MLP Review: “28 Pranks Later”

My Little Pony 2 comments

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You know what this episode reminded me of? A My Little Pony Tales episode called, “Impractical Joker”. The premise is basically the same, one pony’s pranks get out of hand and other ponies decided to give her a taste of her own medicine. There are two main differences with “28 Pranks Later”. First, Dash’s friends do tell her to put the brakes on the pranks rather than just going ahead to getting even. Second, the ending of theTales episode does not have Patch learning her lesson, but thinking of whom she could pull the prank her friends pulled on. One can hope Rainbow Dash learns to differentiate what pranks are funny and what pranks can be hurtful so she can stop doing the latter. Also,Tales episodes were 11 minutes in length.

But yes, that is the lesson of “28 Pranks Later”. Sometimes, the prank is just not funny and could even be hurtful like in the cold open. Fluttershy doesn’t like being scared and there had to have been a reason way back in “Griffon the Brush Off” that Pinkie refused to prank Fluttershy. I think we know why now.

However, the prank she wanted to pull with the Filly Guide cookies could be considered low. That may be why the others decided on a taste of her own medicine to show when you don’t think about how other ponies might feel about pranks and whether or not they’re more hurtful than funny. Another issue is that Applejack and Rarity practically tempted fate dismissing Dash’s first couple pranks as “lazy”. They would be the first two to be pranked after the castle meeting.

So in other words, not my favorite Season Six episode of the year, but certainly not the worst, and certainly better than “Impractical Jokers” from 24 years ago.

Pluses and Minuses:

  • +  Some pranks were actually creative
  • +  Zombie ponies!
  • +  Pinkie Pie
  • –  Rainbow’s prank with the cookies was low
  • –  Reminder of MLP Tales episode with similar premise

GRADE:  B

StatManDan

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  • Raffaele Lanza

    Like I said in the previous post. To me this episode was The Mysterious Mare do Well done right. The problems with MDW that made the episode really bad in the first place were two:
    1)Rainbow Dash didn’t do ANYTHING bad in the first place to deserve what the other Mane 6 did to her. Here she does;
    2)If they really wanted to get her taking easy with the attentions they should have at least tried to telle her, but they didn’t even bothered. Here at least they tried. Twice.

    Also this episode was way more funny and creative than MDW and gets bonus points for that.

    • StatManDan

      I actually seen a couple of “MDW done right” thoughts about this, so that is a fair assessment since fans feared this would be MDW 2.0.