Welcome, one and all, to another episode review. We’re almost 20% of the way through the first two seasons, so let’s give this a go.

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And it’s…number 43, “Putting Your Hoof Down.”

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TECHNICAL SPECS:
Season: 2
Episode: 19
Written By: Charlotte Fullterton (Story), Merriweather Williams (Teleplay)
First Aired: March 3, 2012

SUMMARY:

It’s lunch time at Fluttershy’s cottage, and all her animal friends are gleefully munching away. That is, save for Angel Bunny, who kicks away his own food pellets in a tantrum. When Fluttershy instead offers him a nice garden salad, he repeats the maneuver before pointing her towards a massively complex salad. Fluttershy tries to get him to eat a piece of lettuce, but he just slaps it out of her hoof, slaps her, and shoves the cookbook back in her face.

Finally giving in, Fluttershy goes to the local farmer’s market to purchase the ingredients. Unfortunately, she is quickly trampled over by the other, more aggressive ponies, and is about to give up when she runs into Rarity and Pinkie Pie. The two try to convince Fluttershy to be more assertive, with Rarity using her sex appeal to charm a nerdy colt out of his asparagus, and Pinkie Pie using doubletalk and Bugs Bunny negotiations to reduce the price on tomatoes. The last thing Fluttershy needs is a cherry, but there’s only one left, and when she reveals how desperate she is the seller jacks up the price. Fluttershy tries flirting, but fails miserably; she then tries Pinkie’s method, but ends up negotiating the price higher. Finally, she gathers her courage and gives it another try, but the stall operator just raises the price above how much she can pay, and another pony runs off with her cherry.

Back home, Fluttershy finishes the salad, but before Angel can take a bite, she points out that she couldn’t get the cherry. Enraged, Angel throws the salad out before kicking Fluttershy out the top half of her door and into her mailbox. Finally, Fluttershy admits that she’s a doormat…just as a flyer for Iron Will’s Assertiveness Seminar lands on her head. Like Rarity before her, she swears an oath to Celestia that she shall never be a doormat again. And like always, Celestia has a sense of humor…

Fluttershy gets to the seminar just as Iron Will, a massive minotaur, appears onstage and begins addressing the waiting ponies below. He promises that anypony who isn’t 100% satisfied with the course will pay nothing, and then teaches the ponies to look others in the eye. But things take a decidedly dark turn when he calls Fluttershy up as an example. As she tries to approach, one of Iron Will’s (non-sapient?) goats starts blocking her path, and when Flutters tries to just walk away, he tells her, “When somepony tries to block, show them that you rock!” He knocks the goat over and then moves on to the next lesson, “Never apologize when you can criticize!” After a little bit of coaxing, Fluttershy gives it a try, loudly telling off the goat for daring to stand in her way. Iron Will quickly seizes the chance to promote this pony as his success story, causing an eruption of cheers from the audience that Fluttershy soon finds herself enjoying…

The next day, Fluttershy psyches herself up using Iron Will’s catchphrases before heading out for her daily routine. Along the way, however, she uses her new techniques to deal with ponies that she finds being mean to her. She fires a hoseful of water into Mr. Greenhooves’ face, knocks two carts full of garbage onto Bon-Bon and Cherry Berry, and scares off the entire line at Sugar Cube Corner after one pony dares to cut in front of her. At first, Pinkie Pie (and Rarity, who’s behind the counter for some reason) are happy to see her like this, but that mood changes when a (rather poor) joke from Pinkie ends with Fluttershy nonchalantly knocking a bowl of punch onto her before calling a cab. When another pony tries to cut her off again, she jumped in, throws him out, and gives everypony the one-hoof salute as the cabby gallops her away.

The next morning, Fluttershy has gotten even worse. Now that she has had a taste of power, there is no stopping her. She shoves a nearsighted mailpony into a mailbox when he accidentally delivers the wrong mail to her house, and when she drops a letter while trying to help a tourist find Ponyville Tower, she grabs him by his camera and hammer tosses him to the tower itself. Pinkie and Rarity saw the whole thing, and try to get Fluttershy to calm down, but now that she’s hopped up on raw aggression she believes that they just want her to be a doormat again. When they try to push the point, she responds by tearing into their life’s passions, calling them wastes of time that nopony else gives a flying feather about. Naturally, hearing their entire lives be torn to shreds is enough to send both ponies galloping away in tears.

