My Little Pony - Friendship Is Magic: Episodes 225-26 - A Canterlot Wedding

 

Rating:

A Canterlot Wedding is probably always going to be an episode that many people will love, but not one I ever will.  It tries very hard to be epic, but without actually knowing how to do so.  A typical old boring retconned wed­ding isn’t interesting enough for a big season finale, so they added a bizarre evil enchantress that feels exactly like The Little Mermaid in the beginning and Star Wars by the end.  There are enough Broadway songs to qualify the show for the Tonys, a mind control plot that feels like it’s been seen hundreds of times, and yet another ridicu­lously strong villain that goes down incredibly easily and quickly.  A Canterlot Wedding could have been an episode that explored Twilight’s family dynamic, or at the very least dealt with the life changes that come with getting older and/or married.  But all of it was swept under the rug in favor of a di­rect-to-DVD Disney movie.  The premise was good, and all of the new­ness around is enough to keep it above the sadly numerous terrible epi­sodes in the second season.  But the unnecessary plot additions are too much, so that even an hour-long show feels very rushed with all it tries to accomplish.

As writer Meghan McCarthy would do many times again, she painfully bases the entire plot of an episode from a series with so many good characters on a retcon.  After two years of shows, Twi­light suddenly now has a big brother.  She is “closer” to Shining Armor than just about anyone else, or enough that she is hurt that he didn’t tell her about the wedding himself.  We later find out that he is the captain of the royal guard.  So for all the times they visited Canterlot, she never once made time to say hello to the brother she’s so “close” with?  Twilight didn’t hear about the wedding from her brother for a very easy reason: he didn’t exist before this episode.  That makes it hard to take Twilight seriously when she feels sad about “losing” her brother to the upcoming marriage, since she didn’t have him before, and he’s barely on now anyway.

Celestia takes advantage of Twilight’s friends to score some cheap labor for the wedding.  They’re all understandably excited for the opportunity, but you have to wonder why Canterlot couldn’t have provided some or all of these services.  My guess is price tag, although since it is a royal wedding, “spare no expense” would presumably be the official philosophy.  Maybe the crown is in deeper trouble than we realize.  Either way, it’s an excuse to bring everyone to Canterlot, but they’re treated like American citizens at the airport upon arrival.  All of Canterlot is surrounded by a protective bub­ble, and guards are everywhere.

Twilight’s brother informs her that there’s some sort of terrorist attack maybe possibly coming, and the alert level has gone up by one color.  Is this a commentary on the insane “security” policies instituted by the United States after September 11^th?  Nope, there really is an attack com­ing, although it makes little sense that the invaders’ plan apparently involved tell­ing everyone about it so that the huge nuisance of a force field could be set up.

We also find out here that Shining Armor’s nickname for Twilight is “Twi­lie”, which might be the worst possible one that can be made from her name.  As an older brother who specializes in unique nicknames, I am appalled at this choice, especially since it didn’t take me long to think of better ones.  “Twilie” sounds an awful lot like “Twili” (twigh-ligh) looks, and the lat­ter would have been better despite the confusing Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess reference.  “Sparks” is simple and acceptable (especially for the Sealab 2021 reference), and the even simpler “Twi” (long i) makes more sense and is less painful to the ears.  Even “Twiles”, while a bit dumb, is still preferable.  Nicknames needn’t be limited to Twilight’s actual name (maybe some sort of shot to her love of books), so the terrible one she ended up with from her “close” brother is both unimaginative and unacceptable.

A wife-to-be is the perfect time to introduce a new character, but that wouldn’t be retcon enough for McCarthy.  Shining Armor tells Twilight that his fiancée Mi Amore Cadenza is none other than Twilight’s old babysitter Cadance.  This is another new pony that Twilight is apparently really “close” to, but so close that she never even found out her real name, or thought there was some other similarly named princess her brother was about to marry. Although Twilight’s con­fusion is understandable, since despite coming from the same word, “cadenza” and “ca­dence” mean vastly different things in music (the former is an unaccompa­nied solo in a concerto, while the latter is an ending chord progression).

So we finally meet Cadance, who is greeted by Twilight with her stupid rhyme she learned as a first grader, which naturally the princess finds awkward and ignores.  Is this a discussion about how we all change as we get older?  Nope, she’s clearly evil!  Twilight correctly sees that Cadance’s bitchy attitude toward everyone is more than a typical bridezilla should be, especially since this isn’t the Cadance she knows.  Now we see why McCarthy had to bend over backwards to retcon the future Mrs. Armor as a Twilight acquaintance as well.  Having learned nothing from Suited For Success, Rar­ity happily accepts Cadance’s criticism about her dress design, and Ap­plejack has no problem with her tasty treats being immediately thrown in the trash.

Twilight knows this isn’t right and confronts everybody about it at the rehearsal, which goes over exactly as well as you’d expect.  No one listens to her, although at least the events we witnessed might almost have been nothing but Twilight freaking out.  The trope goes so far that even Celestia disapproves of Twilight’s actions, which is the first time this has ever happened in the series (just to clarify, putting a hole in the exam room ceiling and screwing around with everyone else in it is scholarship-worthy, but correctly outing an imposter bent on taking over the principality is shame­ful).  Was this an opportunity to comment on how people dislike change?  Nope.  Cadance returns and banishes Twilight to hell with an evil smile.

Quite the cliffhanger actually, so that commercial break must have been extremely difficult.  Sadly, Twilight is not in hell but some sort of cham­ber of mirrors that was apparently an ancient booby trap.  Cadance taunts her in the various shards, but this turns out to be quite stupid since it leads Twilight to discern a terrible secret.  She breaks down one of the walls to uncover a rather disheveled version of the pony who had just been taunting her.  At first it appears she has caught the troublemaker, but this can’t possibly be the case.  Everything makes sense as this Cadance is much friendlier, and quickly recognizes her former ward.  Of course, the real Cadance was imprisoned while someone (or something) took her place.

The evil Cadance does a lot of taunting which makes it seem that escape would be impossible (no one can hear you, no one will think to look for you, that sort of thing), but it turns out the exit is just right over there (they montage through the actual getting there portion to be fair, but it still doesn’t seem all that hard to find).  Not so fast of course, since the missing bridesmaids are also mind controlled and guard the exit.  Will our heroes make it in time to stop the wedding?

We rejoin the wedding after the commercial break, and yep, they made it just fine.  Huh?  Where was the battle?  What about the hurried run up to the altar?  Are we too late?  Do we still have time?  In their place, we get a quick flashback in which the still mind-controlled bridesmaids are easily dis­tracted by a bouquet that couldn’t have possibly been down in a rock ca­vern and literally appears out of nowhere.  That was easy.  The real Cadance announces the one on the altar is a changeling, and the fake one quickly changes to her true form, which (perhaps unfortunately) spares us from the “which one do we kill?” moment. 

Celestia was presiding over the ceremonies, but for some reason completely disappears as the fake Cadance transforms into Queen Chrysalis and does quite a bit of mono­loging.  Chrysalis remains right at the altar, but Celestia is no­where to be found.  We last see the dear leader in a frame right after the return from flashback (at around 27:16), but she doesn’t reappear until almost two min­utes later (29:02).  And where does she come back from?  Right where she was standing before.  Where did she go?  What was she doing for those two minutes?  She’s not even in the background.  This is an incredibly sloppy oversight from a show that’s generally much better with animation details.

Once Celestia has had enough of the monolog­ing to finally appear on screen (and to chide the changeling as to how stu­pid revealing herself was), the two fight an epic battle that lasts around 12-13 seconds.  Even worse is that the queen is completely shocked by her vic­tory, which further questions what exactly her plan was (she’s apparently marrying Shining Armor to take down the barrier, but there wouldn’t have been a barrier in the first place if no one knew they were coming).  Find­ing herself now more powerful than the pony who is a canon god, Chrysalis lets Celestia lie there while the mane six are free to escape to look for the Ele­ments Of Harmony, which are surely the only way to defeat the queen.

