WAIT! Wait wait wait wait...there's a character named Big McLargehooves?!
Sadly a fan name. But who knows, I don't know of the official name of that guy, so anything's possible (we got Derpy (briefly...) and Dr. Hooves in some respect, after all).
Anyway, I dug the episode well enough, though some of it was odd for me. I will admit that it played very against my expectations, as I was seeing one of two things happening before the episode started. Either Dash would get there and find her cocky attitude didn't match up with the skills of everyone else, and she was totally outclassed (which actually wouldn't work too well, seeing as she is legitimately skilled and, despite all her cockiness, works her tail off at being so skilled. She's earned where she is), or that she would get offered a more permanent position on the team, and have to choose between staying or going back to Ponyville with her friends. The episode ended on an odd note that sort of brushed aside the latter, but since it was stated to only be a week-long thing (possibly an early initiation of some kind, the pre-academy academy if you will), I can live with that.
I liked Lightning Dust a lot, since she's basically Dash without the loyalty. Was nice to see that they got along at the start (a rivalry was inevitable, but it was good to know it wasn't immediate. And that Dash was better technically, but that LD was, as Spitfire pointed out, better at truly pushing her limits). Spitfire's attitude was a weird one, but I'll ignore past-episode contradictions on the grounds that when she's on the job, she's a real hardass. As is to be expected. She did seem fairly reckless too, but as was pointed out by Rainbow Dash (ours, not the shows), she didn't exactly hear all the details (note that in-show RD left out the fact that she and LD lost control of the tornado). So a good Dash episode overall, and a nice little reminder that she is, at the end of the day, the element of Loyalty.
Still, some of it didn't work. The scenes with the rest of the group were padded like crazy, and while it was good to see where it eventually led, it felt quite superfluous for most of the episode. So a solid enough episode overall, and one that I'm stunned they didn't get to sooner (both in terms of a truly Dash-being-a-Wonderbolt story and of Dash-gets-a-rival story), but a step down from the previous two Grade-A entries.
Meanwhile:
Topic: That One Little Girl's 'Pony' Cartoon that's Slowly Devouring the Internet (Read 110009 times)