Where I Watch – My Little Pony – Episode 10 – Rainbow Fall

The fat Pegasus from the pegasus episodes last season has a name: Bolt Biceps. (I guess he must be – gasp! – a horse.) And the ponies are now gearing up for the Equestrian Games in the Aerial Whatevers tryout (relay, as it turns out). RD is, as usual, full of self-aggrandising bluster casually concealed by that little cough-cough gesture whenever she falls into mentioning how much she…I mean Ponyville…wants them to make it to the games. With the Sochi Winter Olympics just around the corner, this episode couldn’t be better timed. (And I still haven’t got around to booking the archery lessons I wanted to take both after the 2008 and 2012 games.)

Fluttershy is in on the game. I can guess the ending already. ‘Hey, you didn’t qualify for the games until Celestia intervened! No problem!’

Pinkie is their cheerleader. I can see this being more irritating than inspiring.

And AJ has brought them apple Brown Betties, which BB, surprisingly un-aerodynamic, has started into.

Don’t forget to breathe. Yup, Celestia is going to have to give these guys a bye.

After the credits, Twilight (whose horn seems to have grown slightly since her apostheosis) gives them a few words of, erm, encouragement. The weak link seems to be BB, but of course AJ and Rarity have tagged along, AJ wanting people to ‘carbo-load’.

The other pegasi are discussing  the internal politics, with the Wonderbolts representing Cloudsdale and happy to have some competition…if you’re lucky. And RD wants more than luck. She needs…practice.

And decent cheerleaders.

RD starts off with the practice.

BB can’t stay afloat, Fluttershy needs to be introduced to the baton before she will take it, and Rarity wants to colour-coordinate the baton (in reality a horseshoe which is evidently magnetic for hooves). Not the best start. But this is going to be a success: otherwise we won’t get to see the actual Games themselves in the show, right? And, despite the tone of the series, you can’t really show an episode saying ‘Hard luck, but not everyone wins all the time! It’s the taking part that counts’, because the usual message is ‘It’s the taking part that counts, but actually, since the ponies are the heroines, we have to make them win.’ It’s slightly fairer this time, because these are tryouts and the first four teams win. So it’s not like there’s only one winner. All must have prizes.

Onwards.

Cloudsdale has the Wonderbolts. Sooo, maybe you can learn something. Please?

From Cloudsdale’s POV, Soarin’ can do better. He falls from the sky, and shakes his wing as if he’s hurt. It seems to have got sprained.

This is MLP all over. He praises RD for scooping

BB seems to be a dumb jock character.

Could RD fly with the Wonderbolts? She was brought up in Cloudsdale after all. In order to qualify for Ponyville, she has to be OK to qualify with them. The WBs hint that she was so good at the Academy last season (if you haven’t seen that episode, go and dig it up, because it’s how to do a military episode without actually involving Equestria in World War P) that she could do it.

However, for once, RD is actually being loyal to her team-mates when presented with something a bit better than her …mediocre team.

The WBs are, actually, a little sinister in this episode. Under normal circumstances, Spitfire, who calls her decision wise, should be a little bit more honourable than that, no?

Awesome. RD is not only able to keep up with the WBs, she’s become one of their team.

Twilight, still trying to figure out cheerleading in theory and practice, is a bit perplexed by RD’s desertion.

BB and Fluttershy  are struggling, carboloading, and basically goofing off. They don’t know she’s practising with the team.

I think I know where this is going. I’m not sure I like the contrivance involved in getting there (Ponyville must have more suitable athletes than Fluttershy and Bolt Biceps, even if they made sure everyone else was mysteriously doing other events), but so be it. It’s easier to tell a story, particularly for kids, if you demonstrate the extremes of the situation, rather than the middle range.

Twi tells her that one of the teams needs more help than the others. Ponyville can still qualify, because she can fly fast enough to make up the difference. Then there’s another proposal from the WBs – join our team properly.

