Episode Re-Review: A Friend In Deed · 7:06pm Mar 3rd, 2021
This and the next couple of episodes could be said to be a rather abrupt dry patch for the show, not necessarily as long lasting as Season 1's which lasted from "Stare Master" through "A Bird in the Hoof" but still a stretch marked by episodes that don't tend to be remembered very fondly (if at all). Amy Keating Rogers, now defined primarily by "The Last Roundup" and the still ongoing controversy about Derpy, penned this episode. Was Amy about to fall off her pedestal like Larson did or was she able to stay on it the way Meghan did? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with a pointless scene of Pinkie Pie practicing her smiles and funny faces on the Cake Twins, ultimately only making them laugh when she injures herself in cartoonish fashion. After that, Pinkie goes around town and greets everyone she sees. Apparently today is Cheerilee's birthday and yesterday was Zecora's birthday. Then she greets a donkey named Matilda who we've never seen before. Matilda is impressed that Pinkie knows so much about her friends, and Pinkie mentions that it's because she wants to see her friends smile. This leads into The Smile Song also called Smile Smile Smile. A song so good it got leaked months ahead of time. Interestingly, Amy Keating Rogers once performed an alternate demo of the song which would've mentioned Derpy as "Derpy Doo". But that change I'm sure had nothing to do with Derpy since the song as we know it now was already leaked by the time Derpgate hit. The song is definitely the highlight of the episode and pretty much sums up Pinkie Pie's character. It also boasts pretty impressive visuals. But only once the song ends do we get to the actual plot for the episode when Pinkie meets a donkey that she's never seen before.
Pinkie tries to introduce herself, and upon learning that the donkey is named Cranky Doodle Donkey she performs a song set to the tune of "Yankey Doodle" which makes use of the obvious musical reference in Cranky's name. But Cranky is not amused and tells Pinkie to leave him alone. Pinkie Pie then wonders what went wrong as she runs through her checklist of things she does when she meets a newcomer, and it's done in a felt style that the fandom went absolutely nuts over. However, Pinkie decides she just needs to try harder to make Cranky like her. She brings her own wagon so she can be "wagon buddies" with Cranky and it's a literal welcome wagon complete with a song: The Welcome Song. Interestingly, Andrea Libman sings it. If I had to guess I'd say it's to give Shanon Chan-Kent a break. However, when the song ends with confetti shooting out of the oven and cake shooting out of the confetti cannons (again), Cranky's toupee gets blown off and Pinkie mistakes it for a spider.
Realizing her mistake, Pinkie tries to fix things by asking for a new toupee and then takes Cranky to the spa while she gets a wig from Rarity that's basically a Johnny Bravo hairstyle.
Cranky still isn't smiling though, so Pinkie decides to show up at the cottage he's moving into. She finds a whole bunch of trinkets and nick nacks from all over Equestria and briefly learns that Cranky was looking for someone. She later discovers a personal scrapbook and realizes something, but when she goes to ask Cranky about it she accidentally sets the book on fire. Although the fire is quickly put out the scrapbook is ruined, and Cranky yells at Pinkie to get out while claiming he will "Never Ever Ever Ever Ever" be her friend. An upset Pinkie Pie talks about this to Twilight (and Rainbow Dash is there too, reading the next Daring Do book) and is eventually convinced to leave Cranky alone, once he "accepts" her apology.
The next couple of minutes are spent on Pinkie Pie repeatedly stalking Cranky just so he'll accept her apology. And it doesn't matter how many times he tells her to go away and leave him alone, she just keeps stalking him. It's meant to be a nod to the classic Looney Tunes skits, particularly stuff like Pepe LePew and Wil E. Coyote and Road Runner, but there's nothing funny about watching someone get stalked for no reason. However, Pinkie happens to leave and come back with Matilda, having deduced that she was the special someone Cranky was looking for due to having seen similar pictures in Matilda's scrapbook. It's revealed that Cranky met Matilda years ago at the Grand Galloping Gala, but the next day he found that she was nowhere to be seen. Unaware that she'd left a note for him, he traveled all over Equestria for many years to find her before eventually giving up. And because of this he's willing to accept Pinkie's apology and be her friend, meaning Pinkie got what she wanted.
Pinkie begins thinking about the friendship lesson she's going to give to Princess Celestia about how some friends just want to be left alone, but then at the very end she bursts into song again with "Cranky Doodle Joy" and has to be told by both Cranky and Matilda to go away.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Really, it's just not very eventful or even fun. It wastes several minutes on stuff that has no real relation to the plot (only Matilda's introduction as a chekov's gun is relevant) before it launches into The Smile Song. And while the song is really good it basically pauses the story for the next several minutes before we meet Cranky Doodle Donkey, and then the rest of the episode is spent on Pinkie repeatedly acting like a stalker toward him just because he doesn't want to be her friend. Even when she's confronted with the consequences of her actions she still wants Cranky to "accept" her apology even when the best thing she could do is just leave Cranky alone like he wants. I know they probably weren't going to do an episode about how you can't make friends with everyone, but that really feels like a moral Pinkie needed to learn even more than the one she learns here about respecting privacy. This episode highlights a common misunderstanding with Pinkie's character, thinking that everything she does is automatically funny no matter what. But we know that that doesn't work, real comedy takes effort. Just watching Pinkie do cartoonish things isn't enough, there's more to her character than that and The Smile Song proves it. Do what Pinkie does in real life and you'll probably end up in jail or slapped with a restraining order. It's not necessarily offensively bad, but it seemed to the "Winter Wrap Up" of Season 2 where all anyone ever talked about was the song and not the episode itself. In the end, this episode gets a C-, it's rather meh.
Up next is perhaps the most devisive episode of the show up to this point "Putting Your Hoof Down", in which Fluttershy learns how to be assertive.
This episode is one that I kind of thought was okay the first time around, but in hindsight is definitely one of the season's weaker episodes, despite the song being one of the series' best at the time.
Btw, Cranky is voiced by Richard Newman, who also voiced Rhinox in both Beast Wars and Beast Machines.
Love love LOVE Pinkie's song in this episode.
The episode itself? Not so much.
Though I will admit that Cranky and Matilda's reunion and flashback was sweet!