What I Thought About "Applebuck Season" · 5:23pm Jun 7th, 2015
Episode review
Oh, I got excited just thinking about seeing this episode again. It has some dumb stuff in it, but I always dug it. Let's take a look.
Ahh, the early days, when Big Mac said more than "eeyup" and "nope". Though, he's spoken more since those times. Sorta a fluctuation, with more varied talking, then less, then more again. I always liked him, even in the tiny role he has in this episode. He's sensible and even more down-to-Earth that Applejack is, or he once was, at least. And hey, this is actually his first "eeyup" ever, isn't it? Great one, too, just shutting AJ down at the beginning.
"This is your sister Applejack. The loyalest of friends [...]"
Ahh, dammit, here come the people who think that AJ and Dash's elements should be reversed. AJ is honesty, Rainbow is loyalty. Rainbow just lacks tact. Get over it, people.
Hmm. I kinda wonder about that moment when Applejack talks with the cows. Like, I wonder if they wrote the stampede thing first, and then realized that the cows might well be able to speak as well, so they decided to have AJ ask them about why they went nuts. Just a thought. Also, that "steer" pun was nice.
You know, with the big, mayor-approved parties that Applejack gets, she's probably a minor celebrity in town. At the very least, I doubt there are any long-term residents that don't know of her. On a related note, why was Twilight giving a speech, anyway? She only just moved there and likely isn't well established yet. Despite living in the library, we also never see her do any public librarian things in the show, or ever mention them. At this point, contrary to many stories and headcanons, I have to assume that it was not, in fact, a public library. No book loans, just a place where they stick books.
Okay, I feel I have to point something out about Pinkie, here. I've seen the argument that Pinkie is ultra-observant and takes everything she sees into account, based on "A Friend in Deed", but we see her being totally oblivious in this episode. She didn't at all notice that there was something wrong with Applejack, or that there was horrible stuff going into the muffin mix. And then we get the same obliviousness, only up to eleven with "Filli Vanilli". The common thing I hear to explain this? That Amy Keating Rogers always wrote Pinkie the best, and only she knows how to make her smart. Yeah, well, she wrote all three of the episodes I'm talking about right now. Pinkie was just as inconsistent under her pen. She also shined the brightest, though, so there is that.
Alright, enough of that can of wheat worms (which I would actually assume to be mealworms rather than earthworms).
Hey, I just noticed that Applejack's snoring incorporates whinnying. That's pretty cute, along with her flailing when stuck on that apple cart, and that little "whoops" when she kicked over a bucket. Her sleep-deprived antics were pretty amusing in general. They were a little dumb, but amusing. Though, this actually ties in with something else I noticed about this episode. It felt kinda, well, childish. Like, Pinkie jittering across the ground and being silly, the scene with the spooked cows, and AJ and Pinkie wooing at that shiny trophy all felt pretty childish. Yeah, I know this is a show mostly aimed at a younger audience, especially back then, but that's not really a reason to play on simple, cheap, childish humor. The work doesn't have to be dumb, only accessible. Just kinda annoys me, but maybe I'm way off base with all of this. Moving on.
I wonder where Rainbow Dash got that catapult and platform. Did she make them herself? If so, that's impressive. If not, who the hell sells that stuff? Also, wow, Rainbow was really single minded back in Season One. It's a little grating, actually. I can see why so many find her annoying, especially in earlier episodes. I still love her, though. She's a braggart, yeah, but she actually is awesome, so it's pretty justified. I mean, her first scene ever was about her seeming arrogant and then backing up her claims perfectly. Not really arrogance if she really is as awesome as she says (at least most of the time).
Heh, that first time Applejack falls and smashes flat on the ground got a decent chuckle out of me. No bounce, just hitting and sticking. Her other impacts are nice, too. I could watch AJ slam into the ground all day. Also, I wonder if she would've agreed to the whole "let's send Rainbow into orbit" thing if she hadn't been so tired and been able to think clearly.
