SPOILERS! Mariusioannesp Reviews: "Pinkie's Pride" · 6:03am Feb 2nd, 2014

WARNING!!! The following contains SPOILERS for today's episode of MLP "Pinkie's Pride"

Now without further ado, here is my review of "Pinkie's Pride".

Appleloosa.

The ponies and Buffaloes have gathered in peace for one really raucous party. In the hills above the town stands a mysterious colt in a black hat and poncho with rubber chicken riding on his back, looking at another job well done. His name is Cheese. Cheese Sandwich. This colt sounds familiar. Oh, he's voiced by Weird Al Yankovic...

WEIRD AL YANKOVIC!!!

The Alpocalypse has arrived!

Breathe!

Okay. Cheese Sandwich's Cheesy Sense tingles, and it's quite a doozy. It tells him that next party that needs his party planning expertise is in Ponyville.

Back in Ponyville, Pinkie Pie sings a song about how great of a party planner she is while putting together a birthday party for Rainbow Dash. That's when Cheese Sandwich shows up offering his party planning skills since he claims he is the greatest party planner in all of Equestria. Rainbow Dash wants both of them to work together to make her party the most epic ever because it's not just her birthday, but the anniversary of when she moved to Ponyville. Her "Birth-iversary" if you will. However, when everypony gets caught up in how supremely awesome Cheese Sandwich's party is, Pinkie seeks to restore her party-planning honor by challenging Cheese Sandwich to a Goof Off. But will Pinkie's pride get in the way of the true meaning of throwing a party?

So what's the verdict?

By the way, if you walked in late,
Allow me to reiterate:
The name of this show is My Little Pony!
They call it My Little Pony!
You're watching My Little Pony!
It's the theme from....

MY LITTLE
PONYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!...

BOOM!

.....

I’m okay! Now that my head's grown back.

Oh yeah! It blew my mind!

I was looking forward to the BEST EPISODE OF MLP... EVER!

Sadly, that was not the case. For a few reasons.

But it is still certainly one of the best episodes of the season so far. (Neck and neck with "Rarity Takes Manehattan".) Maybe one of the best episodes ever. It was certainly the most epic.

There is a lot to like about this episode!

First off, it’s a proper musical episode. We all remember how “Magical Mystery Cure” kind of messed up as a musical with its pacing issues and stuff. Here though, the songs give the proper exposition, move the plot along, and give us some fun moments with Cheese Sandwich and Pinkie Pie.

Of course, there’s obviously Weird Al Yankovic as Cheese Sandwich! Now, I noted back in my review of Power Ponies I lamented the wasted opportunity MLP had to make references to The Avengers. So, I knew going into this that they probably weren't going to make an explicit references to Weird Al's songs. But there is still a lot here. Cheese Sandwich looks like a ponified Weird Al Yankovic. When he’s having his Cheesy Sense doozy, his sliced Cheese Sandwich cutie mark flexes like an accordion.

ACCORDION!

He also plays the accordion throughout all his songs. Even at one point during “Super Duper Party Pony”…

HE’S DRESSED IN A POLKA OUTFIT AND PLAYING THE ACCORDION!

P-p-p-polka face p-p-polka face
Mum mum mum muh
P-p-p-polka face p-p-polka face

Also during the aforementioned “Super Duper Party Pony”, we see Cheese Sandwich as a colt wearing oversized glasses, one of Weird Al’s trademarks back in the day. Also there’s a moment when he is standing in a police line up, and it’s clear one of the other ponies looks just like him except with a mustache and a Hawaiian shirt, looking even more like Weird Al back in the day. Hawaiian shirts are also mentioned in the song. Plus, the song “The Goof Off” has snippets of polka melodies that are found in Weird Al’s polka songs such as the “Beer Barrel Polka” and “W.A.Y. Moby Polka”. Also, there’s a point in “The Goof Off” where Cheese sings a polka version of the “Smile Song”! Of course when you got Weird Al on MLP, you have to have him do a polka version of an MLP song. Pinkie calls him out on it too.

But hey, you’re going to get called on singing another person’s song when we been spending most our lives living in an Amish paradise.

If only Cheese Sandwich was dressed as an Amish pony like Pinkie’s dad in that line up. That would have been so awesome!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the case that Weird Al wrote his own songs for this episode. But they were all polka songs anyway so that was good enough.

Sandwich. Sandwich. It kind of rhymes with Yankovic too.

