Luna Reviews FIM S3: 03. Too Many Pinkie Pies · 2:35am Dec 11th, 2014
I consider this an interesting but flawed look into some of Pinkie Pie’s concerns about friendship.
I should put it on the record that I am a bit conflicted about how to review something like this. As I’ve said, the episodes in Season Three appear to be entirely fictional, but they nonetheless star individuals that I know personally. I am certainly not heartless enough to dissect another pony’s personality for total strangers, especially with my acute awareness of my own flaws. However, Pinkie herself is one of the strongest defenders of Friendship Is Magic among ponykind, and I heard she was even accepting of a certain infamous episode that I’m rather anxious to avoid watching myself.
Pinkie Pie is the Friend to Ponyville. That’s the title she keeps in her heart. Everypony who knows her knows this. In real life, she must have handled the “inability to be in more than one place at the same time” issue in her first week in the town. This episode attempts to teach the same lesson to little human girls...by threatening to blow them up if they screw it up. So a good lesson and good handling...right up until the last act.
“The Crystal Empire” had issues characterizing the villain. “Too Many Pinkie Pies” dropped the ball on the ending. Tomorrow, let’s see if “One Bad Apple” does better with...the Apple family?
Notes
00:00: I simply have to record my thoughts on the title before I start. How can you possibly put more than one Pinkie Pie in Equestria? I can barely believe there’s one Pinkie Pie in Equestria! She is an utterly unique being pony, so how...will the rest of Ponyville start slowly turning pink? Will it be an invasion of the rest of her alien breed from another planet? (And will they use this as an excuse to parody Earth as the obvious source of these crazy creatures?) Well, enough speculation—let’s get started.
00:11: Well, that’s an interesting way to start the episode. Wait, why is Cherry Berry looking so angry and suspicious in this screenshot?
(Hope: Maybe she is awaiting an inevitable disaster that befalls whenever Twilight tries a new spell?)
00:20: Is...is Pinkie Pie being accompanied by jet plane noises now? Subtlety, thy name is most certainly not MLP Animation.
00:28: I’m...I’m going to see a lot of disturbing Pinkie Pie animation this episode, aren’t I? And what happened to that poor blue jay that Twilight’s spell hit by accident?
00:35: Oh gods why?!! A blue jay orange? An orange jay? How is it even able to…? Gah! I don’t even want to think about it!
(Hope: I wonder if it tastes like chicken, or like an orange, or somehow like an apple.)
(Luna: Stop putting thoughts in my head!)
00:43: I...stop it, Pinkie Pie, please! No more inequine citrus abominations, I implore you!
01:12: “We weren’t going to turn her into an orange, I swear!” Spike gets laugh number two from the season thus far.
01:31: Oh, it’s Apple Bloom again! Is she going to be featured in this episode? (Oh, and Applejack. No offense.)
01:48: This...will not end well. And we still haven’t reached the opening credits yet!
02:06: In my continuing attempts to drain every drop of meaning from this single still from the opening credits, I see um...whatshername. The carrot farmer.
(Hope: Fan name is Carrot top, the name officially given to her is Golden Harvest.)
(Luna: You do know that she’s a real pony, right? And therefore has an actual name? Unless she’s one of the composite characters...an amalgamation of several real ponies, including Carrot Top and Golden Harvest?)
02:46: Fluttershy has a butterfly grove with magical healing powers? Or is this more fiction? Either way, it’s an intriguing idea.
03:57: Aaaa, she did it again! Another orange monstrosity, unleashed upon an unsuspecting Equestria! Twilight Beta Sparkle, what have you done???
(Hope: It can still ribbit. That is funny enough for me to give it the pass. Is her middle name actually Beta?)
(Luna: Err...no comment.)
04:34: Oh...horseapples. Twilight, you should know better than to deploy analogies around the Pink One. I’m holding you partly responsible for what happens next.
04:49: Ha-ha-ha. Okay, animators, you get the laugh credit for Spike’s reaction to hearing that magic practice isn’t over yet.
05:31: I’ve wondered what would happen if Pinkie Pie ever stopped talking, either to other ponies, to herself, or to me in her ever. Probably nothing good.
06:17: Wow, somepony more Pinkie Pie than Pinkie Pie. This can’t end well.
06:57: Rainbow Dash is reading Daring Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone. Well, that’s odd. Is this some sort of product placement? I hadn’t heard that Daring Do was being translated into human languages, so, more like an inside joke?
