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| S1 Twilight: "I'm surrounded by idiots!" |
Written by Amy Keating Rogers
5 Nov 2010
My original rating: N/A
IMDB score: 7.9
The one with Rainbow's first "so awesome!" face.
Thoughts: The the first solo credit for one of FiM's best-regarded writers. We start out in Sweet Apple Acres, which back then was enormous, and Big Mac actually gets to use words. AJ calls herself "the loyalest of friends", which maybe was inspiration for a certain Friendship is Witchcraft joke. The stampede is an odd early-series event, especially the cow talking to Applejack afterwards – even if we do get what's almost the Bonanza theme! Other old-feeling stuff includes Pinkie deferring to Applejack as a superior baker. (Though in the event it leads to the dreaded "baked bads"... and, many years later, to Derpy's canon name of Muffins!) I think this is the first time we see Lyra and Bon Bon standing together, when AJ is dragging her trophy away. Anyway, Twilight (who can now teleport with ease!) cajoling AJ to get over her stubborn pride is a simple plot, but one that works quite well for this stage in the series. We even get a bit of slapstick with Applejack and Rainbow and the contraption intended to launch Dash – who calls AJ "Ponyville's best athlete"; she'd have second thoughts about that a little way down the line! Then there's the famous bunny stampede: "The horror! The horror!" Oh, and the first mule joke. So although a notch short of a classic, "Applebuck Season" is a good watch that still holds up fairly well.
Choice quote: Twilight (again, I know!) : "AJ? I think you're beating a dead... tree."
New rating: ★★★
Next up is "Griffon the Brush Off", which apart from having one of the most commonly misspelt episode titles is also decidedly not amongst my favourites. We'll see whether that changes!
You know looking back on this episode, to better understand why Applejack wouldn't want her friends to help around the farm we'd have to look back on what she had said to justify why she's working so hard. It's one thing that her brother got hurt (Even though 'how' that happened I never really understood), 'all' those Apples that we saw in the opening episode actually only appeared because Twilight happened to walk into their family reunion (That and they actually live all over Equestria), around this time we figured Granny was too old and tired to work (At least this early in the show) and she doesn't bring up Apple Bloom because... I don't know because she figured it's too much work for her young sister? Anyways, we've all been Applejack at some point in our lives. We work tirelessly to get this one job done because we insist that we are the most reliable individuals in our company, but consequentially we end up tiring ourselves and go through this swing of moods that has a profound effect on those around us. In this case, we see Rainbow Dash hurled into the air through a stunt gone wrong, nearly every pony getting food poisoning from eating tainted muffins, and Applejack causing a bunny stampede in the town (Least it wasn't the cows). This is the episode where we see Applejack's stubborn pride at her worst especially this early in the show and it seems only later on when she realizes she barely scratched the surface of her work does she decide... "Okay fine, you win! I'll let you help just please stop ratting on me!"
ReplyDeleteThat's the thing with Applejack, as a character I do like her. When Twilight is not the pony taking charge of the group, she truly lives up to being a dependable pony to others (For the most part). She's like the second-in-command for the group, she's the pony to turn to for simple advice, she has this big sister quality with her friends and she knows how to rock a Stetson hat. If anyone even attempts the muffin recipe that Applejack put together (Maybe with gummi worms in replace of actual worms) I honestly hope no one actually gets sick from eating those (I may not know much about baking, but putting in salted chips is like adding 'salted butter' in something sweet... That's never good).
As far as how Big Mac ended going from this talkative brother in the opening (And near the end) to being the 'Eeyup' guy for the remainder of the series, until that one episode that shows the two in their youth I barely understood this change in dialect. For me, if it was the fact that Applejack is the one pony Big Mac can have a full conversation with I'd vouch for that. Not to say how he is later on is a bad thing, but at the time it took me a while to get used to this transition so to speak.
putting in salted chips is like adding 'salted butter' in something sweet... That's never good
DeleteI don't know... look how popular salted caramel has become in stuff like ice cream. I don't personally like it that much -- I prefer unsalted caramel -- but a lot of people do.
Okay, maybe that 'is' a good example. Then again, I'm more of a chocolate person than a caramel guy but I see why people dig the treat. Still, if we thought this cupcake recipe is enough to make ponies sick, just wait till we get to the episode where Apple Bloom burnt the cupcakes for a party (And yet Pinkie will still eat them).
DeleteThough even Pinkie found pre-rescue Sugar Belle's muffins to be a bit hard going!
Delete"That's the thing with Applejack, as a character I do like her. When Twilight is not the pony taking charge of the group, she truly lives up to being a dependable pony to others (For the most part). She's like the second-in-command for the group, she's the pony to turn to for simple advice, she has this big sister quality with her friends and she knows how to rock a Stetson hat."
DeletePreach it! Applejack is one of my favourite main characters, and stuff like this and the episode above go some way to explaining why. I think she's just so damn likeable, and I relate to the "I gotta do this whole job myself" mentality.
I mentioned how I first watched The Ticket Master hugely out of order, and it seeming oddly out of place even by season 1's internal standards; I saw this one even later, and the opposite applies. The unexpected, and unexpectedly offbeat, humour in this one was so much further ahead of those first couple of episodes that I really felt this was an example of the show getting comfortable once it had hit its stride. The cow talking after the stampede was a great bit of leftfield "animal world!" silliness in the same way as Twilight eating the petals last time out, and the outstanding foley work as Applejack slooooooowly drags and scrapes her trophy along the ground is still funny to me now (along with her getting stuck upside down in mid air still harnessed to the cart).
ReplyDeleteAnd it's full of moments I still cherish. The slapstick string of cock-ups as AJ progressively gets more and more exhausted (including the whole Daffy Duck RD segment), the vomiting ponies in the field hospital, AJ's eventual bug-out reaction when she sees she's only halfway done...
Maybe I'm just biased due to my own farm childhood but I love this. I took Applejack for my favourite pony here, and have never let go in 9 seasons since.
There are a lot of nice moments in this episode, that's for sure. The one that originally caught my attention was the Lion King reference (see screenshot above!) that I really had not been expecting.
DeleteAs for my own favourite pony? It was Fluttershy even before I started, but you can probably guess which episode cemented that status, and we'll be there before long. :)
Whenever they play episodes in order here, they always reverse Applebuck Season and Ticket Master. I don't know why.
ReplyDeleteHow odd. I can't see any reason why they should. I've no idea what Tiny Pop does over here, since I haven't watched S1 episodes that way for a long, long time.
Delete"and Big Mac actually gets to use words."
ReplyDeleteI miss that aspect. Occasionally, the show makes something funny out of his "eeyup" and "eenope" monolexical vocabulary, but overall it's bugged the hell out of me as a profoundly unfunny running gag. Like, was someone on the staff just so tickled by the idea that they forced it into virtually every one of his appearances?