stop the Summer Sun Celebration because there's no longer a point ever since Luna's return and they're retiring.
Later, the villains somehow have sneaked into Canterlot and we see the castle still has the defenses from Sparkle's Seven. I actually wonder: Did the VAs come up with the castle defenses and the other writers decided to stick with it or were they told to add them in to set up the later episodes? At a point, Chrissy while disguised says "glitchy". This possibly doesn't make sense because looking up the history of the word "glitch", there seems to be no use prior to the 1950s, only coming into use after computers started to be a thing, something Equestria doesn't have.
The ponies do stuff and the villains go around ruining it. Chrissy sparks a sense of racial superiority in some unicorns and convinces them they're the most powerful race. Again, read Unicorns Aren't Master Race to learn why this is just not true.
Canterlot goes to shit because of the villains' antics and they succeed in breaking into the restricted library and steal the book about the bell. Skipping to the point, the ponies fix the shit and at the end, Twilight announces the Summer Sun Celebration will now be a holiday celebrating the Sisters or something. So pretty much the same same thing just with a different name.
At the end, Cozy mentions how easy it was to get the pony races to turn on each other and I remember people were chanting "RACE WAR" in the livestream chat after the episode ended in its first airing. That was pretty amusing.
Villain antics are amusing so 4 EV. 4 VB for some reason I don't really remember. 5 DV for the villain plot continuing, Twilight's advancement towards ruler of Equestria, and the sorta new holiday.
EP 18: She Talks To Angel
Rating: 2 2 3
Read this episode's commentary here.
Boring and predictable so it only gets 2 EV. Just A Royal Problem again but worse so it gets only 2 VB. No development so 3 DV.
EP 19: Dragon Dropped
Rating: 3 2 3
Rarity tries to manipulate Spike into doing slave labor but he has better things to do that don't include this bitch's antics. She then forces Applejack to be her slave, ruins Twilight's library, and scares Derpy into closing the post office.
She comes across Gabby and when Spike arrives, she tries to emotionally manipulate him into hanging out with her again. It turns out the reason he's been ditching Rarity is because he's been hanging out with Gabby which causes Rarity to panic since she no longer has an emotional monopoly on him. She then begins obsessively reminiscing about him and gets extremely jealous of Gabby. In her enraged stupor, she sneaks into Spike's room as he's sleeping to invite him to some gem hunting thing only available that day in an attempt to keep him from hanging out with Gabby.
After this works, Rarity invites him to a one-day convention to further keep him from being with Gabby. The next day, she uses his exhaustion from the previous day to manipulate him into spending more time with her by playing his tabletop game with him. Gabby sees this and ends her and Spike's friendship to Rarity's pleasure. Rarity enters a state of ecstasy now that she has Spike all to herself but Spike becomes depressed now that he's forced to be with this bitch. Rarity fails to understand this and when she admits to manipulating Spike to Twilight, she calls out Rarity for the creep she is and tells her to stop obsessing over Spike.
Not interesting at all so 3 EV. This episode feels weird, man. Now, I'm the last person to be the corpotuber who cried groomer but god damn, does manipulating a kid into spending time with you when they want to spend time with their friends seem off. I'm gonna have to lower the score to 2 VB due to this. 3 DV because no development happens other than learning Gabby and Spike are friends.
EP 20: A Horse Shoe-In
Rating: 4 4 5
After meeting a new character named Phyllis, Twilight tells Starlight she's the next headmare of the friendship school. Glimmy then manslaughters Phyllis.
Later, Trixie's getting worried over Starlight's new responsibilities keeping her from hanging out with her and here we go with yet another regurgitated episode plot. What is this, the second time the plot has been similar to the previous episode this season? At least this one doesn't suck.
Trixie gives Glimmy the idea to hire a vice headmare and Trixie wants herself to be it. To determine who'll be vice headmare, Starlight puts a bunch of candidates through tests. One of the tests is substitute teaching and one of the candidates, Spoiled Rich decides to teach the students business and reads a book on the subject to them. Starlight marks her down for this even though money management is a skill students desperately need, especially with how, as I already mentioned somewhere in these, schools instead of teaching money management, groom children into being financial slaves to the credit system.
After Trixie turns her class into nap time, Phyllis is resurrected and as typical with educational institutions, Starlight kicks the financial educator from the candidacy. Next, the candidates do parent-teacher conferences and then organize field trips. Dr. Whooves gives the class a tour of a museum of history of the death penalty and executes Smolder during the electric chair part.
Trixie nearly kills the class during her field trip so Glimmy kicks her out of the candidacy because killing students is a regulatory nightmare and the school can't afford good lawyers because they've ran out of political donation money to fund their lobbying efforts to take away even more student freedoms. At the end, Sunburst is made the vice headmare because like most things in life, the flunker is the only one who isn't a soulless hack that sucks at their job. Trixie is given the bullshit job of school counselor. Trixie murders Phyllis and the episode ends.
Amusing enough for 4 EV. 4 VB for the message about figuring out the right person for the right job. I know I gave The Last Laugh no increased score but this one is much better executed. 5 DV because we learn what's happening with the school and Starlight, Sunburst, and Trixie have new jobs.
MLP Commentaries IndexWritten 2025-5-7 Published 2025-6-1