The WBs are pointing out the obvious. Even with you on their team, they’re still a bit stymied by the poor potential in both FS and BB. Hmmmmm. These guys are already being made out to be trying lure her with promises of …well, not cake exactly, but the way they’re portrayed is interesting.

So RD’s ego has been stroked. But Twilight tries to guilt her into refusing. Now there is another moral involved: it’s OK to cut down a tall poppy through the 100m extreme guilt tripping sprint. Nice.

RD wants to be the best. The way the other episode with Rarity went, was that the guilt trip kinda worked, but the ponies acquiesced in her scheme despite wanting to do something else. They put Rarity’s success first, and helped her to achieve something, for which Rarity went through hell but won out and was generous in return.

And immediately, we see RD’s way out of the dilemma. She appears in a wheel chair dressed in bandages. (I do hope we’re not lapsing back into G3’s anthropomorphic ponies. G4 has been very good at keeping the characters’ action and worldbuilding consistent with equine anatomy.)

She tripped on a …foam hoof, and landed on a fhfhfhfhfhaasseeeer…

OOOOOOOOOOOH! RD’s illness is so fake.

Fluttershy offers to take care of her. Or somepony will. Or a medic. ERM!

They realise she’s faking it.

Shame, it would have been a pretty decent thing to do, actually. Particularly in response to a rather obnoxious guilt trip, which is meant to be sympathetic but comes out all wrong, as if my correct response, when offered a job, with a couple of unemployed friends, would be to turn it down because my other friends don’t have jobs.

They have a replacement. The Pony Who Shall Not Be Named. (Oh dear. I have avoided pony spoilers all week, not very difficult now I’ve taken a break from tumblr, but…this is going to cause a little bit of outrage, although to be fair, this is putting a bit of faith in The Pony Who Shall Not Be Named.)

Twilight is still on the obnoxious guilt trip. Give over, Twily. I think RD has done an honourable thing, particularly since the WBs invited her to train/fly with them, she qualified for their team and under normal circumstances in athletics Bolt Biceps would be in the weightlifting team. I think the episode is a bit contrived in favour of a ‘look after your friends at your expense’. Having friends is nice, but friends don’t often begrudge another friend their own success, particularly not when most other episodes featuring RD have been promoting her and pushing her to succeed on her own terms. Twilight may be in the right as concerns the show’s overall theme, but she’s being a jackass. When I got a temping job the other month people didn’t say I shouldn’t take it just because some of my friends don’t have jobs and I got one. They were, y’know, happy for me, because they knew being employed, even if only for a few days, was important for me.

Fluttershy tries to stem some of the frustration by promising RD the gold medal if they win it.

Soarin’ is upset his friends haven’t been to see him. It turns out the Spitfire and Fleetfoot believes that he’s not 100% and they were going with somepony else.

Oh, how convenient. So the WBs are also jackasses.

This is a frustrating episode. It seems to be forcing the story into ‘tall poppy BAD, ambition BAD’ syndrome. It’s not the sequence of events, it’s how the ‘sympathetic’ character is behaving, and how convenient for the story that the best flyers, who want to be 100%, are being accused of abandoning a friend who might not be 100%, so RD will go back to the Ponyville team.

There are other, nicer ways to push this message. I’m going to persevere, but the way this is written grates on me like Feeling Pinkie Keen did on atheists and sceptics (so I know how people feel about that episode now). Sports is about competition and being the best. They could put this message across a lot better by using a different milieu, and to push RD to be the best she can in Ponyville while now trying to rein her in because oops! she might abandon her friends! is a little unfair. I get that RD might have had to have this episode, and they had to have a story about a tryout before we got to the EGs, but this is ‘settle for mediocrity in personal achievement because FRIENDSHIP!’ – I don’t like it at all. Twilight could become a princess without incident. Why can’t RD be a Wonderbolt?

