YMMV / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S5 E22 "What About Discord?"

• Adorkable: Twilight Sparkle, already established as a book lover, becomes ecstatic in the Cold Open at the prospect of spending the weekend organizing the books in her library.
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: While the episode did make the point that it's OK for your friends to have inside jokes you're not in on, and it's OK to be upset you missed out on the experience, it also makes the point that repeatedly making inside jokes in front of friends who won't get it is rude. Especially when you don't even try to explain, or worse, do it intentionally to make them feel left out.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Was Discord just being a dick by intentionally leaving Twilight out of the weekend of fun he had with her friends, or was he genuinely trying to teach the lesson like he claimed based off of his experiences with such feelings in the past? Especially after his Heel–Face Turn when the cast still didn't fully trust him. It's quite likely that it was the latter, and then Discord just ended up becoming an asshole about it after he saw how extreme Twilight's reaction was.
  • For that matter, when he himself wasn't part of the In-Joke, was his reaction to it genuine, or was it him seizing on an opportunity to turn himself into the fool as a way to apologize to Twilight and/or make her feel a little better about his jerkish behaviour?
• Bizarro Episode: Being a Discord-centric episode, it's to be expected, but the other ponies even get in on it too.
• Broken Aesop: Twilight is meant to come across as unreasonable and paranoid in assuming Discord couldn't possibly have given her friends a good, entertaining experience without mind control - but given how ridiculously vague the episode is on what they actually did together, one is almost forced to conclude that the writers really couldn't think of anything (that wouldn't seem OOC for Discord).
• Broken Base:
  • Discord's behavior in this episode. Some find him trying to make Twilight jealous by intentionally leaving her out of the weekend fun with her friends to be too mean-spirited, especially considering he's been reformed by this point. Others find his antics to be hilarious and that while he is a bit of a jerk about the whole event, he's done worse things after his reformation and still managed to continue being a good person.
  • The episode in general, particularly the treatment of the Aesop. Some feel Discord was funny enough, and there was a good moral about jealousy and being okay with feeling upset or left out. Others think the episode's too mean-spirited, since Twilight is Properly Paranoid about Discord manipulating events, which was specifically to make her break down, yet she is criticized by her friends, but, when they find out about Discord's duplicity, they more or less just tell a passive-aggressive joke at his expense. Another camp feels that the episode is well-made for most of its length, but that the last-minute reveal of Discord's ulterior motives spoils its previous message.
• Fan Nickname: The scene where Discord turns Fluttershy into an orange has spawned the name "Flutterrange".
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • While this episode was made months in advance, it first aired shortly after Twitch had finished streaming every episode of The Joy of Painting. The two Bob Ross jokes that Discord makes were thus hilariously (if accidentally) well-timed on the initial airing.
  • It also aired a few weeks after October 21, 2015, aka Back to the Future Day, making Pinkie's time travel statement also well-timed.
  • There was also a fan made flash created in 2012 that showed Pinkie driving the Delorean.
  • "The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows" featured an advertisement throughout that episode for the Back to the Future TV marathon, three weeks before this episode aired.
  • It's not the first time some fans have seen Discord as Bob Ross.
• Humor Dissonance: The main cast spends a good portion of the episode laughing about their in-jokes (whether at Twilight or Discord's expense). While we never see what actually happened between Discord and Twilight's friends, some of the laughter they share still seems rather exaggerated, given what little information we do have of what happened that day.
• Jerkass Woobie: Twilight Sparkle becomes increasingly pompous and hostile in her jealousy over Discord, resulting in her outright accusing Discord of returning to villainy. At the end of it however, she is merely a victim of Discord's trolling, and felt so left out and ashamed of her emotions that she is practically crying by the time she comes clean.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus is that while it has the usual zany Discord humor, it still falls flat compared to other Discord episodes.

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