Episode Re-Review: Baby Cakes · 7:44pm Feb 26th, 2021
Although not originally intended to be the first half finale for Season 2 (that was "Hearth's Warming Eve" before it was bumped up to air in time for the holidays in 2011), this episode would close out Season 2's first half. Interestingly, it's come to light through recent leaks that a different episode was planned originally that would've involved Mrs. Cake's pregnancy directly. Ponies would be mentioning it through things like "Bun in the oven" and "Special delivery" and Pinkie would get jealous that Mrs. Cake wasn't spending time with her. Quite honestly, it's probably just me speaking but I'm glad they dropped that idea because it would've made Pinkie look really childish and immature, plus it would've raised the issue of why no one ever pulled her aside to tell her directly that Mrs. Cake was pregnant and what that meant. Charlotte Fullerton got to write this episode, but most seem to prefer the indirect sequel "A Flurry of Emotions" that did the same concept several seasons later. But is there a reason why this episode tends to be so frowned upon? Or is it overhated? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins at a hospital in Ponyville. It would seem that between this and the dam we saw in "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" Ponyville is undergoing rapid infrastructure and industry development. Anyway, all the mane six have gathered because they're waiting to see the new baby pony from Mrs. Cake. This is the episode that officially confirmed the names of the Cakes as Carrot Cake and Cup Cake respectively. They'd been named that in official media before but had never been named it on screen. Mr. Cake, looking as if he were going off to war, shows off two new baby ponies: A pegasus colt named Pound Cake and a unicorn filly named Pumpkin Cake. Everyone is excited, including Pinkie Pie who wants to throw a party for the new babies only for Nurse Redheart to shush her and kick her out of the ward (it is a sterilized environment, after all). Then we get to one of the most infamous moments of the episode when Applejack asks how it's possible for two earth ponies to have twins that are a pegasus and a unicorn. Mr. Cake provides what appears to be an explanation but then asks "That makes sense, right?" which raises a lot of unfortunate implications.
I'm not saying genetics can't work the way Mr. Cake suggests they did here, it is entirely possible for children to look nothing like their parents. It's rare but it does happen. But the line about it making sense only makes it seem like they're implying Cup Cake cheated on Carrot, on top of it feeling like an author's note that was left in the script. Anyway, Rainbow Dash mentions how Pound Cake will start flying once he gets the hang of his wings and Twilight and Rarity warn about Pumpkin Cake since they say baby unicorns get "magic surges that come and go". I feel like most people don't remember these lines, which will become important later on. We then cut to a month later as the twins have been brought home, the Cakes are busy getting the last of the nursery supplies set up and Pinkie is throwing a party. This leads to the short but sweet song "Happy Monthaversary", and if it were the only song in the episode things would be just fine in that department. Alas, it is not.
We soon get to another infamous moment when the twins need a diaper change, and we see Mr. Cake changing diapers with his mouth. I really don't understand why hooves and tails wouldn't work, especially since hooves are clearly used to perform the actual diaper change. Afterward, Mrs. Cake feeds the twins bottles (you didn't really think they would show breastfeeding on the show, would you? It's entirely possible that the bottles contain breast milk) and then the twins need to be burped before they can do anything else. It isn't long before Pound Cake starts living up to his name, pounding things not unlike Bam Bam from The Flintstones.
After Pumpkin Cake gets scolded for chewing on things (though she doesn't have any teeth so chewing is probably not what she's doing) and Pinkie brings up food, the Cakes realize they have an important catering order due across town that they forgot to fill. So they quickly set out to find a suitable foalsitter. They first try Fluttershy, a good pick considering her experience with baby animals as well as taking care of the CMC. But she can't do it because she promised to go on a picnic with Angel.
