(Another bonus because...because I want this one gone and done with.)

Yep, it’s time for another review! And after the last episode, I’m hoping for something a little lighter. Perhaps a fairly simple episode, like “A Bird in the Hoof” or “May the Best Pet Win?” Well, let’s see what our lovely Random Number Gods have bestowed upon us this day…

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…It #20. “Over a Barrel.” WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?

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TECHNICAL SPECS:
Season: 1
Episode: 21
Written By: Dave Polsky
First Aired: March 25, 2011

SUMMARY:

Applejack and the rest of the Mane 6 are travelling by pony-powered train (as in, the train is being pulled by ponies) to Appleloosa, a frontier town where AJ’s cousin, Braeburn, is setting up an orchard. AJ passes the time by reading bedtime stories and babying an apple tree – which she’s named Bloomberg – because she’s an idiot. Rarity whines and throws a fit about this because she’s an idiot. The rest of the Mane 6 spend the night talking about whether or not Fluttershy is a tree because, which annoys Spike enough for him go into the back car and sleep with Bloomberg.

The next day, the train is attacked by Buffalos, who are being led by an incredibly tiny one. After slamming the train a few times, the small buffalo jumps on top and detaches the back car. Rainbow Dash tries to stop her, but crashes into a crossing sign because she’s an idiot. The rest of the team arrives in Appleloosa, where Braeburn shows them around a series of puns too lame and horrible for even a Quest for Glory game before finally showing them the new apple orchard. Once he finally shuts his mouth, Applejack tells him about the Buffalo attack, and he confirms that the tribe’s been trying to get the town to remove the trees for some time now. Without the apples, however, the town will die.

Meanwhile, Dash has managed to sneak into Buffalo territory, but her cover is blown by Pinkie Pie, who’s an idiot. The two are soon surrounded, but the situation is resolved when Spike vouches for them; as it turns out, Buffalo respect dragons, which allows for his word to save their lives. The two are taken to the Buffalo camp for the night, where Dash encounters the little buffalo girl again, named Little Strongheart. She explains that the reason they attacked the train was to stop the flow of trees into Appleloosa; the town is planting on their traditional stampeding grounds, and their leader, Chief Thuderhooves, wants them gone. After hearing his dull speech, Dash, Pinkie and Spike volunteer to take Little Strongheart over to try and talk to the townsfolk.

The next morning, the remaining Mane 6 and Braeburn set off into Buffalo territory to rescue Dash and Pinkie, but instead run into them and Strongheart on their way to the town. Braeburn shows a willingness to at least discuss things rationally…but Applejack is an idiot, so she torpedoes the entire first contact because they took her pwecious whittle apple twee. Dash, who is also an idiot, retorts that they just have to move the trees, but it turns out that the stampeding grounds are the only place fertile enough to support the orchard. Twilight – the only character in this entire episode who’s not an idiot – says that they have to come to a compromise, and Pinkie offers a solution: dress up like a stock saloon girl and perform a song-and-dance number about how the two species aren’t so different and should agree to share. And they agree…that the song sucks so much that they’re going to war.

The Buffalo return at high noon the next day, but before they can charge, Little Strongheart finally convinces Thuderhooves that there is an alternative to war…until Pinkie starts singing again because she’s an idiot. And since Thuderhooves is also an idiot, he gets so angered at her song that he orders his entire tribe to charge into certain death. The settlers strike back with…apple pies. And then…Thuderhooves gets struck by a pie, but it tastes so good that he finally makes a deal: they clear enough trees to allow a path through the orchard, and give them some apple pies on the way through, and the Appleloosans will be allowed to keep the rest of their trees.

And so Twilight narrates the lesson: even the worst of enemies can become the best of friends, and that sharing is cool. And finally, it ends, and the healing can begin.

