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>>/12155/
Spike so enthusiastically applauding and congratulating Pinkie Pie, even as nobody joins in, is great characterization in my opinion. Spike’s interesting in that I feel that he’s characecterized both as afraid of actual dangers, but as very brave in a social sense – not afraid of awkwardness or being singled out. The fake-out joke with the Chief and the Sheriff agreeing on Pinkie’s performance being bad is still very funny to me, and it’s one of the things I remembered about this episode before rewatching it because I found it so amusing the first time.
It’s not an especially high-stakes conflict (the ‘pie war’ stand-in euphemism for violence was also used on Veggietales), but a little detail that at least for me evokes something of urgency is how Rainbow Dash is still desperately trying to think right as the deadline approaches, seconds before it’s all too late. In a way that really sells the whole conflict for me, because the preparations of the Appleloosans are just a bit overblown and silly in how much they’re snubbing the mane six, and the pies they’re preparing give you the sense that there isn’t really going to be any meaningful conflict. There is a potential long-term consequence of conflict that would be possible: pies are obviously not going to prevent the buffalo from simply coming back another day, and then another, again and again until they remove all the trees and perhaps demolish the town for good measure. Unless the Appleloosans would be prepared to escalate beyond pies, there’s nothing between the buffalo and eventual victory.
It’s pretty much a consensus that this episode was a mistake, and I have to agree. The biggest reason I think, beyond any issues with analogy or historical representation, is that presenting what’s essentially a real-world violent conflict, that is, essentially, a war in the context of a show that is not allowed to show the actual violence itself is never going to work. So how do stakes even work in a kid’s show? Well, I immediately thought back to Dragonshy – that dragon could have killed the ponies, as could the Ursa Major in Boast Busters. The key is that the threat was established without ever having to actually show the threat being carried out – which frankly, I find in live-action and adult ‘entertainment’ that when these threats are actually followed through on, it’s often for me an order of magnitude more juvenile than even the pie-fight excuse in kid’s shows, so I much prefer the implied threat regardless of whether it’s a kids show or not, really. It’s a real shame, because I like so much of this episode, particularly the comfy train and the buffalo characters. So, I’m going to be giving this episode quite a low rating – 4.6. That is to say, still mostly good, but I think everything that’s going wrong for this episode is so wrong that the overall impact leaves it essentially as a bad episode, the first one I would say is actually bad, that they should have radically rewritten it or not made it, unlike somewhat lower-rated episodes earlier in the season that just needed minor fixes.
>>/12154/
> Will happen later, ug, medical stuff started to happen right now.
Replies coming soon on my end, for now I've got to get to work!