Because of traveling and being busy, I had missed the past three weeks' New Pony episodes. But Discovery Family, bless them, has the habit of re-running the recent episodes before the new one, so I got to see them all in one go this morning. I'll have a few comments on each:
1. A Hearth Warming's Tale: I REALLY liked this episode. Very well done. Many cute touches - Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Pones?) and Watson confirmed for the Ponyverse. This was my favorite of the Hearth's Warming episodes, even as I recognize the first one (where they put on the pageant) was necessary to establish the mythology of the Pony-equivalent of Christmas. (Hearth Warming's Eve is more like an origin-story of Equestria; it is the tale of how the three "races" of Ponies (Earth, Pegasus, Unicorn) learned to put aside their differences and, even better, use their strengths in concert).
This episode was based on "A Christmas Carol" (I wonder how many adaptations, both tight and loose - this one being one of the looser ones - have been done over the years). As tends to be the case with these, the Ponies we know are cast in the roles of the characters in the story. (I find myself doing that; "casting" books I read with actors I have seen or imagining the characters as looking like certain people I know). Starlight Glimmer is the Scrooge figure; in this adaptation she fails to see the purpose of Hearth's Warming out of a combination of ambition (thirst for knowledge; to be the best unicorn in terms of magic) and childhood disappointment (the Snape-pony at her school as much as told her Hearth's Warming was foolish). And so she wants to do away with Hearth's Warming. She doesn't believe any of the purpose behind it; that it is entirely a myth.
And there are the three spirits: Applejack as past, Pinkie as present (or Presents, as she seems to prefer), Luna in a Nightmare Moon like incarnation as Future. And Luna shows Starlight that without the loving-kindness and joy of Hearth's Warming Eve, things get progressively worse: the Windigoes are not mere myth; they are some kind of embodiment of incivility and distrust that has grown strong in the Pony world. (Hm. Sometimes I hear a few Windigoes blowing through the human internet these days)
So of course she repents, and attends the party where her "employee" (played by Rainbow Dash, but also it seems that the roles of Bob Crachit and Fred have been rolled into one, as the party and what some of the party guests (Rarity and Fluttershy) say is reminiscent of comments made at the party Scrooge's nephew hosts.
And the lesson in this one is nice: Sometimes things that seem unnecessary and frivolous are actually very important to our well-being.
2. Saddle Row Review: This chronicles the opening of Rarity's boutique in Manehattan; the one she picked the location out for on her trip there with Pinkie and Maud. This one is told in a clever way - a series of flashbacks as each of the Mane Six is interviewed by a very J. Jonah Jameson pony. (I had to look that up, could not remember the character's name but recognized his mannerisms).
Essentially, there are a lot of problems: the shop is a mess, the clothes are delivered in a terrible jumble, there are raccoons living in the back room, Coco (the would be assistant) is sick, the top floor houses a loud dance club that apparently goes 24/7, the pushy Russian (?) stereotype landlord pony wants his untalented daughter to work there....
And Rarity used Delegate! Which is not super-effective at first because each of the Mane Six tries to do things "as Rarity would want them" until they realize that they need to do it in the way THEY would do it, that Rarity gave them that particular job because she knew their skills would work.
So of course everything gets pulled together at the end and is a great success, even if it winds up being a bit odd (the dance club moves to the shop but also plays slightly more controlled/trancey music, the raccoons get hired on in the shop).
One comment: apparently DJ Pon-3, with the 3 being pronounced as "three" has become canon. When I had only seen it written out I "heard" it in my head as being pronounced leetspeak style, so "DJ Pon-eeeeeee" and the Pon-3 is weird to me.
That said: I like the idea that she doesn't talk. I don't care whether she's actually mute or if she just chooses not to speak.
Also: a callback to the mirror-pool bit from Too Many Pinkies, and Pinkie's admission that having a lot of clones of yourself around is really not that good of an idea. (These little nods to previous episodes are one reason why I love the show)
3. Applejack's "Day" off. Apparently Applejack and Rarity have regular spa days? In the early seasons it was Fluttershy and Rarity, that's how Fluts got discovered as a model....Okay. I admit that I don't see Applejack as the spa type (I am not the spa type, myself - I don't like being touched by strangers and I tend not to have the patience to do stuff like sit in a steam room and do nothing).