Fluttershy continues to rage…until she sees her angry face in a puddle and realizes what she just did. Ashamed, she slinks back to her home, which completely collapses over a period of a few hours or so. Pinkie Pie and Rarity come back, wanting to talk things over, but Fluttershy has decided to seal herself inside her cottage before she can strike again. The two try to convince her that she isn’t a monster, but Iron Will shows up and interrupts the touching reconciliation to demand his money. Rarity tries to charm him into coming back later, but Iron Will simply drops her into the bushes and starts unbarricading the doors. Pinkie manages to convince him that Fluttershy isn’t home and they need a day to find her, but that plan falls apart when Flutters sneezes. With nothing left to stop him, Iron Will rips down the barricade, politely knocks, and then demands that Fluttershy pay up.

She says no.

Iron Will intensifies his threats, but Fluttershy reminds him that during the seminar, he said that if anypony wasn’t 100% satisfied, they paid nothing – and she’s most certainly not satisfied, and that “No means no.” Iron Will is disappointed, but honors his part of the bargain and leaves. The three friends make up, and Fluttershy returns to normal…almost. While Iron Will’s techniques ultimately weren’t for her, she has learned that you can be assertive without being a bully, which she demonstrates by unleashing The Stare on Angel the next time he complains about his dinner.

REVIEW:

Like all Merriweather Williams episodes, this one has drawn a fair share of controversy since it aired. Debates have raged over how in-character everypony was, how badly she mangled the setting, and whether or not this was a good episode to begin with. I’ve already given my opinion of her most well-known episode, “The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well,” so it should come to no surprise to all of you that I really enjoyed this episode and would place it as the best of the four episodes she’s penned so far.

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What?

Well, this episode starts with one of the most infamous scenes in the entire season: Angel slapping Fluttershy. First, if you ever do anything bad to Fluttershy, you will instantly draw the hatred of the entire fan community, but I actually find this worse than when Gilda roared at her. This is the pet that Fluttershy dotes on the most, and he returns her kindness by throwing a tantrum and them forcing her to make an impossibly complex meal for him. Even worse is how he usually behaved. He can be mean, yes, but most of the time he’s been shown trying to get Fluttershy to do what she’s supposed to do this episode: be more assertive and outgoing. He was even willing to help her out when she tried to bribe Twilight for the Gala ticket. So yeah, this behavior doesn’t fit him at all.

Next comes another notorious scene: the market. There are two main criticisms of this scene, which we’ll handle one at a time. The first is that, much like MMDW, this changes the geography of Ponyville. Now, I agree with this to an extent. Ponyville is supposed to be the sticks, not a city big enough to support a massive farmer’s market like this. However, there are two things I’d like to point out. First, we saw similar booths in “Family Appreciation Day,” albeit not an entire market. Second, a market at least makes some degree of sense, unlike the roads to nowhere and skyscrapers in MMDW.

The other criticism is that the ponies are, for lack of a better word, jerks. On the one hand, ponies have behaved like jerks before, with ponies like Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, Trixie, the Flim-Flam Brothers, and others confirmed to exist. However, this was a surprisingly concentrated amount of jerkish behavior considering the show, and a lot of it is genuinely upsetting. That being said, as someone who has survived many a farmer’s market and swap meet in the past, I can tell you that this is pretty much how people behave. It is not an environment for a person like Fluttershy.

Now we get to something that really does upset me. When Rarity tries to help Fluttershy become assertive, she does this by pulling the same trick from “Secret of My Excess” and seducing the nerdy colt into giving up his asparagus for free. I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it here. Pinkie’s usage of Bugs Bunny techniques is funny, but it’s also haggling, which is what you do to get a good price at a farmer’s market. What Rarity does is just…not a good thing to teach kids at all. As for Fluttershy’s attempts, I found the scene hilarious, especially for Rarity’s and Pinkie’s reactions to her utter botching of the negotiations. It also teaches kids an important lesson: if you really want to get something at a good price in a free market, don’t let the other person know how desperately you need it. Supply-and-Demand can be a cruel mistress.

I would be in poor judgment if I didn’t mention the numerous Shout Outs going on in the background. We have Pipsqueak running right by (hey, I got both appearances in a row!) and Lyra reaching for a cup with her hooves. And of course, Derpy appears in a later scene. I haven’t really commented on stuff like this before, but I should: this is the kind of stuff I like seeing. Just silly little background things for us older fans to notice, while the little kids who don’t know what’s going on can focus on the pretty ponies. Again, it’s the little touches that make this show wonderful.

