My Little Pony - Friendship Is Magic: Episode 521 - Scare Master

 

Rating:

 

Oh god why.  Natasha Levinger’s take on Halloween is supposedly funny, scary, and insightful, but the episode actually ends up being another abomination of stupidity.  Fine, Fluttershy didn’t go out during the first Nightmare Night in Luna Eclipsed, but what the fuck did Levinger turn her into?  Now Fluttershy is somehow paralyzed by a wide array of irrational fears, and completely sucks the fun out of every activity.  With nowhere else for this plot point to go halfway through, Levinger decides Fluttershy should scare everyone else instead, but the results vary from oddly not scary, too much for a children’s show, and humorously bad.  Then after an apparent success and many self-congratulations, Fluttershy gives up, says fuck her friends, and goes home.  Larson’s Halloween episode wasn’t perfect, but he addressed why the holiday exists while reintroducing an important new character.  Levinger’s seemed little more than a dreary rehash of Filli Vanilli which has little purpose and accomplishes nothing.  Like Hearthbreakers before it, Levinger assumes details about her assigned holiday that aren’t really established as canon.  Why would Fluttershy be afraid to go out on Nightmare Night when nothing bad actually happens?  Is she really scared of other ponies in costumes?  Levinger says yes, but that doesn’t make any sense.  We do finally see how Rarity celebrates Halloween, but her costume designs look terrible and uninspired here.  Not content with all this, Levinger adds in some unnecessary slapstick “comedy” which gets repeated for additional “effect”.  Outside of Fluttershy’s absurd characterization, the other mane six members essentially phone in their parts.  No one seems interested to be appearing in this abomination, and they aren’t bothered by completely ignoring Fluttershy or her problems.  Even if certain scenes are mildly amusing, absolutely no repeat value exists.  Every joke falls flat the second time around, and Fluttershy’s attitude makes certain parts unwatchable.  Levinger’s time on My Little Pony consisted of awful episodes (Pinkie Apple Pie, It Ain’t Easy Being Breezies, Make New Friends But Keep Discord), with Scare Master being the deserved nail in her writing career.  From strange reactions to misguided ideas on what constitutes scary, Scare Master is another mess which does nothing right.

It’s Nightmare Night, so Fluttershy finishes locking her house down air tight since apparently crime is legal during this one particular evening (“oh who am I kidding, when something scary comes close to the cottage!”).  She plans on spending all night under the bed with her animal friends (totally not creepy), but conveniently forgot to make sure Angel had enough food.  So now Fluttershy must go out and find him some, which is a plot point already used in Putting Your Hoof Down.  Apparently she’d never leave the house if that self-absorbed asshole wasn’t too lazy to get his own food.  But once again, this episode doesn’t pertain to her clearly abusive relationship.

Fluttershy’s trip out involves being scared by Halloween decorations, kids not in costume, and Granny Smith advertising her upcoming barely spooky corn maze.  Forgetting why she came out, Fluttershy feels too afraid to return home and heads for Twilight’s castle instead, which she quickly enters despite it looking much scarier than everything else that has recently frightened her.  Spike and his dead conjoined twin convince her that since she’s already out, she might as well join her friends.  They’re only telling “scary” stories right now (Pinkie’s punchline couldn’t possibly be frightening and Rarity “hilariously” thinks her story’s setup is the story), and could really use a distraction.

After recovering from the huge initial shock of having their friend come over, they leave Twilight’s and finally get their costumes on before the night is completely over.  Rarity must help Fluttershy with this of course, but she passes over that vampire fruit bat costume for a masquerade one without the mask (because guess why).  Then Fluttershy can’t detect Twilight’s obvious sarcasm (“oh…that’s great!  Isn’t it great?”), and now feels like she’s part of the group.

Not really though, since she finds an idiotic fear in every single activity they do.  Pin the horn on Nightmare Moon, bobbing for apples, and even receiving a bag of candy all produce crippling anxiety.  Fluttershy does realize how dumb she’s being, but watching her act this way still feels very painful.  After suddenly having an idea born from pure desperation (no doubt), Twilight suggests Fluttershy should do the scaring instead.  Despite having just found irrational fears literally everywhere, Fluttershy inexplicably agrees so that she can help out on Nightmare Night.

