As we have drawn to a close on another decade and now starting the Roaring 20’s all over again, seems fair to draw a close on this series on the road to the school play. Like I said before, the interesting thing is looking back on all these shorts and seeing what stayed and what was chosen as alternate endings. This is pretty much as the title says it is, being the after party of a long and tiring lead up to the glory that is a successful play. I’m sure my theater people out there know that feeling of when a performance is over and you can finally breathe and not have to play pretend anymore. That fits with anybody that’s been on stage though. But it seems like our little miner minors the CMC has something on their mind after the curtain drop. Let’s see what happens when there shouldn’t be anything else to go wrong after the show is over.
So like with the Fluttershy freaking out moment from last week, it looks like the magic talking apple tree was something that stuck around. Looking back that probably would be the most realistic thing to happen since Twilight forgets she has magic powers every few shorts. At least Applejack being a consistent mom friend is something I can look forward to all the time.
Aww don’t look so down girls. I’m sure G5 is gonna be just as great as G4 and you won’t go back to the nightmare that was G3.5 chibi ponies. Jokes aside, we get some character development from the least person I would expect it from. For some reason I can’t put my finger on, Mr. Cranky Doodle is a selfish hog that won’t let kids use school property. Ok that’s not really the whole idea of it. The girls made a slideshow of the road to the school play (a follow up, if you will) and their teacher won’t let them use the projector to show it because it has nothing to do with anything educational. He’s like the substitute teacher that tells you to do class work that your regular teacher isn’t gonna grade anyway. That just sucks.
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| RD: “Maybe one of us can turn his heart of coal… into a diamond!” |
Ok I’m pretty sure that ugly shoe costume is getting to Rainbow Dash now because even these two are not buying this joke. Someone burn this costume already before it burns a hole in my retinas. But with this, we have our three options to conning a cranky teacher out of his screen projector. This should be interesting.
Rainbow Dash Option
I always like seeing and comparing the human models to the pony (or donkey) models for the characters. Even with Cranky Doodle he still has this terrible wig instead of…I don’t know, the red haired mustache of a sea serpent. Or at least the Johnny Bravo blonde pompadour that Pinkie got him. Seeing this ugly rug is not making him any more sensible as a teacher. But I’m sure potentially grading a kid’s paper incorrect even with the right answer is something Principal Celestia and Vice Principal Luna should probably look into.
By the way, my vote is for the red haired sea serpent mustache. I think it just fits his style more. Anyway, moving on.
So Rainbow Dash’s idea is to get the kids to distract Cranky out of the room, sneak in, and steal the projector. My Little Pony: Friendship is Five Finger Discount. Don’t know how good of a message you want for kids but since Sonic the Hedgehog isn’t here to tell me not to, then it should be fine.
So in one of Cranky’s drawers we see that he’s ruined a good amount of D&D campaigns by taking their dice. He possibly also ruined someone from finishing Luigi’s Mansion with that handheld in there, too. Now you have messed with the wrong nerds. (Editor’s note: why do I feel like these are Firebrand’s dice that he’s probably lost while being Dungeon Master?)
So Rainbow Dash was able to steal…I mean borrow…the projector and show us some flashbacks to more continuity. So I’m guessing this means that these options were done and tried out, but didn’t go through since the final performance had the original set piece instead of Pinkie’s balloon world. But even with the projector, where are the girls who wanted to do this at the after party?
Editor's Note: If you watch through the other options, the pictures will be different and show more from the different options that weren't chosen.
Apparently the way to get a teacher out of his classroom was to distract him with more teaching somewhere else. Maybe this is why I’m not a huge fan of Cranky. He’s a math teacher. And what kind of math is he teaching them? How old are they when they need this much chalkboard for math. With the academic scene from The Friendship Games, I understood how they would do something like that, but they’re older than the CMC. They’re at least in middle school learning this stuff. So even without the desired results the CMC wanted, the after party was still a hit with the stolen/borrowed projector so I guess we can call that a 3 out of 5.
Applejack’s Option
So in Apple Bloom’s words, this is good ol’ fashioned Stubborn Off. It’s not like we haven’t know Applejack to have a stubborn side to the point of being either obnoxious (“Honest Apple”) or obnoxiously right (“The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000”). But with Cranky literally being a cranky old donkey, it would be an interesting fight to see who stands their ground the longest. But with Applejack’s bedroom eyes in the mix, it might be a close call to say.
Disclaimer: This is joke. I don’t condone charming teachers to get your way, especially when it's a sixteen year old.
Well look what’s happening here. It’s the next season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Five Finger Discount. Guess they learned from Rainbow Dash well. And all while Applejack distracts Cranky with reasons to stay here and keep asking for the projector…that’s being taken…right behind his back.
