Excellent work from the cast and creative crew this episode.
Let's start with the good in this episode. Firstly, Rainbow Dash. It's a wonderful breath of fresh air to see this new side of Rainbow, a side that's much more sensitive and caring than the headstrong, teetering on brash, one we're used to seeing. It's genuinely heartwarming to see her so utterly devoted to Tank, and how much it pains her to not be able to spend Winter together. Secondly , excellent group scenes with a perfect blend of a serious, sombre attitude and laugh-out-loud humour . Both the "crying" scene and the "I'm not angry" scene had intelligent dialogue, and a few brilliantly set up punchlines, mostly coming from Pinkie; speaking of whom, was written very well as a support character, not being dumbed down to squeeze in some wacky personality, as has been seen in previous episodes. Thirdly, the song. It's technically spectacular, and the lyrics perfectly demonstrate Rainbows devotion to Tank again, whilst coupled with some awesome visuals, which brings me nicely onto another point, the Weather Factory. The fantastic visuals during the "chaos inside the factory" scene alongside the creativity for deciding how different aspects of the weather should be shown (i.e. lightning in a bottle) left me praising the art team to no end. Finally, this episode was very reference-heavy, from the ponified Who's on first sketch and Game of Thrones' "Winter is Coming", to the slightly more debatable, such as background music in the Weather Factory being a blend of Rainbow Factory and Mission Impossible and hibernation being used as an allegory for death, and Rainbow going through the Kübler-Ross model of dealing with the death of a loved one.
The bad? There are some minor grievances, but I wouldn't list them as truly bad points, so let's move on to...
The ugly - really only small gripes, such as the story was really quite simple in essence , so a little bit of the episode felt like padding to bring it up to the 22 minutes, such as the "crying" scene was prolonged just a little too far, as the song was, and it didn't really feel like it belonged in this episode, as I felt it was a little too theatrical, but I've let it slide because of it's beauty.
All things said, favourite Rainbow Dash episode, and I hope to see more of the same greatness throughout season 5
Let's start with the good in this episode. Firstly, Rainbow Dash. It's a wonderful breath of fresh air to see this new side of Rainbow, a side that's much more sensitive and caring than the headstrong, teetering on brash, one we're used to seeing. It's genuinely heartwarming to see her so utterly devoted to Tank, and how much it pains her to not be able to spend Winter together. Secondly , excellent group scenes with a perfect blend of a serious, sombre attitude and laugh-out-loud humour . Both the "crying" scene and the "I'm not angry" scene had intelligent dialogue, and a few brilliantly set up punchlines, mostly coming from Pinkie; speaking of whom, was written very well as a support character, not being dumbed down to squeeze in some wacky personality, as has been seen in previous episodes. Thirdly, the song. It's technically spectacular, and the lyrics perfectly demonstrate Rainbows devotion to Tank again, whilst coupled with some awesome visuals, which brings me nicely onto another point, the Weather Factory. The fantastic visuals during the "chaos inside the factory" scene alongside the creativity for deciding how different aspects of the weather should be shown (i.e. lightning in a bottle) left me praising the art team to no end. Finally, this episode was very reference-heavy, from the ponified Who's on first sketch and Game of Thrones' "Winter is Coming", to the slightly more debatable, such as background music in the Weather Factory being a blend of Rainbow Factory and Mission Impossible and hibernation being used as an allegory for death, and Rainbow going through the Kübler-Ross model of dealing with the death of a loved one.
The bad? There are some minor grievances, but I wouldn't list them as truly bad points, so let's move on to...
The ugly - really only small gripes, such as the story was really quite simple in essence , so a little bit of the episode felt like padding to bring it up to the 22 minutes, such as the "crying" scene was prolonged just a little too far, as the song was, and it didn't really feel like it belonged in this episode, as I felt it was a little too theatrical, but I've let it slide because of it's beauty.
All things said, favourite Rainbow Dash episode, and I hope to see more of the same greatness throughout season 5
