Honesty is not the best policy · 3:59pm Jun 3rd, 2017
What is it with FiM lately and all these Rarity and Applejack team up episodes? This is the third season in a row where there’s been a lot of focus on Rarity and Applejack being teamed up together. I remember seeing Rarity and Applejack hang around with some of their others friends, but now it seems the show is obsessed with these two being paired up.
I know in season five, there were a fair share of Rarity and Pinkie episodes, but the number of Rarity and Applejack episodes have gone up. Now I understand that these two being so radically different brings a lot of potential for stories and some good comedy. We have seen that before in the past with their other episodes. They do end up being a good dynamic and can play off each other well. If Honest Apple has proven something though, it’s that this team up has run out of steam.
Rarity puts together a fashion contest to see which designer will have their clothes in her shop. She decides to surprise Applejack by having her be enlisted as a judge for the show. Rarity explains to Applejack she wants her for her honest opinion and practicality, but mostly the former. However, when Applejack’s criticisms get out of control, the show ends up being in danger of being ruined.
If you haven’t figured it out already, this premise has one huge flaw; the inclusion of Applejack. Why would Rarity hire Applejack, a pony who is a farmer and never has shown any interest in fashion whatsoever, as a fashion judge? She chose probably the worst candidate to be a judge, even with her honesty coming into play. Let me ask you this; would you believe a premise where Twilight hires Pinkie Pie to put together a party for the upper, snotty Canterlot Elite? I don’t think so. But that is only the beginning of the problems this episode has.
The episode seems to rely heavily on the idea of Applejack being so blunt in regards to her feelings about the clothes the fashion designers put together. Initially, I did enjoy how Applejack is at first with her remarks about fashion mostly because I can relate to her about some of the things. Stuff like clothes having holes in them or the numerous belts were pretty entertaining and I could relate to how weird stuff like that is.
In a way, Applejack seems to be channeling her inner Sugarcoat from Equestria Girls: Friendship Games. While not as hilarious as Sugarcoat was, I did end up enjoying Applejack’s bluntness about fashion in general. As the episode goes on though, Applejack’s bluntness starts to get nastier and nastier. It gets to a point where Applejack feels out of character.
I know Applejack doesn’t know, or care at all, about fashion, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel like her at all. Applejack may be blunt yes, but she isn’t tactless. She isn’t one who goes around criticizing her friends’ work and effort. She has common sense and knows better than to do that. If anything, this episode was written specifically to write Applejack out of character.
Follow it up with the fact that Rarity is just being an idiot in this episode. Her decision of getting Applejack to be a judge in a fashion show makes no sense. Why would she choose a pony who is clearly not into fashion, and even tells Rarity herself, for something like this? I know she chose Applejack for her honesty, but couldn’t she find somepony else to help judge them?
On top of that, when the show looks like it’s going to be cancelled, she acts like Applejack is the only one to blame for everything going wrong. She never admits at all it was a bad idea to enlist Applejack, and acts like she was the one completely in the wrong. I get Applejack is partially to blame, but Rarity should also be held accountable for an idea, that she came up with, quickly went south. This brings me to the biggest issue with Rarity having Applejack help out:
What did she honestly expect?
Rarity says she wanted Applejack for her honesty, so what exactly was she expecting from, and I quote, “The most honest pony there is”? Was she expecting Applejack to be easy going on the contestants? She wanted Applejack for her honesty, and she got it. If she wasn’t liking how Applejack was criticizing too much, then why didn’t Rarity intervene? Rarity clearly showed signs that she was uncomfortable about how Applejack was acting. What was stopping her from telling Applejack to cut it out until the show was cancelled?
Rarity could have learned a lesson herself about how honesty isn’t always the best policy. Maybe if it also had some message about how the people you choose may not always be the best for the job, it could have worked good. Applejack was clearly not fit for a fashion judge, and Rarity should have learned something like that. Instead, the episode portrays Applejack being the one completely in the wrong, and Rarity like as if she is right.
