Well, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the next chapter of Bringing Up Blueblood still isn’t done, so let’s get cracking!

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And it’s #48, “MMMystery on the Friendship Express.”

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TECHNICAL SPECS

Season: 2
Episode: 24
Written By: Amy Keating Rogers
First Aired: April 7, 2012

SUMMARY:

It’s almost time for the National Dessert Competition in Canterlot, and the Cakes have whipped up an amazing entry this year: the Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness, or MMMM. Pinkie has volunteered to help escort the cake safely to Canterlot for the contest, but unfortunately, the cake is so heavy and bulky that even Big Macintosh can’t hold it up by himself. In the end, she has to recruit all her friends just to get it safely to the train. And since they’re all there, she invites them to join her for the competition, but not before getting a massive sales pitch on how wonderfully perfect the MMMM is.

They aren’t the only ones boarding in Ponyville, however. Gustave La Grand, a griffin with a French accent and curly moustache, is bringing his Exceptionally Exquisite Eclairs to the competition. Doughnut (formerly Pony) Joe is also departing from Ponyville, having gone there to secure the last ingredient for his doughnut city he calls “Doughnutopia.” And finally, the donkey Mulia Mild is bringing along her Chocolate Mousse Moose – a figure of a moose made out of chocolate mousse. Naturally, all four get into an argument over which dessert is the best, but Twilight steps in before tensions get too high and recommends that they all get some sleep.

The bakers all leave for their cabins in silence, but Pinkie still doesn’t trust them. Her friends just tell her she’s overreacting and leave her be, but the pink pony refuses to fail in her responsibility to protect the cake, going so far as to swear to stay up all night. It’s a good thing, too, because that night somepony seemingly dashes into the room after the cake. Pinkie follows the blur to the caboose, but when she gets to the end, they’ve vanished. When she returns, she sees another shadow peering in from the other side, but all she can find is the [strike]conductor[/strike] firepony shoveling coal. Frustrated, she returns to the dessert car, only for the shades to suddenly drop and blanket everything in darkness. Sure enough, another thief enters, but accidentally crashes into a wall before leaving, causing one of the pictures to get crooked.

Now vindicated, Pinkie swears to continue her vigil…and immediately falls asleep. When she wakes up the next morning, the cake looks perfectly fine…until Twilight comes in and rotates it slightly, revealing three large bite marks. Pinkie’s anguished screams alert the rest of the ponies and the bakers, causing them all to enter the room at once for the investigation to begin. Assuming the role as chief inspector, Pinkie appoints Twilight as her stupid, lowly assistant, and then proceeds to start pulling out random solutions that finger the other bakers. Gustave is a silent movie villain who ties her to the railroad tracks; Doughnut Joe is a super-spy who used lasers to cut the cake; and Mulia Mild is a ninja. Twilight, however, points out the major flaws in each explanation, and finally, Pinkie is left with another big mystery: why didn’t the thief touch the other wondrous, delicious, super-sweet, mouth-watering treats?

The train goes through a dark tunnel, and a few seconds later, all of the other treats have been consumed as well.

Now that Pinkie is dumbfounded, Twilight takes the opportunity to take charge of the investigation. She has Pinkie retrace her steps, stopping by the caboose, the coal car, and finally the crooked picture. At each stop, she finds a clue, which she tucks away in an envelope where Pinkie can’t see it. Finally, she calls everypony back for the presentation of her evidence: a blue feather, a pink hair, and a false eyelash. The feather belongs to Dash (who zoomed to the caboose and hid), the hair belongs to Fluttershy (who wore the firepony’s hat as a disguise and got a hair stuck), and the eyelash belongs to Rarity (who lost it when she ran into the portrait and has been hiding her eye under her mane ever since).

The three friends apologize, and Pinkie accepts them despite their betrayal. However, that doesn’t explain what happened to the other desserts. Using Twilight’s secret technique of not jumping to wild conclusions, Pinkie investigates the crime scene, and discovers that the bakers ate each other desserts after listening to Pinkie’s description. Right then, the train arrives in Canterlot, with all four empty-hoofed for the contest. That is, until Pinkie comes up with yet another crazy idea…

The four enter the contest together, having combined what remains of each dessert into one massive cake. The judges quickly declare it the winner, while Pinkie narrates the lesson that one needs to find all the facts before accusing someone of doing something they may not have done. Celestia, meanwhile, eyes the cake with no small measure of lust, but before she can take a bite, Pinkie swallows the entire thing in one gulp, thus leaving us with everypony laughing mere moments before a certain pony is banished to the dungeon for two weeks.

REVIEW:

This episode’s prologue is one of my absolute favorites. The Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness (hereafter referred to as MMMM) is just an amazingly beautiful cake, which is a lot more than most of the desserts that enter kids show competitions. It’s also nice to see the Cakes trusting Pinkie more, especially after the hell she went through in “Baby Cakes.” The real meat of the scene, though, is the attempts to get the cake to the train without it getting destroyed. Big Mac struggling to hold the cake up is a bit of a headscratcher considering he dragged a house a few episodes prior, but there’s also a difference between pulling an object and lifting and balancing an object.

