Bats. Oh My God. · 3:08pm Dec 29th, 2013
I just got to re-watching "Bats!". Yeah.
So... I wonder who wrote this episode?
Wait... Meghan McCarthy? Seriously? THIS was the best you could do? But that's beside the point.
The point is that this episode is probably my least favorite episode of the entire series thus far. Like, MMDW has nothing on this thing. After my first time watching it, I just experienced this sinking feeling in my gut that I couldn't quite explain. I've never felt that way after watching a new episode of this show before, but I guess there's a first time for everything.
Here's a list of a few things that I REALLY didn't like about this episode just off the top of my head. I could make a more comprehensive one, but I'm leaving really shortly.
1.) Rarity's first line: As soon as Applejack sounds the alarm and asks for help... what's the first thing out of Rarity's mouth?
CALM DOWN, APPLEJACK. No "What's wrong, Applejack?" or "Whatever is the matter, Applejack dear?"
Um... okay. First off, didn't we learn not to dismiss other friend's worries as nothing just because you might not think they're something to worry about with Lesson Zero way back in Season 2? (Also a Meghan McCarthy episode. Wow.) But now, it just seems like Rarity's willing to dismiss her friend's worries before she even knows what they are! How out of character is that?
2.) "Monsters? That's a bit harsh, don't you think?": Um... no? You're friend's entire livelihood is being threatened, and the thing you care about more than all of that is the freaking vampire fruit bats? Are you serious, Fluttershy? I get that animals are your thing and all, but really now? I'll get back to this point some other time.
3.) Granny Smith, Big Mac, and Apple Bloom are gone: So let me get this straight... after last Applebuck Season, when Applejack had to buck all of the trees by herself and ended up working herself into the ground, her family leaves her to do it all by herself again? Granted, that doesn't mean that they'd be gone the whole time, but they were gone for a whole three days to leave Applejack to do it all by herself, and all because of a stupid produce fair? Then again, I might just be nitpicking and haven't thought this thing through, but that just seems... wrong.
4.) The song: Well, I guess the song wasn't too bad, actually. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, either. Applejack sang, so that's good, right?
Right?
5.) The moral: This is perhaps the worst complaint I have. Once a-freaking-gain, we have some moral that indirectly deals with how Applejack shouldn't be so stubborn and should learn to think through things better.
You know what? How about we have an episode dealing with the POSITIVE sides of being stubborn? Like, how headstrongness (is that even a word?) can push you through hard times? Or maybe about how it's good not to always fold to peer pressure and stick to your scruples even if they're unpopular(You know, kind of like the Season 2 finale, ALSO written by Meghan McCarthy)? But no. Applejack goes through the same freaking thing as usual, and her character potential is just squandered as a result.
I'd write more down, but I'm leaving in literally one minute from now, so I'll leave the list at that until I can add to it later.
And if you haven't seen this episode yet... whoah, nelly. Have fun.
It certainly could've been better. I loved the design of thestral!Fluttershy, but beyond that, the episode was predictable and forgettable.
It wasn't Meghan. It was Merriweather Williams. It was confirmend in a tweet that they'd just put the wrong person in the credits.
My paranoid mind of course thought that it was to lessen the hate the episode would get.
I really liked the song, but other than that, it wasn't much. There were a lot of plotholes. And
1660346 is right. Merriwether wrote this, so that's probably why you didn't like it so much.
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Oh. So Wikipedia was right? Huh. It's kind of bad when the actual episode lists the wrong writer in the opening credits...
Well, I guess that explains a lot.
Granted, I don't hate Merriwether Williams as much as a lot of people I know. I really did like Wonderbolt Academy and Putting Your Hoof Down, but some of her other episodes... not so much. Dragon Quest was alright, too.
At least Meghan McCarthy wasn't the one responsible for this. That makes things a lot better.
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I am looking forward to next week's episode, though. The premise sounds really promising, and Rarity's my favorite character in the entire show, so...
I'm just hoping Dave Polsky can do Rarity's character justice like McCarthy did with her in Sweet and Elite.
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I had that same paranoid theory.
I kept saying to myself you know what the staff should do, they should miscredit something that Merriwether writes, and I'm like watch everyone love the episode and then once they say it was hers everyone is gonna turn around and hate it calling out stupid small nitpicks.
Well to be honest I loved the episode, I thought it handled two different opinions wonderfully and didn't make one character into a straw man. Sure Aj was proven wrong in the end, but she had a very valid point, it was her farm and livelihood that was at stake. Overall I thought it handled that pretty well. Props to Merriwether.
1660851 The execution of the episode was pretty awesome, yes. Even some of the jokes and character dialogue were really good. But the moral... oh god.
Applejack: My whole livelihood, the food for my family, not to mention the rest of the town, is in danger. Flutteshy, please help me fix this.
FS: But they are cute critters.
AJ: Fuck that. Have a musical
FS: Fine! I obey!
Twilight Sparkle fucks up a spell, causing Fluttershy to go batshit insane. The team cures her.
OMG THIS WAS SO APPLEJACKS FAULT BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T LISTEN TO FLUTTERSHY NOW SHE MUST LOSE A PART OF HER FARM FOR THE BATS THAT ARE NO LONGER INTO APPLES! COS APPLEJACK IS NEVER RIGHT! That's right: Twilight messes up, AJ takes the blame. Moral? Just say no. WTFFFFFFF!?!?!??!
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Warning: below this is a massive wall of text. I'm sorry, I had no idea how much I was writing, I hope you can survive it hehe
Yes, credit where credit is due. And yeah it was a nice fun ride which I actually think had a relatively good moral that was relevant and worded nicely. What stood out to me, was that there were two morals, they balanced each other out. Ok, so if you don't mind me doing this, I'm going to try and explain why the moral was good.
So Applejacks dilemma is a very valid one. The entire farm, her whole livelihood, her one source of income to feed her family is endangered. Now she doesn't ask specifically for Fluttershy's help, Fluttershy offers to peacefully ask the bats not to eat AJ's crop and she agrees. So that doesn't work and Aj wants to get rid of these "monsters".
Ok, so yes Fluttershy does say they are cute critters but listen to her other reasons, she brings up equally valid points that the bats would help spread the seeds to grow more apples. Her saying this made me think, wait, how can the help anymore than Aj just using the seeds from her apples, and then it struck me. These ponies always eat their apples whole, they almost never save the core even if they are taking small bites. And I'm sure people who buy her apples don't come back as say hey Applejack here's a bag full of seeds from the apples you sold us. So Flutterhy did bring up a good point, these vats would help spread seeds that would grow into healthy strong apple trees. But, that's a long term benefit that wouldn't show up immediately, it takes years for trees to grow, and the immediate effects the bats presented was crop failure. Something Applejack was more concerned with at the moment. So her moral of her shortsightedness makes sense.
And Fluttershy still wasn't on board with the idea of getting rid of the bats after the song. Which is what led Twilight to wonder if there was another way which led to her researching the spell to make them stop eating the apples (note: she learned from the Parasprites, she was specifically stopping them from eating apples) It was only after coercion from everyone, and mentioning that she would potentially be leaving people to starve that she finally caved in. So after she was given the ultimata she saw that yes, while there were benefits, the immediate consequences would be to harsh to make up for.
I can't really tell what you mean by
I mean the team felt bad that they unintentionally harmed their friend. This is what I really liked, Applejack didn't care anymore whether her crop was being destroyed by Flutterbat, all she wanted was to undo the damage she'd done and have her friend back. There she realized the error of her ways, by seeking a short term solution she ended up causing more problems rather than solving them. So while AJ's reasons for action are more, how shall I say it, reasonable? Justified? Backed up? Take your pick. The episode didn't outright say or imply it was Applejacks fault, because she was right, unless the bats left her crop would be destroyed costing her a lot of money. As for the bats not into apples anymore, that's untrue. See when Fluttershy is cured there are little bat like projections that seem to fly off. Now these weren't physical bats, lets call them 'spirits' or the manifestation of the vampire bats natural instinct. So we can assume that these projections found their way back to the bats, so they once again are eating Applejacks apples.
Yes Twilight messed up the spell, but for whom was she doing this for? Who asked her to do it? And again, in the episode no one says it was a specific persons fault. Twilight said "I think we are to blame" and after explaining, Applejack realizes that yes it was their fault. Because they all were to short sighted and took the fast solution they crated a whole new mess. It's sort of like something my mom says (translated from Spanish) "The one who does it the lazy way, works double". Yeah Aj takes the blame because she herself feels responsible for it, you can feel guilt for something that isn't your fault. Also, Flutter-bat wouldn't have happened had Aj not insisted on the fast solution. I know it sounds kinda hypocritical, me saying that, but life isn't black and white, there is no clear cut right or wrong sometimes. It's kinda like The Lorax, the old animated short that Dr. Seuss helped write. In it the Lorax pleads the Onceler to stop hurting the land. The Onceler replies that if he did what would he do with all the workers he'd have to let go, what about them, didn't they have families too to feed, and the economy what about that? Both parties have valid points you see, and it is hard to make decisions like this. That's why picking a more neutral, kinda balance was the right thing to do. Applejack takes blame for taking it too far, and the indirect responsibility to Fluttershy going all bat shit insane.
And that's why the double moral is fitting, two ponies learned a lesson. Applejack (and really the rest of the mane 5 sans FS) learn that sometimes the short term solution isn't always the best. And Fluttershy that you shouldn't let others pressure you into doing something you don't want to do, even if its your friends and that sometimes it's ok to say no. This moral I liked for Fluttershy because it kinda built off what she learned in Putting Your Hoof Down, where she learns to assert herself and tells Iron Will that no means no. And that's fine and dandy, but saying no to your friends is a whole 'nother thing. Fluttershy is someone who wants to please her friends even if it goes against her own comfort. And this episode showed her conflict between what she thought was morally right, in terms of the animals, and in terms of other ponies and pleasing her friends. Learning to say no to her friends is something she needed to learn. It's something I'm sure a lot of us struggle with I'm sure. I know I myself still have trouble saying no to my friends. When Fluttershy started to say her moral for Spike to write I thought oh great a moral for peer pressure lets hear it, and while technically it is, it wasn't at the same time. Instead of oh I shouldn't let other people make me do stuff I don't want, we get that it's OK to say no to your friends.
So I don't know if I made any sense to you, I really hope I did. I know I kinda jumped around a bit and got pretty long winded, and probably redundant in some areas, so sorry about that. I think I covered everything though. What do you think, is there anything you think I didn't mention, or got wrong? Do you still think this is a bad episode? Let me know
1662737 Well if you get right down to the nitty gritty, if the ponies eat apples whole, they then poop, then use that as fertilizer on the farm. You know, like most farmers did before industrial fertilizers?
The bats might make good trees grow for some reason.Just about any orchard in the world works the same way: They let the fruit stand or rot for a year, then dig it into dirt in a greenhouse until they get it to sprout. They then plant them to a secluded spot for a year to see which ones start growing well, then move it to the orchard proper. It's not about bats shitting seeds all over. It's inefficient and random. Growing a new productive tree takes five, probably closer to ten years What will the Apples eat before that How about the rest of Ponyville? WHAT ABOUT THE CIDER!?
Just wait patiently for the bat-apples to grow somewhere random?
I wrote "The team cures her". I don't know where you got that quote from.
Nice headcanon but nothing substantiated by the episode itself. They didn't outright tell it was so, so until proven otherwise, it didn't.
I really don't think a farmer protecting their whole livelyhood is even remotely comparable to Fluttershy's Greenpeace activism. If anything, I'm amazed that AJ and the others even tried another solution except for maybe poisoning the darn critters. But this is Equestria. We build sanctuaries for vermin. I don't know of a potato farm that holds a sanctuary for moles or rats around their farms. I don't know farmers who wouldn't cover their berries under nets so birds don't come and eat them. They don't wait for the birds to spread their strawberry seeds around the countryside, that's for sure. If they built sanctuaries, it'd be like pissing in your pants during the winter. Sure, the critters might stay away for a week or two, then they'd have multiplied and require even more food. That's how vermin function: as long as there is food, they keep increasing in number. Sure, they have cute families... until you understand that those babies, and their babies etc... need food as well, and as long as they get the food, they just happily keep fu... making more bat babies.
The bottom line is, I think the short term (permanent) solution would have been better in this case.
The moral itself just didn't happen in the episode, because there was nothing to really prove Fluttershy right. She had a rough time because of a messed-up spell, yes, but where did the "say no to your friends" come from? If Fluttershy had refused to help, then the bats would have just been annihilated to the last. This way at least she could try and find a middle ground. If anything, the moral should have been "You might sometimes have to go against your own morals to do what's right for the greater good." A shitty moral if there ever was one, but at least it would have gone with the themes of the episode.
One other thing that keeps bugging me more and more: Twilight's magic. She messes up over half the spells she casts in the series. In addition, she keeps using major league mind-control magic as a go-to solution to problems all the time. Am I the only one who's starting to feel creepy about it? Want-it-need-it? Changing dietary patterns first in parasprites and now bats, memory alteration spells, total personality swaps, love poisons, where does it end?
Now, I never said this was bad episode. It just wasn't good either. It had good moments with several characters, but the last three minutes were a horrible train wreck that returned it from "woo!" to "meh". You know, just like Wonderbolt Academy? It would have been the best episode in season three if it hadn't been so damn rushed. Merriweather writes the best RD in the series to me, but by far the worst Pinkie. It was true in WA, it was true in Bats. I'm just so darn happy that Spike didn't have anything to do with the episode apart from a short cameo that pretty much just demanded a sad trombone solo. Especially after last week's episode where he learned a lesson that was the complete opposite of what he says here. I think she's also getting better with her Fluttershy, because despite the odds, Putting Your Hoof Down was one of my favourite episodes of S2. Mostly because of Iron Will, though. I don't like how hostile and grudgeful she makes ponies, whether it be teenagers and shopkeepers bullying Fluttershy, the mane six backstabbing RD for saving ponies' lives or just fighting against each other until they freeze to death.
So yeah, here's some rambling from me to you. And if I sound hostile or something, it's just me being tired when I write this at around 6:30 AM because I can't sleep again.