Buckball Season Review · 5:55pm Sep 3rd, 2016
So, we've got an official sports episode, and a sort of spiritual successor to "Fall Weather Friends". Well, I'm not much of a sports person myself, for reasons I won't discuss here. But I wasn't going to take that into account when watching the episode and hold it against it, it was the actual story and not the content itself that I was concerned about anyway. We have yet another new writer for an episode, this time it's Jennifer Skelly, and her writing credits include a bunch of shows I've never even heard of before. So it seems like a relatively obscure writer has been given the chance to expand her horizons and possibly become more well know. New writers have been something of a mixed bag this season, with some doing well (like Mike Vogel), others doing okay (like F.M. De Marco), and some being impossible to predict (like the Fox Brothers and David Rapp), so did Skelly do a good job, or did she ultimately turn out to be a bad choice? Well, let's find out. Are you ready for some buckball?!
We begin with Applejack showing off her Matrix bullet-time moves to practice her long distance bucking, in preparation for a buckball game with Appleloosa. Turns out, Braeburn was able to get a pegasus and a unicorn to join him, and now he's bragging about how he's going to beat Ponyville, which apparently doesn't even have a team. Seems like someone's getting a little too ahead of themselves.
Rainbow Dash interrupts Applejack, and decides she wants to join the Ponyville buckball team even though she doesn't know what the sport is. It turns out to be a mixture of football, soccer, and Quidditch from Harry Potter. Earth ponies kick the balls towards the goals, pegasi serve as goal keepers to block the balls, and unicorns catch the balls with their buckets to toss back into the game. Since it seems to have been an Apple family tradition only, not many ponies have heard of it, and many of the most viable candidates seem to be absent, which must say a lot about buckball's general popularity.
Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy soon turn out to be really good at the game, but all of the unicorns that show up are really bad at it (one even forgets to keep their eye on the ball, and another gets hit in the crotch). Then, by chance, a ball comes sailing towards Snails of all ponies, who's carrying water buckets on his shoulders. Snails, in contrast to how he's been potrayed throughout the show, is actually compotent enough to catch the ball in one of his buckets, so Applejack and Rainbow Dash agree to put him on the team.
Deciding that Pinkie and Fluttershy need more practice, Applejack and Rainbow Dash become the coaches and set up an extremely rigorous and demanding obstacle course, and at this point I'm going to have deduct points for Skelly not watching "Hurricane Fluttershy" and "Flight to The Finish", those are the episodes you need to see if you want to understand how a coach Rainbow Dash works, the former especially seems to have been forgotten in this painful training montage in which Applejack and Rainbow Dash forget that they're not the ones playing and that their obstacle course may not work for the players they're coaching.
As a result, Pinkie and Fluttershy are horrible, and decide to get some rest. The next day, they're still worried, but tell themselves they'll be fine since not much of Ponyville knows about the sport and thus they won't be expecting anything. But it turns out Applejack and Rainbow Dash decided to whip up a small cheerleading crowd at the train station, which make Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy nervous wrecks. Having had enough, they confront the coaches, and it's Fluttershy who puts her hoof down about their decision to not play since the game just isn't fun anymore. And it takes some time for Applejack and Rainbow Dash to realize that not everypony works well under pressure (as I can personally attest to, and studies have shown that there's a certain amount of stress the body can handle before performance begins to decline). Thankfully, they realize their mistake will still on the train, and convince Pinkie and Fluttershy to play one more game with them, to whip the replacements (Applejack and Rainbow Dash) into shape.
With the pressure lifted, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy are able to play to peak performance, and Applejack and Rainbow Dash reveal that they've been doing this special practice run specifically to get the two back into their usual great level of performance. Snails then offers some zen-master esque advice about not thinking about the pressure and just playing the game. This advice comes in handy in the showdown with Appleloosa, because Braeburn and his team are really good. The score is tied up at five, and the next shot scored wins the game. For a little while, the ball goes back and forth, but Pinkie eventually beats Braeburn to the punch and bucks the ball into the goal, winning the game for Ponyville!