REVIEW:

Look, I have to level with everyone here: I am not the most critical guy in the world. Generally, if something’s entertaining or fun to watch or read, I’ll do so without complaint. And when I do criticize, I like to at least be a little bit positive. I just don’t like to come off as some horrible flankhole out to ruin someone’s life just to have some satisfaction with my own. Most of the reviews up to this point have showcased flaws with episodes, but I’ve always tried to be very positive as well, and a great many of the episodes the RNG has saddled me with so far are ones that I still enjoy. So you can trust me when I say that watching “Over a Barrel” again was one of the worst moments in my entire time in the fandom. I would rather read every single “Cupcakes” knock-off and then watch the Newborn Cuties videos on an endless loop for two months straight than try and analyze this episode again. It is just wretched.

I said back in my “The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well” review that I considered that one and “Owl’s Well That Ends Well” the worst episodes. I was wrong. I would rather watch either one of those again before I even look at this Celestia-damned mess again. So once again, don’t expect a lot of happiness in this review; just a lot of tears and sobs.

The very first scene highlights one of the reasons why I hate this one: four ponies pulling an entire train at the same speed it would actually go if it was using coal. Now, Faust didn’t want a lot of technology in her new series, and I’m fine with that. I really don’t want Pinkie pulling out an iPhone or Twilight jumping onto Wikipedia to research more spells. I didn’t like the hydroelectric dam in MMDW because it was a massive leap in terms of their tech level, and was made only so they could justify using another superhero cliché. But that is not the case here. You have a country that is, for all intents and purposes, decently large in size and with a wide range of geography. You have to transport goods over a wide area, and just pulling them will be tiring for even a horse. So, you invent a big, metal device capable of pulling similarly metal carriages along a line of track…and then can’t find a single thing to power it? Magitek exists in Equestria. Coal exists in Equestria. You could even have a steam engine if you wanted. I would take ANY of that over four ponies pulling an entire train (PLUS A LOCOMOTIVE) for Celestia-knows how long non-stop.

And right after this is the second problem with this episode: the writing. Every character (save Twilight) feels like they had part of their brain scooped out before the episode began. Applejack cares about her trees, but she doesn’t seem like the kind who would read them bedtime stories and treat them like actual babies. Rarity spends the entirety of the episode in a perpetual whine, crying and sobbing like a three-year-old because nopony is taking her seriously. Rainbow Dash is fine in the first half, but we’ll get to her stupidity later. Fluttershy might as well not exist, and is only there so she can make that stupid meme about her being a tree. And then there’s Pinkie Pie. Oh God, there’s Pinkie Pie. She was kind of irritating in FPK, but here she is almost brain dead. And Spike…well, he’s at least given something to do, and he ends up accomplishing a lot more in the first ten minutes than most of the cast does the entire episode.

As for the Buffalo…okay, there’s a rather big “Elephant in the Room” that I have to talk about. The Buffalo are obviously based on Native Americans, with the episode taking all the trappings of the Western genre. I won’t comment too much on them wearing feathers and living in teepees, because honestly it’s no worse than what they did with Zecora. The problem, though, is that if you swapped out the ponies for humans, you have an episode about what amounts to American (and by that, I mean US) settlers trying to take land from Native Americans, i.e. what actually happened. And it didn’t end with apple pie fights and friendship, unless the pies were infected with smallpox and the friendship was just long enough for the government to show up and force them to move because they found specks of gold on the spot they had moved them to earlier. I’m no expert on this, so I’ll leave it at that, but…if you were wanting to do an episode about enemies becoming friends and learning to share, this kind of isn’t the setting you want to use, even for a little girl’s show.

Anyway, the main buffalo is Little Strongheart. She’s just kind of flat as a character, and the start of the episode spends so much time trying to make her look badass at the expense of Rainbow Dash that it hardly endears her to me. Pretty much her entire reason for existing is to be the “reasonable Buffalo,” which becomes superfluous when Dash ends up doing more for the Buffalo side than her. Chief Thuderhooves is your stock chieftain character, and nothing more.

Speaking of Dash, I do like that she shows some tactics here by choosing to sneak through the enemy territory rather than just barge in, but all that goes away once we get to the negotiation scene.

The first scene with Appleloosa is probably the best part of the episode. Braeburn is like a cross between Applejack and Pinkie Pie, and he’s actually a pretty decent character overall. Some of the puns are enjoyable awful, such as the horse-drawn carriages (the only funny joke in the entire episode), the horse-drawn horse-drawn carriages, and the wild (and mild) west dances. His role, like with Strongheart, is to be the voice of reason on the pony side of the debate.

