The theme for this group of episodes seems to be royalty and love, to go along with the main feature episodes, "A Canterlot Wedding" Part 1 and Part 2. Again, we’re skipping around Season 1 and 2 in this collection, so I’m not sure if we can ever expect to see either season in a full, continuous collection. But either way, this is a nice set of episodes. "The Best Night Ever" is the story of the night out the ponies spend at a big gala event in Canterlot. They each expect something exciting from the event. For example, Rainbow Dash wants to hang out with the Wonderbolts flying team, Rarity wants to meet an elegant prince, and Applejack wants to sell a bunch of tasty apple snacks. Their hopes are all dashed by the night’s events and the snooty ponies in attendance. They end up escaping and hanging out with Spike at the end, and Princess Celestia comes by and explains that the gala is always stuffy and awful anyway, and all is well. One of my favorite Spike scenes is in this episode too: a surly Spike is hanging out at the sweet shop demanding more doughnuts like an angry drunk.
One of the other two episodes is "Hearts and Hooves Day," a special Valentine’s Day themed episode where the younger ponies try to get their teacher, Cherilee, hooked up with Big Macintosh. "Sweet & Elite" follows Rarity as she explores Canterlot and makes friends with the sophisticated crowd there.
As always, there isn’t a ton of bonus material. There are a couple of coloring pages in PDF form that you can print out. There’s also a few sing-along karaoke style videos. This is a pretty basic DVD, with no subtitle options or extra languages either. It is a decent collection though, and 5 episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is certainly better than some of the earlier offerings we’ve seen on DVD.
