My Episode Review/Rant on My Little Pony: Make Your Mark-Hoof Done It?

Greetings and salutations, my friends.

This is your top-of-the-line film, TV show, and episode reporter here with another review.

Today, I'm gonna give you guys my take of My Little Pony: Make Your Mark's "Hoof Done It?"

Here's the rundown of it:

Detective Zipp is on the case to find a thief who steals Sunny's magic lantern. Misty seems to be the prime suspect - or is she?

After finishing my review of "The Traditional Unicorn Sleepover", I knew that doing an analysis of "Hoof Done It?" was gonna be at the top of my to-do list. I just couldn't shake off the need to analyze it right away, especially since there were elements from the last episode that were supposed to lead into this one.

As for how many times I rewatched "Hoof Done It?" before making this review, it was just two more times. Reacquainting myself with this episode since first seeing it last year was, thankfully, not as much of a workout compared to the last two MYM episodes I watched. It was easier for me to get my head in the game for this one, with detailed thoughts on "Hoof Done It?" already coming to fruition. I'm very grateful for this change of pace, that's for sure.

Speaking as a guy who saw "Hoof Done It?" two more times this year...

Unfortunately, I found this episode to be another example of why I believe MLP (G5) is an overall lackluster series.

Sad to say, the prime reason for why I think "Hoof Done It?" is a humdrum revolves around the plot. The story in question was written by Janae Hall, who previously wrote "Portrait of a Princess". And depressingly enough...Hall's writing also negatively affected the characters.

Don't get me wrong, I thought the premise was interesting. The basic tagline was that Zipp goes on an actual detective case, which is to find Sunny's lantern after it goes missing; and, despite there being no explanation for how Misty got the lantern, she actually succeeded at something for once. I was all-in for seeing where things were gonna go, and the beginning provided a good start for launching everything forward.

However, once Pipp discovers the lantern in the community garden, and decides to simply hold onto it before leaving clues to direct Zipp to her, the entire episode was suddenly turned into a pointless exercise. Any reason to get engaged is tossed straight out the window, and the story hardly offered anything interesting as it progressed.

And like that isn't enough, Zipp's entire character arc became completely null & void!

This episode, and the situations it provided, gave Zipp the perfect chance to become a true detective and show that she can solve an actual case. But, because of Pipp's interference, all that potential went down the drain! The story ultimately gave Zipp the idiot-ball by reducing her to a mere joke and having her wind up on a wild goose chase, and considering the fact that she failed to look into even the smallest details left by Pipp, any notion that Zipp will ever be a great detective is immediately dispelled. She no longer had any reason to be focused on, and she certainly didn't have compelling character development either.

With how often I've been talking about Pipp interfering with Zipp going on the case, I may as well go ahead and say that I hated Pipp for basically ruining the story. On top of not having much of a focus throughout "Hoof Done It?" since she started to become a key player for it, she never had a single bit of character development to compensate for her presence.

And no, Pipp's confession & apology moments did not convince me that she actually learned from her mistake. In spite of how genuine she was, Pipp frequently kept making excuses to justify her actions. She commented that Zipp appeared to be having "so much fun" going on the case, and that her cutie mark glowed as she was investigating. I get that Pipp was obviously trying to tell Zipp why she held onto the lantern instead of giving it to her, but for some reason...the more Pipp explained her reasons, the less sincere her apology started to feel.

You wanna know the worst part? Everything Pipp did during the two aforementioned moments caused the reconciliation between her & Zipp to be entirely meaningless. Especially on the grounds of Zipp admitting that she "had fun" going on the case, and was so quick to forgive Pipp regardless of her search being for nothing. It was like the story was manipulating everything to Pipp's favor, giving heavy implication that she had nothing to be sorry for and didn't do anything wrong despite evidence to the contrary.

What message was this episode even trying to give in the long run?!

I know what you're gonna say, "Dude, it was teaching that you should never meddle in another's affairs, and Pipp realized what she did wrong!".

Yay? Well, how can I believe that considering the story was later trying to justify Pipp's actions?!

Moving on from that...

Despite Misty playing a key part in this episode, I noticed that she was hardly given anything to do. She discovers that the lantern's gone, but Janae Hall never thought to create any scenes of Misty going on her own search for it?!

Why?! Why would Hall just put Misty on the backburner like that?! WHAT WAS THE POINT IN MISTY'S INCLUSION IF SHE ULTIMATELY WASN'T GONNA BE PRESENT VERY MUCH THROUGHOUT THIS STORY?!

Don't even get me started on Misty's constant displays of idiocy in this episode. I know that Zipp nearly saw her in the garden, but why would Misty just bury the lantern after hiding instead of quickly leaving with it once Zipp dismissed what she saw?! Or, if she truly believed someone was coming down to the garden, why couldn't she bury it deep enough to wear no one would trip over it and just mark an 'X' to relocate the lantern afterwards?!

Is she seriously that small-minded?!

