MLP Episode review: Too Many Pinkie Pies · 2:20pm Apr 20th, 2016
So, we have Pinkie Pie. Multiple Pinkie Pies... and a SAW trap at the end. Oh, joy! Okay, folks. Get your tally marks ready, because we've got to figure out how many is...
Too Many Pinkie Pies
Do I even have to say two? :p We open with Twilight trying to change an apple into an orange. Out in the middle of Mane Street. With absolutely no safety procedures in place.
Seventeen
Pinkie suddenly bounds into view and tackles Twilight, sending the beam ricocheting around and turning a bird into a bird/orange hybrid. Wow. Apparently hugs are funnerific, or something. Pinkie, let go. NOW. "What a cute orange birdie." No, what a horrible abomination. Get it right. She wants Twilight to turn her into an orange. Do it, Twilight! Do it NOW! She bounces into Rarity, who's sporting the Dark Ominous Cloak of Fashion +1. Pinkie, switch to decaf. Have your blood filtered or something. Ugh!
Rarity takes off the cloak, revealing her latest ensemble. And it's a rather dapper outfit. Pinkie freaks out because Rarity had fun, and she missed out on it! Pinkie... you do realize that happens all the time, right? Oh, god. She didn't realize that! We cut to Rainbow Dash thinning out a cloud so it'll float back up. Pinkie does a Road Runner around it, then zooms off. She hops onto a cart Applejack is pulling, which doesn't look like 'fun' so much as 'work'. And finally, a tea party with Fluttershy. And pinkie needs an oxygen tank as she goat-faints.
Back from commercials, Fluttershy's butterflies are... cocooning Pinkie. it's an odd image, but neat. Pinkie spills that she can't keep up with all her friends having fun. "It's driving me even more coco-loco than usual!" Well, at least we've got solid confirmation on her being coco-loco period. Fluttershy promises not to have any fun. And that's a sentence I just typed. Applejack and Rainbow Dash show up to invite her to some fun. Dash wants to chill by the lake, and Applejack wants her to go to a barn-raising. Dash is... surprisingly reasonable, saying whichever one she chooses will be cool with her. Applejack's reasonable, too.
Back with Twilight and another attempt at the spell and Pinkie bounds in and this time it's a frog that gets mutilated and...
Eighteen
Pinkie digs a trough in the ground with her braking. She's trying to get herself fast enough to attend the swimming hole and barn-raising. "If I can cut my time by only twenty minutes, I'm good." Oh, wow. I kinda wanna hug her and offer her a ride. Twilight says the only way to pull it off is if there's more of her to go around. Pinkie... becomes an alarm clock. "The legend of the Mirror Pool!" And she bounces off, leaving a thoroughly-confused Twilight behind. Spike asks if practice is over, but nope, back to work. And cue sad trombone.
Depp in what appears to be the Everfree, Pinkie is wandering along, hoping she remembers the rhymes from Nana Pinkie's story. Some people think this is a continuity error, with her mentioning another granny earlier... except I've got two grandmothers. She tumbles down a hole and finds herself in front of the Mirror Pool. And in a remarkably well-staged scene, she reaches in and pulls herself out of the reflection with a clever camera twist-around. Now there's two Pinkie Pies. Oh, these are what my nightmares are made out of.
Pinkie quibbles a bit about if talking to her clone is still talking to herself. The clone is obsessed with 'fun'. They climb up and emerge, with Pinkie expositing about her friends. the clone wants FUN! Pinkie tells her to go to the barn-raising, then come back and tell her all about it. I see nothing but good things happening with this plan! She's off to double her fun, with Doublemint Gum!