Pinkie insists she wants to do it, but the Cakes understandably don't go for her right away. They next try Twilight, a fairly reasonable pick considering she at least somewhat helped raise Spike (though it would seem her parents did more of the work when Spike was an actual baby). But she can't because she needs to deliver a report to Princess Celestia summerizing all her other reports (not sure what the need for that is unless it's for record keeping). After that the Cakes ask Applejack, which I'm not sure I would trust her more than Pinkie Pie. Yes, Applejack did help take care of Apple Bloom when she was a foal, but she didn't do it all by herself. There is actually a valid question about whether the twins are going to be cared for wherever their foalsitter is, or if the foalsitter has to come over to Sugarcube Corner. If Applejack could look after the twins at Sweet Apple Acres I'd feel more confident since that would mean extra sets of eyes to watch them in case Applejack was busy. Rainbow Dash is asked next, and at this point in her development I'd sooner trust Pinkie Pie than Rainbow Dash. Rarity is also asked, but she flat out refuses despite saying she's honored to have been thought of. I'd definitely trust her, but if she were looking after the twins at her boutique that would be a problem given all the materials she'd leave lying around. They could definitely have trimmed this scene though and just had the Cakes mention later that they'd exhausted all their best options. Anyway, with no one else to turn to they decide to let Pinkie do it and she initially plays it off, claiming she'll have to check her schedule. But she manages to find time.
Pinkie is given a list of responsibilities to tend to while the Cakes are gone, but as soon as they leave the twins start to cry since this is their first time being separated from their parents. Pinkie tries to cheer them up with a game of "Where's Pinkie Pie", then opts to do a bit of stand up comedy. She even seems to talk with herself when she notes how the twins don't seem amused by her jokes.
So Pinkie decides to bust out "the show stopper" which leads into "The Pig Dance Song". Considering that by this point "The Smile Song" had been leaked, this scene felt like it was going to be where that song would debut. But instead we have quite possibly the worst song of the entire show. It's not creative, it's not original, it's not well put together. It could've and should've been cut. Just having Pinkie bounce around like a pig would be good enough, especially since she ends up bumping into a cabinet and knocking over a bag of flower that turns her entire coat white. This amuses the twins as Pinkie puts a hoof to her forehead in dramatic fashion. Too bad she doesn't have a fainting couch to complete the impression.
Snack time is up next, and fortunately for Pinkie there are two bowls of prepared food already in the fridge. But Pumpkin Cake is more interested in the table cloth and Pound Cake knocks his bowl onto his head. When they both start crying again, Pinkie quickly pulls out another bag of flour and sneezes. When the twins giggle Pinkie says "I can see where this is going" before she snorts. And remember, real horses snort, so get your mind out of the gutter. Anyway, since the twins got a bit messy from snack time, Pinkie decides to give them a bath. But the twins opt to give her the slip and make her chase after them. Eventually, she manages to get them into the tub, impressing them with bubbles before Pumpkin Cake's horn accidentally pops one. As the twins start to cry yet again, Pinkie distracts them with a rubber duck and then throws multiple bath toys into the tub. But it doesn't work, and she's forced to use another flour sack after getting hit by the faucet. Because she's soaking wet the flour turns all goopy. Then, afterward, Pinkie is forced to change the twins' diapers and is clearly not happy about doing so.
The twins naturally make her chase after them again, but Pinkie corners them behind the changing table and tries to perform the change as industrial noises are heard (just what is she trying to do?). Ultimately though, she ends up getting the diapers stuck on herself instead. It's actually a pretty popular joke in animation to get a diaper stuck on your head when you're trying to change one, Pinkie just takes it to the next level by getting another one stuck on her rump. She's naturally embarrassed at having screwed up, before she hears the bell above the front door and assumes the Cakes are back. She goes downstairs with the diapers still on, and ends up encountering Twilight, who doesn't seem to find it all odd that Pinkie has a diaper on her head and her rump.
Pinkie is initially glad to have Twilight provide assistance, but Twilight then lets it slip that she had a feeling Pinkie would end up in over her head. She mentions how babies are a big responsibility and someponies just aren't cut out for it. Pinkie takes offense to this and shoos Twilight away, as Twilight doesn't seem to notice where she went wrong. This is kind of a recreation of Twilight confronting Applejack during "Applebuck Season", since Pinkie is just as stubborn and determined to prove a point.
