Equestrian Editorial: A Look Back
For Whom The Sweetie Belle Toils
By Dominus
Season 4 had a great deal going for it. Complex themes, greatly improved visual effects, and emotional storytelling helped it stand out from its preceding seasons. Few of them have used those elements to the same degree as For Whom The Sweetie Belle Toils. Combining a Child-Like setting with dark, psychological elements is seldom seen in media, outside of Psychonauts or the Mother game series. In a franchise covered in adventure-y episodes with a moral slapped on, For Whom The Sweetie Belle Toils is an exquisite anomaly, capturing a meaningful story with storytelling techniques atypical to MLP as a whole.
Much like Sisterhood Social, it’s primarily focused on the relationship between Rarity and SB. The roles are essentially reversed, though the cause and context greatly set it apart. In SS, the conflict is cut-and-dry; Rarity screwed things up with her sister, now go try and fix it. In The Belle Toils, the audience is only provided a seed of the answer early on, and they’ll likely pass it off while Belle’s rage builds up. Timing is everything. And as we find out later in the episode, the cause is a dissonance of memory. Tempered with ire, Sweetie Belle becomes the saboteur to her Big Sister’s important works(and vicariously her career)…
…Which begins the main event of the episode. It certainly isn’t Luna’s first Dreamwalk with the CMC, as Sleepless in Ponyville had reminded us. The potential damage is a good deal larger than what Scootaloo‘s dealing with, which is likely why Luna employs what would likely fall under “Tough Love”. As Critic Tommy Oliver pointed out, Luna doesn’t really Spoon-Feed her the answer - she has to work for it. Desperate to keep the birthday bash from unraveling while SB remains upstairs and the guest become impatient, she brings out some of the party supplies and does her best to keep their interests sated…which is where the perceptive lapse begins. Sweetie Belle sees her “pre-empting” the party, implying her to be an egotistical prima donna. She storms off to her room, and her childhood(unbeknownst to rarity) becomes thorned due to the past. Finally armed with this knowledge in a waking state, her and the CMC rush to remedy what could end as a disaster. A problem solved, a bond improved, with the past left in the past.
This episode along with Rarity takes Manehattan helped cement writer Dave Polsky as one of the most noteworthy for Season 4. I’ve always preferred his character work for making them relatable and human, instead of a walking cliché. I remember re-watching Look Before You Sleep, scratching my head at the differences in character between rarity then and rarity now. My complaints are generally minor - Luna’s voice very near the end gets substituted by someone else…I’m guessing there was an issues with the VA or something. The other complaint would be the laugh during the sabotage seemed a bit contrived - evil cackles aren’t necessary for a petty act of vengeance. Besides those 2, I was wholly impressed with the 22 minutes of animation…which I’ve rewatched too many times to count. >.>
It’s one of the best episodes to date. Giant balls of awesome can be found here. If you haven‘t seen it, it‘s worth the look.
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