MLP Episode Review: A Friend In Deed. WARNING! Rant inside · 9:21pm Sep 9th, 2015
FINAL WARNING!
This is not gonna be pretty. I am not gonna pull punches or anything like that. To say I hate this episode is ye old 'Pacific Ocean is wet' analogy. Okay? Okay...
A Friend in Deed
Buckle up, folks. We're going for a ride. Anyway, Pinkie starts up a record and puts on some 80's exercise gear. She does her best Flashdance while also doing some weird faces and... we then see she's trying to entertain the cake twins. She then falls on some jacks, gets caught in the ceiling fan and is tossed into the wall. They laugh. "Nailed it!" And we have the one of the only times this episode I don't wanna kill Pinkie. After the credits the rooster crows and a Minnesotan cow comes to Sugarcube to get some cookies. Pinkie goes about town, complimenting Roseluck on her flowers - and we get an amusing gag with rose giving her a flower as a snack. Clever. She talks to Mister Waddle, says happy birthday to Cheerilee, happy day-after-birthday to Zecora and happy birthday in 132-days in advance to Matilda. She spends about five seconds talking to Matilda, by the way. That'll be important later on. Matilda asks how she knows and that segues into the Smile song.
I'll skip talking about it. We've all heard it, or most of us have. It's nice. It's peppy. It's the end of any like I have for this episode. Or at least when it ends, because right after... she bumps into Cranky Doodle Dandy. He's voiced by the man who voices Rhinox from Transformers: Beast Wars. She introduces herself, and he walks right by. She tries to guess his name. Pinkie, leave him alone. He doesn't want to talk! And apparently Yankee Doodle Dandy exists? She invades his personal space, and he yells at her. She's shocked, because according to her felt-thoughts, this isn't how it's supposed to go.
"How can somepony not become instant best friends with me?" Very, VERY EASY! You invade their space and act like you've inhaled ten tons of sugar. She decides to do anything she can to win him over. So she stalks him. Natch. She hops along and he keeps walking by. He tells her he doesn't need any more friends. Gyah, shut up! He came to Ponyville for peace and quiet, to be alone with his-and now she's inside his cart with his stuff. Fuck you, you pink ball of crap. Fuck. YOU.
She wheels around her own cart, a welcome wagon. She talks him into giving him the special welcome. It opens up, she does a song, dance and is generally annoying. Then confetti explodes out of an oven and cake batter shoots out of funnels. The confetti knocks off Cranks' toupee, too. Pinkie is nonplussed about the mix-up, natch. Cranky's not happy and is frantic. Pinkie mistakes his toupee for a spider and mangles it. She then... climbs onto a flagpole and loudly announces about him being bald and everyone laughs at him. Good fucking lord... And okay, she buys him a new toupee and gets him worked on in the spa. I'll admit, that bit is good on her. He even vogues a bit in the mirror.
At his house, she barges in and once again messes with his stuff. Put it down! God, that's not your stuff! We get a hint it's concerning a 'she'. And she steps on a floorboard, sends a bauble flying and his album is... set on fire. His personal possessions... and he snaps and I'm right there with him. And she doesn't fucking GET IT! He throws her out. GOOD!
At Golden Oaks, Pinkie's upset about him not being her friend. That's what she's upset about. Not about what she did to him or how annoying she is. She decides to leave him alone... after he accpets her apology and... okay. We get her stalking him around town. It's not funny. It pisses me the hell off. Oh, we also see him crying over his destroyed mementos. And finally... we get the biggest asspull I've ever seen.
She bring back Matilda, who we saw for about five FUCKING SECONDS before the Smile song. Because Pinkie pulled off a Sherlock Scan that would've had Sherlock going, "Bullshit!" And I said that back then, too. And now. We leaqrn Matilda and Cranky met at the Gala one year, but due to a kerfluffle involving a misplaced note, Cranky never saw her until now. And... he says she's his friend. She overreacts, but realizes not to overdo it. She leaves them alone... sort of. She bugs them one more time before the credits. And thank God this episode is over.
Thoughts/rant
Okay, I hate this episode. I fucking hate it so much. Why? Well, to be honest, it's personal. Don't wanna read? You don't have to. So skip this if you wanna. All I'm doing is explaining. I'm not looking for sympathy or anything like that. It's just... this is why I hate it.
