My Little Pony: Generation 5: Make Your Mark: The Sleepover Episode: It's Bad

I saw some bad episodes of a not-good horse cartoon a while ago. I've written about My Little Pony: Make Your Mark (aka Gen 5) before, to go over how I felt about its cast, but that write-up really only scratched the surface. The show's problems go beyond the characters merely being flat, incurious, unobservant and inconsistent: there's a real problem with how episodes are constructed that leaves them feeling bizarrely disconnected and meaningless.

This is epitomized by Make Your Mark's season 2's two-parter, revolving around a magic lantern being stolen during a sleepover. To give you a preview, the show does such a bad job with structuring that it's not even clear how the two episodes are supposed to be connected. The second episode actually works better and makes more sense if you don't watch the first episode beforehand. I am not joking.

Before I can get into that mess, I'm going to need to talk about a few of the episodes leading up to the sleepover two-parter to give you the appropriate context.

As I mentioned last time, it's not clear how closely Make Your Mark is supposed to follow from Friendship is Magic. On the one hand, Twilight Sparkle is dead, but her magical ghost makes an appearance, and is Sunny Starscout's special interest. Sunny is obsessed with Twilight Sparkle and her friends, and this drives the plot of the movie which precedes the series. The main cast of Friendship is Magic are legendary figures in Make Your Mark, the inspirational heroes who lead Equestria to a golden age.

On the other hand, Friendship is Magic started with the main pony races living together in harmony, and ended with the Ponies making friends with a multitude of other races -- gryphons, dragons, changelings, yaks, hippogriffs, sea ponies, buffalos, kirins, breezies, etc. We saw the start of a concerted effort for integration between the pony and non-pony races, with a school in Ponyville dedicated to allowing the children of the various races to intermingle and learn to co-exist. Aside from the unfortunate choice to make ChristianityFriendship something that the ponies needed to spread among the heathen races, things ended in a pretty good place.

At the start of Make Your Mark, all those non-ponies have vanished. Beyond that, the main pony races live in total isolation from each other, with each race believing the other two to be entirely untrustworthy, if not outright evil. Each race occupies a single city, despite the variety of locales depicted in Friendship is Magic. What happened to Ponyville, Cloudsdale, Manehattan, Appleloosa, Dodge Junction, Rockville? Are all those cities just gone? How was Canterlot allowed to fall into ruin?

What about all the non-pony races, who have vanished altogether? If the ponies couldn't stomach living in the same city as another kind of pony, what did they do to the now-absent non-ponies?

The setting feels weirdly post-apocalyptic. Combined with the largely empty streets and the sterile environments, there's a certain background feeling of horror to everything.

But what could have caused this? Well, according to legend, this all happened because "a magical accident caused a Unicorn to hurt an Earth Pony." (In fact, it was Opaline, who kicked Fluttershy in the butt on purpose to foment racial strife. So not actually magical, not actually an accident, and not actually involving either a Unicorn or an Earth Pony. That said, if I was going to go to war to defend any pony from being kicked in the butt, it would be Fluttershy.)

That's fucking grim. Nine seasons of tireless work spreading the glorious word of Friendship, and one "accident" shortly after the epilogue results in the destruction of Equestria as we know it. I'm not sure how to hold out hope for any kind of happy ending if these dumb horses can revert to turbo racists over a single hearty shove. Pony racism is so dire that in the first "season" (consisting of a single 45-minute episode), the ponies of Maretime Bay do racisms at each other over petty incidents until all the racism causes a black hole to open up beneath their feet, nearly killing all the remaining Earth ponies. Maybe that's what happened to all the missing cities.

Anyway, Sunny's father was obsessed with Twilight Sparkle, and Sunny inherited that as her special interest. And lo and behold, a few episodes into the series, Sunny gets to hear a pre-recorded message from Twilight Sparkle! Twilight delivers a dire warning to Sunny, telling her that an evil pony will try to claim all the magic in the world for herself.

From here, you might expect the season to revolve around that evil pony. You might expect the main cast to work towards discovering her identity and how she plans on stealing all the magic for herself, while also thwarting her schemes as they arise. You might expect this conflict to escalate over time, as the ponies learn more about Opaline, and as Opaline steps out from the shadows to enact her plans.

But here's the problem: Opaline is such an ineffective villain, and the main cast is so painfully unobservant, that no such escalation is possible. Despite Sunny's idol warning her about an evil pony planning to conquer the world, she makes no effort to actually look into the matter. Meanwhile, the episodes with Opaline all revolve around her deciding that some Macguffin is the key to acquiring all of magic for herself, making a haphazard effort to acquire it, and then abandoning the idea at the first hiccup.

