In this episode, Princess Twilight and Fluttershy are called by the map to settle a feud between two families who can't remember why they're fighting against each other.
Well, that wasn't a bad little ride! Not a lot to say but that's not a bad thing. Good message and all that jazz. 7/10 I DID get a kick out of a couple of things though... Looks like neither Flut nor Rockette will be winning any strong mare contests anytime soon! And Sparky seems to have tapped into Pinkie's abilities without even knowing it!! Wait... Did I just go all "EqD Episode Follow-Up" on this stuff!?
Predictable, but pretty good nonetheless. I was hoping for another callback to past episodes, like for the other two map missions, but I guess some random hillbilly horses makes more sense than Twilight Sparkle helping a previously established character with obvious trouble making friends. Perhaps a vain character that refers to herself in the the third person. Perhaps a character that used to travel in a show cart and GODDAMMIT THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN A TRIXIE EPISODE.
Well... I can say I liked this one more than the last one at least. Twilight being Twilight was the best part. I kind of felt sorry for her when she kept trying all her " friendship solutions" that didn't work. Fluttershy came to the rescue to resolve the problem in the end. This one wasn't too bad.
Well, it wasn't awful, but I feel like this is the kind of junky kiddy episode that Season 1 actively tried to avoid. They were fighting, but the solution is that they should have been friends, the end. It certainly leaves some questions open as well. Where did the two families come from if there was originally just one guy each? How did the animals know about what happened so long ago if the ponies had long forgotten? It would have made more sense if a particularly long-lived animal (like a tortoise?), who had been there at the time, was the one to tell Fluttershy the story. I'm also surprised that Twilight is still under the impression that the map calls them to solve friendship problems, since neither Griffonstone nor Manehattan was actually a friendship issue. In the end, it's not an awful episode, but it just doesn't leave an impression.
The animals knowing what happened can be explained by stories passed down to new generations, but the whole "where did the families come from" thing is a good question. And even if that is explained away by mares showing up in the valley for no reason, that only accounts for the first generation. Who are the children of subsequent generations marrying? Is the show implying that the Hoofields and McColts are the product of inbreeding? It wasn't a bad episode, but it definitely wasn't as good as the Griffinstone and Manehatten stories. It would have been a decent filler episode, but it didn't seem like a good fit for part of the season's main story arc.
You know, in the end Twilight says that her meticulously prepared Friendship Folio wasn't any help after all, yet her first backup plan: "Get to the root of the problem" was actually the entire solution.