(Hope: Not sure, I haven’t read the series. Is it any good?)
(Luna: No idea. I just see them in the pony sections of human airports all the time.)
08:07: Hay juice? Seriously? Um, you humans do know that that hay juice is just a joke, right? Something somepony (I’m thinking Rainbow Dash) thought it would be hilarious to talk about to see how gullible you all were? I mean, how do you make juice out of hay? “Squeezing water out of hay” for us is the equivalent of “squeezing water from a stone” for you. Oh, and that bear is seriously cute—lifted pinkie and all. Err...pinkie claw, not Pinkie...nevermind.
(Hope: A few fans have tried making it in the same way that we can make, um... Smoothies? Like, health food shakes and such by suspending the powder in a liquid? Good source of fiber, but not actual juice, I’m sure. It’s good to know that it’s not real though. Meeting up with a world of magic does lead to loosening our incredulity a bit.)
08:13: She...ate the mouse, didn’t she? Or maybe that’s just me getting a little darker than the occasion warrants.
08:17: “But...Applejohn sounds super fun, too!” Wait, so the copy doesn’t really remember…? Oh, this is interesting.
09:10: Pinkie slowly dips into the water: Gaah! Stop trouncing the laws of physics, Pinkie!
(Hope: But it’s so amusing!)
09:12: “How’d you do that?”: You know not what you are asking, mare!
09:59: Pinkie 2’s breakdown: Wow. You know what? Pinkie has issues.
(Hope: Well, this fictional version of her does. I haven’t met the real Pinkie Pie yet so I wouldn’t know.)
10:54: Nooo! Too many Pinkie Pies!
(Hope: Just enough Pinkie Pies maybe? For the show at least, hehe.)
11:37: “Applejack! Fluttershy! Pinkie Pie!” Her copies are so dumb, she had to teach them their own name. Ponyville is doomed.
13:40: One dangerous Ponyville mob, courtesy of Berry Punch. Well, alright, they’re sort of justified this time…
13:54: ...Why is there a secret door behind a shelf in the Ponyville library? This isn’t the Castle of the Two Sisters, after all.
(Hope: I’m not sure, who was in charge of the library before she arrived?)
(Luna: You know what? I’ll look into that and get back to you.)
(Luna from the Future: I’m sorry, we’re not allowed to tell you.)
14:14: A spell that sends back duplicates, and the original? What?! Who wrote this spell? That definitely sounds like a violation of the Unicorn Magic Safety Regulations of 276.
(Hope: Maybe it’s not accurate? Or the book was hidden for a reason? In case of Pinkie Pie emergencies?)
14:44: Pinkie Pie as a beard? That’s madness, madness I tell you!
15:11: Pinkie Pie can’t tell she’s the original. That...is 100% Pinkie Pie. So concerned about the happiness of others that she never thinks of herself. It reminds me of the Friendship Report about when she forgot her own birthday party—it saddened me so much to see that nopony involved truly understood what poor Pinkie Pie was going through.
15:31: Twilight dismisses the real Pinkie Pie as being real because she’s moping: This is so sad! Twilight and everypony else in Ponyville have developed a false image of who Pinkie is, because at some level she terrifies them with her strangeness, and Pinkie herself has supported this image because of her desperate need for friends. What happens, though, when the truth comes out? Will they accept her, or reject her? And what happens to Equestria when Pinkie Pie loses her temper? I mean...I have no idea what her limits are.
(Hope: We don’t either, and I think on some level we all hope she doesn’t get tired of humanity poking its collective noses in her friends’ business.)
17:02: This tree house belongs to the “woodland creatures”? Really? That’s a really nice place to live. Is it the bear’s, maybe? Is it real? And if it’s real, can I visit? Pretty, pretty please?
17:15: A Pinkie Pie roundup?
17:17: Yup, a Pinkie Pie roundup. Ha!
(Hope: Yay rounding up!)
18:29: “The test...will be watching paint dry!” You’re...you’re tricking young human girls ages 2 and up...into watching paint dry. Somebody at MLP Animation is a flipping genius. Or possibly Pinkie Pie. Wait, there’s an idea...given Pinkie Pie’s known involvement with the series, and the fact that all credits on the show are anagrams and aliases, is it possible that Pinkie Pie herself wrote this episode, as a way of using fantasy to work her way through some of her issues? That would be brilliant if true.
