Episode Re-Review: Filli Vanilli · 5:55pm Apr 5th, 2021
With Season 4 half over it looked like things were on a roll, nothing could possibly stop it. This episode was heavily touted ahead of time for what it was, a return appearance by Flutterguy. And it was written by Amy Keating Rogers, the very same Amy who had rose to new heights with "Pinkie Pride". But by the time the dust settled on this episode, controversy would rear its ugly head once again with Amy at the center of it. Has that controversy overshadowed the episode? And if so does that mean the episode is good if you can look past the controversy? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with Fluttershy tending to her animal friends and bursting into song as a result. The song "Music in the Treetops" is fine but nothing special, it feels like it's trying to channel "So Many Wonders" which was good up until suddenly it switched to a Broadway musical feel at the very end. The song ends abruptly when Fluttershy's friends happen to comment, mentioning how this is supposedly the first time they've heard her sing. I guess they wanna retcon all previous group songs since that's the only way this can work. Interestingly, Applejack mentions it being a little slice of heaven, just episodes after she mentioned "Mean as sin".
Rarity then suggests that Fluttershy join an acapella group she leads called The Ponytones. Fluttershy refuses, apparently still struggling with stage fright and performance anxiety. Except The Ponytones are only ever performing for charity or just for the sake of it, there's no kind of performance or competitive nature behind it. Second. Fluttershy has already been shown participating in the Equestria Games and at no point during "Rainbow Falls" did they specify that she was just there for the qualifier. So if Fluttershy can perform for the pony equivalent of the Olympics no problem, you can't possibly tell me that performing for considerably smaller crowds as part of a group is suddenly too much for her. Yes, maybe Amy didn't know about "Rainbow Falls" while writing this episode, but this is the kind of stuff you're supposed to catch in editing to maintain consistency and continuity.
But then we get to what everyone remembers about this episode, and for all the wrong reasons. Pinkie Pie jumps in and tells Fluttershy she should perform, playing up the tension and anxiety and reducing Fluttershy to tears. Pinkie shows no remorse at all for doing this, and even when Rarity whacks her with a newspaper and tells her off Pinkie doesn't acknowledge it. For any other writer this would be bad enough because Pinkie Pie is OOC to an extreme degree. But for Amy Keating Rogers, the woman who wrote the episodes that gave us "The Smile Song" and "Pinkie's Lament", it's even worse because that means she wrote the book on who Pinkie Pie is and how she works. No matter how you try to explain it it makes no sense. Pinkie values her friends' happiness, and Fluttershy is clearly not happy by what Pinkie does. Yes, this scene was sort of done before in "Sonic Rainboom" and "Hearth's Warming Eve", but those scenes lasted nowhere near as long and didn't have the ponies trying to be "supportive" flat out ignore tears or pleas to stop.
Now, I want to make it perfectly clear that the attacks on Amy as a person resulting from this episode were unwarranted and not justified. Good people can make bad art, and attacking them as individuals is wrong (as is sending them death threats). But both Amy and Pinkie should know better in this scene, it's not funny. And because Pinkie Pie does such a poor job of providing moral support, Fluttershy is even less willing to consider performing with The Ponytones. She does still watch them rehearsing, but that's all she is willing to do. It isn't until the next day that a snag pops up when Big Macintosh reveals that he lost his voice. He was competing in a turkey call contest with Pinkie Pie and threw out his voice as a result, losing the competition. What makes this scene work for Pinkie Pie is that she's only briefly on scene to comment on this, and she doesn't do anything to make the situation worse. Anyway, Rarity takes Big Macintosh not to a doctor (which would probably be able to better diagnose such a problem) but to Zecora who cannot brew up a cure in time for the concert. However, she does have a solution in the form of Flutterguy, proposing that Fluttershy can overcome her stage fright by singing for Big Mac and having him lipsync. Interestingly, this episode's title is a reference to the acapella group Manni Vanilli which was infamously busted for lipsyncing.
However, Flutterguy gets two new voices here: One for speaking and one for singing. One of them is Alvin Sanders, who would go on to be inexplicably cast as King Sombra in "The Beginning of the End" in a very ill fitting manner. So The Ponytones perform with Fluttershy (as Flutterguy) singing and Big Macintosh lipsyncing. Rarity is also a member, and two others who are never named on screen appear (but they're referred to in credits as Toe Tapper and Torch Song). They perform the song "Got The Music in You" which has a nice beat, but the lyrics are really generic. It's just "Learn how to express yourself" and that's really it.
The concert is a success though, and a filly named Zipporwhill (who happens to have adopted a puppy) asks if The Ponytones can perform for her birthday party at town hall tomorrow. Fluttershy convinces Rarity to do so, and as a result it seems like everypony in town can't get enough of this musical sensation. They need The Ponytones to perform at all sorts of events, which lead to increasingly ellaborate methods for Fluttershy (as Flutterguy) to keep up the lipsyncing charade as she gets more and more excited. Finally, however, Big Macintosh's voice has recovered and he's ready to get back to singing. The only problem is, Fluttershy wants one last concert to bow out even though no one knows it's her. Rarity agrees, and the concert at Sugarcube Corner gets under way. But eventually, Fluttershy ends up exposing herself and in what I believe is another nod to Courage The Cowardly Dog we see just how severe her stage fright is.
