Season 6, Episode 18 Thoughts and Review · 3:35am Oct 10th, 2016
Alright, even though it's been over a month since the episode aired, I'm still doing review, OK? I am morally obligated to see this through.
The episode opens with Applejack bucking apples at a bull's-eye. When Rainbow Dash appears and asks what she is doing, Applejack explains that she is practicing her "distance bucking".
The animation in this scene was SPOT ON.
According to Applejack, her cousin Braeburn recently made the boast that his team in Appleloosa could beat Ponyville's team at the sport of buckball. Rainbow Dash takes offense at such a challenge and eagerly volunteers to defend Ponyville's honor by joining the Ponyville buckball team.
"I've just got one question... What's buckball?"
— Rainbow Dash
Later that day, Applejack and Rainbow Dash bring Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie to Sweet Apple Acres. Rainbow is now swept up by buckball fever, and Applejack is determined to meet Braeburn's challenge by assembling a team to beat his. Because Braeburn has a unicorn and a Pegasus on his team, Applejack and Rainbow decide to hold tryouts to find an ideal third member—with Pinkie Pie on Rainbow's practice team and Fluttershy on Applejack's.
Pinkie, I love you.
On Sweet Apple Acres' buckball field, Applejack assembles several unicorn ponies together and explains how the game is played: Earth ponies play offense and try to buck softballs into their team's goal basket; Pegasi play defense and try to block the ball from going into the other team's goal before passing it back to the Earth pony on their team; and unicorns play assistance to offense team members by levitating the goal basket and catching incoming balls in the outfield.
Which, leads me to ask...
I'll talk about that later on, tho...
As practice gets underway, none of the unicorns trying out meet Applejack and Rainbow Dash's expectations. However, Pinkie Pie displays a great talent for playing offense, and Fluttershy is good at blocking goal shots with her tail.
LOOK AT MY PRECIOUS CHILD. SHE'S HAPPY AND I'M HAPPY.
As Snails walks by carrying a pair of water buckets, Pinkie Pie accidentally bucks several balls at him, but he effortlessly catches them in his buckets. Applejack bucks several more balls at Snails, and he catches those in a basket as well.
An unexpected turn of events that I am very thankful for.
With the talent Snails has for catching goal shots, Applejack and Rainbow Dash decide that Ponyville's buckball team should consist of Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Snails. Fluttershy and Pinkie are uncertain about playing against Appleloosa in Applejack and Rainbow's place at first, but they agree once they realize how much fun they had playing. In order to prepare the two for the upcoming game, Applejack and Rainbow put them through rigorous training.
It was at this point that the episode took a turn that I was not fond of...
Rainbow Dash compels Fluttershy to run an elaborate obstacle course, and Applejack tosses softballs at Pinkie to kick into goal baskets. The intensity of the training and Rainbow Dash's drill sergeant-like coaching cause Fluttershy to frequently trip up. When Applejack piles onto Pinkie the pressure of not letting Ponyville down, Pinkie gets so overwhelmed that she cannot make successful goal shots anymore. Snails, on the other hand, remains perfectly calm and collected as he practices catching balls in the goal.
Snails is the ultimate Zen master.
Applejack and Rainbow Dash are surprised by Fluttershy and Pinkie's sudden lack of talent after the skills they demonstrated earlier. Reasoning that they just need some rest, the two coaches call it a day and tell them to rest up for the next day's buckball game. On their way home, Pinkie and Fluttershy confide in each other about their worries of letting their friends down. However, they take relief in the fact that very few ponies in Ponyville have even heard of buckball...
...until numerous ponies show up at the train station to cheer for the Ponyville team and see them off to Appleloosa.
After their big send-off at the train station, Applejack, Rainbow, Fluttershy, and Pinkie ride the Friendship Express to Appleloosa. Fluttershy and Pinkie's anxieties are made even worse when Applejack mentions that Ponyville is planning a parade for their return and Rainbow suggests the possibility of a commemoration by Princess Celestia. Unable to deal with the overwhelming pressure of disappointing their friends, Fluttershy and Pinkie confess to Applejack and Rainbow that they don't want to play buckball anymore, and they run away upset.
Applejack and Rainbow come to realize that they focused so heavily on what made the game important to them that they ruined what made it fun for Fluttershy and Pinkie. After finding the two hiding in the train's luggage car, Applejack and Rainbow tell them that they don't have to play against Appleloosa and that they will take their places instead. However, because they have not had any practice themselves, they ask Fluttershy and Pinkie to play one practice game against them before the game against Appleloosa starts.
On a buckball field near Appleloosa, Applejack and Rainbow have a practice game against Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Snails. With the pressure of letting Ponyville down no longer on their shoulders, Fluttershy and Pinkie are able to play much better. Applejack and Rainbow reveal that their "practice" was set up to help show how amazing Fluttershy and Pinkie are when they have fun, and apologize for putting the two under so much stress to win. When Fluttershy and Pinkie still worry about letting their friends down, Snails advises them to simply not think about it – an approach that they eagerly agree with.
Snails is me. I am Snails.
Some time later, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Snails play against Braeburn's team in buckball, and the score is tied five-to-five. When Fluttershy and Pinkie worry about winning, their friends remind them not to think about it and just have fun. In the final seconds of the game, Fluttershy and Pinkie manage to score a point and win the game.
