Mlp Amending Fences Review

To start with, let me apologize for the lengthy delay on this review, the last few weeks have been an uncomfortable mix of hot days and sleepless nights, which has meant I have never really felt up to writing another review (I like to write reviews when I’m in a good mood). Which has been a shame because this episode is one of my favourite episodes of this season, of the last few seasons in fact.

To start with I think this episode has a pretty good premise and it uses a lot of that premises’ potential. To help explain I shall try to compare and contrast between this episode and The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone (which I will hereafter abbreviate down to TLToG)...
   Amending fences has an eye on the past and for simplicity. We’ve already seen Canterlot plenty of times, we’ve gotten a glimpse of Twilight’s life before the show and the idea she had people who knew her in the past isn’t that radical a concept. The episode therefore quickly gets around to meeting these former friends with little problem at all. TLToG didn’t have this luxury, the nature of griffons and the history of the kingdom both mostly come out of the blue and they had to give plenty of exposition to try to catch up.
   Amending fences has more of an eye on the future. Quite simply this story is founded on the people in it, once this episode is over we have four new side characters who we can use the next time we come to Canterlot. TLToG on the other hand spent a lot of time with only one Griffon (who we have already met before) and with a macguffin (which I doubt will return). TLToG failed to give us many good reasons to return, there’s only one person who we know who lives there, there’s nothing really going on and everyone there are jerks.
   Amending fences fits pretty well with the show in general. This episode's premise is all about meeting and rekindling old friendships, this fits pretty naturally with the show’s general aim to be about friendship and delivering morals about friendship. The journey is made up of the stuff that the conclusion is trying to talk about. TLToG on the other hand is trying to juggle their redemption arc alongside worldbuilding (that everyone are jerks and that this place is terrible) and an adventure (to get the macguffin!). Where Amending fences is simple and coherent, TLToG is complex, out of the blue and is pulling in multiple different directions (which is why Gilda’s whole arc basically amounts to two chats with PP and an action scene! There’s just so much crammed into that poor thing!).

I think this episode has a lot of good things going for it and I shall try to be more specific here.
   This episode wisely decided to focus on Twilight (with Spike in a light supporting role). I shudder to think how cluttered this whole thing would be if all of the M6 were here all trying to do the same thing. A personal tale of one person meeting four old friends would turn into a mob of 6 people ganging up on the poor sods.
   On that note, meeting four new faces and trying to learn and amend things with them could be pretty cluttered already. If you gave them equal time, then this episode would only have about five mins for each of them and you would be hard pressed to make a coherent story. So in that respect I do like that 3 of the old friends have very little baggage and that the main part of the story is therefore centred around one former friend, Moon Dancer.
   Which means when you come down to it, the main meat of this episode is seeing Twilight pursuing and trying to make amends with Moon Dancer. It’s a small, personal tale that I think they spent just about the right amount of time building up (in terms of tension) and resolving with a good chat at the end.
   The other 3 friends might not have been so central to this story but I feel that their inclusion helped give some brevity, context and breadth to the proceedings. Without them I feel that things might’ve been a bit too gloomy, for too long and it’d make it look like Twilight had only ever one (very similar) friend to make amends with.

This episode does a lot of things right that I feel is sorely lacking in most of the other episodes of this show. It isn’t cluttered with a large cast, it focuses on interactions rather than spectacles or gimmicks (like the yaks and horrible faces of only one episode prior!), it keeps things simple! Perhaps... too simple...

I liked what this episode did... but whilst I was watching it... it lacked a certain something... it wasn’t bad or terribly flawed but it wasn’t coming to life for me. It lacked a certain spark, something to get me really invested in it. So let me try to explain with some examples.
     The introduction where Spike walks in, describes his daily life and spontaneously talks about their old friends, felt rather clunky. Their dialogue didn’t feel natural, like when Twilight only focused on how she didn’t know their names. I can understand someone forgetting names (I am personally terrible with names) but it felt weird that names would be the only thing she would focus on (particularly since all of them were old school friends, you’d think something.. anything would rub off on Twilight from all that time...).
     When is all is said and done, what do we know about the trio of Minuette, Lemon Hearts and Twinkleshine? They all seem pretty light hearted and erm... Minuette is probably the most energetic of the three. It’s a start but they didn’t really come alive to me, they all seem pretty bland and mostly detached from of the main story.
It just feels like with a little tweaking they could have a lot more personality in this story, if they had been more spirited in regards to Moon Dancer then it would help humanize them a bit more, to at least remind us that it’s not just Twilight who’s missing her..

