Episode Reviews: Magical Mystery Cure

Alright...I've got my bunker nice and secured, flame turrets are operating at maximum capacity, and I have enough canned spam and machine gun ammo to make a crazed Southern survivalist envious. When Alicorn Twilight hits and the world ends, I'll be able to ride out the apocalypse before single-handedly repopulating the human race. Not sure quite how that works but...

Either way, let's review “Magical Mystery Cure.”

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TECHNICAL SPECS:

Season: 3

Episode: 13

Written By: M. A. Larson

First Aired: 2/16/2013

SUMMARY:

Twilight Sparkle awakens on a fine, glorious day, which she celebrates with a song about how perfectly pleasant Ponyville is. Unfortunately, things go to crap soon after when a passing raincloud dumps water on her. Enraged, she calls for Rainbow Dash to fly down and face her punishment...but then discovers that Rarity is the one controlling the weather now. And she's doing a terrible job at it, too. The same pattern repeats with all the others. Rainbow Dash is failing to take care of animals, Fluttershy can't throw a party, Pinkie Pie is going insane on the farm, and Applejack simply can't make dresses. Even worse, they all have their Cutie Marks swapped with the pony who originally had that profession, and are blindly obeying them because Cutie Marks are Pony Law.

Horrified, Twilight and Spike return to the library, where the truth is revealed. A night before, Princess Celestia sent Twilight a package containing Starswirl the Bearded's last unfinished spell. Twilight tried casting it to see what it did, but when nothing immediately happened, she just let it go. What the spell actually did was rewrite reality so that the other Bearers all had different Cutie Marks. (Even their individual Elements have changed to match.) Even worse, all the previous cure-alls won't work in this instance. Twilight goes upstairs to mope for a while, but one pep talk is all it takes for her to resolve to fix things.

Gathering the Elements, she tracks down Fluttershy, who was just about to return to Cloudsdale in disgrace, and convinces her to go help Rainbow Dash, who's about to be cooked by angry native critters. When Fluttershy succeeds despite not remembering being able to do this, it restores her true memories, and applying the Element does the rest. They repeat the process with Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, and finally Pinkie Pie, thus restoring harmony to Ponyville and saving their friendship. And all to song, too.

This gives Twilight the inspiration she needs to finish Starswirl's spell, and everypony races back to the library to wrap things up. The moment Twilight finishes writing the rest of the incantation, however, the Elements suddenly go haywire, blasting Twilight and vaporizing her. Twilight, however, finds herself on another plane of consciousness, where Celestia herself shows flashbacks of her life and how much she's grown. But now it's time for her to complete her destiny...

A massive representation of Twilight's Cutie Mark appears in the sky, followed by her suddenly reappearing in front of her friends...as an Alicorn. Celestia sets down to explain that Twilight has learned so much from her friends in Ponyville, and that she's acquired all the skills and traits necessary to make a fine Princess. Twilight is afraid that this means she won't be her student anymore, but Celestia reassures her that she'll be there to guide her, but she's now less a student and closer to an equal.

Later, in Canterlot, Twilight's coronation goes off without a hitch, with her giving a speech about how awesome her friends are and how much she loves them. Shining Armor lets out some liquid pride, Twilight rides in a carriage, and then she flies off, telling the viewers that everything's going to be fine.

Oh, and Derpy's there too.

REVIEW:

Alright, the hatches have been sealed, security cameras are up and running, and we are ready to go...

To say this episode had a lot going against it would be a tremendous understatement. The fandom was quite ready to tear itself apart at the seams over the issue of Alicorn Twilight, and the fact that the rest of the episode made absolutely no mention of her becoming one did not help matters. Throw in all the other drama going on around the same time, the ill feelings about Season 3 being thirteen episodes, and the Toy Fair promo of the hideously overpriced doll, and you have a mess that not even a perfect episode would solve. And no, this is not a perfect one, either. But we'll get to that in a minute.

The episode opens by establishing just what kind of episode this actually is: a musical. Yes, this is FiM's all-singing, all-dancing episode, so if you don't like the songs in the show at all, this really isn't the one for you. The first tune isn't a fantastic one, but it does a great job of setting up the happy, peaceful setting before things go to Tartarus in a hoofbasket. And Twilight is best Spanish dancer, even when it's on top of something ponies eat off of. (The waiter does it too, though. Makes you wonder how many stars that place gets...) This all ends when Twilight gets rained on, a fairly stock prank courtesy of Rainbow Dash...only it isn't her this time, but Rarity who's failing at controlling the weather. (Apparently Unicorns can do that now, too. Suck it, lesser races! Bow before your true magical masters!)