After Angel acts like a flankhole again (I’ve said my piece on that decision), we get introduced to Iron Will. Before we get to him, though, I have to say that I liked how his seminar was at the center of the hedge maze. It’s a nice touch of Greek Mythology, even if technically the minotaur was in a labyrinth. It’s kind of like a maze, only a labyrinth has just one route that goes in circles while a maze has multiple paths with dead ends. Still, the show has always had a very high amount of Greek Mythology worked in, and this little bit here is a sign that they’re very much trying to work stuff in as accurately as possible.

And then we get to Iron Will. Sweet Celestia, I love this guy. Iron Will is my absolute favorite one-shot character for two reasons, one we’ll see here and another towards the end. But anyway, he’s basically a glorious mix of Mr. T and a few dozen pro wrestlers, shouts every line in a bombastic voice, and best of all, is an actual professional and not just some dope the writers drew up to be a strawman. Granted, a lot of his advice is very rough and rather direct (and I can’t agree with criticizing someone when you run into them), the actual content is still good. His guarantee also implies that everypony up to this point has been satisfied, so it seems like his course works.

Now that Fluttershy has been trained, she is unleashed upon the world. The next few scenes are mostly there to chronicle her rapid descent, eventually ending with her being just as much a bully as the ponies from the market. When she sprays Mr. Greenhooves with water, it’s rather cruel, but he was flooding her garden and wouldn’t let her get a word in when she tried to ask him to stop. The bridge scene is less defensible, since Fluttershy could, you know, fly over. Still, Bon-Bon and Cherry Berry are being complete jerks here, since blocking up the only bridge so they could make a racist joke about donkeys screws over any Unicorns and Earth ponies that need it, and Fluttershy’s retribution is still funny. And the last scene, where a pony cuts in front of Fluttershy, again has her reasonably justified with her anger. Now, everypony else leaving was too far, but by this point, the situation has changed. Every time Fluttershy acted assertively, she got what she wanted. This creates a positive feedback loop that encourages her to behave more and more like a bully every time, since it keeps getting the results she wants. By the time she gets to Pinkie and Rarity, she’s still somewhat Fluttershy, but she’s starting to talk in third-person like Iron Will, referring to herself as, “New Fluttershy.”

Anyway, Pinkie and Rarity are happy with this at first, even if Fluttershy insists that they don’t call Iron Will a monster; after all, he’s a minotaur. Of course, Pinkie makes the mistake of making a terrible pun, which makes Fluttershy think she’s laughing at her, and which finally ends with Pinkie getting a bowl of punch splashed on her and Fluttershy leaving like nothing had happened. And then she beats up the pony who tries to take her cab and…well, “flips off” the entire town. Yes, they had Fluttershy with her leg and hoof clearly extended for the middle-finger salute. But that isn’t the biggest thing they got away with.

The third act opens rather abruptly, with Fluttershy now stuck in permanent rage mode. Her animal friends, all of whom supported her earlier attempts, are now terrified of her. When she gets the wrong mail, she shoves the elderly mailpony into a mailbox, where he is shipped to parts unknown. When a tourist asks her if she knows where Ponyville tower is, she seems happy to help initially (there’s no stuttering or shyness in her voice), but since opening her mouth causes her to drop her mail into the mud, she blames the tourist and flings him all the way to the tower. (His happy little “Oh, there it is!” look is actually pretty funny.)

And now we get to the most infamous part of this episode. Just watch this clip to refresh your memory, and we’ll continue:

The first thing to mention is how Fluttershy’s new assertiveness is affecting her. Normally, she’s almost always on the ground, but here she remains airborne. She doesn’t blink or shy away at all, but remains focused on the two. And when she starts going in for the kill, she has her forelegs folded together like a boss. This shows that not only has she become meaner, but she’s no longer the same pony at all. She’s Rainbow Dash, but without the sense of loyalty to hold her back. So when she thinks the two are trying to stop her from being assertive, she takes them as another thing trying to block her. And after all, “If somepony tries to block, show them that you rock!”

