I thought a bit about what I’d change with the MYM special. As always, I’m not claiming to be a better writer, I just have the luxury of looking at a finished product.
Posey
I like that Posey has a valid point, but she’s just some random bitch. I’d change it so that she’s one of three executive members of the Maretime Bay Day planning committee. She’s also trying to grow flowers to enter into a contest at Maretime Bay Day. She wants to ban unicorns and pegasi from the event, but she would need a majority vote from executive members of the committee.
Humour
I’d be willing to forgive a lot if the jokes landed and the dialogue was a lot sharper. On more than one occasion, it feels like they were setting up for a joke, but then chickened out of the punchline at the last second.
I’d have a running gag where the hijinks of The Mane Five keep accidentally sabotaging Posey’s flowers. Like, Izzy tries to do something creative to cut the pizza, but it backfires and slices the flowers off of Posey’s roses. I’m not usually a fan of making a character bad at something they’re normally good at, but the Maretime Bay anthem joke could have worked. It’s making fun of the trope where celebrities over-embellish national anthems. I’d have it so that the singing kills some of Posey’s flowers, and Posey retorts with something like:
“If you’re going to sing the anthem, you should learn the lyrics. That wasn’t singing, it was a declaration of war.”
The beach scene would have been way funnier if they’d doubled down and treated it like a real crime scene. The destroyed sand castle would be cordoned off with police tape. We see the umbrella sticking out, but never the sand castle itself, and Hitch is disgusted by what he sees. The pony who built it is sitting nearby, wrapped in a blanket and holding a steaming cup. Hitch interviews him, and asks if he knows who did this. The pony points, and the camera pans to a unicorn just off screen.
The Plot
The inciting incident would have more plausible deniability. The glitches start out minor, forcing a pegasus to drop what they’re carrying if they want to stay airborne. The inciting incident happens when such a glitch causes a pegasus to drop something on to a pot of flowers Posey is carrying. Zipp recalls something similar happening to her, so she investigates the crystals. We still get the phone call between Zipp and Haven, they still do the “breaking up” bit, but that’s going to pay off later.
Zipp confronts Sunny about the glitches, but at this point, there’s still enough plausible deniability for Sunny to dismiss it. Later on, we get a scene of Pipp livestreaming, and this gives Zipp the idea to film the crystals. All throughout the special, dark storm clouds are gradually appearing in the background. Zipp gets another call from her mother, but there’s the added detail that she’ll be accompanied by a flock of pegasi bearing gifts.
Zipp still confronts Hitch at his office, but she gets permission to go through the complaints box. We get a shot of Zipp’s flight glitching as she goes to retrieve the camera. Then we get a montage of her doing some real detective work. She calls the rest of The Mane Five down to the police station. She’s able to show a correlation between crystal glitches and complaints about unicorns and pegasi, and that both are getting more frequent. They figure out that more misunderstandings mean more glitches mean more misunderstandings. Then it hits her.
She tries to call Haven to warn her, but there’s too much static so they keep breaking up.
The tipping point comes when the pegasus flock’s magic glitches, and they drop their presents. The presents crash itno the other two executive committee members, knocking them unconscious. This finally gives Posey the authority to ban pegasi and unicorns from the celebration. And that’s when the storm gets destructive and the climax resumes as normal.
We still get a scene with Posey growing flowers, but there’s an extra bit where she accidentally grows a giant rose that splits apart the road.
“I-I’m so sorry. I guess I’m still…”
“Figuring it out?”
Apologies all around, then we actually get to hear Pipp and Posey sing the Maretime Bay anthem.