Episode Review: The Hooffields and the McColts

Spoilers are firing!

This episode opens with Fluttershy and her critter friends hanging out inside her cottage, getting ready to enjoy a nice discussion as part of her furry friends book club activities (go to your local library and get some books. It's good for your mind). This is interrupted when, on Angel's prompting, Fluttershy realizes that she's being called by the map and has to leave.

At the castle, Fluttershy discovers that her partner for this mission is Twilight Sparkle, who is feeling so 'skiddly-boppy-boo' at finally getting a mission from the map that she used all of five minutes to research everything there was on their quest location, and she created a portfolio of friendship solutions, some referencing previous episodes. I can understand Twilight's enthusiasm, since the map locked her out of so many quests previously. And she's adorkable here (the word really was made for her). Unfortunately the saddles Twilight has prepared for her and Fluttershy are not cute, as they're so full they nearly break Fluttershy's back (and simultaneously break my theory about her secretly being the strongest of the Mane6).

Twilight and Fluttershy take the Sparkle Balloon, and discover their quest location is anything but picturesque, having been picked clean of many of its resources by the two families living at the tops of both hills. Welcome to Family Feud: these are the Hooffields and McColts. Twilight is no longer shy about her authority as the Princess of Friendship, and of course Fluttershy is adorably there too -- but both sides think these two newcomers are spies. Neither side remembers what they're fighting over either.

Despite Twilight's portfolio of solutions, no progress is made and Fluttershy keeps having to whisk animals out of danger, thus alerting the audience to a critical plot point. It happens that the families specialize in farming or building, but not both. They're also proficient at make war against each other. Fluttershy stops being cute for two seconds as she suggests that a pair of ponies stop talking altogether.

The solution comes in the form of an invested third party: the animals who have been caught up and starved in the feud, but who also know what really happened. Through Fluttershy, they relate the whole story while Twilight keeps everypony immobile with her spell from 'Castlemania.' Then, unlike the real Hatfields and McCoys, the Hooffields and McColts make up and reconcile.

It's odd seeing a children's show take on a serious subject like a bloody, multigenerational feud. It's not so odd for FiM. The loss or original meaning within a conflict is, I think, realistic. It's just unfortunate that we can't so easily summon a resolution, especially when the land and locals also get swept up into such things, their lives also impacted negatively, sometimes depending on whose side they take. Then again, this is an animated venture, so it is going to have a simplified form when compared to similar conflicts in reality.

Overall, however, it was a good episode. I believe it was worth an 8/10.