I'm an introvert. I don't like loud parties. I g out with my friends... to the video arcade, or parties that would maybe rank a .75 on a scale of one to ten for Pinkie. I'm apart of the group, but also a part from it. I'm usually the first to leave. I sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed. I enjoy quiet nights doing things quietly. So there's two strikes there concerning Pinkie, because she just doesn't seem to get it, that not everyone likes loud, insane parties. I don't.
Now... okay. My brother, as some of you may or may not know, committed suicide on November 10th, 2011. I have some pictures of him. That's it. No video, no audio. When this episode first aired, and when Pinkie destroyed Cranky's possessions-and no, I don't give a damn if it was accidental or not. She shouldn't have been touching it-I literally had to pause the VCR, turn off the TV and walk away. Or I would've put my fist through the fucking screen.
I'm better now, thank God for therapy.
Anyway, by the end, when the asspull of asspulls happened and Pinkie basically got away with all the shit she did? That was it. That was... that was it. And for the record, there is nothing anyone can say to somehow convince me that was a good ending. Or that the lesson was bullshit because she didn't leave him alone. And that it wasn't really about him. It was about him not being friends with her and I could just go on and on, but I think I've said enough.
People will say, "It's just Pinkie Pie!" Yeah, it is. It's her being an insensitive jackass. And that's all I really got left to say. If you agree with me, fine. If you disagree with me, fine.
Well, she at least got them together again, excuses her for what she did, no, but it was a nice thought
I'd to be able to respond. But frankly, I can't. We're just like so different, and our experiences are so different as people that I don't think I'll be able to understand this hatred for this episode or be able to be able to make you understand my lack of hatred for this episode.
Like you, I am also an introvert. But it's too the point that I'm almost completely anti-social. So, if someone like Pinkie Pie was to go out of her way to befriend and force me to be more sociable, I know enough not to fight it despite how much every once of my being wants to.
And maybe I don't quite get why you shouldn't go around touching other people's things. It's something that I do sometimes. I'm OCD like that.
I can't relate to the second reason. All I can say is that I'm sorry to hear about that, and I completely understand your anger at Pinkie's actions.
I can relate to the introvert part. I'm an introvert, too, and I have Asperger's, so I find extended social interaction outright exhausting. When I hit that point, there's nothing I want to do more than slink off and curl up with a nice book or something else solitary. So, yeah. Pinkie not only doesn't understand that people don't like loud, active parties, but also doesn't understand that sometimes, you just don't want to interact with anyone, that you're actually incapable of being sociable. I was ready to strangle Pinkie five minutes in, and I have little doubt that had I been in Cranky's shoes I might have ended up physically attacking her.
If there's one thing I dislike about the show - and there's not much I dislike about it, I love it dearly - it's that the protagonists far too often get away with doing bad stuff. Not being forgiven - that's actually one of the strong points I love, that the ponies are willing to accept and forgive others who have done bad things, instead of holding grudges and demanding punishment - but straight up ignoring and/or glossing over the misdeeds, with the wrongdoer never facing the consequences of their actions.
Weather factory gets blown up? It's okay, Rainbow Dash learned an important pet lesson and besides, they got winter started quicker than planned. Never mind the property damage, weather supplies lost, potential injuries... Fluttershy never face the music over those multiple assaults she made while she was "confident". Nopony mentions the time Twilight brainwashed the entire town, or the time Rarity bedazzled everything with dark magic. Or when Applejack poisoned half a dozen ponies with baked bads.
Is this really a good lesson to teach children? "You can get away with it if you're the hero"?
No wonder I like Trixie better. She doesn't get easy forgiveness.
I don't hate the episode, but it's one of the few I rarely see.
Between this and Luna Eclipsed, there was a good reason that I hated Pinkie in season 2.
Don't you mean DVR instead of VCR? Also didn't know Rhinox was Cranky Doodle until now. That must've been where his spark went after his Tankor body got destroyed and he ranted at Optimus.
3381445 Also Trixie didn't actively do anything that bad in her first appearance and in her second was being turned evil/crazy by an eldrich magical artifact. What Pinkie did to Cranky was much worse than anything Trixie did in her first appearance and neither Pinkie or Dashie have the excuse Trixie did for making so much trouble in her second appearance (hopefully she will have a third appearance in which she isn't as much of an antagonist).