Beyond not bothering to heed Twilight's warning at all, the ponies don't have any kind of memory or curiosity that would lead them in the direction of Opaline even as she directly interferes with their lives. What they have is the ability to say, "Hmmm," when something suspicious happens directly in front of them, and that's it. After that, the suspicious thing will fall directly out of their brains.

Actually, only Zipp has the ability to reliably say "Hmmm." Meanwhile, Sunny has the ability to yell at anyone who expresses discomfort, such as "being uncomfortable with how someone is obviously lying to you." Sunny is and will always be the actual villain of Make Your Mark. She is much better at it than Opaline.

Anyway, no matter how utterly obvious a deception is, the best you can hope for is one of the ponies to look at it, squint their eyes, and go: "Hmmmm." They will then move on, immediately scrubbing that moment of doubt from their head.

It does not matter how many unexplained things happen to these horses, because they cannot concentrate on anything beyond what is happening directly in front of them at the given moment. Opaline can lure them into deathtraps, hide magical racism phones among their birthday presents, kidnap babies, whatever. The ponies don't merely fail to realize that all these terrible events might be linked; they don't realize anything terrible has happened at all.

I'm not exaggerating. In one episode, Opaline has a baby kidnapped, and after an episode of frantic searching for him, the result is: nothing. The ponies don't recognize that what happened was a kidnapping. As soon as the baby is directly in front of them again, his disappearance is forgotten.

When Opaline kidnaps the same baby a second time, they don't even jump right to frantic searching, because... it's not the first time he's mysteriously disappeared.

These fucking horses.

In one episode, two of the flying horses are lured into a seaside cave. They go there because someone anonymous sent them a photo of a flower they've been searching for. After briefly noting how odd the nature of the tipoff is, they head into the cave, only to end up trapped inside when a boulder is rolled in front of the only entrance. They're trapped!

After arguing for a while, the flying pegasus ponies fly up to the ceiling, discover a pegasus-sized hole, and then call for help using the phones they've had the entire time. They need help widening the already-pegasus-sized hole so they can escape.

One of these ponies is an influencer who is addicted to posting on social media, and it took her until the end of the episode to try to get better reception on her phone.

Now free, the ponies realize the photo was intended to lure them into a trap, and-- no, just kidding, as soon as they stopped looking at the photo, they forgot about it, and thus forgot how they ended up in the deathtrap cave in the first place. They do not wonder further about the identity of the anonymous assassin. They do not connect the threat on their lives to Twilight Sparkle's warning about the evil pony. How could they make that connection, when Twilight Sparkle isn't directly in front of them, telling them to pay some fucking attention to literally anything that happens in their lives?

It's worth noting that the non-influencer of these two ponies fancies herself an investigator. It is her job to investigate the things that happen around her. It is her job to investigate the things that happen TO her. It is her job to at least NOTICE the things that happen to her. "Noticing things" is her passion in life, and yet this kind of thing still flies over her head.

In another episode, it's Sunny's birthday, and she receives an anonymous gift: a compact mirror! What she doesn't know is that the mirror is actually a communication device, which Opaline can speak through while disguising herself however she likes.

Okay, so you probably see where this is going. Sunny idolizes Twilight Sparkle, and Twilight has appeared to Sunny through a magical device before. Everyone who knows anything about Twilight knows her as a heroic figure, an unquestionable champion of harmony. Twilight Sparkle is, in Sunny's eyes, the greatest princess that Equestria has ever known, and worth trusting implicitly.

So naturally, to fool Sunny and win her trust, Opaline disguises herself as... Sunny.

Yes, that's correct. Opaline decides that the best disguise for fooling Sunny is Sunny.

She, as Sunny, tells Sunny that she is Sunny's "inner voice," and that Sunny should listen to Sunny even when Sunny feels uncomfortable with Sunny's advice.

See, Sunny has an issue. Sometimes she manifests Alicorn powers, which makes everyone worship her. I guess despite the pony races hating and despising each other as recently as five minutes ago, they still carry a genetic obedience to royalty. But Sunny doesn't like being worshiped for being a superior race, so it's awkward for her!

Opaline, as Sunny, tells Sunny that actually she loves being worshiped, and she should totally lean into the "racially superior" thing to get her way. This is Opaline's plan for making Sunny into her apprentice... somehow. This, in turn, will allow Opaline to steal all the magic in the world.

Sunny is skeptical, but, after a brief eye squint and a pointed "Hmmm," she decides to trust her "inner voice", as it speaks to her externally, through an enchanted device given to her by an anonymous party. She trusts her "inner voice" even as it contradicts her extremely strong, extremely personal feelings on the subject.

Hang on, what was it Twilight said about an evil pony with powerful magic that she needed to be careful of? What is it with these anonymous intrusions into the lives of her and her friends? Didn't two of her friends recently almost die because they were led into a cave and trapped by an unknown assailant, who knew what they were searching for and contacted them anonymously to lure them into the deathtrap?