It’s worse than ‘Celestia will make it so you can win’.

Oh and now we get RD realising she’s missing her friends.

And the huge guilt trip begins, and the self-criticism session begins.

Fluttershy steps forward.

Really?

And Spitfire accepts RD’s capitulation (after having a moustache-twirling moment which seems VERY out-of-character) and invites Soarin’ to rejoin them. It’s not a bad resolution – Spitfire reacts with pretty damn decent magnanimity – but this just feels like a contrived story to teach a specific ‘tall poppies get hurt’ message rather than anything particularly in character.

And they qualify.

I’ll give this 5/10. It’s a nicely put together episode, and quite exciting and with a bit more action than the last one, which was as dull as ditchwater and shied away from any particular argument. The message and contrivance leaves a bad taste in my mouth. ‘As much as I love winning…’ – why couldn’t she both win and have friends? Like, for example, Rarity, who won off the back of a pony sweatshop and her friends magnanimously sacrificed their own personal entertainment for her victory? Or Twilight herself? ‘Don’t want to do well for myself because friends.’ ‘My friends will savagely guilt trip me because I dare to want to be good at something?’

Why not ‘Want to do well for myself because friends?’ ‘My friends will help me do well for myself and I’ll help them do well for themselves too?’

The way it’s put together is shoddy for the message, shoddy for RD’s self-image, and that’s the second time we’ve seen a peer-pressure self-criticism session rather than a Today I Learned.

I’m not down on the show; it’s just this one episode that feels wrong in the way they plotted the story to deliberately drag someone who was getting too ‘above herself’ down. There’s obviously nothing wrong with sticking to your roots or having friends, but the previous WBs episode, where RD was genuinely dealing with an obnoxious bully was much better from a point of view of an inspiring message. In an age where we want little girls to aspire to better things, to tell them that they can go all the way to the top, a ‘I won’t win at any cost, I’ll stay with my friends and not want to do better’ episode is really out of place. As I’ve said, Twilight got her wings; of all the people who have aimed high and achieved what they got through their own hard work and being the protégé of a demigod, she should be the last person to succumb to ‘cut down the tall poppy’ syndrome, and should see clearly that aiming high doesn’t mean having to abandon your mates. But the way the story is set up, there’s no other option for RD but for her to be sent to the Friendship Gulag.

Maybe it’s time to let Rainbow Dash have her wings properly and not always have her have to learn a lesson about humility.

Not keen at all; not as a lesson for little girls who need to know that aspiration shouldn’t have to mean leaving your friends or your roots behind, and that your friends can be happy if you have something they don’t. Must try harder.

Where I Watch – My Little Pony – Episode 5 – Flight to the Finish

I’ve been pony this week – a little ho(a)rse 😉 – so apologies for the delay again. Over the holiday period weekends get chewed up and spat out like gum so I hope to be a little bit more timely after the round of endless trips to the cinema and landing a job on Crossrail for two months next year and so on.

This episode opens in school, so it’s a CMC episode. I like the CMC, they’re cute, although with Twilight Sparkle gaining her wings (that was a heavy night on the Red Bull for her), I’d like to see the episode where the CMC get their cutie marks.

Enter Miss Horsewhinney and Rainbow Dash as an advocate for the Equestria Games, which are about to open, and they need a flag-carrier for Ponyville.

Horsewhinney is a little tired of ‘Ms Dash’’s overenthusiasm, and to be honest, it’s hard not to be, when she keeps interrupting the advocate, who gets really quite angry. Really angry. Like, you’re off the team if you’re not Professional. The way Mizz DAAAASH drips off Horsewhinney’s lips, in quite a good display of a reasonable reaction to RD. (Although I suspect the writers don’t agree with this assessment.)

