Romance has certainly been a subject of contention in terms of anything related to Friendship is Magic. As with any popular medium, there is a pretty large shipping contingent of the fandom that will ship any character that even says just one line to another. Or in some cases especially for the background ponies, if they just simply stand with another character.

But when the show actually gets to like canon relationships and crushes it drives the shipping part of the fandom nuts. Or even just the people who don’t like romance involved with ponies at all. For the most part early on though romance was more played for laughs or a purposeful subvert of expectations. From Rarity’s crush on Blueblood that’s completely demolished by Blueblood’s true colors in the Season 1 Finale to the absolutely crazy ride Hearts and Hooves Day was (Though the latter was still enough to cause some fans. Particularly those who were Fluttershy X Big Mac fans. Cause even though the fandom was still pretty young. Fluttermac was apparently popular enough that death threats on DeviantArt happened at around the time Hearts and Hooves Day came around. That’s when you know you have a serious shipping problem)

It wouldn’t be until the first Equestria Girls where there was an actual somewhat serious attempt at a relationship. But it’s safe to say that hardly anyone got behind Flash Sentry. It’s still kinda the worst attempt at romance in the entire history of this generation of MLP that it’s obvious that the staff had to tone it down to the point they had to let it go and in fact ended any chance of Flash still hooking up with Pony Twilight in the fourth EQG movie. Season 4 would have another Hearts and Hooves-esque episode in Simple Ways where the romance is played for laughs and doesn’t stick past said episode.

Though Season 5 seemed to have something going on between Marble Pie and Big Mac at their reunion though the fact that they might be cousins did make some fans unsure about the whole thing.

EQG4 would have the return of romance in the EQG films through Timber and the human version of Twilight. Which while I’m sure gets some similar ire like Flash did. I personally think it’s not even half as bad for a few reasons that I’ve already explained. But even if you don’t like it, it’s pretty obvious it’ll stay mainly in the EQG series since it now involves an entirely different Twilight. And I think that’s ok, less potential of harming the main series with an important main character being dragged into a rather forced relationship subplot

Though now in Season 7 we have a return at an actual attempt to have a romance and indeed sticks by the end in the show between Big Mac and Sugar Belle. They perfectly acknowledge Hearts and Hooves Day and how a love potion incident may not cause love to bloom between the two, it’s possible to just see them as to have struck a friendship after the whole thing and they just teased the CMC for trolling purposes. But the same can’t exactly be said for the whole Marble Pie thing. Even Apple Bloom says it’s Big Mac’s first crush. There is the possibility maybe Apple Bloom didn’t see the signs to put one-and-one together but still anyone who saw the whole blushing and the way they looked at one another probably still have the right to at least question that statement and ask why it wasn’t mentioned along with the Hearts and Hooves Day thing. Because it almost seems like the new writer was shown Hearts and Hooves Day, but either forgot or was never told about the episode Marble Pie appeared in. You can’t just ignore that.

If I may put in a bit of a disclaimer, I’m not a particularly big shipper. So I’m not saying these things to say like I prefer Marblemac or anything. It’s just something that anyone’s going to at least question if they ever see both these episodes whether they saw Hard To Say Anything first or not. Also for the exception of Rarity’s crushes any relationship/other crushes tends to be kept for secondary characters like Shining Armor & Cadence, Big Mac of course, and Zephyr Breeze’s crush on Rainbow (Who the latter vehemently refuses any advances). So it’s not been that big of a deal really, I’m even kinda fine with Sugar Belle and Big Mac being together at the end. Though the question will be certainly if it even goes anywhere later on or not.

But if I may get to the episode itself. It starts off pretty alright. Buuuuuut once Feather Bangs steps in and the CMC start their rather dim-witted plan of using fairy tales to get Big Mac and Sugar Belle together. To be honest it might be their dumbest plan since some of their early attempts to get their cutie marks back in Seasons 1 and 2. And I think maybe it’s because of the previous Sweetie Belle and Rarity episode, but maybe it comes off as quite contradictory when in one episode Sweetie claims to have grown past some of the things that worked for her when she was young but then uses something that was probably part of her earlier childhood in a sense to help someone. It just seems by Forever Filly’s logic, Sweetie should also know Fairy Tales isn’t going to work very well. It might arguably be a worse plan then their Hearts and Hooves Day one since they didn’t know the love potion would have the side-effects it did until it was too late and if they had known probably wouldn’t have gone on with it. I do have to admit once it gets to that part of the episode it’s a bit of a hard watch on my part between knowing the CMC’s plan isn’t going to work and the whole Feather Bangs thing isn’t exactly making any of the scenes any better.

Though once all that’s over it does pick back up at least a bit. Though making that bigger shelf to get them together at last may still seem a little fast because as much as that was sweet. I don’t think it’d entirely absolve Big Mac of going along with the CMC’s plan earlier. And hey Feather Bangs doesn’t just get thrown away after all that is over and even gets a kinda sympathetic ending to him, which is kinda nice since normally those kind of characters in these type of episodes are almost always  kinda treated like an antagonist that gets beaten in the end (On a side note Feather is voiced by Vincent Tong. Gotta say poor Vincent, that’s the 3rd male love interest character that probably doesn’t have that good of a reputation in the fandom. I’m of course referring to Prince Blueblood and Flash Sentry).

All that said though, this episode may be my least favorite of Season 7 thus far. I don’t think it’s entirely that bad like I’d still prefer it over some of the episodes that I didn’t like so much in the first half of Season 6 but I just don’t feel it’s quite as strong as the others has been this season. As a big part of it is not something I look forward to rewatching really. Also I have no idea if Sugar Belle and Big Mac’s relationship will even go anywhere significant. There is potential they could cover like the possibility of Big Mac leaving the Apple farm to live closer with Sugar Belle. But the question is if they’ll even go that far for it. We’ll have to find out later.

Coming up next is Honest Apple. And episode that quite frankly has a moral that sometimes the entire internet needs to take heart sometimes.