After a dinosaur crushes Dan's car, he declares revenge. Meanwhile, Elise is tasked with humanly capturing the Dino and keeping it out of the public's attention.

"The Dinosaur" starts simply enough with a parody of Jurassic Park as a couple of workers are moving a large crate. In a hilarious moment the create is busted open, and out comes a T-Rex wearing a collar. Cut to Dan, who's sleeping on the couch with his cat before getting a rude awakening from the morning news. Dan doesn't have time to do much before the dinosaur appears and sits on his car, causing Dan to declare revenge. Dan approaches Chris while he's teaching his brother-in-law Ben how to drive and gets him to help. Chris doesn't believe Dan, but he ends up going along to help anyway. I find it annoying that Chris doesn't believe Dan after all the stuff they've seen and been through, but that just means he'll get proven wrong. After this we get a scene where Elise is tasked with humanely and secretly capturing the dinosaur, which was created by the government.

Meanwhile Dan, Chris, and Ben drive around searching for the dinosaur. In another Jurassic Park reference a kid shares how a dinosaur ate his dog, so Dan decides to round up all the dogs in the neighborhood to use them as bait. Unfortunately, the Dino’s collar only has the name Tyra and no contact information. While Elise begins the cover up, Dan changes tactics and decides to recruit an expert hunter: Mel Darwin, an Australian reptile expert known as the Reptile Wrangler, a parody of the late Crocodile Hunter. Despite his eccentricities, Mel actually is a great tracker and they soon find Tyra at the museum. Unfortunately, their efforts don't quite work out; Ben messes up, Chris gets eaten and the Dino goes on a rampage and quickly becomes the center of media attention, leading to Dan and Elise teaming up to destroy the dinosaur. The climatic scenes successfully redeem Ben and make Dan even more likable, all while tying up all the loose ends and ending on a hilarious final scene.

Dan goes up against a dinosaur, how epic is that?! This is a really satisfying episode that was both hilarious and well thought out. The inclusion of Ben was nice as the character added plenty of comedy to the episode, and he hasn't really gotten much use before now. "The Dinosaur" is one of my favorite episodes to date and I fully recommend it.

Fluttershy is too worried about being laughed at to help when all the pegasi in Ponyville need to work together to create a hurricane.

I love the originality of this episode, which reveals more about how the land of Equestria works. Cloudsdale, the pegasi city, plays a pivotal role in creating the weather for the land of Equestria, as Equestria doesn't have natural weather patterns like in our world. Previously Cloudsdale has been shown making snow and rainbows, and here it's shown how they acquire all the water necessary for creating clouds. Apparently many pegasi gather together to form a hurricane, which sucks the water all the way up to Cloudsdale. This time, Ponyville's reservoir is the place chosen to create the hurricane. Rainbow Dash is quick to take charge and train everyone to be their fastest, as she also wants to break the wingspeed record for the hurricane. Fluttershy however wants nothing to do with the event, not only because she's a slow flier but also because of how she was taunted for it when she was a filly. In other words, she's very self-conscious and scared.

Besides Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash this Twilight Sparkle and Spike play minor roles here, but beyond them this episode features many pegasi of various colors. Many have been given names despite their status as background ponies, which is further proof of the show's increased depth. The emotions in this episode are well portrayed, and mild comedy is mixed in too. This episode benefits from the interaction between the very different personalities of Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. Rainbow Dash quickly takes charge of training the other pegasi, but despite being a tough mentor she's still a great friend. After seeing through Fluttershy's attempt at faking illness to get out of helping, Rainbow doesn't just complain. Instead, she asks what's wrong and does her best to encourage Fluttershy after she explains. It's great to see such opposites being friends. Unfortunately when Fluttershy actually gives it a try, she fails miserably with a wingspeed of .5. Humiliated in front of everyone, Fluttershy runs off crying. Thankfully her animal friends cheer her up and encourage her to never give up, so she begins training her hardest.

When Fluttershy tries again she does much better with a speed of 2.3, but that's still well short of the speed of 10 everyone needs so Fluttershy decides to not help with the hurricane. Normally that would be fine since there's more than enough pegasi to do the job, but when a bunch of pegasi fall sick it's up to Fluttershy to find the courage to try despite the risk of embarrassment. When all's said and done Fluttershy learns to always try your best even if you don't think it's enough, because when you believe in yourself there's no telling what can happen. It's an excellent and positive lesson for yet another great episode that I fully recommend.