The CMC are go! And they haven’t mentioned their cutie marks …yet. Their aim is to show Ponyville’s diversity – hearts as strong as horses. (This raises a question: where do horses fit in in Equestria? Are Celestia and Luna horses themselves? I know a pony is not necessarily anything different to a horse except in size, but there is no explanation for this in canon. Maybe they are comparing themselves to an ancient race, or maybe the princess ponies/alicorns are horses ruling over a race of what to them are dwarfs. In this regard, I am expecting Twilight to grow to horse size like Cadence has.)

Song – hearts as strong as horses :D. I really want the showrunners to release a songs album.

During the song we see that fat Pegasus from season 3. Which is nice, but not as good as having a certain Ms D Hooves back. That S2 gaffe cost Hasbro pretty dear, which is unfortunate: while I’m not really offended by the ‘D’ word, I am very strong on not using things that could be construed as slurs in children’s television. Apropos of something else, I did some research into the BBFC rating system and found out that what they look for in children’s media is not just the absence of sex and violence, it’s the presence of uplifting themes and correct moral attitudes. While morals can be relative, I don’t think a Mane 6 protagonist making fun of a pony widely regarded by the fans as being disabled was a good idea, and although you could call the BBFC system censorship, I think kids need to grow up with a lot of diversity and respect for difference in their media diet, and they do a good job trying to cultivate those attitudes in the media to which children are normally exposed. MLP is generally pretty good on that score, particularly having a mane 😉 protagonist who could be taken for non-white, and giving little girls a range of role models. So that’s just my take. We mustn’t forget – not like I did a few weeks ago – that this is still a children’s show. 4chan and what is acceptable in South Park, which is generally regarded as merciless satire for adults, shouldn’t be calling the shots.

Anyway, enter Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. And I mean CRUSH. And here it goes – the three CMCs are still blank-flanks, who won’t be chosen. The bullying gets nasty here: this is perhaps why I find CMC episodes a little tedious, because unlike with Twilight and her friends, the story never progresses. The three CMCs and these two obnoxious twits are locked in a never-ending catfight.

OK. The two bullies watch the CMC routine, ‘The Town Where Friendship Reigns’, speculating on how bad it’s going to be.

Dashie is ‘happy’ with it. But RD has to remain professional. Keep the emotions in check. So her enthusiasm has to be curbed. The bullies are trying to find a new way to get under their skin… or wings.

They walk onto the stage try being saccharine-sweet, and let loose with the ableism on Scootaloo. They tell her that Horsewhinney will never choose a Pegasus to represent Ponyville who can’t fly. With obvious and predictable results. (Now THAT is the way to portray being nasty to someone who is disabled. Make it an obviously villainous character, and direct it at a protagonist who is thus probably bullied into showing those two little trashcakes she can stand up for herself, without the use of slurs related to that disability. I know blank-flank is a slur too, but it’s a fantastical one with no real cognate in reality. Kids are cruel, but you need to make c)

So Scoots is desperate to fly. Back to practise, and offscreen tumble. It’s unclear here, actually whether she’s unable to learn to fly, or whether she is simply physically incapable of it. Either way, it seems to be a

And she tires them out. With obvious results.

Oh dear.

Why do they not just tell RD or whoever what the trashcakes said and have them deal with them? I know it wouldn’t make for an entertaining show , and I know some people are cynical about the way schools deal with bullies, but the secret I suppose is to show why they can’t just circumvent this issue, much like the initial The Hobbit film left out the crucial explanation as to why the eagles couldn’t just whisk them away to the Lonely Mountain (in the book it’s explained that they don’t fly near lands occupied by people fearful for their sheep, lest they get shot, which is a pretty damn convincing reaction, all things considered), therefore spawning a lot of internet arguments normally ending in ‘quit complaining about me complaining about you complaining!’. In this case, however, without any external canon to go on, it would be nice to show them at least attempt to complain about the bullying and get rebuffed, particularly because it hits on a physical characteristic relating to Scootaloo’s wings and is therefore probably likely to be taken a lot more seriously in ‘The Town Where Friendship and, like, you know, Diversity and Cake and other nice things Rei(g)n wink wink nudge nudge say no more about that horrible, horrible pun I just inserted into the title of their song, mind you a rein is probably a horrific instrument of torture in Equestria so forget I said that’.

