Well, let’s look at #8, “Bridle Gossip.”

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TECHNICAL SPECS:

Season: 1
Episode: 9
Written By: Amy Keating Rogers
First Aired: December 10, 2010

SUMMARY:

It’s a beautiful day in Ponyville, and Twilight and Spike are enjoying the sunshine…until they notice that nopony else is doing the same. In fact, the entire town has shut themselves up in their homes, including the rest of the Mane 6 and Apple Bloom, who are hiding in Sugar Cube Corner. Pinkie lures Twilight and Spike inside just in time for Applejack to point out the reason why they’re hiding: a strange, striped, cloaked figure digging up the ground back in the street.

Apple Bloom identifies the figure as Zecora, and Twilight recognizes her as a zebra, a species that usually live far from Equestria. Her friends, however, are terrified of her since she lives in the Everfree Forest, is dark and mysterious, and according to Pinkie, is an evil enchantress that eats ponies. Needless to say, Twilight doesn’t buy this for a moment, and tries to convince them of how stupid their reasoning is, but everything grinds to a halt when Apple Bloom sneaks outside and follows Zecora into the Everfree Forest. The gang find her just before she was about to step into some blue plants, and despite Zecora warning them that the plants are not a joke, they ignore her warnings and just tell her to leave, all while dancing in the leaves.

That night, Twilight tries to sleep, but despite her best efforts, her friends’ words and Zecora’s appearance start drilling into her mind. And when she wakes up, she discovers that her horn has been reduced to a spotted, floppy mess. She can’t find a cure in the library, but still refuses to believe that it’s a curse…until her friends arrive with similar conditions. Pinkie’s tongue has been spotted and elongated, Rainbow Dash’s wings are now upside-down, Rarity’s mane and coat is now a mess of curls, Applejack has been shrunken to a few inches tall, and Fluttershy now has a deep, booming voice.

While the ponies keep blaming Zecora (and Twilight tries desperately to convince them that it isn’t a curse), Apple Bloom sneaks out again to find Zecora. Applejack sneaks into her mane and tries to get her to turn around, but AB just abandons her on a tree branch and continues on her way. Meanwhile, the others notice she’s gone again and head off into the forest. Dash accidentally crashes into the same tree AJ was placed on, and the tiny cowpony mounts Dash’s belly and rides her off to Zecora’s hut.

The rest of the group find the hut as well, where Zecora is mixing up something in a big cauldron. The sight of a bubbling brew, creepy masks, and the zebra’s chanting is enough to start convincing Twilight that Zecora is bad, and when the zebra mentions Apple Bloom, everypony interprets her as making pony soup. At that moment, Dash crashes into the cottage, knocking over the cauldron soon after the others enter. An enraged Zecora demands an explanation, but the ponies accuse her of being the cause of their problems…until Apple Bloom shows up with some herbs Zecora needed.

As it turns out, the real reason they’re all messed up is because of those blue plants, called “Poison Joke.” Anything that touches the plants suffers from a bizarre ailment, which was why Zecora warned them about it last time. The cauldron was actually a cure the ponies had to bathe in, which Zecora has found in a book Twilight rejected earlier because it sounded too silly to help. The masks were good luck signs from her native land, and the chanting was just a nursery rhyme she was humming to herself. Now that everypony’s made up for the whole racism thing, the Mane 6 escort Zecora back into Ponyville to recover a missing ingredient. The town resumes hiding until Twilight has a talk with them, and the episode ends with the Mane 6 in the bath, completely healed, and Twilight narrating the lesson: don’t judge a book by its cover.

REVIEW:

“Bridle Gossip” is one those episodes that anyone who claims Equestria is a paradise tries to ignore. We don’t just see ponies (and our main cast, even) acting like jerks; here they’re pretty much racists (speciesists, if you prefer) to the extreme. We saw bits of this with their reaction to Gilda, but even then they offered her a chance to make friends in the town and be a good person, and she refused. Here, Zecora is not even given that opportunity, instead being shunned for her apparent evilness and obvious ill intent. Of course, her being a zebra with a stock Darkest Africa accent, cottage, and witch doctor-esque abilities makes this a minefield I’d much rather avoid, but let’s take a look anyway.

The opening scene is mostly there to establish just how eerily quiet the town is. I liked Berry Punch hauling her kid inside, as well as Spike’s fears of a zombie pony apocalypse, but otherwise, it’s just there to set an effective mood. And then we meet Pinkie, who lures them inside with the rest while we’re introduced to Zecora herself. Apple Bloom also makes her first appearance here since the pilot, establishing that she’s AJ’s younger sister. (This was somewhat important, since most of the Apples were confirmed to not be living at Sweet Apple Acres back in “Applebuck Season,” save for Big Macintosh and Granny Smith.) And I like how the lighting, angles, and other visuals help build up the tension, even while Twilight and Apple Bloom keep poking holes in their theories. We even get dramatic thunder…which is supplied by Spike dropping some stuff in the kitchen. (Again, a nice little subversion of classic clichés.)

The scene also highlights a few other things about the ponies and the Everfree Forest. Back in the pilot, we learned that the reason ponies fear the forest is because it doesn’t work the same way as the rest of Equestria; here, we discover why.

This actually makes a lot of sense. A species that can completely control everything, down to the very weather and plant growth, and has tailored the world to its very need for thousands of years at least would obviously be freaked out by something that was wild, unpredictable, and chaotic like nature. Throw in Discord and the whole emphasis on harmony, and it’s pretty clear why ponies would have an instinctual fear of crazy things they couldn’t control.

We also learn just how, for lack of a better word, ignorant the ponies are of other, outside races. Nopony besides Twilight has even heard of a zebra, and Rarity chalks up Zecora’s stripes to a fashion choice. It doesn’t help that Pinkie seems to be the one rallying the crowd into fearing Zecora, despite there being no evidence of any ill-doing. She even has another song, “Evil Enchantress,” which is all about making everypony afraid of Zecora eating them and spawning cakes out of nowhere. Besides her, Applejack seems to be the one most into the fear, even shuddering and hugging Apple Bloom before being pushed away. Twilight, of course, is quick to point out perfectly logical explanations for everything, even as her friends make even dumber and more illogical arguments for everything. This little tidbit at the end was my favorite:

All this leads to Apple Bloom sneaking up on Zecora, followed by the group finding the two just before stepping into the Poison Joke. This scene highlights one of the things I love about the show, and something that bugs me about Zecora as a character. First, I love how they take the time to show all the ponies walking, flying and bouncing about in the Poison Joke. While it serves as a very blatant pointer to how important the plant will be in the rest of the episode, it also clearly shows all six getting into it…except for Apple Bloom, who’s perched on Applejack’s back. It also delves a bit more into how magic works in Equestria, with Twilight highlighting the difference between curses and the real thing.

Unfortunately, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Zecora rhyming. Sometimes it’s a lot of fun, but other times it feels like the writers have to force the rhyme in order to get things to work.

Twilight’s dreaming is an interesting tidbit. Despite her protests, her friends’ words are sinking in, and even she’s beginning to see Zecora as an evil figure. In many ways, this is how things like this start to begin with, and even intelligent people can start to believe in irrational things like this if they don’t have a counterbalance to the constant bombardment around them. As if to prop up this point, Twilight has to verbally remind herself that curses aren’t real when she wakes up, and even joke about Zecora cursing her mane…but then lets slip that she thinks she cursed her horn when she finds it limp, flaccid and spotty.

This is when we finally get to the Poison Joke part of the episode. Each pony’s “curse” affects them in a way that serves to underline some kind of irony. Twilight’s special talent is her magic, so her horn is made limp. (It does not, however, completely block off her magic, since she was able to levitate a brush earlier.) Pinkie loves to talk, so her tongue is swollen so she can’t speak clearly. Rainbow Dash is proud of her flying ability, so her wings are flipped upside-down, rendering her incapable of flying straight. Rarity’s passion is fashion, so the Poison Joke makes her a mess of hair that completely obscures her. Applejack is strong and steadfast, so it shrinks her down. And Fluttershy is sweet and motherly, so it gives her a deep, booming voice. Spike even gives them insulting nicknames, although one (“Rainbow Crash”) loses a bit of its humor once you get to “Sonic Rainboom.”

