https://pastebin.com/cK1PRf6P


==Ticket Master==
https://vimeo.com/114961419
http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/Transcripts/The_Ticket_Master

This episode presents the usual cliche plot used often times in everything, not just cartoons. Everybody wants the macguffin, the ticket/the letter/the key/the signed invitation to get into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, a chance at presidency, heaven, the concert, a chance to meet the president, while in FIM's case it's the gala.

Pacing wise the episode is formatted into 2 acts. First part with the ponies each having their own individual dream sequences and goals for the gala and the second part about everyone wanting the ticket and making useless unwanted favors for Twilight which she has no use for.

Originally this episode was suppose to be 10 minutes long, just like G1's episodes in which they segment them into 10 minute parts.
FIM lacks episode to episode consistency, yet the same girly shows like Strawberry Shortcake do not. Very weird, it's almost like Hasbro hates FIM and has an obsession with ruining specificaly FIM. In Strawberry Shortcake they have starter episodes where the characters still didn't get their houses and shops, while in FIM everyone already has their own house and job.

Just like in episode 1, Twilight first meets up with AJ. Apparently they already finished harvesting the apples, rather than showing us before.
Notice Spike's voice getting silent when AJ talks, lowering the volume when she starts talking and eventually goes mute when Twilight talks. There are some dumb directors out there which don't do this and instead let the annoying "Nope"s background voices play together with the other voices you're suppose to pay attention to. You can notice this in the episode "The Last Roundup" in the ending scene with Pinkie and Rarity when Pinkie's voice won't go silent worth a shit.
Hey! Stop throwing those apples you little reptilian shit. You're not even quality controlling.
>Thank you kindly, Twilight, for helping me out. I bet Big McIntosh I could get all these Golden Delicious in the barn by lunchtime. If I win, he's gonna walk down Stirrup Street in one of granny's girdles.
Who is Big Mac? They barely show him at all, less than Applebloom. As such we don't even know these two have sibling rivalries, I thought only Dash and AJ had that going on. Also using Twilight to win a bet, seriously? Ugh fine
>Oh please Spike you've been lounging on my back all morning while we worked.
Speaking of that does she always have to carry around that pet dragon on her back? Reminds a little of Fluttershy not beating up Angel's bratty ass. In seasons 2,3,4 you won't see Spike horse riding Twilight anymore.
Oh yeah Twilight never gets to eat anything in the episode. That stomach rumbling is gonna appear throughout the episode. It's a small feature idea just like Spike riding on her back.
That is one big red vibrant apple... and he just ate it, and he asked "what" like he's dumb or something. Well time to get a new pet dragon or just whip his ass. Apparently Spike being a little shit is part of his canon characterization.
Nice little custom animation there when Spike firebreathes the scroll and Twilight's mane waves rampantly. If only the entire series was hand-drawn properly without the use of flash assets. That's actually how you get all the good "flash" animation, by not relying on library assets.

>Princess Celestia of Equestria, >pan up to the canterlot castle.
That's how you recognize this is a starter episode, when they start dumping some exposition for people who haven't watched other episodes. 
>The capital city of Canterlot
Alright so Canterlot is a capital and a city. What is Ponyville then? What is Equestra, a kingdom or the planet? It would be good if they could answer these geography questions. They should have did this for Gilda, Zecora, Trixie too. Trixie mentions Hoofington/Trottingham, but we never get to see it.
>The 21st of yadarra yaddara (that yaddara was kind of important you fucking writer)
Another summer solstice? Usually the 20-24th days are when a season solstice or equinox happens. We have solstices for every season; summer, autumn, winter, spring. But Twilight just said it's summer so the summer solstice already happened in episode 1. I guess the gala is in the September equinox.
>cordially extends an invitation to Twilight Sparkle plus one guest.
I hope that one guest ticket was meant for Spike. Surely Celestia didn't forget about Spike, right? But nope it's just for plot convenience sake in order to have a problem starter for the sake of the plot.
I hate this stereotypical idea that every plot needs to have a problem issue in order to start it off. The actual content within the plot is much more important than the problem used to lead to the plot. If anything you can show off the dream sequences for the main 6 without needing the ticket issue. Plus most of the things the mane5 want to do at the gala have no relation to the actual gala, it could be any big fancy event and it could work. Part 1 does a great job at doing this, while part 2 shows that the ticket problem in itself is devoid of imagination and content. I prefer sandbox-like episodes with a lot of creative content in them rather than a rails-on checkbox storytelling type.

