My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic “Party Pooped” Review

To call Season 5 of My Little Pony the worst is a bit premature, but so far a good number of the episodes have been more on the average side. The Cutie Map plot has been used way too irregularly. I may be sounding a bit negative, but make no mistake: the season is still solid, just at this rate not going to be one of the best. Pinkie Pie has had no starring adventure thus far. (She was a focus in “The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone,” but shared the spotlight with Rainbow Dash.) While Twilight and the other ponies appear for a lot of scenes here, it’s Pinkie’s journey to save the day and them discovering just how deep of a friend she is that makes parts of the story quite memorable. Unfortunately it’s sandwiched with the pretty awful “Yakyakistan” plot.

Here’s the official description from Discovery Family:

It’s up to Pinkie Pie’s party to save the day when an important friendship summit with some visiting yaks turns into an utter disaster, but it takes an epic voyage of discovery across Equestria to reignite her party inspiration.

It’s always interesting when other parts of Equestria are explored because the writers utilize the different cultures well. Sadly the inhabitants of “Yakyakistan” is too unbelievable. Now someone might tell me I’m thinking way too much about it since technically speaking, MLP is a kids cartoon. But see the difference between this and say Spongebob is that the latter doesn’t try to be anything. The writers of MLP have always succeeded at making it be something worthwhile, and not mindless like 99.9% of cartoons today. So it’s held to a higher standard. The running gag of the Yaks destroying things because it’s not like their country is just insane for too many reasons. For one thing, it makes them look really one-dimensional. Another is that they literally cause great damage, and they get away with it as if it’s normal to go to different countries and destroy things without consequences. It’s just silly to say the least.

New writer Nick Confalone’s rendition of Pinkie is engaging from beginning to end as we see her contemplate how to please the Yaks with a party. We rarely see in her in a worrying state of mind, so it was definitely interesting. Her journey to retrieve something authentic from Yakyakistan was fun, humorous, and engaging as she basically traveled all through Equestria in the course of one day. Perhaps the greatest highlight was the friends discovering she has a “secret party planning cave.” It delivered fantastic insight into how deep she considers making friends is. Out of all the other ponies, Twilight gets the most screen time since she’s tasked with diplomatic relations in attempting to make friends with the Yaks. Her worrying may have been a bit over-done, but some of it was funny to watch. The message was an interesting one, in that instead of trying to make a new friend feel like they’re at their home, rather you should make them feel at home in your home, showcasing what makes your place a friendly setting. It’s a unique message which hasn’t been touched upon in the show.

Overall, “Party Pooped” has some good things which keeps it from getting too low of a score. Pinkie Pie’s portrayal was great. The secret party planning cave was a really cool insight into how she operates as friend. Sadly just about everything else goes to awful running-gag levels. Because of this, it’s one of the lower tier Pinkie Pie episodes.