Just kidding! None of that matters because it isn't what's happening right this second. What's happening right this second is that this magic reflection of me is telling me to do a race supremacy, so that's what I'm going with.

It works for a while, but then Sunny grows tired of people listening to her ideas on the basis of her superior race rather than their merits, so she shelves the alicorn thing. Opaline, having encountered a tiny speedbump in her plan, decides to abandon her idea of gaining Sunny as an apprentice and move to the next plan.

As for what Sunny does with the compact -- the one with her evil "inner voice" that told her to go against her morals and feelings and lord it over the lesser ponies with her racial superiority -- she obviously does not investigate it or think about where it came from or why it tried to trick her into being Evil. She instead brings it to her home, The Brighthouse, a lighthouse. Unfortunately for Opaline, her lighthouse (The Brighthouse) is warded against outside magic, which means Opaline can't scry inside it nor talk through the compact. She'll need another way to get access to the Brighthouse.

And so our sleepover episode, The Traditional Unicorn Sleepover, begins.

So, how is Opaline going to infiltrate the Brighthouse? She can send her apprentice, Misty, to Maretime Bay, but how is Misty supposed to gain Sunny's trust to the point where she can access the Brighthouse? It seems like it's going to be impossible.

The episode opens with Izzy meeting Misty for the first time and immediately inviting her to a sleepover at the Brighthouse.

See, Misty is the first unicorn that Izzy has seen since leaving the unicorn city of Bridlewood. Conveniently, that means they need to be friends. And conveniently, when a unicorn makes a new friend, it's tradition for her to invite them to a sleepover. And conveniently, Izzy lives with Sunny. Convenient!

Listen. This isn't the kind of show where you're supposed to think about why anything happens. Things just happen! Maybe you're the kind of person who likes it when things happen for plausible reasons, instead of the writers just ginning up whatever contrivance they need at that moment to make the plot work. Maybe you like having consistent characters with coherent reasons for doing things.

If you're one of those types, I have a message from the show for you: Fuck You. Get used to it, you'll be feeling that way a lot.

...regarding "first unicorn that Izzy has seen since leaving Bridlewood," there's a weird inconsistency here: in the 45-minute special that takes place between the movie and the first proper season, Maretime Bay seems to populated by a mix of Earth Ponies, Pegasus Ponies and Unicorns. This leads to racial strife as a result of their unstable magic powers, which leads to the city nearly getting swallowed up by a black hole of Too Much Racism, Not Enough Unity.

But following that, all the Pegasus Ponies and Unicorns disappear from Maretime Bay. I guess maybe they went back to their own racial cities? I genuinely don't know whether this was intentional or not. I don't know if the writers decided the non-earth ponies went home after the black hole incident, or if they just fucking forgot that Maretime Bay is supposed to be a multi-racial city.

Anyway. Misty is the first unicorn that Izzy has seen since leaving Bridlewood, so she invites Misty over for a "traditional unicorn sleepover." Sparky growls at Misty multiple times, which Izzy completely blows off because growling isn't dumb unicorn bullshit, which is her only interest in life.

So, having been invited to the Brighthouse, naturally Misty declines. Episode over. I told you it was going to be impossible!

...

No, just kidding!

Not about Misty declining. She really does do that. Opaline has to push her to go to the sleepover, so she can have an opportunity to steal Sunny's magic lantern. It's Opaline's latest plan, by which I mean it's the latest MacGuffin that will grant her everything she's ever wanted. It's so, so very important to her that she is willing to do anything to acquire it: even sit around doing nothing, before giving up the moment anything goes wrong.

So Misty heads to the Brighthouse. Sunny asks Misty what her name is, and for some reason, Misty decides to lie about having a last name. She looks at the Brighthouse and comes up with "Bright," then looks at a house and comes with "-house." It's the "Pea - Tear - Griffin" scene, but unironic.

Realizing that her lie is too obvious even for this show, she looks at a mural depicting a dawn and amends "-house" to "-dawn." Misty Brightdawn.

Izzy, noticing Misty's panic, her desperate glancing about for words to make a last name out of, her need to revise her answer after initially inventing a far too implausible lie, decides to -- just kidding, Izzy doesn't notice any of this and invites her in, completely unconcerned about this total stranger's panicked reaction to being asked the most basic of all possible questions you could ask someone about their identity.

This makes a little more sense when you remember the main cast lies to each other all the time for no reason. They're used to it by now.

Why do they lie to each other? Here's what the show has to say about it: Fuck You. That's all you're going to get.

