MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #7 - May the Best Pet Win

So My Little Pony is going to be taking a Rainbow Dash-centered twist for a few weeks, and first on our to-do list is to get that filly a pet! If the fandom's hypotheses hold true, she'll end up with either a turtle, a falcon, or Scootaloo. So let's get right to it and see what happens, shall we?

Here there be spoilers, fyi.



Rainbow Dash starts off having a twisted dream and ending up in the middle of a pony-pet playdate that the other mane five have weekly. Perhaps most importantly, we get to see Winona and Owlowiscious again! We haven't seen those two since... well, since they had their first appearances!

I don't think anyone really liked either of those characters much, though, so... eh, whatever. It's still cool.

As the ponies-with-pets explain to Rainbow why they didn't tell her about the playdate sooner (read: she didn't have a pet), Rainbow suggests that she might want to get a pet. Fluttershy, being Flutterhy, gets super-excited at the prospect of introducing Rainbow to her animals, and does so promptly. With a musical duet, even! It's a really fun sequence, and marks the first song of season two. It's totally worthy of that title, too, and it's kind of out of nowhere int he best kind of way. I mean, did anyone actually expect this episode to have a song?

While Fluttershy and Rainbow sing and Rainbow hates on most of her animals, we see a particular pet a few times and it becomes pretty obvious that said pet will end up being Rainbow's in the end due to its dogged pursuit of the title despite being ignored. Spoilers: it's the tortoise. And no one is surprised.

Ultimately, Rainbow Dash decides that the best way to decide on a pet is to make them fight to the death participate in a series of competitions to see which one is fastest, most agility, awesomest, and that sort of thing. So a batch of flying critters and the turtle from earlier show off their skills, all while being mercilessly judged by Rainbow Dash doing her best impression of Simon Cowell. Meanwhile her friends cheer her pursuits on, even after Twilight and AJ briefly comment that Rainbow seems to have the wrong idea of what having a pet is about. Do I sense a moral coming on? Quite possibly.

The events culminate in the finalists (a hawk, falcon, bat, and owl, along with the tortoise that adamantly refuses to be left out) racing Rainbow Dash herself through Ghastly Gorge, a terrible place filled with all kinds of things you might see in a merciless video games, from masses of thorns to "Quarray Eels", terrifying eels that try to devour all the competitors, and come dangerously close to succeeding. The things are practically ripped from Super Mario 64! Sheesh.

But then the twist comes along: Rainbow gets cocky and causes a rock slide, pinning herself under a boulder while the flying pets head off to win the race. Of course, there is still one pet left to save her and take her to the finish line, where she proclaims the tortoise victor and writes a letter to the Princess. She also names the tortoise Tank, which is a pretty great name, and gives it a magic propeller so it can fly with her. And they lived happily ever after and Rainbow had a pet!

Easily the biggest strength of this episode is its variety of characters. It has none of the typical background ponies (except for a very creepy and subtle appearance by Ditzy) and instead has a host of assorted other animals to focus on. The competitors are all very unique and fun to watch, even though none of them speak. It's great to see, and almost certainly something that will stand as unique in the series.

Unfortunately, the episode suffers from being too darn predictable. As I mentioned earlier, it's quite obvious as soon as we see Tank that he's going to be Rainbow Dash's pet, and it doesn't exactly help that practically all of the fandom already guessed it before they even knew that the episode was going to happen!

Much like Sisterhooves Social, however, the ending is a little bit of a twist from the usual. It would have been pretty easy for them to use the cliche of "slow and steady wins the race", but instead they tied the episode together with a nice moral about judging pets and friends by more than just physical qualities. There's even some great fridge brilliance to be had: ultimately, the pet that won Rainbow's heart was the one that showed itself to be loyal to her, and naturally that would be something that the holder of the Element of Loyalty would appreciate!

Even though the episode's predictable, it's still a lot of fun. I give May the Best Pet Win a

7.5/10

Pros:
-Awesome musical number
-Very unique characters throughout
-Pulled itself together very nicely, avoiding cliches

Cons:
-Really predictable

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Again we have an episode not nearly as grand as previous ones, but quite good nonetheless! And that musical piece was all sorts of fun, so yay. I can't wait to hear all kinds of fun remixes of it from the fandom!

And as a bit of a side note, I personally wasn't a big fan of the use of The Ride of The Valkyries in the Ghastly Gorge sequence. It's a fine song and all, but using premade music felt like it was almost squandering the talent that goes into making amazing custom background music for the series. That's probably just me, though, and I didn't really think it was anywhere near objective enough to put in the review. So I didn't!

So, how long do you think it'll take Tank to show up again? It only took Winona 29 episodes, and Owlowiscious managed to pop up again in only 9!

Speaking of popping up again, Big Mac's episode streak has finally been broken! Oh snap!

~C.O