>Applejack and Twilight Sparkle: The Grand Galloping Gala! [cheering] 
>Applejack: Woo-hoo! 
>Spike: [burp] Look, two tickets. 
>Twilight Sparkle: Wow, great! I've never been to the gala. Have you, Spike? 

So wait you just get excited over anything that sounds fancy!? are you ponies retarded?
So they know about the gala as much as the viewer does, which is zero. As such the gala is so shallowly explained we barely understand what it's about even when the Best Night Ever airs. Apparently it's just a dime-a-dozen up-tight fancy party for the canterlot elite. No festivities, no goal, no reason, no theme, nothing interesting. What a pile of shit of a gala.

>Spike: No, and I plan to keep it that way. I don't want any of that girly frilly frou-frou nonsense. 
>hurr durr boys don't like girly things, right. Shit joke, mate.
The feminist is speaking through this one. So was the grand galloping gala a Hasbro mandate or something thought up by Lauren and she's just expressing her distate for girly things through Spike?
Actually no. Here's the thing with Lauren. She believes that girly things can be good. She hates it when everyone keeps telling her girly stuff is shit, so instead she prides herself in this girly charade. 
So you want to make a good girls show by... pridefully parading it around in all it's frilly girly frou-frouness? while at the same time saying it shouldn't be a frilly girly parade? Or she wanted the latter, but failed? Either way she didn't think very far beyond her Galaxy Girls doll line idea.

Observations:
Perfect time to talk about that red vibrant apple. Notice how vibrant the color of the apple is compared to the color shade of the ponies. The seasons constantly had this color correction problem where they never fix the colors properly, in S1 the high brightness makes the colors too light and shaded out. In season 2 the colors are too darkened and yellow and gold starts looking like brown. But overall the default colors of the ponies should have much more vibrant and eyecandy colors rather than their boring pastel colors with no vividness to them. Hasbro should either stop feeding their color correctors bread crumbs or smack them and halven their salary. It shouldn't be a brony fan's job to color correct the episodes and neither The Hub's job, it should be Dhx Media's.

The theme song. Probably the most boring visual intro ever, together with some boring music and lyrics. But it's also the most honest intro. It basically tells you that the show is only about the characters and nothing else. If only those characters were 3-dimensional and had an extensive story to tell, as well as backstory, multiple goals and other things to make them interesting. I never liked this trend of putting the intro song after the first opening, it always made me lose the first 3 minutes of a cartoon. The TV intros were designed so I can tune in exactly when the show starts without losing any content, rather than waiting after commercial after commercial till out of a sudden the cartoon's cold open starts.

http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/Twinkling_Balloon
So much for consistency. In the first episode Twilight doesn't use the balloon, she instead flies to Ponyville with the help of a chariot pulled by two pegasus guards and they fly horizontally rather than steep down like Canterlot seems to be placed. Canterlot is miles away behind those mountain tops, far away from Ponyville. Most people seem to think that Canterlot is neighboring Ponyville and hovering over it and you can just drop down in a straight line or fly up vertically and get there instantly.
By the way the pink hot-air balloon toy won't appear till episode 13. The intro also serves as a toy commercial for that stupid balloon. Eh I guess it's better than a toy train which requires a train station, railroad tracks and pretty much modifying ponyville and equestria to fit it in. Trains suck, stand-alone vehicles are better. Weird enough they never tried putting another toy ad in the intros for seasons 3 and 4. Very odd.



Continuing with the episode.


