“Bats!”: Good Moral, Clumsy Execution

When I saw the synopsis for “Bats!” I was really excited. FiM tends to handle real world conflict fairly well. I also like to see friends in conflict over personal views when they clash, and we rarely see Fluttershy and Applejack together. Compromise and reasonable discourse about environmentalism! Character stuff! Hooray!
Shame that’s not what happened.

What’s frustrating is all of this could have had a much simpler resolution
Uh, guys? Relocate the bats.

Just move the friggin’ bats.
You don’t need a sanctuary (since when do bats respect boundaries or signs? is there anything keeping them from straying out?). You don’t need to hurt them or even drive them out. They had the bats rounded up. They could have put the barrels in a cage and moved the cage to Fluttershy’s cottage or wherever. Move them somewhere else where they won’t be a problem. Bats are happy, Applejack is happy. Nobody gets hurt and everybody wins.
Also, I don’t really think the amount of apples the bats eat (which seems to be a hell of a lot) justifies the apple trees that would grow back. That section of orchard could be eaten up in a month. It would take a year at the very least to grow a tree, even by earth pony standards, unless vampire fruit bat guano makes apple trees pop up every other week.

It also bugs me to a degree that Fluttershy hardly takes Applejack’s concerns seriously at all. Applejack I can understand, since Apples can be stubborn and “get rid of the varmints” is gonna be a farmer’s M.O. in this situation. Time is short, after all and bats won’t wait. Granted, I understand that Flutters is on the bats but is it too much to ask that there be at least SOME attempt to see things from AJ’s point of view?

Also, I thought the stare was something Fluttershy couldn’t control. Did this change somewhere and I missed it? And why the concern that it hurts the bats? It didn’t hurt the dragon or the cockatrice, it instilled a sense of remorse and shame.

That said, it could be that what harms the bats isn’t the stare but the spell Twilight cast. If they weren’t eating apples, then what WERE they eating? They didn’t go away and they didn’t seem to redirect onto another food source. Would they have just stayed at Sweet Apple Acres and starved to death?
Because that would be a legitimate concern. The bats are actually at risk, as opposed to being at risk of… what are they at risk of again?

That’s really the problem here.
Everypony is scared of the bats or hates the bats but none of them mention hurting them. At worst they’d be driven off and… that’s it. Fluttershy doesn’t have as solid ground to stand on because the bats aren’t at risk the way AJ’s orchard is. If the bats were going to be exterminated or hurt then she’s have a better leg to stand on but as it is, it just doesn’t work.

I like the morals of this episode a lot. Long term solution is better than a short term solution, and don’t let people push you around, even if those people are your friends. Sadly, both of them are handled pretty clumsily, and it’s a real shame. With just a few throwaway lines and tweaks it could have been so much better.
Oh, and Fluttershy was a bat. That was kind of neat, I guess. It demonstrates short term solutions causing more problems fairly well, actually. Kind of a Space Whale Aesop, but whatever.

All that said though, aside from my gripes I did mostly like this episode. I’m just frustrated and disappointment the way it handled some things. Like a lighter version of my reaction to Dragonquest.

Comments

[Ellington]

I definitely didn't like the moral. If Fluttershy believes THAT then she'd probably stop the Mane Six from getting rid of the parasprites. And actually AJ wasn't the one with a short term plan, Fluttershy's plan is short term; those bats will destroy all the apple trees and thus put Sweet Apple Acres out of business. It's just like elephants in Kruger, elephants are good to have around because their poop has fresh seeds that grow forests and elephants are the only animals (besides rhinos) that eat mature Gamba Grass and thus prevent forest fires. But when there are too many, instead of growing forests they destroy forests and thus they either need to be culled or a good portion relocated.

Just like with Look Before You Sleep they tried to portray two sides of an issue, but instead they made one pony in the right and one in the wrong and claim the one in the wrong is in the right.

Plus domesticated apple's seeds can't grow into trees (it's probably not like that in Equestria but in real life it is) so those bats wouldn't even do what Fluttershy claimed. Not really a big point but worth noting...maybe.