Applejack confronts Big Macintosh and is basically able to guess the problem without him needing to say anything or even use a series of charades. The rest of the mane six then head to Fluttershy's cottage where they find that she's taken the herbal remedy bath Zecora gave her, so Flutterguy is gone for good. Pinkie Pie then climbs up to Fluttershy's location just like a spider.
And then Pinkie Pie does what she did before, reducing Fluttershy to tears by describing how terrifying the crowd was. To quote Mr.Enter "Once is an accident. Twice can't be anything other than malicious!", and what's even worse is that when the others glare at Pinkie after Fluttershy runs off, Pinkie just replies with "What? Too much?" implying that she's aware of what she's doing and doesn't care. And she keeps on doing it as the rest of the mane six try to track down Fluttershy. Nothing about this is funny, it's mean spirited, malicious and horribly OOC for anyone! And at no point does Pinkie Pie apologize or even understand that she's going too far!
Rarity ends up being the one to talk sense into Fluttershy by asking if it was really that bad. But Fluttershy says it was and just can't bring herself to be a part of The Ponytones full time. She insists on "Baby Steps", which involves her performing with The Ponytones with no one around. So Fluttershy basically knows she has a problem with stage fright, but doesn't want to try to confront the issue and overcome it. She instead just wants to face it on her own time whenever she think she's ready. If not for the fact that we saw she wasn't willing to tackle the issue, this might make sense. You don't need to jump into the deep end to overcome your fear. But "Baby Steps" is not an excuse to backslide or refuse to confront the problem. If you never want to confront your fear you'll let it control you. And that's what Fluttershy is allowing to happen here, and it feels like this is being done solely so the writers have a "justification" whenever Fluttershy needs to backpedal for the sake of an episode's story, completely negating her development in both "Putting Your Hoof Down" and "Hurricane Fluttershy". I know they wrote themselves into a corner with those episodes because they didn't anticipate the show going on for many more seasons, but this is just taking the easy way out by trying to erase that growth rather than work around it.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Well, most say that if you just look past the pink elephant in the room, this episode is relatively good. And yeah, Pinkie Pie's behavior in this episode overshadows so much else. There's no way to slice it, Pinkie Pie is at her worst here! What she does isn't funny, and she is completely incapable of seeing the obvious even though she should be the last pony to do what she does! Plus, she just keeps doing it even when she's told off and never apologizes for ever taking it too far! All it would've taken to lessen the sting of this would've been to include a few simple lines towards the end, a sincere apology from Pinkie for going too far.
But Pinkie Pie's portrayal aside, this episode still has a lot of problems. People are right when they call this the poor man's "Hurricane Fluttershy" because it borrows from a similar structure and even similar imagery. The difference is that this episode doesn't have Fluttershy overcome her flaw despite how crippling and problematic it is. This episode instead sets up a system for Fluttershy to just backpedal whenever she wants. I don't expect perfection, but I do expect consistency and a sense that she at least wants to try to overcome the problem. "Baby Steps" would be fine if she weren't spending the whole episode looking for any reason not to face her fear. The Ponytones are nice, and it's surprising they would go all in on the musical reference in the episode title. However, the episode really stretches itself out and seems intent to milk "Find The Music in You" for as long as it can. Part of it may be that it was the first song to come on the heels of "Pinkie Pride" and its impressive musical numbers, but that can only do so much to make up for how basic the lyrics and the message are. Honestly, this episode's working title made it clear what this was: "The Return of Flutterguy", a cash grab on Flutterguy's popularity even though they didn't get the original voice actor back (and Flutterguy worked best as an occasional joke, not the focus of an entire episode).
So this episode gets a D-. It's very disappointing and underwhelming, not a good start to the second half of Season 4. You know how this story could've worked? Change the focus to Sweetie Belle, a kid character with established stage fright that we never got to see overcome said stage fright. You could replace Pinkie Pie with Diamond Tiara and work around a couple of others things, and the episode wouldn't lose anything of substance.
Well, next up is a CMC focus episode involving Twilight and her newfound alicorn status finally being a big deal. Hey, better late than never.
Even though this isn't necessarily a great episode, I have a lot of fun with it.
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This episode has it moment
Couldn't agree more! Say what you will about Pinkie's other flanderized moments this season, like being preoccupied with a coloring book in Princess Twilight Sparkle or getting distracted by a balloon twice in Three's a Crowd. At least she wasn't hurting anyone or making the situation worse. Put simply, I'd rather have an air-headed but harmless Pinkie Pie than an air-headed and insensitive one. It's a cruel irony that her best and worst outing this season came from the same writer.
As for Fluttershy, is it wrong to say I kind of agree with Commander Firebrand when he called her overrated in his Taking Ponies Too Seriously review of this episode? If you need a reminder, here's what he said: