After here be spoilers, be forewarned. And also, this is an all-pony post, so if you're not into pony, you don't need to read it if you don't want to.
I re-watched it this morning. My opinion on first watching it yesterday was "Did not quite live up to expectations." I like it better upon rewatching; I caught some of the stuff I missed. I will say this is one of the ones that feels like pretty much a giant nod to the adult fans, many of the visual jokes are things a kid wouldn't get - like Discord's various standup-comedy references (first dressed like vintage Eddie Murphy, then doing the Rodney Dangerfield eye-thing, then as Gallagher).
I admit some of my disappointment was over the Smooze. Having seen this clip before:
I was really expecting/hoping him to do some doo-woppy singing, or at least go SMOOZE! a few times. (Yeah, out of context that clip is WEIRD. I think the big puffy thing is a pair of large ladies' underwear converted into a sail. And the two girls are witches)
Then again, Smooze did make the manga-cute smiley face :3 towards the end. (And he -or rather it, apparently Smooze is genderless - kissed Discord, which I found funny). In this incarnation the Smooze did gunk stuff up, but it was also acquisitive - it liked to eat shiny things and jewels, and it grew when it did. (I think more can be done with this, maybe in a later episode). It didn't seem to make the ponies sad or anything, just gunked them up.
(And I find myself wondering: how soon before we see fan-made plushies of Smooze? It wouldn't be hard to scrumble one up - some green yarn, an octopus pattern with a ruffle instead of tentacles, and a little embroidered smile. Actually, it might be kind of cute)
I dunno. The plot basically revolved around who got invited to the Gala (which rolls around again - it seems like seasons 1-3 maybe represented a single year of Equestria time, and 4 and 5 are starting another year? Given what we've seen of winter and of holidays and of the Gala).
One thing I really liked was the idea of how they did the "plus ones." Instead of, like in the human world, the unattached female ponies panicking and going "Ohmygosh ohmygosh I have to find a DATE," the Mane Six (mostly) just ask their sisters - AJ and Rarity ask their little sisters, Rainbow has Scootaloo come along with her (Scoots is now sort of her honorary little sister). Pinkie invites Maud, which then allows Maud to deliver the BEST line in the whole episode.
Twilight....well, she doesn't seem to have a plus-one, but maybe as an organizer she wouldn't? (Unless she had Flash Sentry stashed somewhere on the palace grounds).
Fluttershy....well, she provided the impetus for the whole plot. She invited a new friend. Treehugger.
Yeah, a hippie pony. I don't LOVE Treehugger but I don't hate her as much as I initially did. I admit that she's the sort of pony that in person form makes me roll my eyes and try to get away as fast as I possibly can, because of the vocal tone and also all the 'woo' about auras and stuff. (Though I admit I like the excuse of "I have to go align my chakras before I can hug you from a place of authenticity" when putting off someone who wants to hug you that you don't want to hug).
(And yeah, some of the fandom have now adopted her as Stoner Pony. Whatever.)
Fluts apparently met Treehugger when she was off visiting the Breezies, apparently this is Treehugger's thing - not quite a cryptozoologist, not quite an endangered-species activist.
So she decided, when receiving her ticket for the Gala, well, why NOT invite her newest bestie? Not thinking, of course, of Discord, who pretty much regards her as his sole friend. And then Discord finds out that, yes, actually, Fluttershy had asked someone else. (This is a little late for "prom season," but it reminds me a bit of it).
Discord goes kind of nuts. He's a teenager, or perhaps a pre-teenager, in terms of his emotional maturity - Fluttershy has abandoned him! She likes someone else better than she likes him! It's not fair! Anyway the Gala is stupid and he doesn't want to go ANYWAY! (until he gets his own ticket, and then HE is the one with the "Oh, my, can't show up alone, that would look bad" anxiety. Cue the Smooze - which he claims is an old friend of his. (I wonder how many more old MLP creatures are stashed in the Chaos Dimension. Heh. It's kind of like Hammerspace, in that sense)
Well, at the Gala, Fluttershy kind of ignores him, so taken up is she with her new friend. (And that also kinds of rings true in a childish way - so maybe there are some elements directed at the primary audience here - how many of us remember feeling abandoned when one of our little friends made a new friend. And on the other side of things, how many of us shamelessly ignored our old friends for a new one? Or, for that matter, at least in my own little circle's sense, ignoring one's old friends for one's first boyfriend?)
Some commenters have remarked that Fluttershy carries the "idiot ball" a bit in this episode, in how she ignores Discord. On one level I agree: it's a bit out of character for Fluttershy. On another level, there is that element of the sort of giggly crushiness that can come with a new friend (either someone you are expecting as a totally platonic friendship, like your new BFF, or someone you hope to become romantically involved with) and also, I think maybe that bit of it was in keeping with the fact that seven-year-olds are actually the original demographic of this, and it's kind of in keeping with how seven-year-olds often are.
At one point Fluttershy is made to make this face
Okay, that is one of the FUNNIEST expressions I have seen on a pony on that show. (And also, that's my face when a student launches into a totally TMI explanation of why they missed class)
And so Discord flips out a little again, and goes into a comedy-club routine (which he is awful at). At one point, he is trying to involve the ponies in a knock-knock joke, and they don't bite, and he declares, "This is the most basic of jokes!"
Maud Pie: "You're the most basic of jokes." Said in the flat-affect Maud Pie voice. I literally did laugh out loud at it. (Best line in the whole episode, I think.) Also: Maud Pie: classic older sister. (I could see myself having said something like that to my little brother circa 1980 or so)
Then there's a brief Shining reference, and the Smooze busts out and makes a mess of everything, and Treehugger clears it up with some weird whinny-chant (That actually redeems her a bit to me: the whinny-chant was pretty funny). Also, I wonder if a subtheme of this season is going to be "other ponies are the solution to the problem" - we saw it in the two-part season starter where Party Favor et al. were the ones who ultimately rescued the cutie marks. And we saw an inversion, perhaps, of that in the episode with Troubleshoes, where the cutie mark crusaders helped somepony else to learn the value of his cutie mark...
I liked the dresses and the hairstyles given the ponies in this episode (even though Rarity lost her dress, and went through the standard "I'm NAKED in PUBLIC" try-to-cover-all-the-"important"-spots*
(*I wonder at this, plus the occasional shot you see of a pony in a bikini. Ponies are ungulates, and so on female ponies, the ....mammary part....of their anatomy would be an udder, and would be down between her hindlegs. So no bikini top would be necessary. Then again, as a biologist, I may be overthinking this)
Anyway. I guess my short summary is I hope we see the Smooze again, wouldn't mind so much if we don't see Treehugger again.
(And was the sock puppet supposed to be a reference to something, or was it just meant to be confusing?)
Edited to add: Thought of this while mowing, though I suspect I'm not the only fan who did:
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