As a result of the way both Rarity and Applejack are, the story ends up using elements from two bad episodes. The first being the boring and blandness of Fluttershy Leans in. The second part being using the idiot plot formula in Princess Spike.
Much like in Fluttershy Leans in, there isn’t really a conflict at all. While there is one, this is mostly because of Rarity’s own stupidity in choosing Applejack as a judge. However, it does end up suffering the problem of having a conflict in it, and then just be quickly resolved in less than two minutes.
As soon as the fashion show is cancelled, Rarity takes Applejack to a pony who loves strawberries, but insults and belittles apples. This triggers Applejack and she realizes she went too far with her criticizing, and that is it. Yup, that is the extent of the conflict in this episode. Sure you got the fashion show that must go on, but the main conflict is resolved in two minutes. Rarity just shows Applejack a pony who doesn’t like apples and that’s all that takes for Applejack to realize her mistake instead of Applejack learning it herself.
On top of that, the story itself is idiotic and has many plot holes like in Princess Spike. I already explained about how dumb Rarity was for choosing Applejack to be a fashion judge, but you got to wonder some of the other elements in this episode too. Why didn’t Hoity or Photo pull Rarity aside about how Applejack was acting? Shouldn’t they have questioned her about Applejack’s credibility? They had no idea who Applejack was or even question anything about her at all. They seemed to be just as shocked about Applejack’s actions through the design of the show, so why didn’t they also step in?
Going back to that strawberry pony, who is called Strawberry Sunshine, why is Rarity okay with how she is going about how apples are terrible? I know this character was meant to show Applejack the error of her ways, but it's implied that Rarity knows Strawberry well, and thus knew about how much she hates apples. So my question here is why is Rarity okay with somepony she knows insulting one of her friend's lines of work? If she was this upset with Applejack insulting fashion, Rarity's line of work, then why is she okay with somepony she knows basically doing the same thing? Isn't this a bit hypocritical on Rarity's part? Does she seriously not mind it when somepony she knows insults her friends' work, but the moment fashion is declared ridiculous, she gets triggered?
For that matter, why couldn’t Rarity call one of her other fashion friends to help like Sassy Saddles or Coco Pommel? I guess Coco is busy with her own show, but what about Sassy? While I’m on this subject, Rarity chose Applejack to be the judge the day before the contest happens. Shouldn’t Rarity have had the judges chosen in advance instead of springing this on Applejack at the very last minute? The sheer amount of illogical plot points hurt an already poor episode.
The fashion ponies are nothing interesting at all either. All three of them are bland overall and are uninteresting. Starstreak feels like Hoity Toity and even has an accent similar to his. Inky Rosewell, while I like how she looks similar to Wednesday from The Addams Family, feels like a copy and paste version of Moonlight Raven. Lily Lace is the stereotypical valley girl and uses words like “totally”, “like”, or “literally” in every sentence. None of them are that interesting at all and are forgettable.
The main point this episode was trying to give about the difference between an honest opinion and being overly critical, but misses it completely. While the episode does a decent job with the moral of not putting down the efforts others put into their work, it failed to convey a message about constructive criticism. I think the moral could have been stronger if during the montage scene of the show being put back together, Applejack learns to be a little more constructive and offer some more ideas to the other fashion designers. It would have shown Applejack learn a bit more and develop a bit more of her character.
At the end of the fashion show with it being a three way tie, Applejack ends up voting for all three. In other words, this is one of those endings where everyone is a winner at the end. I really have grown sick of seeing stuff like that in shows. I’m surprised they all didn’t get participation trophies or anything.
The one thing I will say to this episode’s credit is that in one scene, Pinkie offers Rarity a guitar to play to relieve stress? So what does Rarity do? She ends up doing a rocking guitar solo! It is so out of nowhere and so weird, that it ends up being all kinds of awesome! It’s like Rarity is secretly a rock goddess or something! You know, if this episode somehow ends up being foreshadowing of Rarity joining a metal band secretly, I could be more lenient towards it then. Unfortunately, that’s as good as this episode ever gets.