The changeling minions soon break in though, and are hot on the trail of our heroes.  Naturally, this horde soon changes into all of the mane six ponies, which breaks out into a massive and surely doomed fight.  There’s a slight problem in that not even the changelings can tell each other apart once they’ve morphed, which does provide a fun moment when Fluttershy pretends to be an evil Fluttershy to avoid an attack.  With the numbers stacked against them, it’s surely only a matter of time before our heroes are captured.  Nope.  Thanks to Twilight’s abundance of magical powers, the changelings are easily morphed back and are quickly defeated.  That was easy.  Unfortunately, even more changelings are on the way, and more are waiting as the mane six attempt to approach the Elements.  They don’t quite make it to their “only hope”, and are returned to the wedding hall.  That means the best scene in the entire episode ends up going nowhere.

Yet more monologing from the queen allows Twilight to free Cadance, and her in turn to cast a spell to snap Shining Armor out of his trance.  Chrysalis doesn’t care since it didn’t really matter if Shining Armor was in­volved in her plan or not, and reproaches Cadance’s cheesy response to a spent Armor that her love would give him strength (perhaps in about an hour or so) with “what a lovely but absolutely ridiculous sentiment”.  Truer words are not spoken in the episode.  Of course, Chrysalis has apparently never read a fairy tale, since true love always conquers all somehow, with some sort of magic or something.  And some sort of magic indeed happens, as Cadance and Armor create a spell that removes all of the changelings (while not affecting anyone else) and sends them back to whatever dimen­sion they came from.  That was easy.  So much for the Elements Of Har­mony being their only hope.

The wedding finally goes off as planned, and everything is perfect this time.  Twilight’s parents even show up, but like before don’t utter a word between them.  It’s nice they weren’t forgotten, and that continuity was pre­served in that Shining Armor looks more like his dad (with Twilight look­ing very much like her mom), and that he appears to be a color that could actually be produced by his two parents.  Otherwise, they weren’t present in the episode at all, and not only was this a missed opportunity, but it’s also unlikely they wouldn’t have anything to do with the wedding planning.  It feels like somebody thought at the last minute “oh crap, Twilight’s parents!” and threw a cameo of them in there.  But where were they during the first wedding, which everyone else thought was real?

As Cadance walks down the aisle, Twilight finally inquires as to what brought her brother together with her former babysitter.  Shining Armor re­sponds that an apparently large part of his pitch was that Cadance would be gaining a “sister” in Twilight.  So apparently Armor just wants to bang Twilight’s hot babysitter, while Cadance consents to the marriage because of her unrequited love for the young filly she used to take care of.  What’s a little pedophilia in a children’s show after all?  And how did Twilight’s par­ents get a freaking princess to take care of their daughter anyway?  Look­ing after random commoners isn’t exactly something royal families do.  I guess this was supposed to happen shortly after Twilight was accepted to work with Celestia, but wasn’t that supposed to be some sort of boarding school?  Do they really have babysitters at boarding school?  And these baby­sitters are princesses?  It’s never good when episodes raise these unnecessary questions.

Princess Celestia surprisingly takes care of the message herself this time, citing the difficult to follow “trust your instincts” (a valuable lesson for all poker players out there).  In true royal fashion, she refuses to apologize for failing to believe Twilight and consequently almost losing her entire kingdom.  She then reminds Rainbow Dash that it’s time for a sonic rainboom.  Dash’s first rainboom came in a race to defend Fluttershy’s honor, and was the single most important event in all of the mane six’s lives.  Her second only happened as she was saving Rarity and the Wonder­bolts from a gruesome death.  Pinkie Pie went to great lengths to say how rare rainbooms are, and how none of them had actually ever seen one (which wasn’t true after all, but still).  Dash herself tried over and over to per­form a rainboom in the episode, but failed every time (as related by Fluttershy).  Guess she got over that stage fright pretty quickly.  Within about a second af­ter the request, a burst of rainbow explodes over Canterlot.  That was easy.

