MLP:FiM - "The Last Crusade"

[Darrin]

Here is my review of the episode.

[spoiler]I lot of unexpected things happened in this episode.  The possible break up of the CMC and Scootaloo's parents as well as her aunts sort of took the highlight... but why did it all seem so forced?  It seems like the writer made a political statement just for the sake of doing so, sort of like "hey we did it too in a kids show."  It wasn't forced, but it seemed expected to happen just because it's the cool thing to do.

Scootaloo's parents were some of the weakest characters I've seen in awhile.  Super boring, bland, cookie cutter, and just having so far-reaching career.  Seemed forced.  So did their lack of parenting and how poor they seemed to be at it.  Scootaloo's Aunt's seemed like much better figures to watch over Scootaloo... and speaking of which, did Scootaloo just live by herself in her parents home and have constant figures watching over her all this time?  Seems like a pretty big plot hole they just all of a sudden tried to fill... but didn't.

The CMC breaking up... we've had plots like this before and it didn't get me invested.  Instead we had a bunch of long-dragged out scenes of them crying.  This episode lacked humor and charm.  The ended was forced and just made everything come together for the sake of the storyline.  It was weak and a poorly written episode.  It's a shame this is probably how we will send off the CMC with such a weak episode.  Disappointed.[/spoiler]

My score: [spoiler]4/10.

[Anyponedrawn]

Episode Review

[spoiler]As much as I should have liked this episode, I can't help but feel it was too bland, boring, and totally predictable.  There was nothing here I didn't expect to happen in the story.  There was no heartbreaking split up and the parents were as bland as you could get.  Personally, I'd rather we never have known about Scootaloo's family and kept it a mystery because how we were introduced to them was just as dumb as the whole episode.  The parents entry into the school was seriously one of the dumbest scenes I've ever seen.  I easily put this down as one of the most uninspired and poorly written episodes of the series... and for sure this season.

3/10.

[Rainberry]

[spoiler]It was a pretty run of the mill episode that seemed predictable.  Way too much had to just lay into place for the outcome of this episode to happen.  There weren't any major highlights to me as it just seemed pretty average.  The parents weren't that interesting and I feel I would have liked them more if they were more average... but they were to fictional.  It was just average. 

5/10.

[1234]

Lol, why are you all spoilering your reviews?

[✨proponypal✨]

Lol, why are you all spoilering your reviews?

Because it’s the new cool kid trend

[Smiles2us]

Lol, why are you all spoilering your reviews?

Because it's polite for people who haven't watched it yet probably.

[1234]

Obviously. I mean, why now?

[Anyponedrawn]

Because the episode came out exactly on that day.  So I wanted to make it private for people so as not to get spoiled.  Usually if my reviews come a week or so after the episode premiers, I don't spoiler it.  Just common courtesy that I see others did as well.

[Kiwi]

Talk about a conflicting episode.  So many should be 'ground breaking' moments happened in this episode and yet all I can do is walk away rather bored and thinking it was lackluster. 

The writer also said coots gets a new foalsitter every day between her Aunts, the Cakes, Rarity, Rainbow Dash and likely the Apples too. That seems pretty far fetched... they foalsit all year, 24/7?


It goes without saying whomever wrote this just shoved in as much as they could within the run time... yet somehow we had these dull periods of wasted crying that was dragged out far too long.  After all the rollercoasters of back and forth, we were left with, well, where we began.  Nothing changed, nothing happened, and really, we didn't even need this episode. 

So lets see... what did we gain from this episode... Apparently a broken family should stay broken even when the kingdom is being threatened like never before just because the parents didn't consider a filly's feelings. Oh, I guess we did get something out of this episode.  How weak.

5/10.

[Wolfwood]

This episode was absolutely awful!  Let me sum it up with this quote from TwilightIsMagic.

"It was honestly a foregone conclusion that Dubuc and Vogel would find a way to shoehorn in their “aunties” when they got appointed, and this episode seems to be tailor-made by the former exactly for that. It’s not their shagging each other that bothers me (the episode doesn’t harp on that, a small mercy at least), it’s that this ended up removing RD from Scootaloo’s storyline in one fell swoop."

Lazy as fudge writing and the parents were crap.  Absolute cop-out crap.  It was so lazy that none of this seemed believable to have been happening in the background with Scootaloo for all these years.  Truly one of the worst episodes I can think of.  I felt zero emotion in this episode and quite frankly, I am disappointed at how poorly this was all presented. 

1/10.

[Anyponedrawn]

^ Sounds like he liked it!

[Wolfwood]

If truly disliking something is liking something... then yes.

[LovesSneezingApparently]

I've long been mystified by the name "Scootaloo."

Knowing that a pair of hardcore adventure ponies somehow settled on it for their foal despite it utterly mismatching their more epic names doesn't help.

[Silverwing]

Scootaloo is seriously the weirdest name. 

[1234]

So before watching this, I saw how everyone here hated this episode and either deemed it weak or horrible.

Me? I didn't have a bad time watching it. It's not horrible. It is flawed, I'll give you that. Some parts of the story make no sense (especially when Scootaloo wanted to leave on a train by herself, without her friends - before they decided to come along - which pretty much went against everything she tried to prevent), some of the dialogue was... meh, and it is true that Scootaloo's parents aren't too fascinating. And the crying scene lasted a tiny bit too long (reminded me of the crying scene in season 5's "Tanks for the Memories"). And the ending made this episode feel a little unnecessary.

But despite all that... I dunno. I still feel this episode had a bit of unexplainable charm. Almost felt like writing for a Season 1 episode at times. It's FAR from being one of the better episodes, but in my own personal opinion, I just don't feel it deserves a super-low rating like 1/10, for example. Maybe 5, as some people here have given it. Or maybe 6, if you wanna be generous. For me, it's just a watchable episode.

(Yeah, I know, this is the second generally disliked episode in a row that I haven't disliked. What can I say. )