Reviews WesternAnimation / My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic

28 Disappointments Later

You know...even though I despise certain moments more than others, such as characters being made utterly useless for the sake of a plot, or wasting a great story for pointless filler, it's when a show pretty much abandons its moral principles and briefly becomes the opposite of what it should be.

I love My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and what it did for me. It broadened my horizons, taught me things about myself I never knew, and shaped a few moral beliefs in the process. It holds quite a special place in my heart, if you couldn't already tell. So when I see episodes like "No Second Prances", "The Cart Before the Ponies", "Every Little Thing She Does", or the subject of this review, "28 Pranks Later", I'm more than a little absolutely livid!

So let's talk about that particular episode, shall we? The episode itself could work on a concept level, having a zombie apocalypse in Equestria and all that; the premise works well enough on paper. But then you realize it's actually an episode about pranks. Yes, it's a lesson to learn in this day and age that pranking can cause a laugh, but if it goes too far, it's not very funny. But they could have done it so much better.

I could go on picking apart every little thing about the episode, but instead I'll just cut to my main problem: nopony in the episode is likable! Rainbow Dash starts the episode by pranking Fluttershy, for Celestia's sake! I thought it was a basic rule that you don't do that, but here she is, ignoring an established unspoken law just to make her seem like a complete jerk. And she doesn't show any remorse for it; she doesn't do her pranks to amuse anyone, she just does it cause they amuse her.

The rest of the ponies aren't any better. All the pranks themselves are relatively harmless (except for the above mentioned one) and yet the only likable thing the others do is that they try to reason with Rainbow Dash and tell her that what she's doing isn't right. That's a step up from "Mare Do Well", and about ten steps down afterwards; unlike that episode, all the humiliation on Rainbow Dash was inflicted by herself, and the ponies playing Mare Do Well only stepped in when Rainbow herself couldn't get the job done. But here, they're all actively out to get Rainbow Dash back for menial pranks. And they way they do this is to reenact a zombie apocalypse to scare the crap out of her. Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen.

So yeah. As you can probably tell, this episode spits in the face of everything Friendship is Magic stands for. "Mirror Magic" may be the worst thing it's produced by far, but "28 Pranks Later" is by and far my most hated episode of the lot. It made me hate everypony present, just for one episode. Yes, even Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Princess Twilight Bucking Sparkle. And barring "No Second Prances" above, she's usually my favorite. It's an episode I refuse to count as canon in any way, shape, or form. Screw. This. Episode.