And speaking of the debate, the scene where the two groups meet is handled very poorly. The entire meeting gets hijacked by Dash (who is suddenly totally on board with the Buffalo) and AJ (who is acting like a stupid moron because her tree got treenapped). The scene highlights that the Buffalo had the land first, and that the Appleloosans need the land to plant their trees. The idea is to give both sides a valid claim, but in practice, I’ve found a gaping hole in this little setup: why can’t the Buffalo stampede somewhere else? No, really, why can’t they just, you know, go around the orchard and town? Is everything around there quicksand? Are the rattlers just waiting to jump up and start biting? A reason is given for why the apple trees can’t be moved, but there’s no attempt to explain why this traditional stomping ground is so bloody important besides for the fact that it’s traditional. History be damned, I’m going with the settlers on this one.

And next comes the most infamous moment in the episode: Pinkie’s song about sharing. Granted, it’s actually not too annoying, the outfit is a bit of genius, and it gave rise to the “wingboner” meme. Where I have a problem with it, though, is that it’s apparently so bad that it drives both sides into a near-homicidal rage at each other. I get that it’s supposed to be a jab at using silly little songs to diffuse conflicts, but as we’ll soon see, the solution they come up with here isn’t all that much better.

And now we have the single worst moment of this entire mess, the thing that boils my blood to murderous levels. Thunderhooves finally relents…and Pinkie breaks into song, which is all it takes for him to charge again. I know the whole joke with Pinkie Pie Songs is that they’re so bad that they annoy others, but this is taking the one-joke premise way too far. Not only that, but Pinkie saw that the song had the opposite effect of what she wanted…and did it anyway. I hate, hate, hate this episode.

The fight is…just okay. We get some decent moments, like some buffalo slamming into an anvil hidden inside a hay bale and Carrot Top riding one like a bull, but the resolution is so rushed and stupid that it hurts my brain. Thunderhooves gets slammed by a pie, which causes both sides to stop fighting and cry over the dead chief…even though he just got hit in the head with a pie. I’m pretty sure apple pies only kill you if you eat them. And look, he eats a crumb, and he likes it so much that he immediately abandons his plans to murder the ponies and agrees to let the ponies keep the orchard, as long as the Buffalo get pies. Again, I know it’s a girl’s show, but it’s kind of hard to watch when you know how it really turned out. That, and it’s a stupid ending. All this time, all they needed to do was give Thunderhooves a pie and he’d be willing to let the settlers stay? That’s…dumb.

And oh yeah, why are they fighting with apple pies? Forget that it’s a kids show for a second and look at the logistics involved. The settlers rely on the apples from the apple trees to live. The entire reason they’re fighting is because the Buffalo tribe wants the trees removed. So in order to save their food, they bake the apples into pies, using up flour, eggs, and other ingredients, and then throw them like this is a Three Stooges sketch. So, in the process of saving your food supply, you waste about half of it. Yes, that’s a wonderful plan.

And then there’s the moral. The first part (“enemies can become friends”) isn’t a bad lesson in and of itself. I have known a lot of people who start out hating each other, but over time become good friends, and it is a pretty good lesson for the kids. The second half (“sharing is caring”) is just tacked on and feels like something out of a much lesser cartoon. And Pinkie’s final gag is so irritating and I’m just happy this episode is done.

CONCLUSION:

I hate this episode. I really, truly do. The comedy makes me smile at best, the writing is terrible, the conflict is resolved in the worst manner possible, and there is just so much concentrated dumb that I can’t believe this made it to air in this condition. Yes, I know, kids show, but even shows for little girls need some kind of quality standards. There is almost nothing worse than watching bad comedy, and this episode proves that in spades.

If you like this episode, that’s fine. Maybe you find the jokes funny. Maybe you thought the conflict was resolved well. Maybe you think I’m just being a grumpy gus. And you may be right. But the fact is, this episode really does offend me with its awfulness, and I never want to see it again.

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Well, that’s enough mean-spiritedness for one day. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need a drink.