The rest of the prologue is just Pinkie and Big Mac walking down the street, while Carrot Cake faints every time the cake almost falls. The others joining in is also a nice touch, especially since this is one of the few Season Two episodes to feature the whole cast. There are also quite a few nice touches, such as the crowd of supporters just outside a barricade outside Sugar Cube Corner, Pinkie’s siren hat, and Mr. Cake hyperventilating as they finally near the train itself. And of course, it ends with them being unable to get the cake into the train because of the small doors. If you have ever lifted anything massive and heavy in your life, you have probably been here. Even better, it’s implied in the very next scene that they had to take the train car apart just to get the MMMM inside.

Pinkie’s vivid description of the MMMM is obviously there to set up the motive for the thieves later, but also shows that for all her high-strung insanity, Pinkie is a really good salespony. Heck, even I wanted to take a bite into that thing. Even better, though, it continues the episode’s trend of actually remembering previous development and has Pinkie actually defending the cake, even smacking away Applejack’s hoof when she moves in for a taste.

And then we meet the other chefs. Gustave Le Grand is basically every French chef in television history, only now he’s a half-eagle, half-lion crime against nature. I like how they justified his éclairs radiating a golden aura by having him flash a flood light on them; it’s actually fairly ingenious in how far they’ll go to make sure a joke works for reasons other than straight cartoon logic. Next we have Doughnut Joe (who was Pony Joe in “Best Night Ever”), who has built an entire city out of doughnuts. Granted, I’m impressed that he managed to sculpt this whole thing, but at the same time, it’s just too grand a thing to eat, and that’s a disaster when it’s a dessert. And finally, we end with Mulia Mild, an obvious parody of Julia Child, who has made a moose out of chocolate mousse. Again, I’m impressed with the artistry here.

Now that we have our players, the next stage of the mystery begins. The train departs, thereby cutting off the Mane 6 and the bakers from the rest of the world. Pinkie’s fears that the bakers will sabotage the cake are naturally laughed off, despite similar tactics ending with Twilight brainwashing the entire town, including this small bit:

The next scene is just a long scene of attempted thievery, while also showing Pinkie falling asleep. I like that she’s committed to keeping her word and delivering the cake safely, which again shows that at least some of the “responsibility” lesson from “Baby Cakes” is sticking. We also get small clues as to the identity of the perpetrators, although you have to keep an eye out for them. Just going by the body figures, it’s clear that two of the thieves are ponies. The first one isn’t galloping so much as flying along the ground, thus pointing to Dash. The second is a lot harder to judge, but you can see a little dash of yellow on their body during one brief shot. And when the third thief comes in, they manage to not only close the blinds, but when they leave, the painting is crooked and the stallion in the picture has an eyelash he didn’t have before. It also has one of my favorite Pinkie lines in the episode:

And so Pinkie falls asleep, curling up like a dog and even scratching her ear in the morning. Twilight then shows up and reveals the bite marks, kicking off the actual investigation. (We also get another clue when Rarity enters; she’s styled her mane so that it covers one of her eyes.) This is also where we get to the Odd Couple pairing of Twilight and Pinkie, and as I’ve said before, I love it when these two get an episode together. The characters just bounce off each other perfectly, and for all her insanity trips this season, Twilight honestly works best when she’s serving as a straight pony to the general madness around her. It also has ponies in hats and smoking bubble pipes, which is also cool. And finally, I love that Twilight is pegged as the stupid assistant, and it’s even funnier if you know of the eternal hell Watson has been damned to thanks to adaptations forgetting that he wasn’t a blithering moron. Granted, they’re doing Sherlock Holmes in an episode whose title is a parody of an Agatha Christie novel, but whatever, small reference pools and all that.

Of course, Pinkie isn’t the pony you want leading an investigation, as she starts just blindly blaming the three she already pegged as criminals. Each of them even get their own increasingly ludicrous imagine spot. First up is Gustave, now a Snidely Whiplash-esque villain in a silent movie. The scene is just awesome in how many clichés from the era it throws together; from Pinkie getting tied to the railroad tracks to Gustave destroys the cake with a saw, it’s just hilarious. Even better, though, is when Twilight interrupts everything to point out that the cake has been bitten, not cut. Oh, and if Pinkie was tied to the tracks, she would probably be a lot more dead right now.

