My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic ‘Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3’ Review

By on Sunday, April 6th, 2014

Right when I saw the name ‘Amy Keating Rodgers’ I was immediately excited for this episode. It’s always fun seeing new writers take control of the characters, but nothing beats seeing the classic all-stars. Amy has written one other episode in this season thus far, the fantastic ‘Filli Vanilli.’ The previous episode was a pretty solid one of Applejack, 8.5/10. This one is Rainbow Dash starring. She’s my least favorite pony, but under such a great writer I was looking forward to it nonetheless. Well, I’m sad this say this was definitely her weakest episode yet, and one of the weaker ones of Season 4 overall.

Here’s the official episode description from The Hub:

Rainbow Dash has to get ready for her entrance exam into the Wonderbolts Reserve, but she has trouble studying. The other ponies try to help her out, but they each have their different way of studying and they all don’t seem to help Rainbow Dash. Luckily, Twilight comes up with the perfect way to help Rainbow Dash get ready.

Rainbow Dash can be very annoying sometimes, but she can be written as the most brave pony of them all. Unfortunately, this is one of her ‘annoying’ appearances. The last time she was in Wonderbolt training was in the season 3 episode, ‘Wonderbolts Academy.’ So I suppose this is kind of a continuation. The whole first half was pretty sadly written on Rainbow’s part. She doesn’t like to study, okay,  but shouting to Twilight, “It’s all your fault!” after the latter tried to help her? Rainbow also seems too laid back in the first half about the ordeal. If this were any other test, sure, but the Wonderbolts? In all the episodes regarding that she’s ecstatic, not here for some reason. It’s just overall a poor rendition of her.

There were some cool things about this episode. Amy writes another fantastic Fluttershy. But it’s really Pinkie that shines with her unexpected Fresh Prince of Bel-Air homage. I didn’t see that coming. This show never fails with the surprises. The end message was pretty solid, very solid actually. No one way of studying is correct, everyone studies in their own way. While the road getting to that message wasn’t the best, that moral is still one of the stronger ones.

Rainbow_Dash_celebrates_her_exam_result_S4E21

Overall, this was generally a weak episode. It’s by no means bad, but Rainbow Dash was pretty painful to listen to. Twilight and the other ponies, especially Pinkie, were all very good however. Amy Keating Rodgers is still my favorite writer, but she hits more of a foul ball than home run with this one.

OUR RATING
6
+Twilight is a cool teacher +Pinkie's Fresh Prince home was fantastic +Good message -Rainbow Dash was AWFUL

S#!T Talking Central

  • immblueversion

    Yep, this is the exact opposite of what I thought of the episode (save Twilight, the rap, and the message being awesome).

    • Logan

      Ditto. I quite liked last week’s episode, but I’d take this over it in a heartbeat. I’m a huge Flutterfan who blows hot and cold about Rainbow, but I’m seriously wondering whether I may even have liked this ep *more* than “Filli Vanilli”. As far as Dashie’s performance went, this is up with the likes of “Sonic Rainboom” for me.

  • wasabi

    You didn’t see RD’s conflicts in herself? You didn’t see how she reacted to the other study methods? Did you not hear the hilarious and witty banter between Twi-Twi and RD?

    Call me crazy, but I consider this one of the best eps in the ENTIRE series, partly because of RD’s attitudes to learning. So much was in this episode, but you seemed to only focus on RD’s bad attitude and reacted negatively to it, and not see the big picture.

  • Jose Galapagos

    I liked this episode quite a bit. Rainbow being a class clown, and goofing off in class I thought was pretty hilarious.

  • mike

    Yeah, you need to get a sense of humor. Rainbow Dash was great in this episode.

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