We are then treated to far too many scenes in a row that play out exactly the same way: Izzy introduces an activity done during a "traditional unicorn sleepover," which Misty finds new and delightful, before having to walk back her reaction to pretend it's familiar to her. Again, and again, and again. When she doesn't know the lyrics to a song, rather than admit she doesn't, she tries to just make them up. There is no way for this lie to work! She isn't going to GUESS the song lyrics she doesn't know!!

And yet none of the other characters seem to think any of this is any cause for suspicion, even as Misty is forced to shout, "HA HA I WAS MAKING A JOKE, OF COURSE I ALREADY KNEW THAT THING YOU JUST SAID" eighteen times in a row.

No one is suspicious, that is, except Zipp. It's Zipp's job in the show to notice things happening in her surroundings and actually care about the plot of the show. This means while the other ponies merely say "Huh?" when Misty blatantly lies to their faces in unmistakable ways, Zipp gets to take it to the next level: she gets to say, "Hmmmm."

Which she gets to do a lot in this episode.

After an interminable loop of Misty claiming to know everything about unicorn traditions before being exposed as knowing nothing about unicorn traditions, Misty finally breaks away from Izzy's eternal torment long enough to go searching for the lantern and, immediately--

--can't find it.

...

...

It's nighttime. The room is dark, lit only by some twinkle lights and THE LANTERN. She looks around, directly at THE LANTERN, unable to find THE LANTERN. She gets closer to THE LANTERN, staring at THE LANTERN, unable to find THE LANTERN in the dark room lit only by THE LANTERN.

Why not? Because: Fuck You. You should really know better than to expect the situation on screen to make sense by now.

Finally, after several shots of her being unable to find the lantern--

...she still can't find it. Why can't she find it? That's simple: Fuck You, that's why.

The camera pans as Misty scans the room for the lantern, trying to find the only visible thing in the room, the sole source of light by which she could see anything else. She squints her eyes, searching for the object directly in the center of her field of vision, the illuminated magical artifact shining an eye-catching array of colors directly at her face.

...

Ah! There it is!

The compact!!

Yes, Misty manages to miss the lantern, but spots the compact by the light of the lantern. She grabs it so she can contact Opaline, in order to report: fucking nothing. She has nothing to report. She hasn't found the lantern yet. Still, she decides to call Opaline anyway, for some reason. The compact doesn't work inside the Brighthouse, but Misty solves this by throwing open a window, leaning six inches out of it, and then SHOUTING VERY LOUDLY INTO THE COMPACT.

Opaline instructs Misty to check the roof, where the Unity Crystals are. Bear in mind that the Unity Crystals are far more powerful than the lantern: they are the source of All Pony Magic on Equestria, whereas the Prisbeam Lantern just has a tiny bit of that power. You'd think she'd have Misty prioritize the Unity Crystals if she can get to them, but then there'd be a single detail that actually made sense. And we can't have that, can we?

As a sidenote, this bit contains the one good thing across both episodes: Opaline starts doing a maniacal laugh, and Misty joins in. Opaline stops laughing, compliments Misty's laugh with an "Oh! Better, Misty!", and then gently chides her with, "But it's a marathon, not a sprint." This show would have been so much better if Opaline was genuinely encouraging of Misty's reluctant villany. They have her play up being a villain, but only rarely in the fun way that this scene uses.

Unfortunately, the elevator to the roof has hoof-reading technology, apparently, causing Misty to set off an alarm. Zipp (and only Zipp) investigates and catches Misty. Misty makes up a lie about needing to find the toilet, and then a follow-up lie about how she loves to see a great view before using the toilet. At this, Zipp's suspicion vanishes. She, too, understands the joy of taking in an impressive vista before relieving herself!

Zipp herds Misty back to the party, so of course we need another scene of Misty being incredibly suspicious, after the scene where she was caught sneaking around, being incredibly suspicious. Zipp finally puts together that there's something suspicious about Misty. So she asks her a probing question:

She asks Misty where she's from.

In response, Misty panics and flees the house, and in the aftermath, Zipp apologizes to the rest of the ponies for wanting to know the "real truth" about Misty. Izzy steps over what she's saying by whining about how the sleepover was a failure. The other ponies don't disagree that there is a "real truth" about Misty they don't know, but they also don't follow that up in any way.

The thing about this whole sequence is that it is entirely fucking pointless. There is no need for Misty to lie about where she's from. Unicorns are all eccentric forest dwellers anyway! Their entire culture in the show is that they're zany. That's it, that's their culture. They're idiosyncratic, but in that boring way where they're all identical flavors of idiosyncratic. Totally synchronized idiosyncracisity.

More like idiotsyncratic, am I right? Eh? Eh?