Anyway, the idea is Rarity cannot pry AJ away from her chores long enough for that to happen, and Rarity gets upset about that. (It seems a little....petty? to me for her to be so upset that AJ can't join her, it seems a little self-centered). So finally they persuade AJ to let Twilight and Spike take on some (one) of the chores so AJ can go to the spa.
(Okay, there is probably an extended "You had one job!" joke in there - Applejack's way of feeding the pigs is very oddly detailed and specific and with some actions that make no sense which are vestigial leftovers from past problems she solved. It actually makes me think of the old gag about the woman who got a pot roast, cut it in half, put it in the pan and cooked it. Her husband asked her, out of curiosity, why she did that. She responded, "I don't know, that's how my mom always did it." So she called her mom and asked why. Her mom said, "I don't know, that's how MY mom always did it." Fortunately, the woman's grandmother was still alive, so when she called her, Grandma said, "Oh, honey- when your mother was growing up we didn't have a lot, and I had only one roasting pan, and it wasn't quite big enough for a whole pot roast, so I had to cut it in half.")
Also: why pigs? Ponies don't eat meat, and the idea of raising something purely for slaughter (presuming the pigs are somewhat sentient) doesn't work in a sentient-animal-world. Cows are there for milk; chickens are there for eggs. I know Lauren Faust once made a joke about truffle-hunting. I suppose the pigs are there "because there are pigs on old-style farms" and maybe to eat the garbage? But pigs don't lay link sausage like chickens lay eggs, so....
Anyway. Applejack goes to the spa, but finds they have a problem: there is not enough hot water pressure for steam. And Applejack is dead set on using the steam room. Eventually, by following the pipes, she finds a leak, which she fixes.
(I may be a bit more like Applejack than I realize; that seems like the sort of thing I would do. I try to find solutions to problems). So eventually she gets her spa day. (And there are jokes in there about Rainbow Dash being a bit of a softy; despite her one-time claim she didn't like anyone touching her hooves, apparently she went in for the pony version of a pedicure as well as a massage)
4. Flutter Brudder. Wherein we see Fluttershy's family. Her parents, as you might expect, are quiet. (In fact, they seem to think she is more assertive than they are, and perhaps this is true, at least in re: her brother). Her dad is sort of a turquoise color with a pink mane and mustache, and he is apparently retired from the cloud factory. Her mom is yellow with pinkish red hair and is pretty much how I imagined her mom would look.
Edited to add: every meal her parents serve has a gelatin mold at it. Hm. I wonder if that's a signifier in some way? I associate gelatin molds as a very upper-Midwest thing (even some older Wisconsin restaurants have them on the salad bar) and also allegedly Utah has the greatest amount of Jell-O bought in the country. Both of those locations are often stereotyped as having fairly quiet, "nice" people....Or maybe it's suggesting her parents are stuck in the Pony-equivalent of the 1950s? That seems to have been the era of the great flowering of Jell-o mold art....
(Also, isn't gelatin made out of hooves? Yipes. Well, maybe it's an agar mold, then, agar being the vegan equivalent to gelatin. Or maybe there's some kind of magical Pegasus substance that is like gelatin but is not....made out of cloud leftovers or something)
Her brother, though. Yeesh.
When I first heard of the episode, I envisioned him as an even-more-timid version of Fluttershy who needed her help somehow learning confidence (and I think that would have made a sweet episode). Instead, he's a bro-dude-ish hipster (or maybe a hipsterish bro-dude) who is the eternal leech and is like the stereotype of the overindulged younger child ever.
(Fluttershy is the oldest in her family. Interesting. So, let's see:
Rarity is the oldest of her family with a younger sister.
Twilight is the little sister to her brother
Applejack is a middle child
Pinkie is apparently a twin and also the next-to-youngest (Marble Pie is "a few seconds younger" than her, so that's why I assume "twin" unless pony time-marking is very different from ours)
Rainbow Dash, we don't know, but I've always headcanoned her as a youngest child, a lone sister with numerous older brothers
Of course, all of this is pending some new sibling being written in; we did not know of the existence of Twi's "Big Brother Best Friend Forever" until shortly before his wedding, and this is the first we've heard of Fluttershy's brother).
anyway. Zephyr Breeze is, I'm sorry, SUPER annoying. (And double so that his nickname is Zeph. I had a grandfather who went by Zeph. His given name was Joseph and he was of partly French Canadian heritage, and everyone who knew him called him Zeph)
Zephyr is....well, it's maybe a bit facile to say he's the stereotype Millennial* (or Lizard Person, if you're doing that). He's not "found himself" yet. He's coming back home to crash with his parents after dropping out of "Mane Therapy" school.
