MLP:FIM Rock Soild Friendship

This episode was written by Nick Confalone, who wrote what is my favorite episode of last season, The Saddle Row Review. This is his sixth episode, his previous ones were Party Pooped, Hearthbreakers, No Second Prances, The Saddle Row Review and Dudgeons and Discords. He is currently one of my favorite writers on the show. The storyboard artists are Sherann Johnson (who has been working on the show since the first episode) and Ward Jenkins (who started on the show last season).

This is an excellent episode that brings together my two favorite ponies besides the mane six or the CMC. This is Starlight Glimmer and Maud Pie. Luckily these two characters have great chemistry. You really believe their friendship and it feels so natural. It is just a joy watching these two work together.

There is much more than this to recommend the episode though. Pinkie, while she annoys the characters, never comes off as annoying to the audience. This is something that is done all together wrong too often in cinema and TV, and it is great to see it done so well here. She is actually funny and gets some good laughs and we can always see her heart is in the right place. On top of all this the humor in this episode is fantastic, Maud's delivery of comic lines has lost none of what makes it so great. A flashback scene (which I will not give away here) gets very huge laughs.

In other words this is just a great episode.

-Michael J. Ruhland