Land sex?! ah okay AJ said Land sake. Should have been "for land sake reasons" but redneck country and all she never uses enough prepositions.
>ponies would be chowin' our tasty vittles till the cows came home
Ah yeah back then AJ was spewing a lot of redneck slang, you'll notice less of that in the latter seasons. "Do you have any idea how much business I could drum up for Sweet Apple Acres?" Do you have any idea how terrible your plan is? I'm sensing a lot of illusions of grandeur from these ponies' dreams.
Jesus that's a lot of stock characters without cutie marks and dark colors. But notice how even those dark shades are actually pastel colors and the coat and tail colors complement each other with lighter and darker shades.
The backgrounds for Canterlot used in all these dream sequences are the same from episode 1.
Paying gold bits for apples!?!? are you nuts? You're ruining the economy. God damn. At least if they showed where they mine all that gold so I can get an idea of just how their economy is like. I know girl shows have a fucked up economy and system, but even FIM is too dumb compared to other cartoons. In Dreamstar Button Nose they use generators filled with strawberry juice to power up the town with electricity. At least that one has a clear "it's a girl's show" thing, but FIM instead uses the medieval aspects rather than fantasy aspects. Using gold coins instead of green dollar bills, but even back then platinum and gold was much more expensive than apples. Alright done.
 Plus Applejack's flaw is so plainly dumb. Who would pay for your apple sweets when the gala has extravagant delicacy foods in the banquet indoors? Her apple accessories won't stand a chance, plus doesn't she need a permit to sell it at a big fancy event? I mean selling it in Ponyville sure I can accept. Selling it at a big fancy event filled with guards and canterlot elite, no way somebody won't bat an eye at that, even the 5 year old girls would be looking weird.
There was a comic somewhere about how dumb all of their ideas for the gala are, and how their ideas have nothing to do with actually attending the gala itself.
"We could replace that saggy old roof" the roof is fine quit lying, "and Big McIntosh could replace that saggy old plow" bullshit. "and Granny Smith could replace that saggy old hip." what as in medical surgery? Also she never looked that bad in the first episode. Just fix Granny's voice to something more coherent and keep her as a one-shot character like BigMac.
Often times cartoon shows, especially overly cheesy preachy ones like these say that money is bad. Often times it leads to greed. Applejack doesn't come off all that convincing at subverting this cliche with her humorous 5 seconds imaginary problems. Maybe if it was an entire episode or a full 5 minute scene then it could work.

I like some of these dream sequences for showing off the characters on their own, they do a better job at showing off the characters's personalities and aspirations rather than the element trial challenges in episode 2.
This individuality screentime for each character within the same episode is one of the things FiM has it going for it. Sure it needs to be hugely improved, but the thing is that it's unique compared to how other shows treat their characters. Most shows pick char 1/5 and always treat that one as the main character while the rest are secondaries per episode, rather than all 5 of them shown as main characters at the same time in one episode. Often times they never get their own solo screentime, stories, motivation and have to stand out through their personality and abilities and other means in the crowd of characters.
Sadly this individual stuff also doesn't last much for FiM, Episode 1,2,3,26 are the few examples of individuality which FiM offers. Instead they try to give equal screentime and attention to characters for every episode, but other cartoon shows do that just fine and much better than FiM. My issue is with them not treating them as individual characters and instead treating them as 1 team with just 1 identity.

And Rainbow Dash falls from the skies, once again living up to her name as Rainbow Crash. She crashed in the first episode when meeting Twilight and now she crashes again in her first appearance in this episode.
>I was napping >shows a bed and bedsheet in the tree
Who the fuck... napping on clouds is so much better than trees.
Twilight Sparkle: Oh, well in that case, would you like to-- DENIED
>Dash: Watsup faggots, I heard you discussing TwiJack. Don't you know TwiDash is the best OTP?
>Were you busy spying?
Dash already said that to Twilight in episode 2. What is it with these ponies and their spies. 
>The Grand Galloping Gala every year.
Ah so it's annual. It's not that ultra rare and special as everyone makes it out to be. I wonder how much the tickets would cost or how horse famous they'd have to be to get one. The gala last time was pretty packing.
>Super Speed Strut. Fantastic Filly Flash. Buccaneer Blaze.
Wow 3 overly common moves she does with no actual trick or pegasus magic to it. Except the pirate blaze which she shows off-screen as some sort of lightning and light effect.
They could have did a better job with this one flight sequence. Oh yeah I'm sure that would work, just like in a Goofy Movie. Get past the guards and wow the performers by stealing the show. Can't she just sign up for the tryouts like everyone else?
And then Rainbow Dash became a Wonderbolt! I wouldn't mind seeing one of the ponies reaching their goals in the first episode. That and some early Wonderbolts/Blue Angels characterization. She looks good in that costume and goggles, the blue and yellow goes well with the rainbow hair.
Weird how she still keeps her rainbow trail with the costume on, yet the rest of the wonderbolts use thunderclouds trails with lightning inside them.