Braeburn admits defeat, and it seems Michael Daingerfield (his voice actor, despite a misleading source that credited Andrew Francis) is a little out of practice voicing Braeburn (or he had a cold while recording), because Braeburn sounds a bit deeper and more masculine here than he has in his previous appearances. But for what it's worth, this is likely his best appearance even if it's just for a few minutes towards the end of the episode. Anyway, Braeburn vows that he'll have to train extra hard to beat Ponyville next time around, but the Ponyville team reminds him that it's just a game and the important thing is to have fun (in other words, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game). The episode ends with no appearance from Little Strongheart, despite a teaser from Skelly that claimed an old character would make a return appearance in this episode (Braeburn doesn't count, since he appeared in "Appleloosa's Most Wanted" last season, and had cameo appearances in Seasons 3 and 4), and neither is her voice actress credited as anyone. I'm not sure if this means Kelly was originally going to have Little Strongheart appeared, or if she was just trolling us (or she considers Braeburn that old character). Whatever the case, there's no sign of Little Strongheart in this episode.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Well, it was interesting and a fairly solid episode (though it was likely one intended to save money on the voice acting budget, as Ashliegh and Andrea spent most of this episode talking to themselves or one another, only Richard Ian Cox and Michael Daingerfield were also credited with major roles), and I think the highlight was seeing Snails be treated as something other than just the village idiot alongside his partner Snips (I still have to question why they were given speaking roles in "The Cart Before The Ponies" instead of Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon or literally any other school foals). At first I thought this episode was going to be yet another episode that resets Fluttershy character growth, but thankfully that wasn't the case despite what early scenes suggested. She and Pinkie Pie were wonderfully in character throughout, as even Pinkie Pie has her limits. Applejack and Rainbow Dash however, well maybe if this was Season 2 their actions would be in character most of the time, but by this point in the series they really should know better. It's nice that they realized their mistake and worked to make up for it, and I'm glad their mistake didn't cause Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy to swear off the sport forever and ruin it for Ponyville. But this is the sort of stuff that turns me off from sports in general, more often than not it just gives a few people an excuse to be jerks and pick on others, to say nothing of the numerous star players who commit immoral acts off the playing field but get to stay because they're worth a lot of money. In the end, I give this episode a B+, putting it above "Flutter Brutter" simply because Zephyr Breeze just isn't a compelling character in the slightest and the moral is way too preachy for its own good (especially in today's economic times), but below "On Your Marks" which has opened the doors to a lot of potential new stories for CMC episodes that the writers so far haven't really capitalized on (Apple Bloom's getting yet another focus episode, even though we've only gotten two for Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. Surely, it's not too much to ask for Apple Bloom to be given a rest for the near future), plus Tender Taps was a nice kid character that sadly seems to have been neglected by the fandom (probably because he was hastily thrown into the last third of the episode, and even then he only became important in the last two acts or so).
Speaking of the CMC, next week we're finally getting the long delayed ninth episode of the season in terms of production order. "The Fault In Our Cutie Marks", in which the CMC face a problem with a griffon that involves cutie marks, and Ed Valentine is returning to write the episode. Ed seems to do well with the CMC on their own, but both times he's collabed he hasn't done a good job so hopefully he'll be given solo reigns for the episode. And I hope either Sweetie Belle or Scootaloo takes over the leader role for the episode, Scootaloo especially because she could have an interesting conflict if the griffon can fly, and because it'd be similar to how Rainbow Dash befriended Gilda at flight camp when they were young. I should use this time to mention, I'll be gone all day tomorrow (with the possible exception of early in the morning), and won't be back until Labor Day, because my family is going up north to see my dad's grandfather for his 80th birthday. For those of you wondering about his condition, so far he's doing alright. Sometimes he has a good day, and sometimes he has a bad day. Hopefully, he'll be having a good day when we go to see him. Shortly after Labor Day, school starts back up for me, and I have classes everyday except Friday. So we'll see how that affects my time on the site. I'll try to keep you updated as best I can though, and for now I don't forsee any major complications. Hopefully, the long delay for "The Fault In Our Cutie Marks" means it'll be great.
I really thought the episode had its awesome moments; Fluttershy standing up for herself and Pinkie, and Snails proving he's more than just one of the resident klutzy ponies. The moral was also good.
I have to admit, I'm very interested in what next week's episode holds. I can't wait to see if Griffins can get Cutie Marks in some way after all.
Seeing as how Twilight, Rarity, and Spike were absent in this episode, would it be safe to assume that this takes place during the events of Gauntlet of Fire since Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash were absent in that episode as well?
I have to admit, I was pretty shocked to see Snails get a bit of a role in this episode, it made a very nice change. But yeah, I do deduct a few points off the newcomer's writing who forgot about the episodes you mentioned.
For her first time, it was a good episode, but could've been better had consistency been more present.
4189788 Perhaps.
Personally, I find this episode to be average for the season, so it's fantastic, just not one of my favorites.
I did like what it did for Snails, though I've always kind of liked him from the beginning.
4190664
Or as an alternative, this episode could've taken place during The Times They Are a Changeling. Why? Well, Pinkie and Fluttershy needed a unicorn for their team, yet Applejack and Rainbow Dash didn't think to invite the other members of the Mane 6 with magic horns to join. Since Twilight is no longer a unicorn and having an alicorn on the team would've given Ponyville an unfair advantage, she's out. Rarity is obviously not the kind of pony to take part in anything sports-related, so she's out as well.
That just leaves Starlight, who as you've mentioned before in some of your previous reviews didn't really have an excuse not to be featured in episodes that didn't center around her despite being the Seventh Ranger. The point I'm getting at here is that by having the events of this episode and TTTAAC take place simultaneously, it actually gives a legitimate reason for why Starlight didn't make an appearance here. Do you agree with all of this?
4196674 That's another possible explanation.