S09E16: A Trivial Pursuit

[Wayoshi]

Twilight's hopes of keeping her Trivia Trot winning streak alive are waylaid when she's unexpectedly paired up with Pinkie Pie, who has never been to a trivia night before!

This thread is for discussion of the episode. This episode airs at 11:30 Eastern / 8:30 Pacific on Saturday, August 17!

Official preview clips and images are okay to post, as is speculation about the episode. Spoilers from non-US releases are NOT OK to post.

Early spoiler thread: http://www.roundstable.com/forums/viewt ... =16&t=1962

[Applepie2017]

Also Itunes leaked

[Octavia]

Prediction: Twilight's gonna be annoyed by Pinkie not being good at trivia, but then Pinkie will get them the win on an obscure question related to parties or candy or something.

Also how weird would it be if you were some random pony going to the pub for trivia night and a princess walked in

[The Doctor]

I didn't really like that. Between this and last week's episode they are really dropping the ball in showing how much the character's have grown in preparation for the finale.

[PonyHag714]

Twilight was at her adorkable best in this one. I guess they wanted to give us one more dose of that before she takes on the responsibilities of ruling.

I think it would have been more fun to have trivia questions about events of previous episodes, but I suppose that wouldn't be fair to characters who weren't involved in them.

[Octavia]

Hardcore slice-of-life episodes are my favorite.

My prediction was incorrect. Instead of the lesson being not to underestimate your friends, it was about how having fun playing games is more important than winning.

[SlateSlabrock]

I think this one needed one more scene. Apologizing is good, and not taking a game so seriously is good, but show somehow that Twilight is making amends for her behavior. We get that at the veeeery literal tail end, but it could've used something a little more. Even 30 seconds.

I spotted Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon! They're here!



See 'em?

no?

Here:

[Fizzbuzz]

I wish I didn't have to miss this one due to travel since I think it was hilarious. And even after all that, it still didn't go for the cliche of Pinkie Pie miraculously bailing the team out in the end, which is what I came into the episode expecting. I suppose it could've worked the lesson a bit harder as SlateSlabrock said (perhaps if the episode didn't use the whole first act on establishing the teams), but I still appreciated what we got.

I'd heard some takes from around the fandom of people who watched the leaked version and were complaining about "memefaces," so I went in thinking there was going to be something particularly wrong with how this was animated, but it turned out to just be complaints about the show's wackier art direction in recent seasons. While I can understand that some people might've preferred the more restrained look of the early seasons, I have greatly enjoyed how FiM's look evolved, and I hope it's a direction the G5 show can continue in. (That 3D short with a phoned-in Pinkie Pie doesn't inspire confidence, but I assume that was the summer project of some random Hasbro intern or something.)

Twilight Sparkle as a hardcore angle shooter made perfect sense to me. For Equestria's sake, perhaps we should be glad she apparently never got into tabletop gaming like Spike did.

[PonyHag714]

I agree. I've always enjoyed watching Twi freak out ever since Lesson Zero. I think she's just letting loose before she takes on the serious responsibilities of ruling.

[Fizzbuzz]

I thought about this classic YouTube CC screenshot again and it in turn made me think of this episode.

[Mechanical Ape]

Yeah, I do trivia contests because my buddy Dave loves writing them (he’s a teacher) and always makes me playtest. Let’s see how I do with this!

• Spike’s nightgown and cap are the best little ol’ thing.
• Ha, a ragged old Pon-3 shirt for sleeping in.
• Yeah, this is how Dave gets too.
• Those are some damn good team names, Pinkie!
• We really needed a jump cut to Traumatized Starlight and we didn’t get one.
• They burned the face budget for the whole season on this episode.
• Ha, Twilight completely backstabbed Pinkie. This is some Season 1 stuff in the best way.

Really loved this one! Great faces, voices, character moments, and it’s nice to see Twilight be a jerk sometimes.