Fillies, Gentlecolts, and foals of all ages, welcome once again to another edition of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic recap/review. We’ve reached the penultimate episode of the season, and just like the season prior, the focus is once again on Pinkie Pie. But can our favorite random nutcase deliver once more time this season? That’s a case we intend to solve with this week’s episode “MMMystery on the Friendship Express”.
Protecting the precious pastry
We open the episode with Pinkie admiring the Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness (Or the mmmm), a cake that Mr. and Mrs. Cake have made for a contest in Canterlot. They’ve given Pinkie Pie the job to take care of it, a responsibility Pinkie holds quite dear. She gets the help of her friends to get it to the Friendship Express train, as the Cakes worry seeing their precious cake almost get ruined on the way there. But Pinkie still manages to get the cake into the train, as they head off to the contest.
While on the Train, the mane six meet the other chefs who have also entered the competition. Entering the contest as well are French chef griffon Gustav Le Grand, who has made a pile of eclairs. Another entrant is Doughnut Joe, with his city of Doughutopia. And finally Mulia Mild, with her giant chocolate moose. They all argue over which of them deserve to win the contest, and Pinkie begins to worry that the three plan to sabotage the MMMM.
The rival confectioners
That night, Pinkie tries her hardest to watch over the MMMM, but in the darkness continues to sees figures that she believes could be trying to sabotage the cake. However, Pinkie tries her best to defend the cake, but eventually falls asleep. She awakens the next day, and notices the cake is still intact… Until Twilight points out that a whole side of the cake has been eaten, which puts Pinkie in a panic.
Believing that one of the bakers did it, Pinkie makes herself a detective (even wearing a detective hat), and assigns Twilight as her lowly assistant. However, instead of looking for clues as to who could have wrecked the cake, she begins to make accusations about the three rival chefs. Making Gustav come off as a silent movie villain, Doughnut Joe as a James Bond type secret agent, and Mulia as a ninja. However, she still has no concrete evidence on any of them to support her accusations. She wonders out loud though why if they were out to sabotage each other, why the other confections were left alone. However, after the train exits a dark cave, they soon discover that the other confections have been sabotaged, and Pinkie has no idea who do doned it.
Twilight takes over detective duty
Tired of Pinkie’s wild accusations, Twilight Sparkle decides to take over the role as detective, and immediately begins to look for clues. She calls back everyone when she figures out who did it. The first clue she finds is a blue feather, which means that it was Rainbow Dash who took a bite of the cake. But that wasn’t all, a strand of pink hair was also found at the crime scene, meaning Fluttershy was responsible as well. Also, a fake eyelash was found as well, which belongs to Rarity (who was covering her eye with her hair as to not reveal that she wears fake eyelashes.
The guilty ponies apologize.
The three of them apologize for taking bites out of the cake and are quickly forgiven by Pinkie. Pinkie, now learning how to be a detective correctly then reveals that the saboteur of the other confections were the bakers themselves as they each have pieces of dessert on their bodies. They all say that they only did it after Pinkie made the desserts sound so delicious. With everything ruined however, it looks as if all is lost, but they all decide to combine what’s left of their desserts and enter it in the competition.
The episode ends at Canterlot, with Pinkie telling the moral to Princess Celestia. The moral being that one shouldn’t be so quick to judge others, and that you should always get your facts straight first before making wild accusations. Twilight offers Princess Celestia a slice of cake, and Pinkie devours the entire cake in one bite in classic Pinkie Pie fashion.
Well, that was quite a mmmystery, but did this episode leave a delicious taste? Let’s get to the always tasty pros and cons.
PRO
Pinkie’s accusation stories were easily the funniest part of this episode. The fun classic references to things like James Bond and silent films is Pinkie at her finest. And in an episode that really lacked some stronger bits (we’ll get further to that in a minute) this was easily a major stand out moment that helped big time.
I liked the competing confectioners as well, I especially chuckled at the Julia Child donkey. They made good “antagonists” for this episode.
I was also very much pleased that the culprit didn’t go the almost too obvious route of it being Pinkie Pie, and instead was a collaborative cake eating by three of Pinkie’s friends. While the “it was her friends all along” has been done before in a previous episode, this time it was handled far better. Plus, I liked Rarity’s mane covering her eye. Nice touch.
CON
This episode’s pacing felt a bit off in comparison to previous episodes this season. For the most part, it felt like this plot was squeezed too tightly into a 22 minute episode, and in turn it really hurt the episode’s quality.
For the most part this episode lacked in really strong moments, and even lacked in a lot of quality humor moments. The opening bit with the cake, and Pinkie’s accusations aside, there really wasn’t any huge laugh moments that previous episodes of this season provided. And that really hurts, especially when doing a silly mystery story like this one.
And finally, this entire episode felt like filler. It didn’t have the quality feeling that some episodes this season had plot wise. For the most part, it was rather bland, and sadly forgettable in the grand scheme of things. And when you look at how not just how far superior the Pinkie Pie episodes were this season, not to mention how the penultimate episode last season, which was also a Pinkie episode fared better, you can see this one was really just there. And when winding so close to the finish of this season, that’s a shame.
“MMMystery on the Friendship Express” was a decent little mystery episode, with a solid moral, and some funny moments. But it just really felt like a total filler episode, and definitely one of the weaker episodes this season has provided. It’s far from a horrible episode, and you may find something in it you’ll enjoy, but for the most part, this was a very lack lustre episode. There’s no mystery here, just an average episode.
RATING: 7 out of 10
In two weeks, you are all cordially invited to the My Little Pony event of the season. In the two part season finale it’s “A Canterlot Wedding”. Twilight Sparkle’s brother Shining Armor is set to marry Princess Celestia’s niece Princess Cadance. But when Twilight learns a dark secret about Cadance, can she save her brother? Or will this be one unholy matrimony? Find out in two weeks in the must see wedding of the year!
See you next time bronies and pegasisters.