Anyway, there's nothing stopping Misty from saying her parents never let her participate in any traditional unicorn sleepovers and being done with it. Does she really think Izzy won't buy that instantly? The other ponies are desperate to believe even her worst lies! They'd eat that lie up!

Misty eventually returns to the sleepover and... decides to lie about why she left, claiming she was hungry and wanted to get some berries from the garden to eat. Despite there being a fully-stocked kitchen and party food in the house. And despite everyone in the room having BEEN there when she FLED THE PARTY, so they ALREADY KNOW WHY SHE LEFT.

Gentle reminder: Fuck You.

Doesn't matter, Izzy is just so glad Misty is back. They resume the sleepover, and somehow all simultaneously make up the same lyrics to a song. How? I have no idea.

After this, they all go to sleep. Misty wakes up, and... walks right past the lantern, lowering her head as she walks off-screen. I was going to make fun of this, but I think this is actually the show effectively conveying that Misty feels too guilty to betray her new friends after the bonding experience of making up lyrics together. Could it be?? Is the show actually communicating Misty's divided loyalties between her abusive parental figure and her trusting new friends? Without any dialogue at all?? Well done, Make Your Mark! Have a point, you earned it.

(This is undone when Misty later steals the lantern without anything having changed. Oh well.)

Misty goes off to grab the compact and start talking to Opaline again. And with all the ponies sleeping in the same room, she starts SHOUTING TO OPALINE ABOUT HOW SHE HASN'T GOTTEN THE LANTERN YET, BUT SHE'S TOTALLY FOOLED ALL THE PONIES SLEEPING NEARBY INTO THINKING SHE'S THEIR FRIEND

MISTY SHOUTS ABOUT HOW SHE GATHERING INTEL ON MAGIC FOR OPALINE, AND OPALINE SHOUTS BACK THAT SOME OF THE SLEEPOVER ACTIVITIES SOUND LIKE "FUN" INSTEAD OF "GATHERING INTEL", SO MISTY HAS TO SHOUT BACK ABOUT SHE'S JUST DOING IT TO TRICK THE PONIES INTO THINKING SHE'S REALLY THEIR FRIEND.

In the middle of this shouting, Zipp wakes up.

She looks over in the direction of the shouting, where Misty's ass is hanging out of the window.

She listens as Misty shouts to Opaline about how she is getting TOP SECRET INFO from the ponies that will DEFINITELY escalate their SECRET PLANS to the NEXT LEVEL.

She narrows her eyes, as Misty shouts to someone about lying to them all just to squeeze them for information.

So Zipp does what Zipp does best. Say it with me now:

Credits roll. End of episode. With The Traditional Unicorn Sleepover done, we move into the second episode, Hoof Done It?.

Here's where it gets confusing.

You might be saying, "Wait, what? How could it get confusing? Zipp knows Misty is lying to them, right? So the next episode has to start with Zipp either confronting Misty, or revealing what she overheard to the other ponies, right?"

No. We are still not at the point where Misty's behavior warrants a confrontation. Zipp overhearing her talking to Opaline about her betrayal doesn't go anywhere. Here's that shot again, with Zipp in the same room, looking in Misty's direction, and going "hmm" about what she hears:

This doesn't go anywhere.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT DOESN'T GO ANYWHERE," you're shouting, if you're me watching this episode for the first time, or second time, or any time after that.

It doesn't go anywhere. It's never brought up again.

"WHAT THE FUCK," we are shouting together now. (I'm glad you agree with me so passionately.)

Don't worry, it gets more confusing from here.

Alright, so what happens instead is we get an outside night shot, with Misty vaulting over a garden wall, before tripping over a shovel, revealing that she has stolen the lantern and has it hidden inside a sack.

Misty tripping over a shovel 300 feet away and down the hill wakes Zipp up. Somehow. Misty shouting in the same room as the sleeping ponies only barely causes Zipp to stir, while her hitting some soft dirt down the block makes Zipp sit bolt-upright in bed. Don't ask me how that works. File it under "Fuck You".

Zipp goes to the window and shouts down into the garden to ask if anyone's down there, causing Misty to flee. Satisfied, Zipp goes back to sleep.

Zipp wakes up the next morning, and immediately realizes the lantern is GONE!! And after a brief pointless diversion in which Sunny tries to convince her the lantern isn't gone, they both realize that the lantern is GONE!!

So at this point, you're probably saying, "Well, since Misty left the sleepover in the middle of the night, she's the only suspect for the theft, right?"

Except, no. I told you things were about to get more confusing.

See, despite the previous episode ending in the middle of the night at a pivotal moment with Zipp waking up during the sleepover, and despite this episode starting in the middle of the night with Zipp waking up, this episode isn't about the night of the sleepover. We don't get to see that. The sleepover concluded off-camera, and this is a completely different night, a non-specific number of days later.