Braeburn commends the Ponyville team for playing such a good game and resolves to get serious for their rematch. Fluttershy and Pinkie tell him not to get too serious, however, as the secret to good buckball is just having fun.
So.. What did I think of this episode?
To be totally honest...
I had a bit of a hard time watching this episode. Kinda like with "The Cart Before The Ponies," I found myself feeling tense and uncomfortable during the episode because of how AJ and Rainbow were acting. I understand where they were coming from, but as someone who has fallen subject to that kind of behavior from authority figures in my life, it was really hard to enjoy this episode when I had real life experiences knocking.
HOWEVER, while this is not my favorite episode, I still enjoyed aspects of it! I loved seeing Shy and Pinkie together, as well as their individual selves. I didn't particularly care for AJ and Rainbow's characterization, especially since it reminded me of "The Cart Before The Ponies", but I liked the turnaround at the end.
Something I enjoyed in this episode was how Pinkie and Shy were as a team, because despite their differences, they both shared anxieties about the game.
Fluttershy is an extreme introvert who suppresses a lot of anger at slights, real or imagined, that she’s felt over the years (which can lead to serious meltdowns). Pinkie Pie is an extreme extrovert who uses it as a mask to hide her inner anxieties over whether she’s good enough to be the every-funny party girl every pony thinks she is (even though she is so much more than that).
Pinkie doesn't want to say anything, because she likes to make ponies happy and she fears that if she says something that they don't agree with, it'll upset her friends. It has been a constant struggle for Pinkie to quit shoving down her feelings of discomfort and sadness to accommodate for others, and I can totally understand her anxiety in this episode. She's scared to stand up to her friends, but she's also scared of disappointing everypony back home.
Meanwhile, Shy doesn't like to be put in the spotlight and mostly does everything she does with the intention of doing it for her own enjoyment. She's scared to show other ponies her hobbies and talents because she likes to hide from the scrutiny of others and enjoy things in private. She enjoys singing, but she shies away whenever she finds herself in the spotlight because she suffered from severe bullying and judgment as a filly. Then, when she is in the spotlight, she usually is to help others and, most importantly, have fun. When someone takes those away from her... that anxiety returns and the activity is no longer enjoyable.
And that's why I like this episode so much; despite how different they are, they both experience the same feelings for different reasons, but are able to share in their troubles together. There's usually a little bit of animosity between Pinkie and Shy (perhaps not on purpose, but still), so it was really nice to see them come together and share their feelings with each other.
HOWEVER, I did have a bit of a problem with Rarity, Twilight and heck, even Starlight not being in this episode. The team called for a Unicorn, so why weren't they involved? They could've at least showed the girls in the episode and given reasons for not having them on the team. For Twilight, they could argue that because she's an Alicorn, she'd be an unfair advantage. But, Rarity or Starlight could be good candidates for the game as well. I guess I just wish that they would have at least mentioned them in the episode. However, I also enjoyed seeing Snails in this episode and really liked seeing him grow out of his previous incarnation of cluelessness.
So, there comes the lesson with this episode: not everything is a competition. This is a lesson that we've seen in the show, but that was more for the characters losing themselves in the competition (like in "Fall Weather Friends" being a good example). Here, this is more about how people can pressure others into feeling like they have to be good at something in order to enjoy it... And that's just not true. It's by enjoying what we do that we become better, not the other way around.
This is a lesson that is so important for kids to learn. Don't do things to be good at them; do them because you love it.
Which, leads to the next lesson... Well, I'm gonna quote something I said for my review of "The Cart Before The Ponies": "To the parents who saw this episode: the lesson in this is that your child's activities are not necessarily your own. You can be excited for them and cheer them on, but in the end, it is their activity and something that they're doing, not you. If your kid wants to perform at the local talent show, it's their act; not yours."
Seriously. If someone is having fun doing something, don't try to work them so hard that they don't enjoy it anymore. You're not making them better; you're making them miserable.
I will say, however, that I wish AJ and Rainbow weren't written so harshly. They came off so harsh that it was hard to see things from their perspective and I really wish they would have toned it down a little bit. Overall, not a bad episode, but I wish they did a little more with it.
Feel like I miss anything in this episode? Go ahead and comment down below!
For me, the reason why Starlight isn't in here could be as follows:
1. She was doing something with Trixie.
2. The episode takes place before Cutie Re-Mark.
As for the other two, they probably figured that Twilight and Rarity wouldn't be into it.
I love what this episode did for Snails' in terms of his overall reception, though I personally have always liked his pony self.
And the episode itself, while not one of my favorites either, is still pretty entertaining.
This was a good episode, the lack of Rarity and Starlight could probably be explained by how few ponies seemed to know about Buckball until Applejack and Rainbow Dash started talking about it.
4249086
True, but I wonder why AJ and Dash didn't at least ask them about it (at least, on screen anyway). They could've just said something in passing like, "With Twilight and Starlight in the Empire..." or "With Rarity visiting her boutique/out of town...", then I would have been fine with it. It's kinda like how Spike isn't in episodes or is just sent away without a reason to it.
Snailyatta confirmed.