We also get a hint at the moral here when Twilight writes off the “Supernaturals” book as being silly, since after all, there’s no such thing as ghouls and ghosts in a world of magical unicorns. You have to set the magical limit somewhere, after all. Still, we’ll get to what this means at the end.

Apple Bloom abandoning Applejack on the tree branch was funny, but also highlights another angle the Poison Joke may have been working from. Throughout the first act, Applejack was terrified of Zecora, hushing Apple Bloom whenever she tried to speak up and using her authority to keep her little sister from discovering the truth. AB, meanwhile, doesn’t buy any of the crap the others are selling and wants to see what kind of a person Zecora really is before she judges her. In other words, the little sister was actually more of an adult than her big sister, so the Poison Joke shrank AJ down so that AB could be the real big sister. Still, it was kind of a dick move to leave her out there to die. It’s a forest full of monsters, and your sister is now an appetizer. Thank goodness Dash crashes into her.

The rest of the scene at the library is just more silliness, even the “sat on her” bit. So let’s move on to the Everfree Forest, and to AJ shanghaiing Rainbow Dash into helping her fly. This is where the running gag of ponies getting insulted whenever anyone said anything like, “Giddyup!” or, “Hi-ho!” began, and it’s one of my favorite ones in the whole series.

The scene where the group gets to Zecora’s hut is when we finally see Twilight go to the dark side completely. She sees the creep décor, watches the cauldron bubbling, and finally listens to the zebra’s chanting, and when combined with her friends’ paranoia and peer pressure, she finally gives in. Even her last-minute reprieve that she might just be making soup seems half-hearted at best, like a last bit of logic desperately reaching out to be heard, only to die against the rocks as another misunderstanding rears its ugly head.

Oh, and there’s also this scene:

There’s a lot to comment on once Dash crashes through the roof. First, I liked how even AJ started calling her Rainbow Crash. Second, I loved Zecora’s WTF reaction to all this as she tries to keep her entire home from being destroyed. And third, once the cauldron’s been knocked over, we start getting to the real meat of the moral a piece at the time. The ponies call her out on cursing them, but she retorts that they broke into her house and ruined her work, and then have the gall to call her evil. If Apple Bloom hadn’t come in when she did, things would have gotten a lot worse.

And then the walls of prejudice come crashing down. Zecora and Apple Bloom explain exactly what happened, from the Poison Joke to what was in the cauldron. It’s a very well-executed resolution to the mystery, and I liked that even after Rarity stopped believing Zecora was evil, she still wasn’t a fan of her choices in home decoration. And then we get to the callback, as the book Zecora used to make the cure was the same one Twilight rejected without thinking back in the library. And so we have the moral of not judging a book by its cover used twice over. On the one hand, we have the obvious message of not basing your opinion of other people entirely on looks. But on the other hand, you have the message of not dismissing something simply because the outward appearance doesn’t immediately hit your fancy, much like how many bronies had to get over the fact that this was My Little Pony before they started watching – and loving – the show.

The final scene is mostly there to establish that Zecora is no longer unwelcome in the town. The bath at the end is funny, and we also meet the spa ponies for the first time. Oh, and Pinkie apparently breaks the fourth wall.

One other thing about Zecora was that she was intended to have a much bigger role in the series, serving as a third mentor to the characters. Much like Princess Luna, however, these plans were crushed by the executives, and as a result she only makes two appearances this season, with a third episode namedropping her. Still, you can see hints of what they were building towards in “Swarm of the Century,” and she reassumes a similar role in “Luna Eclipsed,” “Cutie Pox,” and “Secret of My Excess,” being the go-to zebra whenever all other options were exhausted. And honestly, that’s where her character really excels; she’s the person others can turn to when the chips are down. I mean, they could have made her into a straight villain for absolutely no reason other than to service a deus ex machine for another villain and completely throw the moral out the window, but that’d be silly.

CONCLUSION:

“Bridle Gossip” is a very good episode, and for me is when the series started its gradual ascent towards being really, really good. There’s a lot of character bits here, the moral is very well done, Zecora is a very good character, and Apple Bloom is given the official introduction she needed before descending into endless Cutie Mark hunting. I do have some minor issues with how they designed Zecora’s character, but for the most part, she works, and it’s a shame we didn’t get to see more of her this season. Overall, a solid episode.

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Well, see you next time!