Anyway, enough about how Cheese Sandwich is like Equestria’s answer to Weird Al. What about the colt himself? Given his black hat and poncho, Cheese Sandwich is obviously meant as a parody of Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name. It’s like they thought that since Weird Al parodies stuff, they would use him to parody something too. Not only something, but Clint Eastwood! I think Pinkie’s final line as Cheese Sandwich trots into the sunset about never even getting his name is a reference to this. (My knowledge of the Western genre is woefully inadequate. Even though I like Western themed MLP fanfics. And Firefly.)

He also has a habit of making cheese puns. With his poofy mane and tail and his own Cheesy Sense, Cheese Sandwich is obviously meant as Pinkie Pie’s foil and canonical distaff counterpart. (Sorry, Bubble Berry.) During the Goof Off, he one ups her party cannon with a party howitzer! Cheese Sandwich is very unique though as the antagonist of this episode. Unlike other antagonistic foils like Trixie, Lightning Dust, and Suri Polomare, Cheese Sandwich is not at all malicious and doesn’t intend to one up Pinkie Pie. In fact he’s almost flabbergasted when he’s declared the winner by default of the Goof Off. He’s just in Ponyville to do what he does best. Plan parties.

Speaking of Pinkie Pie, this is one of those episodes that shows Pinkie Pie’s depth, which some feel has been forgotten for most of the season. After her friends get swept up by the awesomeness that is Cheese Sandwich’s party, Pinkie questions her party planning ability. Pinkie factors her party planning and making her friends smile and laugh as a very large part of her identity. When those things seem to be taken away, she fears losing herself. In this way, this episode calls back to Season 1’s “Party of One”. In fact, during the lament she sings about this, Pinkie’s mane does lose a bit of its trademark poofiness. However, instead of having a mental breakdown like she did in “Party of One”, Pinkie instead decides to fight for her place as the best party planner by challenging Cheese Sandwich to a Goof Off for the right to plan Rainbow Dash’s party.

Speaking of call backs to previous episodes, there are quite a few of them here. While singing her lament, Pinkie looks at pictures of some of the notable parties she’s thrown such as her first party featured in “The Cutie Mark Chronicles”, Twilight’s Welcome to Ponyville party in “The Magic of Friendship”, what looks like Gummy’s birthday party from “Party of One”, and Shining Armor and Cadance’s wedding reception in “A Canterlot Wedding”. We also see Pinkie’s party cannon of course as well as her Welcome to Ponyville wagon from “A Friend in Deed”. Speaking of “A Friend in Deed”, Mathilda the donkey from that episode appears in the crowd during the Goof Off.

Also Derpy makes a number of appearances throughout the episode. Derpy!

There are a number of other references outside the Weird Al and prior MLP episodes that I found amusing. When Cheese Sandwich first appears, he introduces himself: “Name’s Cheese Sandwich. I plan parties.” I couldn’t help but think of Winston Wolf’s introduction in the film Pulp Fiction: “I’m Winston Wolf. I solve problems.” Cheese Sandwich also has rubber chicken that rides on his back named Boneless. Now, it could just be a reference boneless chicken, but I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Cartoon Network show Cow and Chicken. It also featured a character named Boneless Chicken who was literally a chicken without bones. When Pinkie Pie challenges Cheese Sandwich to a Goof Off, she sets the time for high noon. Classic Western trope. When Twilight points out it’s already 3:00, Pinkie resets the time for 3:10. If I recall correctly, there are two Western films called 3:10 to Yuma. Also during the Goof Off, Pinkie Pie sings a Mexican birthday song on top of a giant piñata cake. As a native Spanish speaker, it excited me to see Pinkie sing in Spanish. It's something I've always wanted to see for some reason.

This piñata cake then falls on top of Rainbow Dash who was judging the Goof Off since it was for her party and all.

It’s at that moment that it happened!

Just as I suspected in a previous blog, Pinkie Pie has a Laughter epiphany in this episode! However, this time it’s only her eyes that have rainbows in it and not anything else. She was looking at Rainbow Dash though who is already rainbow colored. Anyway, Pinkie realizes that Rainbow Dash isn’t having any fun judging the Goof Off. She let her pride and her desire to outdo Cheese Sandwich get in the way of actually throwing a fun party. So, Pinkie forfeits the Goof Off, and Cheese Sandwich wins by default.