Her idea for scaring the mane six is so bad it’s almost good.  She invites them to a spooky tea party, but chides her friends with psychological fears instead.  These include no one complimenting Rarity’s outfit, Pinkie Pie’s “friend” not showing up, and the dreaded unplanned guests.  Fluttershy finding these things scary might be cute, but the joke doesn’t really hold up on repeated viewings.  The mane six are not amused, and Fluttershy sends them on their way so they can salvage something from this never-ending Halloween.  Giving zero shits, Pinkie starts badmouthing Fluttershy before she even leaves the house, which somehow almost goes unnoticed.  With yet another act left, that bastard Angel decides to help Fluttershy scare her friends.  As we will soon see, his ideas are...a bit darker.

The other mane six members enter Applejack’s corn maze, but they find more surprises than expected.  Granny Smith’s earlier monologue detailed some of the “frights” (“bones”, “eyeballs”, Granny in a realistic horse’s head, and Big Mac dressed as a mummy), although none inspire much fear.  A mysterious figure somehow spooks Applejack (who “honestly” lies throughout most of this section), while three apparently real ghosts start chasing the mane six.  They fall into a quickly covered hole, and the terrors only get worse.  “Granny Smith” loses her head, followed by our ponies getting chased into a spider web by a giant monster.  Twilight transports them out and they’re able to escape the cave, but a large bat hangs nearby.  Apparently Fluttershy has again transformed into her vampire bat state from Bats!  She takes off Spike’s twin’s head and appears ready for more carnage, but breaks character after seeing her friends looking petrified.

After failing initially, Fluttershy’s animal friends successfully helped her try scaring again.  The mane six are extremely impressed and inexplicably want Fluttershy to do this every year, but she “surprisingly” doesn’t enjoy terrifying her friends.  Even though nothing bad happened, Fluttershy won’t be celebrating Nightmare Night ever again (nor will the series).  Her friends accept this, and Scare Master ends positively.  Wait, it’s still not over yet?  Alright, fuck it, let’s trash everything that just happened.  Reading to her animals from under the bed, Fluttershy declares that this sole activity makes for a perfect Nightmare Night.  The whole episode wouldn’t have existed if she had just done this, and…oh why do I even bother anymore.

Fluttershy has always been depicted as nervous and fearful, but never this absurdly.  She actually refuses to eat a piece of taffy because her mouth might somehow become “glued shut”, while her other excuses aren’t much better.  Furthermore, no explanation is given as to why she happily accepts scaring her friends, or how she easily dons the vampire fruit bat costume.  Given everything earlier, she should be afraid scaring her friends will cause harm (it almost does) and reliving Bats! will trigger her PTSD.  Since everyone else walked straight to the corn maze from Fluttershy’s tea party, she couldn’t have asked Granny Smith to make the maze scarier or have it all set up.

Both sets of fears are also oddly handled.  Granny Smith’s real horse head mask elicits the exact same simultaneous reaction from all five ponies and Spike, which is poor and unrealistic animation.  Any other “scary” part gets laughed off or criticized by Rainbow Dash.  But then Fluttershy’s improvements are too much.  The six friends are chased into a hole (during which Rarity stupidly and needlessly justifies Fluttershy’s fear regarding dress length), and are almost buried alive once they’re shut in.  Applejack “spots” Granny Smith even though they passed her moments earlier, but she recovers too quickly from her ancestor’s head suddenly falling off (an unwanted Psycho reference).

After getting trapped in a spider web and seemingly close to being eaten alive, Twilight’s deus ex machina magic momentarily saves them.  They escape this hole and find themselves on top of the maze.  There’s no logical way this could have happened.  And even though the pony who “attacks” them is clearly Fluttershy, they look more terrified of her than anything else.  Their reactions don’t make any sense, while these specific fears are pointless for a children’s show to include.  Considering the mane six’s inexplicable subsequent reaction is that this horrific experience was “the best thing ever”, it would appear Levinger stole her moral from what Larson vocalized in Luna Eclipsed.  This mishmash of fears, poor reactions, and an undemonstrated reused moral does not offer the argument that Levinger had any idea what she wanted her script to accomplish.

Too much went wrong with characterization and otherwise for Scare Master to earn anything more than two stars.  Fluttershy’s first half fearfest is utterly painful, while her second half eponymous job didn’t make sense and wasn’t effective on many levels.  Fluttershy not leaving her house on a specific night and her friends blindly accepting this also remains hard to believe.  Levinger never wrote a decent episode, and Scare Master can only be classified as another failure.  Halloween has nothing to do with what was presented on screen here, and Scare Master is such a misfire that it should be excised from canon.