We're with Rainbow Dash at the lake, reading Daring Do. Nice. :) Pinkie jumps up, does a Neo as she inflates a flotation device, and jumps in. The water's especially wet today! Dash, however, is tired from work earlier. *Thinks back to yesterday* I am so with her. This is actually pretty cute and heartwarming, albeit a bit confusing with Pinkie's double-talk about her twin. Don't worry, Dash. I'm so with you there, too. :p
We cut to Fluttershy picking berries and the Pinkie-2 bouncing by. Fluttershy couldn't help herself, and is having a picnic! Yogi and Booboo are banned, though. He and Harry are pretty sore at each other. God, even a mouse goes up and offers a hunk of cheese to the clone. Too... cute... Unfortunately this causes Pinkie-2 to get really confused and has a fucking panic attack. Back at the lake, Pinkie's told Dash about the duplicates. Dash is dismissive. Dash, after everything you've seen... Dash takes a nap and Pinkie turns the volume way down. Then Pinkie-2 shows up and Dash is all, "Okay, whatever." Pinkie grills Pinkie-2 about the barn-raising, but she confesses about 'Fluttershutter's' picnic. And she breaks down because she didn't have any fun. Aww. So Pinkie decides to... make some more Pinkie Pies. "Would I lie to me?" I don't know, would Annie Lennox?
Oh, no. This is what my nightmares are made out of!
So yeah, two ore clones. Fun-obsessed. And then they create more clones, and then even more clones, all bouncing up and down and chanting fun. Pinkie is... starting to get exasperated, methinks. She gives them a quiz on names and... they pass. and then they fan out. First they're at the lake, and Dash realizes Pinkie wasn't kidding. It's a cacophonous crowd. Pinkie realizes the barn-raising might be taken over, too. There, some of the Apple Clan are raising a wall. Applejack, Big Mac and two I can't identify. One of them bounces on Big Mac, he lets go and all the walls come a tumbling down. My god, John Mellencamp was right! Aplejack is pissed as a water tower is destroyed, too. Pinkie is having an, "Oh, god what have I done?!" moment behind a haystack.
There's a crowd gathered in front of Golden Oaks, fortunately no pitchforks or torches. Rarity's shop was ravaged, and fluttershy's picnic was ruined, too. inside the library, Twilight tries to recall the name of the legend Pinkie mentioned. Spike finds... a hidden panel, and opens it. No, that's not ominous at all! Inside is a book with info on the Mirror Pond. There's a spell to send them back. And to quote...
"If I can't figure out which one's the real Pinkie, I might send her back by mistake." Remember that for later, folks! Back outside, Twilight asks if anyone can tell them apart. What is obviously the real Pinkie bounces in and asks for help. Twilight brushes her off, while another mirrors her actions. Other Pinkies bounce up, saying they're the real Pink Shady. Including one... who rises from inside Fancy Pants' hat.
Okay, why did they use Fancy Pants' character model, there?
Pinkie has an identity crisis as she kinda loses herself with the others, and... you have to feel sorry for her, here. Hell, I feel sorry for her. As the clones bounce about, Spike points out the real Pinkie, saying she's not acting like the others. Spike, you win all the cookies. Twilight brushes him off, saying the real Pinkie's never sat that still her whole life. How the hell do you know this, Twilight? Spike asks her, and my god this is legit sad. More on this scene later, but it's like she's realizing, "It's how they all see me." Twilight is confused about what to do. I don't know... ask them questions only the real one would know? Realize the only one not bouncing about and screaming, "FUN!" might be the real one?
Pinkie then pipes up and says to give them all a test, something hard for a Pinkie to do. Questions, maybe? Whoever wants to stay the most must be the real Pinkie. This is a horrible plan, so of course Twilight goes along with it. Pinkie also has another breakdown. "Stupid magic mirror water! This is all your fault... and mine." Oh, thank you so much for those words.
Twilight finds the others, hidden in a tree trunk. She tells them her insane plan, while Applejack's family rounds the clones up. They all sit down. Inside is the test. Just before the test begins, Dash brings the real Pinkie inside and dear god this is nightmare-grade fuel already. The test is... watching paint dry.
You are fucking kidding me. Nineteen.