Next up is Doughnut Joe, who’s now imagines as a James Bond-esque super spy named Con Mane. And like all 007 parodies, he’s a hit with the ladies; he even has time to rest a milkshake on Carrot Top’s head before running off to perform his mission. He knocks Pinkie out with a smoke bomb, uses a gas to locate the laser security system (because we have those now, too), and finally uses a mirror to redirect the lasers to destroy the cake before his entourage hop onto his legs like the sex machine that he is. Naturally, Twilight points out that there’s no laser security system, but also that Doughnut Joe is too big, gruff and messy to be a spy. THIS is how you do “Innocently Insensitive,” NOT “climb up a pole and announce to the whole town that the new resident is really, really bald.”

And last is Mulia, who’s actually a master ninja who knocks out Pinkie with a frying pan before giving the cake a delayed slice. This is probably my least favorite of the three, as it doesn’t really seem to be parodying anything other than generic ninja tropes. Still, I like that Twilight doesn’t even have to explain why this is stupid; she just shows Mulia cowering in a corner and the rest speaks for itself. Now that Pinkie’s blind accusations are done with, she starts wondering about the other treats, all while giving them the same amazing descriptions she gave the MMMM. So naturally, they’re the next to go…in about one second. That is some amazingly fast eating.

The third act finally commits itself to resolving the mystery, with Twilight taking charge by swapping hats with Pinkie and dismissing the suspects. She even takes the time to wipe Pinkie’s saliva off the pipe before blowing her own bubbles. We then just retrace all the places Pinkie went to when chasing the thieves, with Twilight finding a clue at each one. Unfortunately, this is where the mystery part suffers a little, since we don’t get to see what she found until the summation. Still, Pinkie getting increasingly frustrated with being cut out of the loop is a perfect mirror of Twilight’s near-aneurysm from Pinkie’s stupidity earlier.

Also, that isn’t a conductor. A conductor is responsible for checking tickets, reviewing cargo, and making sure the train stays on schedule. The one who shovels coal is called a fireman. Mind you, I didn’t know that was the right term until I started this review, but even when I first watched the episode I knew that the conductor doesn’t shovel things into the furnace.

And then we get to the summation, and to the episode’s biggest stumbling block. There’s a lot of amusing bits here with Pinkie, such as her believing Gustave dyed his feathers and that Rainbow’s wearing a wig, but that does little to offset the big problem I have with this ending. All of the evidence points to Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Rarity messing up the cake. As it turns out, they did it because Pinkie made it sound so good that they couldn’t resist. The problem, though, is that the Cakes were depending on that cake to win them the competition, had entrusted it to Pinkie for safe keeping, and trusted the rest of the Mane 6 to help Pinkie defend it. Not only have they ruined months of hard work and betrayed their friend’s trust, but they’ve also cost the Cakes the contest and ruined Pinkie’s reputation with them. They couldn’t wait one more day?

Oh, and before you say that Applejack was innocent, the original script said otherwise. Originally, she was also guilty of biting into the cake, but was careful enough to cover her tracks. She would have only been found out because she couldn’t take the guilt anymore and confessed. This was cut because the episode was already running long. Then again, it would have also made it an even better parody of “Orient Express,” as just like in that one, everyone would have been guilty and gotten off scot-free.

Still, it has one of the funniest Rarity moments in a long while:

Now that leaves only the mystery of the other treats to solve, and this time, Pinkie is ready. Her walking over everypony else in the room was cute, and much like in “Baby Cakes,” shows her learning a lesson without completely altering her underlying character. She solves the case by finding the little traces of the various food items on their body, including sprinkles in Mulia’s wrinkles. (Trust me, that scene’s more than a tad disgusting.) They admit that it’s all Pinkie’s fault for selling the desserts so well, and all is surprisingly well considering they now have nothing to show for all their hard work being ruined. Fortunately, all four can combine their treats together into the Voltron of desserts, making something that makes me wish I could reach into the TV and pull at least a slice back out.

The moral is actually fairly good, and makes sense considering what happened in the episode. It’s just a shame Twilight didn’t remember this for the next episode. I also love Celestia licking her chops before going to bite into the cake…before Pinkie swallows it whole, depriving her loving monarch of so much as a taste of that sweet, delectable treat. I guess what I’m saying is, Pinkie should be very happy Trollestia and Tyrantlestia are just fan creations…

CONCLUSION:

Were it not for the solution to the mystery, I would have rated this episode much higher. Pinkie is in great form throughout, and I loved the dialogue between her and Twilight. The mystery actually has enough clues in there for the audience to solve, the jokes are funny, it keeps the character development from previous episodes, and the fantasy spots are funny and engaging for the most part. All in all, if you can look past the weak ending, it’s definitely one of Pinkie’s highest points in the second season.

One more thing I’d like to mention is the theory that this episode was meant as an apology for “Feeling Pinkie Keen.” After all, FPK was about using your gut instincts and trusting in things you couldn’t explain, while this one was about using logic to analyze evidence before jumping to conclusions. Personally, I don’t really see it that way, but if you do, good for you.

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Well, that’s the last Pinkie episode of Season Two. Hope you had fun with her.