My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Season 9 Episode 5: "The Point of No Return" (SPOILERS) · 4:04pm Apr 27th, 2019
In which Twilight goes Twileynanas about a library book she never returned...in Canterlot.
Hey, Derpy got to speak again!
This is a plot we've all had happen to us at some point: we/our parents clean out our childhood rooms and send us a box of old stuff, and buried at the bottom of that box is some old forgotten library book we never returned.
So anyway, Twilight, who's never been late with a book return in her life, suddenly ends up with a book that's been left under a shelf in her old tower for the last nine years.
Naturally, she freaks out.
When the cheerful librarian discovers how late the book is, she sends Twilight down to the BASEMENT OF SHAME. Twilight learns that the clerk for super-naughty overdues is out to lunch, so she heads to Restaurant Row to seek her out. She heads to the Tasty Treat and runs into Moondancer. There, she learns that the old librarian, Dusty Pages, was forced to retire after one patron never returned a book.
Now, Twilight really DOES have cause to freak out.
Twilight decides she needs to give the book to Dusty Pages so she can return it herself and get her job back. Since Dusty moved away a long time ago, Twilight and Spike end up flying all over Equestria searching for her.
They track Dusty down to a senior living community where they learn from the residents that just about the only place she ever ain't is resting in her apartment. She's involved in just about every craft and sport and hobby the seniors have going on. Dusty is happy to see Twilight, but then is taken aback when Twilight confesses to having had the missing book this whole time, even reacting angrily to the notion of ever seeing the library again. There's an obvious swerve coming, but going to the last break, it really looks as if for once, Twilight's freakout wasn't just her going Twileynanas.
When Twilight finds Dusty again and has a longer talk, it turns out that Twilight's mistake led to Dusty re-evaluating her own life and her own obsession with perfection, and she decided to get out of the library and go out and live life.
Twilight learns a lesson about not always having to be perfect, and to cap things off, it turns out she only owed 28 bits because the library caps late fees at a month.
This was a fun episode with a neat little moral about not obsessing over every little thing, and had a lot of nice little callbacks. I've got a 10/10 stamp for this one with a half-peeled 0 because nobody's perfect.
This episode was a lot deeper than I thought it would be.
I got my review up before yours this time. What do I win?
Twilight forgot to return a book? Hey guys, I found the episode they really should have called The Beginning of the End!
My late library book story is my sister lent one of my library books to a friend of hers and we never saw it again. That fine didn't get paid for years, as I recall. It was super frustrating.
My favourite part was the library staff's reaction to the overdue book justifying Twilight's worrying. I don't think the rest of the episode would work if the library didn't seem to take the situation as seriously as Twilight was.
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All in all, a "meh" episode.
Meanwhile Moondancer's secret plan to finally become Best Book Borrower comes to fruition...
So, the maximum fee for a late return is 2.8 cherries?
great episode but tbh I find it kinda weird when the world conforms to twilight's paranoid delusions
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Oh man, now I'm jelly about deez nuts.
And the delicious irony is, had she actually got to read that book, it's quite possible that 8 seasons worth Twilight Spergle moments could have been avoid, or at least reduced in their impact
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Hmm. Actually considering how much of her young life she likely spent in that library with it's rather harsh policies, it probably is the source of a lot of Twi's paranoia! Of at least heavily reinforced her natural tendencies.
As Dorothy Zbornak would say, this is the final piece of the puzzle that is Twilight Sparkle: her favorite place reinforced traits best left suppressed.....
I saw this episode as roughly Bridle Gossip crossed with Lesson Zero.