My favorite episode is The Spooky Nighttime Adventure. I loved the whole mystery feel it gave all the way up to the very end. It had a huge surprise near the very beginning that made viewers just want to stick around. Ruby was telling a creepy story, and people are all like, “She has quite an imagination,” and nothing more. Then when Mr. Thicknose goes, “Oh, he’s real,” viewers nod at first, then suddenly spit out their soda and go, “Whaaaaat!?” To top it off, we get to see The Land Before Time version of a fire-breathing dragon! Is that wicked cool or what?
Cera makes a big step in her maturity in this episode. In the first movie, she could never admit to being afraid. Yet in this episode, she blatantly says that she was afraid. It also shed some very useful information on the size of the Great Valley. Through Mr. Thicknose, we learn that going from point A to point B in the Great Valley is a two day walk. If it takes two stinking days to walk somewhere, the valley must be enormous! They couldn’t have been going in the Mysterious Beyond, because their parents would never had allowed it, as they did get permission for this trek.
I laughed so hard at this quote: “Hidden Runner not invisible. He only look that way.” “Hey kids! Are you feeling depressed? Sad? Bored? Well all you need is a bottle of Petrie Logic and you’ll be smiling something fierce and be happy as a, well, a really happy thing, whatever.” There was just never a dull moment in this episode. It snatches viewers’ attention and holds on tight. It does make you wonder why a Great Valley dinosaur can’t talk but merely squawk or whatever he does, but that only adds to the mysterious tone.
My summary: This episode rocked!
My least favorite episode is The Brave Longneck Scheme. My main issue was the disappointment that followed the hype of learning that Ali would be in it. Ali is my favorite canon character, and a lot more could have been done with her part in that episode. She was, in a way, a damsel in distress, and her kidnapper was extremely-hard-to-believe lies. So a huge amount of time was spent simply devising a way to stop the “villain” from making any more headway and saving Ali.
I was so dissatisfied with the role Ali played in that episode that I vented by writing a fan fiction a long time ago coming up with a reason why that wasn’t even really her. For another thing, I disliked how she lost her “I’m going to do what I want no matter what you say” thing she had going for her in the fourth movie. This episode ripped that from her and made her too controllable. To elaborate on that, when the others were shouting in movie four not to go down that steep decline because it was dangerous and she’d fall, she went anyway. In this episode, when Rhett wanted her to play a game that she didn’t want to, she mildly objected one time then gave in.
To top it off, the only real fight scenes in the whole episode were fiction. I mean, I know The Land Before Time isn’t real to begin with, but I mean the fights were literally fiction in fiction, merely stories by Rhett. Maybe if his stories were realistic, but viewers would have to be under the influence of something to take those fights in a serious manner. As the writers often do, the adults were again portrayed as nearly incompetent compared to the kids, as seen as they catastrophically tried hunting Chomper down. Furthermore, they left a question unanswered not even three minutes into the episode. They build all this wonder about where Littlefoot and Cera are going and why just the two of them are, then they completely ignore it. So the entire opening scene was a complete waste of time. Those two could have seen Ali’s herd from anywhere. The writers didn’t need to start a quest then leave it unexplained. Sure, the fact that the Hidden Runner was unable to speak leaf-eater was never explained and I praised that, but that aspect didn't build up to any big moment then suddenly forget all about itself. Unanswered questions can add a nice touch to a story, but only if done well.
My summary: I give it two big thumbs way down for Ali’s part and the episode as a whole.