The real sad thing about Honest Apple is just how bad Rarity and Applejack team up episodes have gotten, and this episode is proof of that. Earlier in the show, the two of them brought some good comedy and chemistry together. They were fun to watch and enjoyable to see. Now, it seems like Rarity and Applejack episodes are meant to bring out the worst of each other.
Honest Apple is a perfect example of how tiresome this team up has gotten at this point. Setting aside a lot of the issues, it’s probably the worst episode involving Applejack and Rarity teaming up together. Rarity is an idiot for choosing Applejack as a judge; not to mention she doesn’t take responsibility for everything going wrong because of her ideas. Applejack, while I enjoyed some of her bluntness at the start, is out of character for most of the episode.
The story is duller than dishwater. Aside from the poor pacing in this episode, there’s barely a conflict at all. Rarity and Applejack barely do anything at all in terms of a team up episode. In fact, Rarity contributes nothing aside from being the one setting up the conflict and causing the show to be cancelled because of her own actions. Applejack is the one doing all the work in the end and having to resolve everything. The other episodes involving these two at least had them solving the problem together, but not this one.
The bits of Sparity we got in the beginning were good, Applejack’s initial bluntness was funny, and, of course, rock goddess Rarity is all kinds of awesome, but none of those can save this episode at all. It wants to teach a lesson about criticism, but fails in its own ways because of how it missed certain elements. It could have taught some things about constructive criticism, and Applejack ends up only learning her lesson by being shown a pony being nasty to her instead of learning on her own.
This episode is easily the worst of the season so far. It even manages to beat Fluttershy Leans in by a mile. That episode was boring and pretty bad, but at least it had some pretty good characterization for Fluttershy. This episode is just bad in general and has next to nothing to offer. It’s boring, poorly paced, has an idiot plot, and Rarity and Applejack are out of character. This kind of episode feels like something I’d expect from the first two seasons of the show, not season seven. Was this episode rushed into production at the last minute just to do another Rarity and Applejack episode?
After three seasons in a row of constant Rarity and Applejack team up episodes, it’s time to give this team up a rest for a while. It’s gotten dull at this point, and nothing new is really being offered at all anymore. The great chemistry these two brought has gotten stale. The comedy is not as good anymore. They just bring out the worst in each other now, and it’s not getting any better. If this was a season one or two episode, I could be forgiving to it, but this was season seven. At this point, Rarity and Applejack should know each other well, and this episode should have known better.
FINAL SCORE: 3.5 out of 10 (D)
This image alone perfectly sums up this episode in a nutshell:
Season seven episode ranking list from best to worst:
Parental Glideance
Rock Solid Friendship
Flurry of Emotions
Celestial Advice
Forever Filly
All Bottled Up
Hard to Say Anything
Fluttershy Leans In
Honest Apple (NEW)
I like to think she picked "the most dependable pony in ponyville" because of their history together. When in need of help you generally think of those closest to you. Haven't seen the episode, just rambling.
I'm pretty sure shes learned enough to throw a proper boring party for some boring ponies!
Also pinkie was able to save two countries from war.
Any spike episodes yet?
4556906 I will be coming up soon. He'll be hanging with Ember and Thorax.
4556920 oh right! Hm.
just thinking about the synopsis makes me think we got another princess spike quality episode. I hope he's able to fix his mistakes in this episode as well at least.
4556924 As long as Neal doesn't get it.
I think I'll have to disagree with your score for this one. Personally I loved the episode, yes in hindsight picking Applejack was probably a bad idea, and it was definitely one of those ideas that probably seemed better in Rarity's head but I still found many moment of the episode charming, the shredding guitar, the Sparity dosage, more Hoity Toity, Photo Finish, and some great new characters (Loved the Strawberry Sunshine bit)
Honestly, this one's probably my 3rd fav episode this season (second being Rock Solid Friendship and the first being... well you'll see it next week :3)
4557625 I honestly feel like at this point they're starting to phone in these Rarity and Applejack episodes. And yes, I am aware of that episode. It's going to be an interesting review that's for sure.