After some time, one gets distracted by a bird. Twilight shoots it... and it floats up, puffs up like a balloon and explodes. Some sort of energy, probably its soul, goes back to the Mirror Pool. Oh dear sweet fucking god. Oh, and we have a 'Take That' against G3. Because of course. Twilight's horn even starts fucking smoking.
Two are left. And Dash, being an asshole, does a deliberate distraction. And yes, the real Pinkie is left. She realizes she has to choose which friends to hang out with, and it's all right to choose between them. Also, Tom is plugged into the hole that leads to the Mirror Pool. At the end, Pinkie decides... to take a nap.
Thoughts
I'm gonna divide this up into two parts. The majority of the episode, and then the horror movie at the end.
1. Okay... I think I've made it clear my feelings on Pinkie. For me, she can be quite intolerable at her worst. Here... was not her worst. Okay, she messed up big. Thing is, she owns up to it. I'll give her that all day and twice on Sunday. She meant well for people she knew could mostly handle her wackiness. She didn't destroy any property either or get bailed out by an asspull.
And... I felt pretty damned sorry for her by the end. I think she had a realization. "Oh, god. This... this is how they see me. I'm everyone else, seeing Pinkie... and I can't even blame them!" It's sad, in a great way. And it's deep, too. I commend the show for that.
The Mirror Pool is an interesting concept.
And then... the test, the fucking test.
Okay, Twilight. You have clones all acting insane and shouting fun and acting insane, and there's one of them who is acting depressed and completely not like the others. You have a spell that can 'send the others back', but as I quoted above, can also send the real Pinkie Pie back, too. So in other words you have to be really careful with it. So... you have them watch paint dry.
I have no words. Okay, I have words, but they're kind of rambling. What if one of the clones was brain-dead? What if the real Pinkie had another panic attack or seizure? What if you miss? What the hell is wrong with you, here?! This is the most insane, unsafe thing I've seen in a long time. It's also completely unnecessary, as I pointed out. Question the clones. Observe their behavior. Don't herd them together and fire off a spell that can send the real one back if you fuck up!
So... up until the end of the episode, rather good. Rather thought-provoking. It made me sad for Pinkie and want to hug her. After, it's a horror movie. 
This episode is great because it gave us sooo many fics with Twilight being arrested for murder.
There was this one fic I read that I really enjoyed, but can't remember the name of that had a scene with Celestia being the one to deal with them, and Applejack had rounded all the clones up in her barn and Celestia throws her crown on the floor and goes "Welp. Time to do what needs to be done" with her crying afterwards because she knows SHE JUST MURDERED LIKE A HUNDRED SENTIENT BEINGS meanwhile Twilight is acting like she's trying for a god damn high score or something.
The appropriate reaction:
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Actually it's kind of interesting, sociologically, that your review never mentioned the idea that disposing of the clones was murder, yet the first two comments were strictly about that.
The episode really didn't establish very well exactly what the clones are. For all we know, they're mere simulacra with simple programmed personalities based on their creator. The fact that they say things other than "Fun!" occasionally doesn't mean they have any higher reasoning processes, maybe they're just reacting as their programs dictate.
This would actually be a perfectly legitimate basis for Twilight's test—the clones would literally be incapable of concentrating, automatically responding to any outside stimulus, a limitation which Pinkie, as a real pony, would lack—except for the fact that Twilight had no way of knowing that was the case.
I believe one of them was Apple Fritter.
Yeh Twilight was really quick on the trigger on this one.
And, hell, maybe she did just murder a bunch of 'real' ponies in cold blood.
3883647
I remember seeing one, where Rainbow Dash ended up being cloned. And it was great for Scootaloo. At least until the others figured out what was going on. For a little while she had a 'big sister' who gave a fuck about her.
I dont remember how that one ended though. But it was a pretty good idea.
3890418
I think part of the problem is that these clones are literally less than a day old, so their behaviour could just as much be from not having a lifetime of experience to draw on as being programmed simulacrum.