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| "Wow, the IOC must be really desperate for new climbing disciplines!" |
My original rating: ★★
IMDb score: 7.4
Thoughts: Written by Josh Hamilton, author of the decent "Triple Threat" and the great "Parental Glideance", this wasn't that popular an episode (Text Review Roundup is all over the place). It's a bit of a throwback: a Pinkie/Rainbow episode, a homespun Ponyville setting, etc. I like Pinkie's characterisation; a little less so Dash's. Applejack in a smallish but fun supporting role. Some funny dialogue and amusing animation details that help cover the thinness of the main story. A decent moral, if not a particularly original one. Although I don't think this is an amazing instalment of Friendship is Magic, I don't agree with one 2017 reviewer that this episode is a "travesty", and in fact I probably admire the old-fashioned feel more now than I did seven years ago. This is a silly episode, but it's fun silly, and I can forgive quite a bit for that. I'm actually going to nudge this up to a low-end three.
Choice quote: Applejack to Pinkie: "You okay? Or are you just screamin' for fun?"
New rating: ★★★
Next
time I'll be looking at "Uncommon Bond", which is the last single-parter of this season. One I quite enjoyed last time, but it was a bit of a mixed bag, if truth be told. We'll see how it fares this time around.
okay, I seriously regret not having followed your rewatches myself c_c;;; what is this episode even about??
ReplyDeletePinkie bakes Rainbow a lot of pies. She pretends to like them but actually doesn't and disposes of them when Pinkie's not looking, in order to spare her feelings. Pinkie finds out. There are shenanigans. They make up. The end.
Deleteohh, wow, is that what it was called? c_c heck
DeleteI remember it being tedious, yeah. And creating an entire "actually always been there" issue out of nowhere only to resolve it by the end was such a cop-out plot.
Impossible Numbers here, improvising again.
ReplyDeleteMan, as much as I frequently end up Commander Contrarian to your opinions, Logan, I swear I don't enjoy it. So apologies in advance.
Take this episode. I've seen people compare it to the early seasons, but for me that was "Honest Apple". This one feels like it has the hallmarks of late-seasons MLP through and through: thin plot stretched beyond breaking point, meme faces galore, and a general tendency to be ugly (that hideous pie at the end, for one thing).
I just find this episode unpleasant. The fact that so many pies go uneaten I'll admit is a me-problem, and merely a recurring discomfort. I don't especially care about the Pinkie-Rainbow pie tradition either, as this is the first I'm hearing about it, and seven seasons later feels way too late (waiting to see if anyone has evidence of a pie-eating Rainbow in prior continuity, but I'll give that a pass). The reconciliation at the end just feels awkward, not helped by the weird masochism, odd reactions, and vaguely bad "they're a mess" boyfriend-girlfriend vibes. And I'm never a fan of sightings of the Party Cave under the bakery, which I still think was a poor fit of an idea.
It's when the plot starts in earnest that my discomfort grows severely. Pinkie's insistence on Rainbow eating things feels out of nowhere at first (because of the aforementioned problem), then obsessive, then unpleasantly unhealthy (the meme faces don't help). Rainbow is just straight-up gaslighting Pinkie here well past the point of sanity. And for such a trivial problem, the mutual toxicity feels especially unwelcome because the stakes are just not worth it in my eyes.
Feeding a pie to Tank and making him ill? Baaaaaaaad.
Plus I feel the whole mystery aspect was already done twice and done better - far better.
So... no me gusta, basically.
Also, I'm going to get real tired of the "friends shouldn't deceive each other" moral, because the back half of the show uses it so, so often. At least "Honest Apple" was the rare duck that did the opposite.
DeleteNo apologies needed! Let's face it, I've known for a long time that you're (mostly) not fond of the later seasons. The same goes for Mike -- though in this specific case, a little bird tells me that he may not be entirely negative on this one.
DeleteI really do think I set my expectations differently by this time in the show's run. I found "Secrets and Pies" a bit tedious first time around. This time I switched off the analytical part of my brain and went into a kind of Looney Tunes mindset -- and it mostly worked.
Or, "the one where a later-then-intended airing of Season Seven's back half, on top of meaning the Movie released with five episodes still to go rather then right after it had finished, meant the main series comic that chose to follow up this episode released ten days before it aired". Whoops!
ReplyDeleteOne of the common sentiments about Season Seven since it first aired was how, in some ways, it seemed to be trying to recapture the feel and mood of the cosier, more domestic early season episodes. And in particular, we have those where newer characters don't appear and the episode directly revolves around a character learning a moral. "Honest Apple" being the obvious example, and this is the other obvious result.