(Hope: I hope it is! I would love to meet her some day, especially if she’s happy with the fan base being so involved.)
19:08: Well! That was a pretty graphic demise. This sequence is betting pretty heavily that the real Pinkie Pie wouldn’t screw up. I mean yes, she would be much more emotionally motivated, as it appears that she alone actually remembers her friends, and therefore how much this whole experience is hurting them, but...this is Pinkie Pie!
19:13: You’re going to penalize the Pinkies who were distracted by other Pinkies? That’s not fair—nopony can resist a Pinkie distraction! I begin to detect a serious flaw with the resolution of this episode.
19:20: OK, those three deserved to get it—nopony should feel anything but revulsion and horror at seeing an orange frog. Plus, Pinkie Pie was there when It was created, so these three are definitely copies.
(Hope: It gets worse.)
19:27: Aaaah! Wrong! Wrong! Put those pinkies back, Pinkie!
(Hope: Much worse.)
19:35: Aaaaaaaaaah!!!! That face...THAT FACE!
(Hope: Yup.)
19:36: Okay, it’s my personal theory now that the pony horrified by...The Face...was the real Pinkie Pie. Congratulations, Twilight Sparkle, you just banished one of your best friends to the Mirror Pool.
20:25: Oh, all right. The last one is the real one, because she cares about her friends. But I swear, if the episode ends with this Pinkie muttering “fun, fun, fun” under her breath, I am ending this blogging experiment post haste.
21:04: Twilight, Pinkie Pie and Big Mac use a big rock to block the entrance to the Mirror Pool: Why do I get the feeling that that rock looks familiar? Also, that scene looks unbalanced—there should be an additional distraught pony standing next to Big Mac.
Questions for Hope
1. Outside of cloning, are you aware of any other well-known ways for someone to copy themselves in human fiction?
Hope: There are a few, most using technology or magic in a similar style to this episode. There are stories written about characters moving their minds into computers, or taking the bodies of others and turning them into themselves in a sort of cloning, but we don’t have very many stories like this. In most cases copying oneself is not a common goal of a character, and it happens by accident or against their will.
2. Is Cherry Berry usually in a bad mood in the series? Is she maybe jealous that Twilight Sparkle stole her balloon for the opening credits?
Hope: I’m not sure that it’s intentional to show her like that. You’ll notice many ponies are used multiple times in background shots or as filler, and they sometimes have random expressions.
3. Have the Daring Do books shown up in the series before this point?
Hope: Yes. during a minor accident requiring an overnight stay for monitoring at a hospital, Rainbow dash is shown the series by Twilight Sparkle, and it becomes an important lesson about enjoying books.
Luna: Huh. I must have missed reading that Friendship Report.
4. Are there a lot of secret doors in the Ponyville library, or is this the first one?
Hope: This is the first! Very interesting, and it leads me to wonder if maybe the library itself could be an important tool, if it has such convenient books stored in it. Maybe there are more secrets to be found?
Fun! Fun! Fun! Nah, just kidding.
Cherry Berry, at least by this point, looks entirely fed up with Twilight Sparkle's shit
and she's not gonna put up with any shenanigans anymore!
I like Grumpy Cherry, I hope they use her more often.
The Pinkie clones struck me as something like automata: one instruction repeated ad infinitum until shut down. Really, it's a good thing their prime directive was "fun" as opposed to... well, just about else.
I'm going to go with Beta being Twilight's middle name in the same way Danger is RD's middle name.
At least AFAIK anyways... Beta as in Beta Tester, though with Twilight perhaps Alpha Tester would be more accurate...
Headcanon aquired.
2645755
There's Twin Twilights and Alpha Twilight was DESTROYED ooOOOoooOOoo
Hmm.... Well, I guess I could say that this episode unnerved me with all the Pinkie Pies, although I must admit that I knew that Pinkie Pie (real) would be okay in the end. To be honest I never am or have been bothered by the plot holes of a story till others point them out. Still, I have the opinion that the magic Twilight was doing in the beginning was temporary. Also Pinkie Pie, is Pinkie Pie... as the show seems to say.
Also good questions that I will not attempt to answer, and I hope you enjoy the next episode. I look forward to your thoughts and opinions of what you have to share for the future. Thank you for sharing with us these wonderful insights.