Rating:
Receiving his second straight solid premise, Nick Confalone
unsurprisingly flushed it down the toilet.
No Second Prances finds Starlight Glimmer making friends with Trixie,
but this spectacular development gets lost through poor characterization and
writing. Twilight wants Starlight to
make her own new friend for an upcoming dinner with Princess Celestia, except
Starlight actually chooses someone who understands her. Trixie has returned with a new magic show
(sort of), and…fuck it, she has no tricks and the dinner doesn’t really matter
anyway. Criticisms about No Second
Prances pandering and being bullet points to or a summary of an actual good
script are quite accurate. Confalone
doesn’t care whether his characters actually arrive where he wants, and every
choice he made was awful. Trixie has
forgotten about Magic Duel (except for some toothless asides), Starlight won’t
stop joking about her past, and Twilight is an annoying mother whose change of
heart only occurs because the script says so.
Then we get Trixie trying to kill herself while Celestia has no lines
because they didn’t want to pay her voice actress. And since Slice Of Life was so popular, why
not needlessly throw in those background ponies too? Cranky rattles off some decent quips and
Trixie’s sarcastic introduction elicits laughter, but No Second Prances is
otherwise a complete mess. Confalone
can’t be forgiven for utterly destroying his premise when it should have been a
season highlight and likely top list inclusion.
Instead, the episode confirms that forcing Starlight onto the show was a
huge mistake. Confalone certainly wasn’t
attempting this goal, but he nevertheless achieved it with yet another
disappointment.
Setting the table for dinner is really important because
knives are sharp and this spoon represents your heart. Starlight fails her first test, but should
pass the second since slavery remains an alternative. She must find a new friend to show Celestia
how well these unseen lessons are going.
Since immediately following this plot would be too easy, the other mane
six members suggest acquaintances who couldn’t possibly work out. You might recognize that this filler
technique was previously used in Baby Cakes.
Starlight quickly bails on her messy situation and heads toward the spa.
After thinking something might be wrong with her, wouldn’t
it be amazing if Starlight found her friend right there? Important plot points at the spa already
happened during Games Ponies Play, but that was like three years ago so who
cares. This encounter makes some sense because
they probably wouldn’t meet anywhere else, but it still feels forced. Given their earlier histories, Starlight and
her “mysterious new friend” immediately bond, so she rushes off to tell
Twilight about a successfully completed assignment.
Strawberry pick. Unsurprisingly,
Twilight quickly becomes pissed upon discovering, holy shit, Starlight’s new
friend is Trixie. Despite announcing a
penitence tour, Trixie has reverted to her pre-Magic Duel self and revels in
being invited to Twilight’s new castle.
Much discussion occurs about “second chances” and “trust”, so Twilight
eventually lets her daughter pupil play with Trixie as long as she’s
back by midnight. “You won’t regret
this.”
Before helping set up Trixie’s new stage show, Starlight
learns her great and powerful friend envies Twilight’s skill and hopes she can
one-up the princess. Their get-together
is also interrupted by Twilight attempting to set Starlight up with Vinyl
Scratch I mean DJ “Pwn-Three”, Derpy (I don’t mean “Muffins”) and
Cranky. Who can remember what they said
two minutes ago about trust? And also
Trixie really wants to perform some dumb yet probably fairly easy trick where
she almost gets eaten. Trixie shouldn’t
need help, but she still guilts Starlight into blowing off the dinner.
Twilight would be in more trouble if Celestia could actually
talk, but giving her lines would have cost money and we can’t have that. At least Twilight included her three meme
friends, but only Cranky voices how shitty this dinner is for the same
reason. Since Celestia can’t possibly
object, Twilight quickly leaves to seek out her truant student. It’s not long before she spots that eyesore
of a wagon Trixie arrived in and deduces what happened. Her main reason for being angry is wasting
“exquisite silverware placement”.
