28 Pranks Later · 5:36pm Aug 28th, 2016
Only just got round to watching this one. That's time I could have spent jetwashing flagstones or somesuch. Ah well. I have to ask why they felt it necessary to write this story. Have they felt guilty about condoning prankery ever since Griffon the Brush-Off graced our screens? I doubt even Hasbro could be that apologetic.
To be fair, I didn't find the pre-titles sequence irritating. My only gripe there is that it seemed at first to be the prelude to a much better story than we got. Things then went rapidly downhill. Fluttershy seems to feel compelled to call a meeting - something I'd be far too shy to do over a daft prank, so goodness only knows how she of all ponies managed it. The dialogue is stultifying, spelling out the story's message before we've even had time to recover from the theme. We also get the full-on through-scored dialogue. When Rarity speaks, of course, we get a 'delightful' burst of synthesised harpsichord that helpfully reminds us "This mare is cultured and a bit sarcastic," (By the way, I was almost surprised when, after the insightful line "Everypony has things they like and things they don't," Rarity didn't just turn to the camera and announce warmly "And that's okay."); then, when Applejack makes her valuable contribution, we get some vaugely country-related stuff to tell us everything that her accent already has. Honestly, I have every faith in the excellent voice actresses who play our beloved Mane Six, and I don't think they need music to tell us in notes of one hemdi-demi-semi-quaver how we should interpret their words.
The ponies' treatment of Dash is just embarassing. What put them in tetchy mode so fast? Her pranks are actually quite funny. I for one can't help but wonder what exactly was in those scrolls that bombarded Celestia. Dirty limericks, no doubt. Fair play, by the way, to the jaunty polka that plays during the prank-montage. I enjoyed that. In any case, their behaviour had me quietly loathing the ponies I know and love. Fluttershy's behaviour puts me in mind of a human rights-savvy 'victim' invoking her right not to be scared. The others act like a gaggle of maiden aunts. Tchah.
Rainbow's cookie prank wasn't really too severe. I mean, if everyone's a victim, no-one can really feel ashamed or humiliated. My system would just have been to send Rainbow to Coventry following her cookie switcheroo, rather than doing... that thing. Besides, as we see, you can just wipe the rainbow stuff away in about 3 seconds. Honestly. I've known kids deliberately eat sweets that turn your mouth a funny colour.
I'm more worried about why Rainbow is so easy to fool. Does she really not have a scrap of cynicism in her? The joke-cookies, granted, are a bit weird. I'm curious to know why they turn your whole muzzle rainbowish. Are ponies just messy eaters, or do those things have stuff that seep through your flesh? All the same, I'm concerned that Rainbow is so willing to accept the cookies' turning everypony into zombies. It's never properly explained where she got 'em, but what kind of sadistic swine sells that kind of stuff?
Oh yeah. Well, apart from him. Then she just runs into her friends' houses, assuming that they and they alone will not have eaten them, and is proven wrong over and over again. Golly. That girl is thick this week.
All this brings me to the faux-zombies themselves. Wasn't it pathetically obvious what was going on? It's a story about pranks. There just isn't space for an unrelated zombie outbreak in the middle of that. Not in a 20-minute timeslot, anyway. At least The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well had a sort of twist. I actually quite enjoyed that story. Here though, any attempt at horror - and there is attempt at horror: the score gives us some rather good zombie music (which, to my delight, was played over the credits), and the ponies do actually look quite creepy, especially given the help from the lighting - is ever-so-slightly marred by the fact that the zombies keep moaning 'cookies'. Hmm. Besides, there are often scattered cookies everywhere, but they always seem to go for Dashie, leaving our biscuity friends untouched. Dash, as you'd expect in this episode, doesn't notice. It's not actually clear what they would do to her if they got her. She doesn't have cookies for brains. As far as I know, cookies make up no part of her anatomy. Maybe if they had been moaning 'skittles' I'd have been more convinced. I'm also curious as to how they made themselves all pale. When the lights come back on (!) they just seem to turn it off. It it all in Dash's head?
The conclusion of the episode involves the message being spelled out for those of you at home who are as dimwitted as Rainbow seems to have become. It doesn't involve much else. There's only room for the moral. We do learn some things of value from the story though: for one thing, Doctor Whooves has a balcony. Important news for fanfiction writers. We also learn of the Filly Guides, who, for some reason, have never been mentioned before. When I was in the Boy Scouts, we met every week. Surely some reference to a meeting would have made this surprise revelation less of a... er, surprise revelation.
Well, a disappointing story. There are other things about it that irritated me, but I can't think of anything else good about it, except that Pinkie's facial expressions were in full-on cute mode. Small comfort.
4177674 Well, ta very much, old thing! I plan to make a habit of it. Hopefully I can be a tad more complimentary in future. I don't enjoy being nasty. I'm just good at it.