Next, there’s the issue of what Fluttershy actually does here. This is, by far, the cruelest moment in the entire series so far. Everypony may have been at each other’s throats in “Return of Harmony,” but that was because of brainwashing. Twilight may have been abandoned by her friends, family and mentor in “A Canterlot Wedding,” but that was because she just accused someone of being an evil monster without any actual proof. But here, Rarity and Pinkie have done nothing wrong. All they did was tell Fluttershy that she’s taking things too far and needs to calm down.

There are a lot of ways to interpret what Fluttershy says here. It could be that she’s just finding an easy target and picking at it until they break, or this might be what she really thinks of her friends. In all honesty, it’s probably a bit of both. We all have friends who’ve irritated us or have annoying habits, but we still hang out with them because we still like them despite these little disagreements. The important thing to remember, though, is that Fluttershy isn’t in her right mind here. The things that are normally just little annoyances become amplified when someone’s in a rage state, so Fluttershy just magnifies things like “Pinkie’s parties can be annoying” or “Rarity can be a little petty sometimes” into “These two are wastes of space and must pay!”

No matter what you may think about why she said it, though, this scene only works because of its ungodly brutality. If Fluttershy had just called them goofy names and said they were stupid-heads or something like that, it would have just been a silly bit and nothing more. But when Fluttershy tears their lives apart, it has a much deeper impact on us. Even worse, Fluttershy is actually telling the truth on some level; Rarity is petty at times, and Pinkie is obsessed with parties. This scene is designed to hit you right in the feels, and for the most part, it works. Granted, they might have done well without the hidden f-bomb, but it works. (Seriously, how did they get away with half the stuff in this episode?)

Of course, this is where Fluttershy realizes she is the demons and retreats to her home. All the stuff between her going into her cottage and Iron Will returning are kind of…okay, I suppose. I don’t think making her home look like it had been abandoned for years was really a good choice, since it messes with any perception of time we may have. Angel tying up Fluttershy is amusing, and the animation is fantastic here, but otherwise, it’s just there to bridge the gap. It is nice, though, that Rarity and Pinkie are even willing to talk to her again after what she had just said, although the “Pinkie is insensitive” joke kind of gets old when it happens twice within about thirty seconds of each other.

Fortunately, Iron Will arrives to end the episode on a high note. His little fourth-wall gag is rather amusing, especially with even Pinkie wondering who he’s talking to. Even better, though, is how the episode calls back to the market scene when the two try to stall for time. Rarity tries to play her charms again (although calling him a monster kind of defeats the purpose), but Iron Will just wants his money and disposes of her. Pinkie using the Bugs Bunny technique was hilarious, especially when Iron Will grabbed her by the tail and she started walking on thin air, but of course, it ends when she tries to block him, thereby giving him an excuse to show her his rock capabilities.

The ending is…well, rushed a little. The moral itself is a very good lesson for kids and adults. Far too many people mistake “standing up for yourself” with “being an inconsiderate flankhole,” and the message that you don’t have to change who you are to defend yourself is a good one. However, Fluttershy really pulls this right out of her flank. That, or she had a major epiphany while tied to a chair.

But then we have Iron Will’s behavior here, and why I really don’t consider him a villain. He pushes Rarity aside and tosses Pinkie into a mud pile before ripping off the boards barricading the door, but then he just knocks politely. When Fluttershy initially refuses, he threatens to beat her down if she doesn’t pay, but when she explains why, he changes his tune. It would have been easy to just have Fluttershy unload his own assertiveness techniques on him in some sort of ironic revenge, but instead the team has taken the harder route and actually showed him as a rough, aggressive, but still fairly reasonable guy who just assumed that Fluttershy was trying to cheat him out of his hard-earned money. So rather than fight her again, he just packs up and leaves, while also resolving to incorporate what he learned from this into his next workshop. I also loved Rarity and Pinkie’s reaction to this:

CONCLUSION:

This episode has some serious issues, and just how much you’ll like it depends a lot on how well you can stand Merriweather William’s cynical writing style and Fluttershy’s absolute cruelty. For me, though, this episode is just a lot of fun, and stands out as the best of her four episodes, beating out even “Hearth’s Warming Eve.” The comedy is solid, the characters are fine for the most part, and Iron Will is just awesome. It’s not one of the season’s absolute best, but it’s one I really enjoyed.

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Hoo boy, I dread to look at the comments for this one. Saying that this episode is divisive is like saying the Atlantic Ocean is a little wet. Well, I’ll see you next time.