Help! My Heart is Full of Pony! - Filly Vanilli · 10:39am Jan 11th, 2021
Filly Vanilli is an interesting episode. It starts with the Mane Six accidentally overhearing Fluttershy's singing voice. They are so enamored of its beauty, that they pressure her to sing in public. Of course, Fluttershy has stage fright and is far too nervous to even dream of it.
However, when Big Mac, who sings bass for the Ponytones, (a local a capella quartet), loses his voice, Fluttershy agrees to stand in for him (because the Ponytones are headlining a fundraiser she's holding to try to get animals adopted as pets).
Fluttershy, with Zecora's supervision, takes poison joke to bring out the low-voiced "Flutterguy" from Bridle Gossip. However, she still cannot bear to be seen singing in public, so she performs from behind a curtain while Big Mac mouths the words.
After the fundraiser is over, Fluttershy pressures the Ponytones to accept a series of minor gigs, just so she can continue to have an excuse to sing.
If the story sounds convoluted, that's because it is. By this point in the series, we'd heard Fluttershy sing many, many, many times. It raises countless world building questions that it doesn't answer.
Does the Mane Six's lack of awareness of the sound of Fluttershy's singing mean that ponies are not conscious of their own voices during musical numbers? Do they even know they're singing at all, or is it some sort of mass spell that ties into Equestrian magic?
Also, what makes Fluttershy's voice so special?
The VA does a great job, and her singing sounds both authentically in character, and thoroughly polished. However, so does everypony else's. Almost everypony in Equestria can sing.
If, in the context of everyday life, Fluttershy's singing voice is so unusual, I cannot help but wonder if the musical numbers we hear are not the characters' actual voices, but rather, magical projections of emotion - idealized vocalizations of what the characters are feeling.
I'm not going to get into the continuity problems this episode causes, especially since we saw Fluttershy perform on stage in "Hearth's Warming Eve," and she (presumably) joined in during the carol at the end, (which was not a musical number, but rather, an on stage performance). I'm not even going to get into the way that this episode used Pinkie as a plot device, repeatedly having her monologue at Fluttershy to stoke her deepest and most terrifying anxieties for comic effect. Pinkie Pie had always been depicted as "random," and operating on a different wavelength as everypony else, but her over-the-top lack of sensitivity to Fluttershy's feelings is a bit much in this episode - even for Pinkie.
You could write entire volumes on the logistical flaws in the premise of this episode, but in my opinion, absolutely none of that matters. I care a great deal about continuity, but at the end of the day, Filly Vanilli had tremendous heart.
That matters more.
I am a musician, and I have spent my entire life struggling uphill not to be self conscious about my voice. Watching Fluttershy take joy in singing from behind the curtain, for me, is pure bliss. It captures everything that makes music beautiful - the freedom, the ecstasy, the abandonment of inhibition.
With every passing gig in this episode's montage, Fluttershy's performance gets more and more improvisational. Music becomes a drug to her, and, for personally, I find it incredibly satisfying to watch.
If at age 39, I could identify with this episode so viscerally, that means that somewhere out there, there's a kid who saw themselves in Fluttershy, and got a little bit more confident because of it.
At the end of the day, that's what this show is really about.
The writing on MLP was, for the most part, rather exemplary, and we should all applaud its continuity. It's even okay to pick at logistical errors. That's part of geekdom. That's part of the fun. However, we should also remember that the primary focus of this series is, and has always been, to speak emotional truths.
Filly Vanilli told a darn powerful story full of hope and joy and triumph.
Last but not least, I want to applaud this episode for not taking any shortcuts.
In the very end, after Fluttershy had been exposed as the secret singer, we see her performing with the Ponytones...finally as her mezzo-soprano self.
At the end of the song, it's revealed that her audience had consisted only of her five friends and her animal companions. When asked if she is ready to join the Ponytones permanently, she replies that she is not - that she will get their eventually, but that it'll take baby steps to get there.
Often times movies and TV, (pony included), emphasize that the big finale - the big triumph at the end of the story - should resolve all of the character's internal woes. In real life, it's almost always about baby steps - hard work on self improvement every single day.
I applaud MLP for acknowledging that, and I am grateful that this episode exists and manages to encapsulate so much rapture and so much joy, even if the premise itself presents logistical problems.
Discuss.
-Sprocket
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Thank you as usual for your insight and commentary. :)
Heart Song magic.
When ponies burst into song randomly with guitars and pianos and everyone knowing the lines it's known as Heart Song magic.
Rarity's band is just regular people playing music.
How diegetic musical numbers are can be... indeterminate. We get lines ranging from Dash's "Ponies just bursting into song in random places at the drop of a hat? Who does that?" to Fluttershy's own "Should we sing about it again?" And that's saying nothing of how human Twilight's selfie drone records Wallflower Blush's performance in "Forgotten Friendship." But there does seem to be more than a bit of magic to most of the songs in the series, especially the choreography-heavy ones.
But yeah, continuity issues aside, there is a very good message here.
Filli Vanilli sucks the sweat from a dead donkeys ass. Its there with Testing 1,2,3 and Trade Ya as the worst three episodes of season 4 - and the worst MLP episodes ever - until Father Knows Beast and Rock hoof and a Hard Place rolled around in Season 8.
The only redeeming thing in the episode is Shannon Chan Kent's singing voice. The rest is beyond deplorable for the way it craps over Fluttershy's character development from It Ain't Easy Bring Breezie.
5433783
Filly Vanilli is Season 4, Episode 14
It Ain't Easy Being Breezies is Season 4, Episode 16
Hate the Filly Vanilli all you want, of course, but it can't have ruined the development of an episode that hadn't aired yet.
The key line for the whole singing bit is
"We've never hear you sing like that before"
they've heard her singing, but this was her doing so on her own and simply enjoying it for the sake of doing it