Plus, in all two of the scenes she had after the prologue, the 1st featuring her coming back for the lantern and the 2nd showing her spying on Zipp from a distance, Misty once again did nothing but constantly give reasons for others to be suspicious of her. Especially Zipp. An example is that, when Zipp spotted Misty back at the community garden again from a distance, Misty for some reason just ran away and tried to hide from Zipp! Even after Zipp apologized to Misty for suspecting her of stealing the lantern, Misty didn't refrain from acting nervous to where a pony could still suspect her of hiding something.

Word of advice, Misty: GROW YOURSELF A BACKBONE AND QUIT BEING CONSPICUOUS!!!

Meanwhile, the subplot revolving around Sunny trying to find the lantern, which was by gathering ponies together to activate the Unity Crystals, was both underdeveloped and unnecessary. Sunny only has two major scenes before all five main characters are gathered together near the end, the 1st being the one where she's talking to Cloudpuff and the 2nd featuring her asking HItch for help in gathering everypony to the Brighthouse, and they honestly never contributed anything even remotely important! Basically, they were mindless filler that appeared to be there simply for bringing this episode to its 22-minute runtime, and if they were entirely excluded from the equation, they wouldn't be missed.

Along with being needless, all two of the scenes featuring Sunny put the character in a bad light. She'd constantly say that she has confidence in Zipp finding the lantern, yet her behavior strongly indicated the opposite. And when she came up with that little plan of hers to somehow find the lantern, even if it's supposed to "help Zipp" and serve as a way to "do more than just stand around & wait", it heavily translated in my head that Sunny didn't trust her own friend enough to reacquire the lantern.

I get that Sunny and her friends are supposed to guard both the Unity Crystals and the lantern, but come on! Zipp literally promised Sunny that she'd bring the lantern back, so why would she still worry about it?

All in all, Sunny's scenes caused the character to come across as an idiot who contradicts herself and may not believe in friendship as much as she lets on.

For the sake of giving knowledge to those who haven't seen "Hoof Done It?", I'll go ahead and confirm that Izzy Moonbow, Hitch Trailblazer, Sparky Sparkeroni, and Opaline Arcana are in this episode too. They didn't exactly have much of a large part to play, but their inclusions weren't without issues either.

In regard to Izzy Moonbow, the biggest thing that peeved me was that "Hoof Done It?" served as a large enforcer for why I now consider the character to not only be an irritation, but also an imbecile! She told Zipp that she took the lantern just because she wanted something to see with as she was traversing through the garden looking for tea leaves, and apparently...she literally forgot that she could just use her horn to light the way! Not to mention, after seeing Sunny and Hitch dashing through town, she just assumes that they're playing a game of tag! Also, the part where she got overly descriptive about why Sunny likes to sleep with the lantern next to her on the nightstand after confirming that she put it back was...unsettling, to say the least. It made Izzy come across as a literal creepizoid!

As for Hitch and Sparky, I'm questioning why they needed to be part of this episode in the first place. All Sparky ever did was get into mischief over wanting to play with things that he shouldn't lay a claw on, while Hitch was the least bit engaged with Sunny's problem and had more focus on trying to get Sparky to settle down. Basically, they appeared to be there for the purpose of serving as useless comic-reliefs.

Lastly, despite Opaline having only one scene near the end of "Hoof Done It?", and even though it wasn't particularly meaningless, there were many issues I had with her appearance in this episode. It annoyed me that Opaline basically repeated why she needed Misty's help, and her promise to grant Misty a cutie mark for perhaps the 100th time!

We get it, Opaline! You've made a promise that Misty shouldn't pass up for helping you, now quit repeating yourself!!! Enough with trying to manipulate her as well, you're terrible at that!!!

And as for the order she gave Misty to bring dragonfire back to her, especially considering Misty told her about it in the last episode...well, I've got a mouthful of things to say about that plot aspect. But, I have a feeling it'd be better to save that for the next review.

Outside of these issues regarding the plot, which are strongly connected to the characters, here are a boatload of other problems I've noted involving this episode:

The pacing of "Hoof Done It?" was wonky!

I don't know why or how, but for an episode that's 22 minutes long, it was too uneven for me to calmly process all it provided. The majority of this episode came across as extremely quick & straightforward, and it ran so fast that it appeared to be at the speed of a 5 minute "Tell Your Tale" episode, only at a larger top-speed! Once it gets to the part where Misty returns to Opaline's castle, the pacing ran slower than before, particularly to where it seemed like the credits came sooner than expected. In short, it felt like I was watching a very long beginning, and by the time everything calmed down enough for me to get invested, it's over!

On top of that, the tone was far from well-worked. The humor throughout "Hoof Done It?" was dull, cringy, and flatly-executed. None of the gags made me laugh or smile, and they only added onto how boring the episode already was. "Hoof Done It?' hardly had any sense of heart and emotion either, and that's regardless of the depicted friendships and family bonds!

In the end, "Hoof Done It?" is nothing more than a fruitless endeavor that exists simply to waste a person's time. It had potential that was never taken advantage of, the writing was atrocious, everything!

So, I rate "Hoof Done It?" a solid one out of five stars.