Determined to prove Twilight wrong, Pinkie Pie decides it's time to get serious and lay down the law. She quickly tells both twins off for their behavior and tells them it's time to take a nap. It seems to work as they fall asleep in the same crib and she tucks them in. But after she prepares to leave the nursery she sees the twins have gone missing and naturally panics. Pinkie does find Pumpkin Cake pretty easily, slobbering on a rubber chicken in the closet. Then the episode seems to take a more horrifying turn as Pinkie tries to find Pound Cake. She ultimately does find him, hanging from the ceiling as it's revealed that he can fly. Remember what I said earlier about the line warning about surges? Well, that's what this line was foreshadowing. So it didn't come completely out of nowhere. And remember, we'd never seen baby ponies to the extent we see them now, so there was never anything to suggest they weren't capable of stuff like this. Anyway, Pinkie brings Pound down from the ceiling with suction cups only for Pumpkin to get surges of her own with her horn. Pinkie steals all the toys Pumpkin tries to slobber on and locks them in a toy box, then tries to make Pound stop flying only for him to drag her down and back up the stairs.
At her wit's end, Pinkie throws a laundry basket over the twins and ties it down with tape. But Pumpkin easily teleports out of it and Pound is able to break the tapes by flying and putting pressure on the basket. With the twins now out of control, Pinkie Pie breaks down and starts crying not unlike the twins were earlier. Pound and Pumpkin realize that they've taken their fun too far, and decide to cheer Pinkie up by dumping a sack of flour on the both of them. It works, although I should mention that they haven't had diapers on since Pinkie's failed changing attempt. It's probably just an animation oversight, they meant to put diapers back on but forgot to. Anyway, Pinkie Pie probably diapers them when she cleans them up again and puts them back to bed. Then, while cleaning up the mess downstairs she starts thinking in her mind about a friendship lesson she'll send to Princess Celestia about how our desire for responsibility can cause us to take on more than we can handle. Good, but at the same time not necessarily a friendship lesson so much as it is a life lesson. From there, we cut to later that night when the Cakes finally come home. They expect the worst but find everything to be spotless, causing Mr. Cake to wonder if they're "in the right place".
Pinkie Pie motions for the Cakes to be quiet as she reveals that she just put the twins to bed, and Mr. and Mrs. Cake are impressed by how well she managed. They ask her if she'd be interested in becoming the go to foalsitter, but Pinkie is initially quite hesitant and insists she won't be available. However, when she hears the twins call her name in their sleep, Pinkie's heart melts and she accepts the offer.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Well, maybe I'm a little biased since it was the first new episode I saw, but I think it's way overhated. Maybe not the best episode of its season or even one of the best overall, but definitely nowhere near deserving of the hate it gets. Yes, it's by no means perfect and there are things to dislike. Some of the attempts at humor fall flat (such as Mr. Cake's line about "That makes sense, right?" or the attempted gross out with Mr. Cake changing diapers with his mouth) and the twins' crying does get overdone. The songs are also unfortunately weighed down by "The Pig Dance Song" and how bad it is, completely overshadowing "Happy Monthaversary" since it's so short. But the surges don't come out of nowhere, and if there was anyone who needed to learn this moral about responsibility it was Pinkie Pie. All things considered, she was doing better than everyone expected her to and did the best someone with her lack of experience could've done given the circumstances. Twilight was still right to suggest Pinkie wasn't cut out for the responsibility, just not in the way she was going about it. It was unintentionally condescending, even if Pinkie was wrong to reject the help just to try and prove a point. I actually like this episode more than "A Flurry of Emotions" because unfortunately that episode occurred at a point and time where Twilight should've already known the intended moral, plus it was inconsistent on Flurry Heart's mentality (sometimes she was a child prodigy and other times she was no better than a dog). Both do tick off a lot of the cliches for the babysitting episode, but I think this one justified them a little bit better whereas the latter seems to have existed solely because of fanfiction demand. So ultimately, I give this episode a borderline B+/A-.
Now it's on an episode that is remembered for one thing and one thing only: Derpgate. But we have an entire episode to cover with "The Last Roundup" despite the controversy.
This is definitely one of season 2's weaker episodes
You know, it's kinda funny. Josh Scorcher said in his own review that if this episode was his introduction to the show, he wouldn't have watched it at all, claiming that it feels like something out of G3. Mr. Enter was a bit merciful in his own review, saying that most of his problems with this episode come from the last five minutes when the babies show off their "god powers".
This is a middling episode of the season to me. I think it's really great, and very very underrated.