Now... Moon Dancer. Despite her leading role she doesn’t feel like much of a character to me. So let me try to explain several different ways.
      Moon Dancer is established as being very bookish, very academic, like Twilight. However this trait makes her come across more like a drone, than a person, because she hardly comes across as someone who has any passion, goal or motivation to her studies. People don’t just study day in and day out, in the library unless they have a lot of drive to do so, and that drive should be a pretty strong factor in how they respond to someone like Twilight butting in. Instead though.. all Moon Dancer does is say stuff like “I tried friendship and it's just not for me.”. and that she has to “[reorganize] my biology scrolls.”. She is either giving people the cold shoulder or giving technobabble about her ‘studies’.
      In many ways Moon Dancer is a derivative to Twilight. Her design is mostly just a colour swap (with inverted colours and an added hair bun), her bookishness is just a copy (without the established passion for magic or role/goal as Celestia’s student) and her defining conflict is defined by Twilight (it’s Twilight’s episode and it was ‘caused’ by Twilight).
In the end of the day Moon Dancer doesn’t feel like much of a character to me... she had a conflict, now it’s over. So.. erm she is a bookish person who is friends with the others.. the end.
     Speaking as a relatively intellectual, reclusive, polymath, autodidact myself.. I found it really hard to relate to Moon Dancer and the arc they told for her and Twilight. I find it kind of hollow that all of academia is reduced down to ‘they read books’. :/   Seriously.. there’s a lot to be said for how different academically minded people approach one another.. What do they have passion for? What are they trying to achieve? What do they study? How do they study? How do they approach people in a different or similar field? I know this is just a kids show.. but the writers shouldn’t dumb down ‘people who like reading books’... being interested in ‘stuff’ (not just friendship) is arguably just as important to show to young audiences (we don’t value education so highly for no reason!).
      It wouldn’t even need that much of a change.. because most of this episode isn’t half bad. Having Moon Dancer, this bookish person who became a depressed drone because Twilight wasn’t at her party is just plain silly, erm hello. Brain to Moon Dancer. Celestia’s student. Summer SUN Celebration. Everyone else turned up. Also.. parties don’t seem your style.
       I would suggest that all you needed to do was to focus instead on Twilight being one of the few intellectual equals that Moon Dancer used to interact with.. when Twilight disappeared.. Moon Dancer would have suddenly been alone and lonely.. and therefore be rather resentful. Instead of just being a pouty face, Moon Dancer could then have this interesting thing where she’s been going solo and she doesn’t want to be hurt again. The conclusion would mostly be the same.. except I would add that she and Twilight would try to keep up correspondence with her.. thus giving us the feeling that Twilight is really friends with her in the long run.. rather than Twilight just up and leaving with little to no commitments!
      When it comes right down to it.. I think the arc Moon Dancer got was a pretty generic emotion puller.. It would’ve fitted much better with someone who wasn’t bookish and as someone who is very familiar with her portrayed personality.. it felt disingenuous. I also don’t like how this is another case where one of the M6 have to be the cause of the great strife in another (for another petty reason). It’s an easy way to make things more personal.. but in terms of this story it meant that Twilight didn’t really have to investigate the problem and that she would’ve been stumped if her egocentric assumation hasn’t turned out to be right.


So to conclude. M.A.Larson generally does his best work, when it feels like he is free to make up his own ideas. Episodes like Return of Harmony, Sonic Rainboom and this one seem to generally have a lot of great ideas put into them and they are generally pretty grounded affairs.. Whereas episodes like Slice of Life, Magic Duel and Magical Mystery Cure (episodes that feel like they were mandated by someone else) don’t have that same consistency and they are instead crammed with loads of bells and whistles.
This episode had plenty of good ideas and it executed them fairly well but they lacked polish and in the case of some, they needed a second opinion. It is good to see M.A.Larson be given free reign to write some great ideas.. but the crucial problem with this episode is that it’s “story editor” was “M.A.Larson”. A real story editor is just so crucial... and it should be someone else, an outside opinion, someone to bounce ideas off of and to polish things up*. But for now, it’s an alright episode.. we’ll be back to drowning in porridge.. next time.


*I’m not trying to say he’s a terrible editor, Larson is only one man, he can’t reasonably do the same amount of work two people would do for this episode.