Starlight barely defends herself before Trixie gloats about being chosen
over the princess. Cue a “second” act
conflict which almost breaks up the new friends because Starlight isn’t happy
about apparently being used. “Saying
that didn’t help, did it?”
Dining with God is boring, so fuck it. Since the show must go on and Trixie
literally had nothing else planned, she decides to just shoot herself into the
manticore and end it all. Most people
couldn’t resist witnessing such an event, so Twilight blowing off dinner to
watch this with Starlight feels quite understandable. There’s no time left though, which means
Twilight now suddenly approves of Starlight’s new friendship. She helps out after all, and subsequently
avoids Ponyville’s first (reported) suicide.
The show is a huge success since nobody saw that conspicuous flash by
the box Trixie “appears” in. Apparently
they’re completely satisfied by a “trick” Twilight does multiple times per
episode, because the magic show ends after that two-minute stunt. Well, I guess we can give them some fireworks
too. And Celestia’s still waiting for a
dinner which will never arrive.
Trixie’s first return in Magic Duel was undesired yet
worthwhile, although her third appearance proves exactly the opposite. Larson plumbed character depth which
previously didn’t exist, but Confalone only makes half-hearted attempts. Trixie “admits” all of her actions are
motivated by besting Twilight since she’s always better at everything, but this
wasn’t really true during their meeting in Boast Busters. Avenging public embarrassment makes sense,
but an imaginary dick-measuring contest which isn’t supported by evidence
doesn’t. After their previous parting,
Twilight should treat Trixie as a comrade (similar to Starlight Glimmer now),
but instead she behaves like Starlight has befriended Discord or another
previously seen villain. This clearly
only happens so that some sort of plot arc can be manufactured.
And my god is Twilight awful here. This is perhaps her worst characterization,
as she feels completely off throughout.
It starts with a strangely chiding delivery of “Starlight!” after a bad
joke about her protégé’s past and doesn’t improve. Twilight should accept Trixie right away, but
there wouldn’t be an episode otherwise.
Then she stalks Starlight in the bushes to suggest certain famous
background ponies would be better friends, while Confalone only rehashes what
we saw from them before. An awkward
start to dinner finds Twilight claiming Starlight has already made friends with
them, before she ditches her beloved teacher and never returns. After making Starlight’s understandable
disappearance about herself by needlessly bringing up the silverware, Twilight
quickly has a change of heart without reason and blesses Starlight’s new
friendship. This isn’t Twilight but
rather a nagging parent caricature. Dave
Polsky may have tried to destroy Twilight physically in Feeling Pinkie Keen,
but Confalone finished the job by rendering her completely unrecognizable.
As usual, Starlight doesn’t fare much better and still fails
to distinguish herself. Her only
defining trait is constantly joking about earlier appearances, except nobody
ever describes themselves as evil.
Starlight should understand her motivations even if she no longer agrees
with them. Instead, the jokes keep
coming like they are about another pony.
If Starlight is suffering from dissociative identity disorder, then she
needs treatment since her condition resulted in a personality cult that nearly
destroyed the space-time continuum.
Delving so far into this would normally be absurd, but Starlight has
nothing else going on. Her character
demands understanding why the village happened and how she’s changed, but My Little Pony never explores this. Starlight keeps sucking time away from the
actual main characters (who only make virtual cameo appearances here), while
the writers futilely continue justifying Meghan McCarthy’s retcon
creation. Although suffering from many
other issues, this is the chief problem behind season six’s struggles.
Story
editor Josh Haber has stated that his goal and job is making it impossible to
tell (without the credit) who wrote any particular episode, which (if true)
means this mess is on him. Taking a
bizarro view of Slice Of Life’s ideals, he whittled characterization down so
much that My Little Pony ceased being
about the mane six under his watch. They
either have barely any lines here or are virtually unrecognizable. No Second Prances could have been Starlight’s
crowning moment, but it’s only a confused debacle that always feels wrong. Haber’s series became a glorified spinoff
which barely rated as watchable, with No Second Prances being irrevocable proof
of My Little Pony losing its way.
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