"Hold on. Even if it is a different night," you protest, "Surely Zipp would remember Misty shouting loudly about stealing TOP SECRET INTEL during the sleepover and suspect her immediately?"

Ha ha. No. Did you think she would remember that? Fuck You.

"Wait, how did Misty break into the Brighthouse to steal the lantern some random number of days later?"

Ha ha! Unclear. Does that sound like something that should have happened on-camera? Well, Fuck You.

"Alright, well, given Misty had all night to get the lantern back to Opaline, surely it's gone now, right? Opaline wins, series over?"

HA HA! NOPE!!

The lantern is still in the garden.

See, when Zipp yelled at Misty from the Brighthouse window (from too far away to even see Misty, apparently), Misty decided that rather than flee with the lantern, she would stay where she is, grab the shovel, dig a shallow hole, half-bury the lantern in it, and then flee so she could return for the lantern later.

"Wait, half-bury?", you ask.

Yes.

Half-bury.

Her plan was to come back later and retrieve it when no one was looking.

This is what she stuck around, in line of sight from The Brighthouse, in order to do. She could have noticed that Zipp closed her window after looking around for 5 seconds, and just left. Instead she did this, with the assumption the bag would still be there when she got back.

UPDATE: Hang on. We saw Misty flee immediately when Zipp shouted down to her, which happened immediately after she tripped over the shovel. So what actually must have happened is that Misty fled without the lantern, waited for Zipp to close the window, returned to the lantern, THEN half-buried it while she was under NO scrutiny and had already successfully fled once, then fled a second time, with the plan to return to that spot in the morning so she could try to flee a third time.

Just... whatever. Whatever. F you or whatever.

Back to Zipp, she's in full detective mode, which means it only takes her a few minutes to notice an extremely obvious ring of dirt from the garden* where the lantern used to be, suggesting the lantern was brought to the garden and then placed on Sunny's nightstand. She also finds an extremely obvious path of dirt from the garden leading from where the lantern was down to the door leading out towards the garden.

*(she figures out the dirt is from the garden by tasting the dirt, then gets disgusted by the fact that she tasted dirt, which makes no sense. How did she identify the garden dirt by its taste if she's never tasted dirt before?)

So, now that she has a clue pointing her towards the garden, Zipp... continues to fly around the Brighthouse, looking for other clues and finding none. No signs of forced entry, even. Either Misty is really good at this, or the door is just unlocked.

During this, Pipp notices her sister's ass glowing (okay fine it's her cutie mark), which means Zipp is super enjoying herself. Pipp is utterly delighted that her sister is doing something which makes her ass glow.

Pipp goes out to the garden and almost doesn't notice the half-buried lantern, until she trips over the same shovel Misty tripped over. She grabs the lantern and takes it back to the Brighthouse.

So, episode over?? I guess??

No, because Pipp sees her sister's glowing ass and decides returning the lantern would spoil her fun. Remember that the lantern is the second-most important artifact of Raw Magical Unity Power in the Brighthouse. It's not a toy. It's not even Zipp's super important artifact of Raw Magical Unity Power!!

It doesn't matter. Pipp decides she's going to keep the lantern hidden, and also not let any of the other ponies in on this, regardless of how much stress the missing lantern is causing them.

Instead, she goes to where she dug up the lantern, leaves a big, obvious hoofprint, and sprinkles a bunch of her signature wing glitter around so that "Zipp will find me in no time". She makes it as obvious as possible for Zipp. (Spoiler alert: Zipp never gets it.)

Seconds after Pipp leaves, Misty returns to the scene of the crime. During the day. Instead of leaving with the lantern in the middle of the night, she decided she would leave it half-buried until well into the morning, then return to retrieve the lantern from THE COMMUNITY GARDEN when EVERYONE'S AWAKE and THE COMMUNITY would be there.

She realizes the lantern is gone, notices Pipp's Big Obvious Clue, and vows to find the new lantern thief before the other ponies can. Zipp catches her at the scene of the crime and asks why she's there. Misty makes up a bad lie about being there to fill a gopher hole, but Zipp realizes the hole is actually lantern-sized. Brilliant observation!

Except there's also the hoofprint and the signature wing glitter. So. It was just a bad lie.

Also, Zipp will never ask herself why the lantern was buried in the garden in the first place. If the lantern was temporarily buried, it would suggest the thief was planning to return, right? And now here's Misty, at the site where the lantern was buried, and nope never mind lost my train of thought.

As Zipp brings up the stolen lantern, Misty loudly yells about not knowing what a lantern is and flees.

Zipp says that Misty's behavior is "totally weird," but also that "it tracks." These fucking horses. These fucking horses!!

