Episode Review: Hearthbreakers · 4:40pm Dec 7th, 2015
Spoiler bells, spoiler bells, spoilers go away!
It's another winter holiday episode before a fall episode. What is up with time in Equestria? Or perhaps airing times. The mid-season hiatus knocked a few things on, and other things off: perfect timing for the 5th anniversary, but the seasonal stuff got whacked pretty hard. Not as hard as the stinger in Friendship Games, though.
In this episode, the Apple family goes to spend Hearthswarming with the Pie family, and we get a gingerbread reprise of the story of Hearthswarming by Applejack and Pinkie (until the latter eats the flag). As soon as the group arrives and we see the Pies being, well, Amish, it should have been sufficient warning that things would not go smoothly: even as humble as the Apples live, they still live more opulently than the rock farmers, and so there are soon some cultural conflicts between the families -- most created by AJ who wants to show the Pie family a 'real' Hearthswarming, while we can note that the others are getting along just fine. Maud with Apple Bloom, Granny with Cloudy Quartz and Igneous Rock, and the very shy Marble with the equally non-verbose McIntosh (let the shipping begin). Even Limestone is fine as long as no one touches Holder's Boulder.
And then AJ touches stuff in order to decorate the farm, and everything falls to pieces, quite literally. Limestone is most vocal about the Apples leaving, and AJ and Pinkie both go into the mines to think. It takes finding a present from Pinkie on the train and Granny talking about Holder's Boulder for AJ to realize how great another family's culture can be, and the Apples go back to help the Pies, and they compromise a bit.
And Pinkie ships MarbleMac. It's okay because they're too distantly related for it to mean anything salacious.
I enjoyed this episode and seeing more of the Pie family. This is saying a lot, since the commercialization of Christmas has made me hate it quite a lot, form when I worked at a grocery store. What I didn't like here was AJ being hit so hard by the Idiot Stick that she would try to impose her culture over others without even consulting anyone. That's how you make war. But the Pie sisters, especially Maud and Marble, saved this episode.
I still like Fluttershy best.
I give this episode a 7.5 out of 10.