Oh, and she has Rainbow Dash's Cutie Mark.

This brings us to the next song, a musical montage of the ponies doing things they aren't skilled at simply because it's what their Cutie Mark says. And while the song here is pretty good on its own merits, what sells this are the visuals. The way these ponies are utterly broken by doing things they are not skilled in and have no real investment in doing simply because their magical butt tattoos have gone Serpentor on them is both sad and funny. Rainbow Dash is unable to control that many critters at the same time. Fluttershy doesn't have the show presence necessary to give a command performance. Applejack's dress designs are gussied-up burlap sacks, and she can't figure out how to make them work. And Rarity's obsession with patterns and design have made a mess of Ponyville's weather systems, including frostbite over sunburns. Man, that has to hurt like hell.

One thing about Pinkie, though. She has her mane and tail flattened out like she did in “Party of One,” and a lot of fans said this is proof that she's gone Pinkamena. Only she hasn't. Keep in mind that the spell rewrote reality so that they all have different Cutie Marks, meaning that Pinkie never found her true calling and left farming behind. Anyone remember why she's called Pinkamena in the first place? Her mane and tail were like that before the Sonic Rainboom, thus explaining why a pony who still has no idea what joy is will continue to remain that way.

This brings us back to the cause of this disaster. Remember that book from “The Crystal Empire?” Turns out it was Starswirl the Bearded's journal, and within it is his last, unfinished spell. Twilight being Twilight, she immediately decides to blindly cast the spell a certified genius and one of the forefathers of Unicorn magic in general was unable to perfect. And then she shows that uncanny pony ability of being incapable of turning around, and thus misses the fact that her spell changed the Elements of Harmony. Way to go, Twilight. You cocked this one up good. Spike even launches into continuity mode, setting up why the tactics from “Return of Harmony” and “Bridle Gossip” won't work in this instance. Twilight has literally rewritten reality so that the ponies have different Cutie Marks than before, are forced to do different things, and thus have no memories of their former lives outside of being friends.

This brings us to the next song, and it's a very good downer tune. The entire montage goes gray as we witness Ponyville falling apart because of this blunder. Watching Sweet Apple Acres fall into disrepair and the dress shop close up is just downright depressing, even if the timing doesn't quite make sense. And the singing and music is simply fantastic. Unfortunately, this is kind of undermined by Twilight getting right back up after a very short pep talk from Spike.

This brings us into the fourth song this episode. This one was actually leaked almost a week ago, and while I didn't listen to it, I did read the comments, and they all came back to two things: the lyrics were awful and it sounded like Dora the Explorer. So now that the episode's aired, allow me to counter with this: I think this song is great and just needed the visuals to tie it together. In fact, that's kind of true of most of the music on the show; even “Smile, Smile, Smile” was universally panned when it was leaked, but became almost everyone's favorite when it actually aired. You need both the audio and visual components for these tunes to work, and they really deliver here.

The song starts with Twilight finding Fluttershy, who's basically ready to cash it all in and go back to Cloudsdale. Ah yes, failure, something I am intimately familiar with. Still, the spell hasn't erased the fact that the ponies know each other and are friends, so despite having never worked with animals in this reality, she still goes with Twilight to help. And that's good, because Rainbow Dash has screwed things up badly and is about to be cooked into a big tasty stew. Fluttershy has a few moments of hesitation, but once she starts getting into her groove, everything comes flying back to her. And then the Element comes on, restoring her memories and bringing back her Cutie Mark.

Cue the montage.

We see each of the ponies start to remember who they are as soon as they're back in their elements and wearing their Elements. This sequence is both funny and heartwarming, from Rarity complaining about being in a nightmare after seeing how AJ's messed up her place to Pinkie regaining her poofiness and cheering up the entire town. And at the end, we have everything coalesce into a fantastic chorus, with all of Ponyville cheering on the return of these dear ponies.

But then we get to the other part of the episode, that thing it...kind of has to do...

Twilight remembers the book that caused this whole mess and returns to the library, finishing the spell with some notes about friendship and love and all that. Unfortunately, she fails to notice everything slow down as the quill strikes down the last period, signaling her impending doom. For the Elements suddenly come alive again and blast Twilight with all of their power. The mare can only stand there and accept her end as she is utterly atomized, leaving only her friends and a scorch mark behind to indicate she was ever there.

YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW HER UP! AH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO TARTARUS!

So...Twilight ends up in some higher field of consciousness or something; it's kind of hard to tell if she was just teleported there, or was actually killed by the Elements and her soul has ascended to this place. No matter what, though, Celestia is able to access this place, and we finally get the moment that made me squee with joy:CELESTIA GETS A SONG! And it's a pretty good one, too, going over Twilight's life up to this point and how proud she is of her accomplishments. This really buys into the theory that Celestia was grooming Twilight for this since the beginning, and in that respect, there are some hints from earlier episodes of this happening. From Twilight learning to delegate responsibilities to others, to looking outside the box to defeat Trixie, to entertaining the delegates from Saddle Arabia, this season has shown Twilight being given bigger and more responsible roles to play.

But alas, it's time for Twilight to finally ascend, and after a dazzling light show and return to the moral plane, she reappears before her friends...as an Alicorn. Yep, it finally happened. Alicorn Twilight has been made canon. Oh, and so has Alicorn, confirming that the Alicorn Amulet was not talking about the substance horns are made of. Eh, works better than winged unicorn in any case.

Alas, this is where things are going to be a bit rough to describe. Twilight basically voices our own insecurities on the prospect of her ascension, including losing her role as Celestia's student. What Celestia says, however, seems to imply that she'll still be there to guide her, but she's now surpassed being a mere student and is now almost equal to her master. In that way, it's actually kind of a touching moment, and gives some credence to the idea that this was intended to be a series finale in case the show didn't get renewed. (Which, given the way children's animated television works, was a real possibility. They've already confirmed that Transformers Prime is ending once it hits its syndication numbers, and that's one of their biggest shows, so...)

The actual coronation is pretty syrupy, but it also helps assuage one of my other fears about the Alicorn process; namely, Twilight no longer being Twilight. She's still her adorkable self, unsure of what to do, and still very much in love with her friends. Alas, we must kill the good mood by ending with a rather frustrating reprise of the opening song. Twilight jumping off the carriage to walk with her friends was nice, but then...she flies. And breaks the fourth wall to tell us that everything's going to be fine. And then we get the “Friend, Friend, Friend” song over the credits.

There are a few other things to note about these last couple scenes, though. We see Twilight's parents again, and Shining Armor lets his liquid pride leak out of his eyes. That is what I'm going to call all manly tears now. Luna wearing pink is horrifically wrong, and makes me wish they had kept the deleted Rarity scene from “Luna Eclipsed” just for the callback. Still, seeing the two smiling and loving each other was a nice touch. And even better, right as Twilight's walking with her friends, mere moments before the end of the episode, Derpy appears in plain view just at the right of the screen. After a whole season's absence, the muffin queen has returned. Here's hoping it marks a full return to the “Where's Derpy?” game next season.

CONCLUSION:

...This was going to be the series finale, wasn't it? I was just supposing before, but this...this feels like a final episode, even more than “Return of Harmony” did. Celestia's summation of what Twilight's learned from her friends, her ascension to princesshood, all of it just smacks of “This might be our last season, so let's wrap things up as best we can.”

I really, really enjoyed this episode. It's definitely in the top three this season for me. The musical setup provides a good way to rush through the two storylines while still fitting in all the important pieces, and while things are a bit too fast at points, the emotion and feeling of those moments are perfectly encapsulated by the music and lyrics of the songs themselves. If there was a rather specific weakness, it was that the two plots really don't fit together. Twilight finishes Starswirl's book, and bam, she's an Alicorn. I know it's become old hat by this point, but this needed a second part. They could have killed “Spike at Your Service” and provided us with a truly epic and fantastic finale.

As it stands, however, this was still a great episode. And according to Meghan's twitter, the Season 4 opener is going to continue from this point, setting up whatever they have planned for the fourth season of Miniature Equines of My Persuasion. So while I wouldn't call this a total success, it was still far from the apocalypse a lot of fans were expecting, and I'm eager to see how this develops from here.

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There will be a follow-up post to this, discussing the idea of destiny as it's presented in this episode and giving my own thoughts on it, but for now, I hope you enjoyed the review. Whether you agree or not, feel free to post below. Now in the meantime, I have to go hunt down the radioactive mutants that no doubt litter the land now.