Anyway, RD needs to go coach some other ponies and they mustn’t miss the train to the Crystal Empire. The one thing I like in this is that again we see a multi-part – and multi-season – arc relating to a big Equestrian event, just like the Grand Galloping Gala in series one. Given this, I suspect we’ll see the CMCs getting their mark: since there is some continuity and the series isn’t just pressing the reset button or ignoring what was decided in earlier episodes, there’s that chance. I for one would like to see their CMs. It might even be a fitting series finale when Hasbro finally puts the kibosh on the series and moves on.

Scoots is devastated. We have five minutes now to resolve this. On your marks, get set…

…Go!

Applebloom and Sweetie Belle are scared Scoots will miss the train. She’s the weak link, and she’ll fall or flop. Better off without her. Applebloom’s reaction is quite surprising. If she’s gonna quit, WE don’t need her.

And thus we get the Town Where Friendship Argues With Itself. RD is excitable about their routine. And AT LAST! The CMC tell RD about their problem. RD instills them with the fighting spirit to, erm, abandon the train to the trashcakes.

They hook up with Scoots, who makes the proper noises for a few seconds. RD speaks for the others when she explains how diversity actually works. RD was from Cloudsdale

The disability plotline is worked out: we find out about Scoots’ disadvantage in not currently being able to fly, but maybe she will, maybe she won’t – but she’ll still be the best li’l pony in town. And it’s Dashie who is making up for her teasing of D. Hooves in S2. :D. This Asperger’s blogger, who has tried for ten years to get into the position in which she can get and hold down a job, can sympathise with that – Scoots wants to fly, and she’s not going to let anything stop her trying. She’s not just sitting back and saying ‘I can’t, so I won’t’. But at the same time, now the girls have finally approached someone else over this situation, they’ve found it doesn’t really matter, because every person has their own unique talent…yeah, you can see where this is going. The CMC episodes are about ponies – well, people – trying to find their niche in life. This ep has been all the better for not fixating on the blank flank aspect and getting another angle in on the kids finding out what they do best. Scoots is disappointed that she can’t fly, of course, which is another layer to the inspirational message here. Sometimes you can’t do the things that others can do, and that can lead to being bullied. But on the other hand, finding what it is you can do bolsters your confidence in different ways and in time will make you just as good and as valuable as everyone else. This is a message particularly valuable to people held back through handicaps which are no fault of their own, a bit like Scoots’ underdeveloped wings.

Which is better than keeping an animation glitch around for mane protagonists to laugh at.

Cue motivational song and a reprise of Hearts as Strong as Horses.

The inevitable happens when the CMCs are chosen to carry the flag. Even Horsewhinney (Dashie actually says Harshwhinney) is overenthusiastic and Dashie gets in a dig. The trashcakes  look on, going a nice shade of green to clash with their dresses.

And the stinger? They are like totally going to get cutie marks in flag-carrying.

OK, I’m giving this episode 10 out of 10. The standard of writing is amazing, they wrote a decent disability episode to make up for the D. Hooves incident, and the Hearts as Strong as Horses song is just about the best one in all four seasons. I’ve largely gone over what I wanted to say, but this is an episode in the fine tradition of the series, all about ‘you CAN do what you want to do’, with a side order of ‘disability is something you have to adapt to, but it shouldn’t hold you back’, which is what I needed to hear a few months ago when I was struggling to get a job (I now have had a couple of days temping and start a contract job in January) and feeling that my lack of ability in the past to get much more than voluntary work was holding me back. I’ve largely accepted that an academic career is what I’m after in the long run, but I have office skills, and that has got me interim projects to work on.

You CAN do it. Good luck.