The reception is from the ending of what the episode should have been.  DJ Pon-3 makes a long awaited reappearance after being conjured up by Pinkie Pie to perform the one duty she’s apparently capable of.  This probably in­creases her screen time by a factor of ten, and we do get to see her eyes as well.  It’s a shame characters like this are limited to token appearances while most of the main ones in the episode are retconned.  We also see Spike putting the moves on Sweetie Belle (both Rarity and Rainbow Dash get a bit of action as well), and Rarity ea­gerly reclaiming her precious.  While most of the jokes fell flat, Spike’s prom­ise of a rocking bachelor party correctly draws a large laugh from every­one.

A lot of hype surrounded this two-part season finale that was pro­moted to feel more like an “event” than a “good episode”.  It was appar­ently attempting to capitalize on the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middletlon, despite it taking place a full year before the episode aired.  Unfortunately, instead of involving someone important, the My Little Pony wedding is between two characters who had never been on the show before and that we don’t care about.  Add to that the fact that too many things are going on even for the extra amount of time allotted.  Twilight having to deal with her brother getting married and seeing her old babysitter again could be part of a good character driven episode, but then suddenly the mind-control element is thrown in.  The battle between good and evil that de­veloped thereafter is designed to feel epic, but every resolution is way too quick and easy.  Everything with this section feels rushed, but it still takes up so much time that there isn’t any left for the love story.  Like every crappy romantic comedy, we’re just expected to believe the main couple are in love without ever finding out why.  They just are; isn’t it ro­mantic?

On top of all that is a healthy dose of Broadway songs that made me feel like I was watching Wicked.  I don’t understand the line of thinking that goes “more songs = better episode”.  Good songs help, but they shouldn’t ever be the fabric or the sole reason for the success of the episode.  These were not good songs as much as they were songs in popular styles that are ac­cessible and talk about the plot.  I understand that most people will not agree with this assessment, but these type of songs never do anything for me since the music isn’t imaginative and the lyrics always sound awkward.  The songs were far from awful to be fair, but certainly did nothing to ele­vate the episode.  While not necessarily terrible on their own, not one of these various elements fit together.

A Canterlot Wedding is not a bad epi­sode, and by default ranks in the top half of the second season.  But it isn’t nearly good to warrant its own Wikipedia page either.  There is too much going on which doesn’t fit and feels rushed.  It could have been a one-epi­sode character driven story that explored Twilight accepting the passage of time and the “loss” of her brother, or even a three-episode Star Wars-type epic featuring a massive and difficult battle between good and evil.  But not both, and not in-between.  This was an attempt to please everyone and have everything and show every single pony ever shown in the series, but there wasn’t nearly enough time for that.  The episode might feel epic at times, but it’s still a complete mess overall.

Perhaps A Canterlot Wedding will age better over time, but I don’t see myself budging too much from a three-star rating for a number of reasons.  I cannot forgive the fairy tale depiction of black and white good versus evil.  The changelings just want to kill indiscriminately (to eat love, apparently), show no remorse for their actions, and garner no sympathy for their plight.  These villains are one-dimensionally evil; high on sinister laughs and low on plans making sense.  There was no reason to have Chrysalis marry Shining Armor when an unannounced full-scale as­sault would have actually accomplished the objective, except of course for plot contrivance.  The depiction of “love” between Shin­ing Armor and Cadance also can’t be excused, as they only love each other because the plot de­mands it, and not for any other reason (the only ones we do see are solely about with Twilight, and are more creepy than was intended).  This kind of “love” is a fiction perpetuated by bad movies and TV shows, and I will absolutely never sanction it. 

And I also can’t forgive Princess Celestia inexplicably disappearing for almost two minutes.  This is a huge and preposterous oversight that just un­derscores how unprepared McCarthy was to take on the challenge of this two-part episode.  M.A. Larson is the only one of the writers who is convincingly able to do epic, while McCarthy produces efforts like Lesson Zero and Hearts And Hooves Day.  Even if she’s otherwise been decent, McCarthy is maddeningly consistent at being no better than middle-of-the-road.  A Canterlot Wedding might not be an epic fail, but it is certainly a failed epic.  Maybe, like Rarity experienced, the show’s higher-ups started to demand more and more for their hyped event that things got past her original vision.  That’s what it feels like at least.  The premise and ele­ments are there somewhere, but the execution just didn’t happen.  No amount of hype is going to change that.