Crystal Empire mini-review.

The moral of the Crystal Empire episodes.

Take Celestia's dialogue in "The Crystal Empire," for example. I had to watch it twice to be sure Celestia really did give Twilight stupid instructions. She did: her instructions were stupid.
*(cue cutie mark background effects, camera panning and feelsy music to show the importance of the scene*)
''Celestia: But Twilight. In the end it must be you and you alone who ultimately assists princess cadence and shining armor in what needs to be done to protect the empire, do you understand?''
   That was one of the most subjective, generalistic piece of crap I've ever heard. I think the director tried to mask how bad the dialogue is.
There was no reason for that. Anal-retentive and obsessive-compulsive as Twilight is, Celestia could have just told her, "You're in charge of this mission, Twilight.'' ''Even Cadence and Shining Armor have been instructed to follow your orders," and Twi could've gotten it into her head that she had to do everything herself just because of how she is.

Watching her go down that road into needlessly pushing herself too hard and pushing others away would have been a lot more interesting than most of the lame comic relief and needless songs that we got. Then, in the end, Celestia could have said, "You didn't fail, Twilight. You delegated. What do you think I do? Did I redeem my sister? Did I defeat Discord? No! I got you to do it. You're learning to be a leader, and that's what a leader does."
The frustrating part is that it didn't require a massive overhaul of the story, just a few tweaks to the dialogue.

Thinking "you're in charge" meant "you have to do everything yourself" would not have made Twilight look like an idiot. It's a common misconception. President Jimmy Carter made the same mistake. He didn't know how to delegate. That job ate him alive.

Like In the end, Celestia did praise Twilight for putting the Crystal Empire ahead of her own future, but it didn't come off as something she had planned as part of the test. It came off as… well, something slammed out for five-year-olds, with a lesson they'll never need at that.
Like I said, it came across to me as her being praised for doing something that anyone with enough neurons to form a synapse would've done in that situation. Like no shit you "sacrifice" your interests in a situation when the whole goddamn country is at risk of being eaten by a shadow monster. That's not praiseworthy, that's common fucking sense.


The reason the crystal empire episodes were in my opinion the worst two-parter by a wide margin, and simply badly made on its own, is the idiotic sub-plot about deceiving the crystal ponies. Not only did it remove 5 of the main characters from the actually-important events, but surely I'm not the only one who felt that it was a bit immoral. Why couldn't they just be honest? What kind of message is that? It was made with the intention of filler, to drag down the pacing.
HURR HURR CAN WE SEE THE THING?
DURRPY HURRVES NO YOU CAN'T SEE THE THING

The problem being this isn't something small that they could have changed fast such as the dialogue, visuals, music, voice acting, and other types of cringeworthy handling - something a competent director could change easily.
This flaw wastes up lot of time which the episode could have used for something much better. It needs to be rethinked entirely to fit in with the actual narrative, which takes much more time to animate and figure out.

Forget keeping the crystal ponies happy to charge up the crystal heart artefact, it was made with no real thought.
 It was a bad sub-plot. Think how much more interesting it would have been if Celestia had just said, "You're in charge of this one, Twilight," and that had led to conflicts with her friends. The silly vignettes that served no important part of the story could have been changed to Twilight not liking the way the others were doing things, and gradually taking everything on herself. Conflict is good. It could have delivered a good message about leadership which is found in every kind of role in the real world.
It still could have ended up with that final critical moment with Spike, and Twilight thinking she'd failed. That's just how Twilight is.
As things turned out, the ending slapped me upside the head. Celestia actually agreed that Twilight had failed, but passed her anyway. What? In no scenario, real-world or fantasy, could that outcome have been considered a failure. Under no circumstances, when the outcome was that important, would Celestia have told Twilight she had to do everything herself in the first place.