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| The costume is one thing, but actually gnawing through the tree takes Pinkie-level dedication |
Written by Amy Keating Rogers
18 Feb 2012
My original rating: N/A
IMDB score: 8.2
The one with the Derpy snowglobe.
Thoughts: This is a wonderful episode... as far as the end of the "Smile" song. That isn't quite my favourite canon song, but it's way up there. I'll never get tired of it. Unfortunately, thereafter the episode goes downhill fast, largely because of the incredibly unappealing way Pinkie behaves. She repeatedly ignores Cranky's pleas for her to stop messing with his stuff, she won't leave him alone, she advertises his baldness to the town and eventually she destroys his most valuable possession. She's outright dislikeable, which is a horrible thing for this pony to be. For that reason, I just cannot enjoy this episode as a whole, even though Pinkie redeems herself at the end by finding Matilda for Cranky. There are nevertheless fun things herein, notably the "fuzzy felt" sequence and Rainbow reading a Daring Do book. We also get the first canon mention of hoofbumps – so I suppose it was here that "brohoof" began to retreat. It's also the first ep with dedicated end-credit music, albeit in this case just a piano arrangement of "Yankee Doodle" rather than anything new. Two stars is all I can give this overall, although "Smile" itself would be a clear five.
Choice quote: Cranky: "No, you're extra special, kid."
New rating: ★★
Next up is "Putting Your Hoof Down", generally seen as the worst Fluttershy episode of the early seasons. I haven't seen it for ages, but I have a grudge against it for something specific. You'll see.
The first third of this episode is classic Pinkie. What's so great about that song is the way it genuinely makes me smile whenever I hear it: it's like Pinkie's enthusiasm manifests on a meta level. It's also a perfect exemplar of what I might call the Pinkie Code of ethical hedonism: her aim in life is to cheer up as many ponies as she finds. For that reason, I agree whole-heartedly with the 5-star ranking of that section alone.
ReplyDeleteAfter that, I'm broadly in agreement with you, though I'd subdivide again:
The second third is where Pinkie gets obnoxious, but I think someone could make the case that it'd be an interesting set-up for a more mature, bittersweet moral about how Pinkie cannot just make friends with everyone she meets.
It'd still have Pinkie be grating, but it'd at least feel more like an intentional criticism of her insensitive friend-making obsession than just an accident of bad writing. Especially when the episode gets to that talk between Twilight and Pinkie (with Rainbow butting in), I think it could have taken things in at least a respectable direction.
The last third kills it for me.
Pinkie is just selfish here. She nosedives into straight-up harassing of someone who has been pushed into outright terror of her. Then the episode gives her a barely foreshadowed deus ex machina to get her out of an otherwise unwinnable situation, and it still doesn't excuse her behaviour beforehand.
By the time she even acknowledges that harassing others might NOT be a good idea, she's already gotten her ulterior motive fulfilled and basically been handed an easy out on a platter. And she's still annoying them with the song at the end. We can't even guarantee that moral stuck.
I'll give credit: the episode at least acknowledges that some people prefer to keep to themselves and that's fine. But message is at odds with action here. Pinkie gets rewarded for intruding on Cranky's time, and especially to someone who views personal privacy as serious business, I will not forgive the episode that.
I just can't let this episode bother me that much. Partly, it's because Pinkie is exonerated in the end, though not quite in the same way as Last Roundup. Partly, it's because Cranky Doodle Donkey is one of the Great Tragic Figures of MLP and I love his story. Partly, it's because the whole thing is just so entertaining.
ReplyDeleteBut mostly, it's because I know Pinkie's worst episodes and behavior lay well ahead of us.
Hm. There's many episodes for which I've had an unusual or at least uncommon take, but this is not one of them: even when I first revisited this one, I already knew many others shared the viewpoint of it having a stellar first third and dipping after that.
ReplyDeleteAmy Keating Rogers is a stellar writer on the show, and she's written a large handful of great Pinkie episodes, and on many levels, she clearly gets Ponk - but on many others, she's often guilty of cheapening Pinkie's character depth for laughs (to be fair, the list of writers who do that is far greater then those that don't - she is a tough character to write, but that doesn't make getting her right any less important).
And yet... I still like this episode a bit. Oh, I do bemoan the near-masterpiece of the first 6 minutes never returning, but Perfect Present is right in that it's still very entertaining. Something I'm often aware of with MLP is that we place a lot more importance on characters being, well, in-character no matter what, then in other cartoons. Loyalty to the wonderful characters and all that. It is a view I largely subscribe to, and in no way am I advocating for characters to be cheapened for a laugh - they shouldn't be. But neither am I going to let such moments ruin an episode for me on principle, as they do for many people. MLP is still a cartoon, and we shouldn't forget that.
Is Pinkie way too pushy? Yes. Is the message and its delivery and execution muddled beyond all comprehension? Yes. But there's still tons that's funny in this one. And while Pinkie is given an easy out at the end, at least she seemed to take the lesson on board. Again, I look to Perfect Present above - there would be many future episodes with far worse behaviour for Pinkie and other ponies, often where the episode doesn't even seem aware their action and bad and that they should be called out on them. Now THAT, this is episode-ruining stuff (do I even need to name examples? Many episode from the show's back half, whatever their strengths, fit this).
That's a lot of space to basically come back to the same point - amazing first third, weaker rest of the episode. But it doesn't ruin the episode, just take a big chunk out of its armour. IT's still, overall, a decent episode, and while that puts it firmly towards the back of the UnicornTwilight era of the show, it's still well ahead of that era's few misfires. So there's that. At least we've got some better Pinkie episodes coming real soon!
Agreed, I found this episode more annoying than anything else. Sadly, she doesn't really grow out of this sort of behavior, an in my mind, that goes directly against her element. She should inspire people to have fun, not to browbeat them and make them upset. Sure, in the early seasons, a lot of the girls were still in learning mode, but Pinkie kept doing this in later seasons.
ReplyDeleteY'know, that song never caught on with me much. It was fine enough, but it just never sticks in my head. I can't remember the melody of it at all, and when Cheese hijacked it in "Pinkie Pride," I didn't recognize it in the least. Even after being told so and specifically listening for him doing that, I never spot it. The few words of it, sure, but not the melody so that I recognized it as that song.
It did have some cute visual effects (upside down in the Dutch door, the felt theme, Pinkie counting on more than four hooves), but the plot is just forgettable to me.
Cranky Doodle is one of the characters who get a very different skin tone in Equestria Girls than they have as equines. I always thought it was odd which ones they chose to do that with.