So I guess the trick was to not just take the projector but to also leave a decoy so he wouldn’t notice right away. Which makes not a lick of sense. They couldn’t even find a white box to make it look more like it from a distance. I mean how blind is the old guy anyway?
Well it looks like the jig is up and the box with the flashlight on it didn’t get past old Cranky’s keen eye. Either that or he wanted to make sure Lyra and Bon Bon were actually doing homework instead of partying. Looks like they’re busted.
Wow. He was actually thanking him for finding his flashlight for him. Even if the flashlight was taped to a cardboard box and placed where his projector was. Uh… I guess that’s thumbs up on getting away with borrowing the projector. I did enjoy listening to Applejack and Cranky going back and forth with who can be more stubborn. It’s a funny moment that kind of reminds me of the old Looney Tunes cartoons where two characters would argue back and forth until one of them slips and gets a shotgun to the face. Thinking back on that now, that’s probably gonna be deemed too violent for children since they can barely get away with homosexual characters in cartoons of today. Right Steven Universe?
Rarity Option
So I’ll have to get a little personal with this next one. She’s my favorite of the Main 6 now, but in the beginning, Rarity was probably my least favorite character with how she would use her looks and charm to get what she wanted like she was using people. I see it now as a way of using what you got to move things in your favor, but it was still something that bugged me unless she was using it to help others like in this situation now. So this should be something to watch for all the Rarity fans who like her overwhelming confidence that’s not fueled by ego like Rainbow Dash has issues with.
Ok so two things here. We have Rarity playing a pseudo lawyer representing her sister and her friends and we also have her saying that she’s representing the Cutie Mark Crusaders. So…CMC doesn’t stand for the Canterlot Movie Club now? It stands for what it originally stood for in the pony world? Then what is a cutie mark in the human world? Do they really get tattoos somewhere that represents something they like to do? In all honesty, I don’t remember them mentioning it before or even seeing the CMC logo anywhere around the human world so what does that mean here? If Equestria Girls does come back with G5, I would love to see if their design gets updated with their new Cutie Marks (or clothes patch).
So I love Rarity hitting him hard with the common sense of Cranky trying to pull off school equipment as his own property. Not to mention throwing in there that Applejack and Rarity are hard-working tax payers whose taxes go to paying for their public school. This was so much more adult than I was expecting to happen and I’m loving every second of Rarity playing Single Female Lawyer to a teacher. Worst thing is, Applejack works at a smoothie bar along with helping her family with the family business and Rarity works at a clothing store along with hopefully selling her own creations independently so they probably do get more tax write offs than a teacher since they both have their own lines of business. In terms of finance, they truly would out rank a teacher's salary. Just let that sink in.
Ok I have to bring up the lovely continuity of this moment where she just conned him out of a projector with common sense. Mostly because this scene reminds me of the episode “Putting Your Hoof Down” where we see Rarity and Pinkie Pie showing the different ways of asserting yourself. The method Rarity used in the pony world was to flirt and charm someone into getting what she wants, but what she used here in this short is similar to what Pinkie did with another Looney Tunes moment of going back and forth and tricking up the other person's words until they mess up. They could’ve recreated that moment here, but Pinkie doesn’t really come off as someone using “common sense logic” compared to Rarity.
So this was actually a fair trade off compared to stealing the projector like the other two options. Since Cranky also pays taxes (that being his only argument against what Rarity said), he at least has the right to watch over the projector as long as he supervises its uses. Meaning we get the beauty of watching him get down on the dance floor after a few cups of hard cider and a lampshade needing a new home. Probably the noblest option, which is saying something when it’s Applejack, element of honesty, who condones taking something without permission.
So that was Happily Ever After Party and this was a nice and fun way to wrap of this line of continuity while getting out follow ups every week. The first two was pretty much a variation of “steal from the old cranky guy”, but at least with Applejack it had some funny dialogue with it and Cranky was happy to have his flashlight back. Rarity’s option is hands down my favorite with how serious it got where she had to confiscate the projector as evidence of him claiming school property. Rainbow Dash is pretty much the option of "stealing causes you to sit through horrible math problems you shouldn’t be learning until college". Anyway, I’ll be getting back to other follow ups through the history of Equestria Girls and just because the holidays are over doesn’t mean I won’t do the final holiday special (especially when I live in the mid-west of the U.S. and it’s snowing even now). It just takes a while and I’ll still be uploading a lot of past stuff because until there’s a G5 of Equestria Girls, I’ll be looking back at all the favorites. Let me know if there’s any you want to talk about and I might write it. This is Penny Wrights wishing you a Happy New Year and let the Technicolor ponies distract you from any unfavorable news you read on social media.
Editor’s Note: I also made sure to use exactly 20 images in this follow up because I’m just that big of a dork that way.