Meanwhile, Sunny makes a plan to bring about so much Unity that it causes the lantern to light up so they can find it. I don't care about this.

Zipp harasses some random children about the crime, causing the children to randomly mention Pipp's signature glitter. The same wing glitter found in the garden.

Zipp goes, "Wing glitter...?"

And then decides against thinking about that any more, because "a good detective doesn't just fly to conclusions." She decides to go harass the elderly instead.

Then she interrogates Izzy, who confesses to having brought the lantern to the garden last night in order to harvest tea leaves, which explains how dirt from the garden got on Sunny's nightstand. Zipp is disappointed to learn that Izzy returned the lantern, even though... how the fuck did she think the dirt got on the nightstand in the first place?? Obviously the lantern was taken to the garden and returned??

These fucking horses!!

As far as I can tell, this causes Zipp to stop being curious about how or why the lantern ended up buried in the garden, because that doesn't come up again. Does it make sense? No. Oh, were you hoping anything that happens in this episode makes sense? Well, guess what: Fuck You.

Instead, she returns to the garden, and spots Misty, who is skulking about for no reason. She calls out to Misty, who flees, causing Zipp to chase after her. I really love how Zipp's investigation never moves forward because of a decision she makes or a realization she has, but rather through the completely random events that occur directly in front of her.

Speaking of completely random, Misty sprints into Pipp's beauty salon. She takes a seat in one of the salon's styling chairs, causing Zipp to lose track of her. Zipp somehow can't identify Misty by her unique fur color and hair, and simply leaves the beauty salon instead.

Rather than simply stay in her chair, Misty decides to leave the beauty salon immediately following Zipp. Outside, she runs into Zipp, because that's what happens when you follow someone immediately!! My god, these horses are bad at what they do.

She ducks back inside, only to be confronted by Zipp, who accuses her of stealing the lantern. Zipp brings up how Misty has been suspicious since the sleepover: her probing questions, not knowing anything about unicorn tradition and trying to sneak into the elevator leading to the Unity Crystals, her general shadiness and her constant sprinting off. She backs Misty into a literal and figurative corner and demands that she confesses.

...only for Pipp to intervene, revealing the stolen lantern. She explicitly mentions having found the lantern outside the Brighthouse, but no one seems to care to think about how the lantern got there in the first place. Like I said, I think Izzy mentioning bringing it out and returning it "solved" that part of the mystery for Zipp, even though it shouldn't have.

Zipp feels bad that her first real case was totally fake and that she accused Misty of "a bunch of horrible things she didn't do"... but then decides that since she had fun, it's okay.

Oh what, were you hoping for a good moral? Ha ha. You know what's coming by now: Fuck You.

Zipp apologizes to Misty. And then Pipp sings a forgetable song about looking for something, accompanied by the random kids that Zipp harassed earlier. You'd think an episode all about Zipp would have her lead the song, but no.

Sunny's plan to make the whole city Do a Unity is called off. Everyone has a good laugh, causing their asses to glow and the lantern to shine brighter. Zipp takes a video of everyone's asses and decides she wants to do more scientific analysis related to lantern/ass proximity.

Izzy seizes hold of the dust-covered single braincell for just long enough to suggest to Zipp that her next investigation should be who that evil pony Twilight Sparkle mentioned is. This suggestion goes unacknowledged.

Opaline chides Misty for her failure, smacks her ass (to remove the fake cutie mark she drew there) and decides that stealing the lantern is for chumps and she's not going to bother any more. This, despite the fact that Misty is still welcome at the Brighthouse, and that she's capable of sneaking into the Brighthouse without leaving any trace behind. We already did that episode, so the plan is dumpstered.

The End!

So. Okay.

There's this thick band of neurons in your brain called the corpus callosum that connects your left and right lobes. If that band gets severed (for example, as part of a medical procedure to treat certain kinds of seizures), your lobes can no longer talk to each other. You'd think this would radically alter how someone behaves, but it's actually shockingly mild. The first person to undergo corpus callosum surgery woke up from it and immediately reported that the only side effect they felt was having a "splitting" headache.

But there is at least one bizarre effect: the speech center of your brain is in the left hemisphere. That means the right side of your brain is no longer talking to your speech center.

So they did an experiment where a subject with a severed corpus callosum would be shown instructions, but only to one eye at a time. So if they saw "draw a face" with their eye (which, remember, transmits signals to the left side of your brain), the subject would take their right hand and draw a face. If asked why, they would say because that's what they were told to do.

But if they saw "draw a face" with their left eye, the person would take their left hand (even if they're not left-handed) and try to draw a face. And if asked why, they say something like, "I don't know, I just felt like it."

If they then received an instruction like "stand up and leave the room" to the left eye, the person would stand up and move to leave the room. If asked why they were leaving, they would say something like, "I'm thirsty, I'm just going to grab a drink from the vending machine."