Wow, this episode gets me thinking a lot. Like, do you think that the Cakes might've insisted that Pinkie have an assistant because they didn't trust Pinkie to do it alone? I wouldn't be surprised.
Muffins.
Most of you guys and gals probably already know, but real horses actually don't have a gag reflex and are incapable of puking. They eat something toxic, they just have to deal with it. These little ponies are clearly not real horses, though. They have uvulas, too, which horses don't. We really can only use so much known horse anatomy for these characters. Same with real-world physics. I refuse to utterly abandon known laws of reality and behavior, though, even though someone recently told me to do that when writing ponyfics. I'll insert known things about our world when they seem to fit. Like the fact that they have gravity, know what comets are, and so on. It really doesn't seem all that different from our world, functional magic aside. But I digress (again).
Man, Applejack sure is pissy at Fluttershy and the bunnies. Either she hates bunnies or is just getting that much worse from the mounting stress. The resulting bunny stampede was totally awesome, though. Those poor, adorable flower ponies. I wanna see more of them. Like, a lot more. Also, wow, Daisy sounds almost exactly like Twilight in her first line, and then like Rainbow in her second. Weird.
Oh, and on Twilight harvesting from about forty trees at once*, I'm gonna call that less "unicorn master race" and more "Twilight master unicorn". It's been stated that she's more powerful than most ponies, even in Season One.
And the episode ends with Spike eating from the trash. He has crossed the line that divides dragon and bum. He is now a bum. So yeah, this episode was pretty great. Lots of fun stuff, lots of things that made me think, fun expressions, and a great lesson at the end. Not a lot left to say, really. I'd give it 9/10, with minor points lost for some cringe-worthy childishness.
By the way, if anybody isn't digging this rambling, scatterbrained format, feel free to let me know.
*That's as many as four tens.
And that's magical.
Well, with A Friend in Deed, she's also shown to be pretty oblivious. I don't remember every character moment of hers but maybe it's something she has to focus on and it comes and goes. It's also possible she just has come-and-go allergies and her pills cause her to space just enough.
I definitely agree with you on Rainbow Dash.
As for the episode itself, I honestly find it to be one of the first season's weaker ones.
3130144
She has her moments, but she mostly just seems nuts, yeah.
3130202
Care to elaborate?
3130324 It's hard for me to really explain... I guess I just don't find it as enjoyable as the majority of the season 1 episodes.
3130334
I've had the same thing happen to me. Sometimes, it's hard to pin down why we don't like something, we just don't dig it.
On the topic of Twilight giving the speech in town, she is Celestia's prized student. She was practically a royal member ever since Season 1, being the Princesses' personal protege, only one step below royalty herself, and she was treated with the utmost respect throughout the series by the rest of Ponyville. After all, even in the pilot episodes, her original job was to visit Ponyville and oversee their activities to make sure they were getting done properly, so she does have rank and authority even this far back. I'm sure that rank didn't vaporize just because she moved to Ponyville.
For all the crying people did when Twilight gained her wings and her crown about how she's supposed to be "normal", the fact is she was never normal. She was always one of the most magically gifted Unicorns in Equestria, and she always represented Canterlot and the royal family within Ponyville. This is also why it's her, not the mayor, who is in charge of planning for Celestia's visit in "Swarm of the Century".
3130632
Huh. I didn't think about it like that. After the whole ordeal with Nightmare Moon and the ensuing party, surely lots of ponies saw Twilight hanging with Celestia. Word surely spread after that, establishing her standing and position as one of Celestia's students, nay, as one of Celestia's agents in Ponyville. I bet Twilight had an uncomfortable conversation with the mayor about that. About how Twilight would be wielding authority alongside other town officials.
Thank you. I've always thought the drama surrounding Twilight's alicornification to be both overblown and asinine.
3131114
A lot of the Season 1 episodes take on new context when looked at from this perspective. Like I don't think just any normal pony could've gotten the cooperation of the entire town with two sentences in "Winter Wrap-Up", no matter how confident they seemed.