Season Six Episode Review: The Cart Before the Ponies · 5:47pm Aug 6th, 2016
It's Cutie Mark Crusader time again. Still freed from their repetitive episode structure, can the little darlings captivate the audience once again as they compete in derby racing?
TECHNICAL SPECS:
Season: 6
Episode: 14
Written By: Ed Valentine and Mike Vogel
First Aired: August 6, 2016
REVIEW:
The episode opens with something absolutely stunning: Cheerilee actually doing her job. She opens with a quick introduction to Physics, which obviously flies over the heads of what amounts to an elementary school classroom, before segueing into a discussion of the Applewood Derby. Thus the class gets to participate in a fun activity (to an extent – designing and racing an entire cart in one day would be torture for someone as ineffectual as myself) that helps lay the groundwork for a greater understanding of how the world works. And then Cheerilee gives the actual school lesson anyway, because she's a teacher and therefore must balance her love for her students with her burning desire for revenge.
Because the Applewood Derby gives prizes for being the fastest, the most traditional, and the most creative, the CMC naturally drift towards their older siblings/sister figures for help. The CMC actually want to go for things outside of their usual skill sets, but the adults want to live vicariously through them and force them to go the stock route, taking over the project entirely and even driving the carts themselves. This destroys the race, prompting the CMC to finally tell them off for being jerks. A lesson is learned, everyone is happy, and the race is re-ran with only the foals.
It might sound like I'm just narrating the episode to you. That's because I am, and that's because this episode was just dull. Actually, scratch that: the CMC were dull here, while the Mane 6 representatives were just aggravating. About the only one that doesn't get a full rant is Rainbow Dash, because she is at least overwhelmingly egotistical and likely to shut out Scootaloo's complaints in order to relive her youth. (Plus, Scootaloo's design is based on an old meme and therefore sucks like she now does. Sit in the corner of shame, young lady.)
Rarity at least has a funny setup for her reason: namely, getting a chance to make up for a failure in her past. (And losing a creativity competition to Derpy is certainly a failure.) After that, though, she's just as boring as the rest of the episode. She and Sweetie Belle seem to have the least amount of time arguing over the direction the cart is taking, which seems to defeat the point of the episode a bit. Plus, she also turns out to be obsessed with coming in first place considering her attempts to block off the other carts with her swan wings. So while Rainbow's wheel coming off is what triggers the crash, Rarity blocking the lane contributes greatly to the resulting carnage.
And then there's Applejack. Oh Sweet Heavenly Celestia, what happened to Applejack? Obviously, the Apples are going to be tied to “tradition;” after all, they perpetuate a racist town ritual, constantly undersell their cider to avoid damaging quality, and just earlier this season Applejack worked herself into exhaustion doing things she no longer needed to do because it's what she had always done. But whereas the other two are dismissive of the CMC's attempts to actually take charge of their own school project, Applejack is outright hostile towards any attempt to jazz up her old buggy. She doesn't even attempt to win the race itself, deliberately making the cart as slow as possible so as to be as old-fashioned as possible. She even implies that if Apple Bloom goes against her wishes, she won't be a “real” member of the family, a possibility that terrified Apple Bloom a season ago. I'm happy we have Applejack doing things besides running around her farm, but can we please stop scooping out her brains every time we need her in a slightly antagonistic role?
So in the end, the adults ruin it for the children, just like in real life. The lesson is about how it's difficult to speak up to grown-ups, and how it's still necessary when they're behaving like butts. Good lesson, but very iffy execution. There was also a song, but it's very forgettable and is mostly there to try and liven up the actual race.
Something else that kind of bugs me: the three adult ponies have almost no interaction with each other. It's not until the very end that they seem to acknowledge each others' existence. This feels like a lost story opportunity. Perhaps the three could have gotten into a squabble that helped highlight how immature they were all behaving. Maybe they could have been supporting friends for their non-competing goals, further reinforcing their unwitting undermining of their partners. Or even better, the CMC could have actually split off from their uncaring mentors and jumped into the carts they actually wanted to race. (Sweetie Belle with Applejack, Scootaloo with Rarity, and Apple Bloom with Rainbow Dash.) I know I should judge an episode by what it is and not what it could have been, but that's what happens when you get such a boring episode. Bad episodes make me upset. Good episodes make me happy. Dull episodes make me wish for something better.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Overall, this was just kind of a mundane, slightly-below average outing for the show. The only part I found especially bad was how Applejack was handled. Some of the jokes were amusing, but overall the episode just felt rather boring.
Next time, we have zombies. Grab your shotguns, folks. It's time to put some sick horses down...
Wait zombies?? Zombies?!
4135387
The episode title is "28 Pranks Later". I suspect that some fans may be reading just a teensy bit too much into that.
AJ's characterization in this episode was so jarringly terrible that after a while I couldn't even get mad at it. This is the first episode in a while where members of the mane 6 felt unambiguously mishandled in the writing department.
Ultimately I found the episode to be so bad to the point of being funny again, although my girlfriend did not have as forgiving a reaction.
Well, Scootaloo's final design ended up being a phoenix, so I don't think it was intentionally pandering to the chicken meme. I think the joke was supposed to be that a chicken head was all she could find on a small budget last second, cause the wings she picked as well didn't resemble chicken wings. Or it could have been the meme. I dunno. I thought the final design was pretty dope as far as cartoons go, so I didn't mind.
4135916
The final design wasn't bad, yeah. It was mostly just the chicken joke that was off-putting originally. (Plus, putting that big a headpiece on the front of your vehicle is just going to block your vision and make you more likely to crash...not that Rainbow Dash needed any help in that department.)
A good episode for the grown ups to learn from children for the first time.
In conclusion? Still follow grown ups 99% of the time.
This whole season is boring...
I have to agree the episode was rather meh but at les-
Wait.
The Apples perpetuate a racist town ritual? When did that happen? Did I miss a episode, or was it a comic thing?
Yeah, out of all of them, AJ was the one that was actively aggravating to me. Though all of them seemed to suddenly decide to ignore 6 years of character development.
4136490
Not just racist but also actively destructive: removing snow from farmland with heavy plows like that would destroy the topsoil. Earth pony magic has to be messing with both physics and biology in really insane ways for Sweet Apple Acres to be even remotely functional.
Honestly, I believe this is thus-far the... not worst episode of the series, but one of the worse of Season 6 for the level-grind into Jerkass the trio took. Applejack especially. Rainbow Dash, you can excuse the ego... Rarity... she's had this kind of conflict with Sweetie before. AJ, however? AJ's just bein' a varmint.
Oh, the three didn't tell you to outright stop? Well, they still voiced concerns, which you three continued to BRUSH OFF. Self-serving memory, much?
That part makes it the most frustrating. If instead, they admitted and stated "yeah, we should have listened your concerns" instead of claiming they didn't say a thing, I probably wouldn't dislike this episode as much.
4136490
Talking about Winter-Wrap-Up, which specifically denies using magic, making it racist towards unicorns. ...And considering without Twilight's super-organizational skills the town is perpetually late in finishing, and the fact that other places apparently allow it, it DOES smack of something stupid enough to come out of racism.