Pinkie Pie is about to leave Ponyville when her friends apologize for getting so carried away by Cheese Sandwich’s party. Rainbow Dash assures her that while Cheese Sandwich is a great guest (Yeah, Rainbow just broke the fourth wall) party planner, Pinkie is their permanent party planner. That’s when Cheese Sandwich shows up to apologize as well and explain how he has misrepresented himself previously. He confesses in song that instead of being of fun-loving colt, he was actually really shy until he wandered into Ponyville and found himself at one of Pinkie Pie’s parties. It was at that moment that he decided to become a party planner and travel across Equestria throwing parties. It was Pinkie Pie who was responsible for making Cheese Sandwich the pony he is now! They decide to work together to throw Rainbow Dash the most epic birth-iversary party ever!

It is at this epic party that Cheese Sandwich and Pinkie Pie sing a song called “Make a Wish”. To me, it sounded a lot like a parody of “This is Our Big Night” from Equestria Girls. Of course, you got Weird Al on so you parody a song from Equestria Girls. It is at this party that we see Pinkie Pie jot the lesson she learned in the diary. Cheese Sandwich goes to her and gives her his rubber chicken Boneless, which then glows with rainbows! It is once again different this time since it’s not at the very end that this happens. Another party well done, Cheese Sandwich then trots off into the sunset.

But the fun doesn’t end there! Instead of the regular ending theme, the episode ends with a polka medley of “The Goof Off”.

There were just a couple of things I didn’t like about this episode though. While the Goof Off is probably one of the best parts of the episode, it did include a pair of gags that I found very jarring. At one point, Cheese Sandwich does a Rubber Chicken dance and then tosses it to his rubber chicken Boneless, who appears as a live action rubber chicken who does a dance while pulled on a string. After Pinkie sings in response and similarly tosses it to her pet alligator Gummy, who appears as live action stock footage of a baby alligator. I admit it was kind of funny. However, it felt too far outside the gags they normally do on MLP. I mean it’s a SpongeBob Squarepants kind of joke. They use to do that on SpongeBob all the time.

Another issue was that like many other episodes this season, it includes the rest of Mane 6 and Spike beside Rainbow and Pinkie and they don’t really do much. All Spike does is make a joke about how Twilight can find a handbook for everything and apologize to Pinkie at the end along with everypony else.

Overall, “Pinkie’s Pride” was an awesome episode! It’s probably MLP’s most epic episode. It was an episode like two years in the making. I really enjoyed it, and I’d love to see Weird Al as Cheese Sandwich again in the future. In the meantime, I’ll write fanfictions about him featuring parodies of Weird Al songs.

Cheese Sandwich and Pinkie Pie are one of my OTPs now. They need a proper shipname. Cheese Pie? Pinkie Sandwich? Sandwich Pie? I kind of like Cheese Pie.

What did you all think of “Pinkie’s Pride”?

But before I bring this review to a close, let’s do something a little different since MLP also ended this episode differently.

DJ Pon-3. Drop me the beat from CNR!

Cheese Sandwich Ryely was a mighty colt
The kind of colt you'd never disrespect
He stood eight feet tall, wore glasses, and had a third cutie mark on the back of his neck
He ate his own weight in coal, excreted diamonds everyday
He could buck you down a flight of stairs, but you still would love him anyway
Yeah, you know you'd love him anyway

Cheese Sandwich Ryely won the Running of the Leaves with two broke legs and a missing mane
He trained a rattlesnake to do his laundry, I'm telling you the colt is insane
He could rip out your beating heart, and show it to you before you died
Everyday he'd make the Great and Powerful Trixie give him a ponyback ride
Yeah, two hour ponyback ride
Giddy up Trixie!

Ninja warrior, master of disguise
He could melt your brain with his laser-beam eyes,
Oh yeah
Oh yeah
He had his very own line for apple cider
A sea pony let him get inside her
Oh yeah
Oh yeah, that was something to see, I tell ya

Cheese Sandwich Ryely figured out Starswirl’s last spell, but he never ever told a soul
I've seen the colt unhinge his jaw, and swallow an MMMM whole
He'd bash your face in with a shovel if you didn't treat him like a star
You could spit at the wind, or tug at Starswirl’s beard
But Celestia knows you don't mess around with CSR

No, no, no

Talkin' about CSR

God bless you all. God bless America. And God bless Equestria.

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