Their speech center-half of their brain never saw the instruction. The speech center-half of their brain didn't have a reason for their body getting up to leave, so it invented one. It made up whatever it needed to in order to make the events that were occuring try to make sense, even when they didn't really. Why would they abandon the experiment like that without asking for a break? Doesn't matter, the brain just needed a plausible-enough reason to have them walking out the door.

That's what watching Make Your Mark is like, but especially this episode. Nothing that happens in any scene makes any sense at any point. The ponies go where the plot needs them to go and do what the plot needs them to do, but it's all divorced from any kind of rationality. The episode only starts to make sense when you realize the actions come before the reasoning.

Zipp watches Misty run away from the garden and decides that's normal because she's not chasing her yet.

Later Zipp watches Misty run away from the garden and decides that's suspicious because now she is chasing her.

Zipp doesn't come to any conclusions about the lantern-base-shaped dirt mound on Sunny's nightstand because none of her actions depend on that conclusion. There's a single, simple conclusion to draw -- that the lantern was taken to the garden and returned -- but Zipp doesn't make this conclusion because the next thing she does is continue to investigate the Brighthouse.

The writers came up with where the ponies needed to be for their bad plot to work, and then assigned feelings and dialogue to the ponies after the fact.

What are we supposed to make of Zipp overhearing Misty shouting to Opaline about TOP SECRET INFO, with absolutely no follow-up? What are we supposed to make of Zipp stating explicitly that Misty running away is normal because she's just anxious like that, only to heatedly pursue her the very next time it happens?

What are we supposed to make of Zipp being so familiar with the taste of dirt that she can immediately identify that the dirt is from the garden, only for her to then immediately express surprise that she just tasted dirt? The only way to understand it is to imagine that the action came first, independent of her post-hoc justification for it.

There is no consistency or coherency to be had. And that's a problem when you want to write an episode about a detective doing deductions!!

It's not great even when the point of the episode is to ask, "is leaning into racial supremacy okay if it means selling more smoothies?" but it extremely does not work when it comes to mysteries. You can't make a plot that relies on observation and deduction when your characters are all willfully blind and thought-free.

You won't be surprised to learn that the two episodes were written by two different people, which explains how the first one ends on a cliffhanger with zero follow-up. There's no other way one episode could end with "Zipp in bed at night" and the next one could start with "Zipp in bed at night" while expecting you to assume the two episodes take place on different nights.

I honestly think The Traditional Unicorn Sleepover was written as a two-parter, but Hoof Done It? was written as a standalone episode. That's the only way I can make sense of TTUS's cliffhanger ending which is dropped and never brought up again. I don't think the writer for Hoof Done It? had the script for TTUS on hand. That's the only thing that makes sense to me. Whether or not it's true, the fact that it makes sense to me suggests that the production situation for this show was dire.

Do you want to know how dire the production situation for this show had to be? In the first episode of season two, Izzy talks loudly about how happy is that she'll get to celebrate a friend's birthday for the first time, because this is her first time having friends.

Except... Izzy had a normal childhood. She's had friends and (presumably) celebrated birthdays all her life.

Misty is the unicorn who was kidnapped as a baby. Misty's never had a friend before.

The writer confused Izzy with Misty and no one caught it. Not the writer, not any editor or proof-reader. Not even the voice actor, who would presumably be familiar with her own character. (Or if anyone did catch it, there was no time to fix it.)

This would be like Applejack talking about how excited she is to get to try apples for the first time. It shouldn't happen. The writer should be able to remember which of the six main characters was kidnapped as a baby.

But you can't even just blame the writer at this point. You have to assume the entire production was plagued with problems. There had to have been issues with the quality of the show bible. There must have not been enough time set aside for review and revision. The fact that a two(?)-parter was written by two separate people is already a huge red flag, right? Is that normal?

Have these writers worked on anything else I'm familiar with? Damn, the writer for the second episode of the sleepover two-parter contributed writing to The Owl House? Wow.

So where was I going with all this? Well, I think the answer to that is obvious: I don't think the show is very good.

Hopefully you picked up on that.

I'm not sure what else to say. I honestly didn't watch much past the 2nd season, since it went from "so weirdly incompetent that it was still entertaining" to "just tedious." This is the show at its most interesting, when it was still struggling so much that it accidentally revealed just how hard it is to make a competent show. In a way, did this two(?)-parter not make us detectives, observing the myraid contradictions the episode presents and deducing what must have been true of the production as a consequence?

Sure, good enough.

...I put way more effort into this than I meant to.

Fuck Me, I guess. Fuck Us, one and all.

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Thanks for reading the whole thing! And my sincerest condolences for reading the whole thing.