He wears a man bun. When I saw the preview that alone made me go, "Ruh-roh."
(*stereotype, because I've had a plurality of Millennial-aged students who do not act like the stereotype. Then again, maybe rural kids or kids who had to work young have their heads screwed on a bit straighter?)
Anyway, Fluttershy is deeply annoyed by her brother's indolence and mooching, and pretty much tells her parents that. And so some kind of law is laid down, he's told to go somewhere else to stay.
Which turns out to be Fluttershy's cottage.
(But first: funniest line for me in the episode: "I'm PEEVED. oh, pardon my language." And a later instance of it suggests that peeved might just be a bad word in the Ponyverse)
Anyway. She tries to find him jobs, each of which he (unconsciously? Because fear-of-failure?) sabotages and gets fired from. Eventually she throws him out - and he goes off and tries to camp, but of course he can't even make a freaking FIRE so she comes back and rescues him.
And here's a question for discussion: is he really just so terrified by failure he never learned to do anything, or has he been so coddled and saved-from-maybe-failing that he never learned to do anything, and thus is totally inept?
Because, for me, fear of failure is strong. There are perhaps a few things - riskier things - I have not attempted because I don't like failing. (And I don't like investing enormous amounts of time in something that's a hopeless long shot - which is why I don't write NSF grant proposals, for example). But I also don't like having to depend on other people for stuff. I once commented I liked the "self-rescuing princess" t-shirt because that kind of describes me.
So I really liked Fluttershy's comment when Zephyr mentioned that she had saved Equestria "like, a dozen times" - she remarked that she was terrified every time she was going to fail, but she did it anyway. (Bravery is not not being afraid; it is being afraid but doing what you have to do anyway)
In the end, she lets him come back for a while, BUT he must try. And he must follow through on things. And when he tries to "go by the book" from his Mane Therapy school (rather than breaking any and all rules and being "Creative' before he even KNOWS the rules and understands what they are for), he sort of succeeds. It's not perfect - and if it had been, that would have undermined the moral of the story, I think.
(From Adventure Time, a rougher version of this moral: "Sucking at something is the first step to becoming kinda good at something")
Eventually, he successfully graduates from Mane Therapy school (hopefully with not a lot of student debt) and proves he CAN do something.
There's also a running gag in here, that he thinks Rainbow Dash has a crush on him. I think her unimpressed reactions will provide fodder for those Flutterdash shippers, but as I don't ascribe to that ship (for a number of reasons), I think it's as much a gag about the sort-of-unappealing guy who thinks he's got magnetism. (And Zephyr is, at least at that point, pretty darn unappealing).
Also, he needs a shave. The stubble look does not work for him.
Another edited to add: Maybe, upon rewatching the episode, I was a little harsh on Zeph. (Again: lots of times when you have that kind of helpless late-teen, you have to sort of look at the parents and how they coddled). BUT: I could almost see someone (maybe even me) writing a fanfic shoehorning this storyline a lot more tightly into the parable of the prodigal son. Parents who, at least in the older sibling's eyes, let the younger get away with murder? Check. Older sibling unduly ticked off at younger? Check. Parents that welcome younger back? Sort-of-check; there's no indication of them giving a bigger welcome to Zeph than they did to Fluts, and I think that's what a real retelling would take. (Also, Fluttershy does not work for her dad; she has merely gone off and gotten her own job - and yes, I think she has a J-O-B job she gets paid for, whether it's by the Equestrian version of The Nature Conservancy or the individuals whose pets/livestock she helps, and maybe some of the animals she helps actually pay in-kind (I could see her never wanting for honey, because Harry the Bear).
But as I've grown more mature, I see the point of the Prodigal Son parable is as much "don't be the resentful and really kind of ungrateful older brother" (which I admit I can at times write myself into the place of: not so much with my own family as my brother is a grown-up adult who manages his own life, but with other people I deal with) as it is "we are all the profligate younger brother sometimes and isn't it a good thing our Father is more forgiving than our older brothers are?"
But yeah: as I once opined, there's really not a Gospel According To Ponies (although the fandom being what it is, there might be) but I can see elements of the morality if not the religion in the show.
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