It's an admirable effort, but I've always found this to never get there nearly as much as it'd like. It's a mixture of reasons, but mostly they boil down to late-season writing shortcuts: Pinkie's pie-obsessive schtick of making them for ridiculous barely-events gets pushed past absurd rather too many times for it to still be amusing. Or, indeed, anything but the writers mugging for our attention. The episode commit the rather egregious sin of spelling out that Dash has been getting rid of the pies just a few minutes in, and given she's not outed until barely five minutes are left, that's a lot of wheel-spinning to try and cover up with comedy. Dash's actual dislike of pie is something they don't even provide an explanation for (they don't even have her say "I just don't like the taste", as simple as that would be), making how out of left-field is it stick out further. And there is a little of the "actually toxic relationship" sentiments at the margins here that the last two seasons would emphasise from bad writing so readily.
In other words, with all the strained writing and characterisation attempting to go for wacky and feeling forced, you can really feel Josh Haber was back as Story Editor here.
More broadly, a lot of the common Season Seven issues nip at its heels (or hooves, I suppose), from a protracted setup (yet another cold open that could be cut with minimal rewrites), tight third act that feels perfunctory as a result, characterisations that are subtly but pervasively off due to being exaggerated (Pinkie) or watered down (compare Twilight's supporting role here to even, say, "Rainbow Falls" and how much blander she's gotten really sticks out).
All that being the case, on this rewatch, I enjoyed parts of it, more than I expected. Mostly this is for the segment of Pinkie investigating: in the show's history of such sequences, it's not at the level of "Rarity Investigates!" or "MMMystery on the Friendship Express", owing to some straining exaggeration, but enough of it lands, especially off the odd-but-funny choice for those Pinkie interrogates to take the matter totally seriously (after the initial one with the Wonderbolts). Also, the Batman-style pie transition caught me totally off guard, something that rarely happens with the show's visual gags by now (we're a long way from the Cartoon Network comedic timing used so well in the early seasons). And the attempt at a simpler, cosier thing (if a drawn-out one, this is another easy "would have been better at 11 mins long" episode) does mean, even with the inauthentic late-season micro-level writing, that some other moments do land too.
Ultimately, an okay episode, I suppose, if one that mostly shows how capturing the energy and magic of those early seasons is a lot tougher than it looks, off the facsimile we have here. That still probably inches it into this seasons' top half of episodes. Alack for having such standards!
I thought the idea of this was fine, and it did feel a little early-season-ish in that it was low-stakes silliness. But it wasn't much more than the single joke stretched out over the whole episode. It could have made for a nice running joke as a B plot to something else, but it wasn't meaty enough to carry its own weight.
ReplyDeleteSo many people call Fame and Misfortune one of the show's worst episodes, and it's not like I disagree with that sentiment, but have you people even seen Secrets and Pies?! Because that episode, to me, is far, far worse.
ReplyDeleteI know that Rainbow Dash is supposed to learn to be honest to Pinkie about how she feels about pies, but if the moral of the episode is this obvious, then it makes the entire conflict feel pointless and could easily have been resolved in five minutes instead of dragging it out to twenty-two. Or better yet, do it early on instead of seven seasons in!
Not that Pinkie's any better, for she comes off as a stalker to the point of forcing Rainbow to at least take one bite out of a pie. Seriously, why did Pinkie not consider asking Rainbow Dash if she liked pies or not? Yes, I know you're going to argue that if she did, there'd be no story to begin with, but again, I counter by saying that if the solution's this obvious, then your story is filler.
Also, why did Pinkie not notice something was off from the first few times she gave Rainbow Dash pies? There's a line between obliviousness and stupidity, and Pinkie crosses that line there.
As it stands, I don't care for either Rainbow Dash or Pinkie Pie in this episode, for both come out of it looking terrible; the former for not being transparent from the get-go, and the latter for coming off as a stalker. Secrets and Pies has the dishonor of not only being my personal most underhated episode of the show, but the worst episode of season seven, full stop. It's an atrocious waste of time.
I can't remember whether it was you who called this episode a travesty in 2017, but even if not it seems you agree with whoever it was! I don't, though I suspect I've slightly overrated it here because I just enjoyed the silly fun. Worst episode of S7? For me, no. I'd watch this over "Not Asking for Trouble", for example, because it doesn't bore me as that does. But I somehow don't think I'm going to change your mind! :P
DeleteIt was someone else entirely.
DeleteThanks. I thought it was, but now I know.
DeleteI wish Hamilton had trusted his audience to be a little more intelligent, and had been a bit more subtle/nuanced. The egregious speedbump in this episode that kept rattling my teeth was the whole concept centered on the insanely broad concept of "pie."
ReplyDeleteIt's a great lesson to learn that your friends may have different tastes, and to realize that those are just tastes, not inherent bad or good value judgments, and that a disagreement there is something you should accept rather than try to "fix." But when the concept is as broad as "pie," then, yes, you have a valid reason to suppose your friend is suffering from some sort of unexplored trauma and needs to visit a shrink.