♪ Butterfly in the sky ♪
♪ I can go twice as high ♪
♪ Take a look ♪
♪ It’s in a book ♪
♪ A Reading Rainbow ♪

That’s right, it’s #40 on our list, “Read It and Weep.”

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TECHNICAL SPECS:

Season: 2
Episode: 16
Written By: Cindy Morrow
First Aired: February 4, 2012

SUMMARY:

When the story begins, Twilight, Rarity and Pinkie are watching Rainbow Dash streak about off-camera. What they don’t know, though, is that Rarity spiked Dash’s hayshake before she took off, causing her to crash into the ground. And this time, she doesn’t just get back up; instead, she has to be hospitalized with a broken wing. Despite her friends’ assurances, all Dash can do is be bitter about how much it sucks being stuck in a bed for a few agonizing days. Twilight is at a loss for what to do until she sees a passing book cart.

Soon enough, she presents Dash with one of her favorite books, Daring-Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone, and tries to sell her on the whole series. Unfortunately, Dash’s transformation into a jock stereotype is now complete, and she refuses to read on the grounds that it’s uncool. This earns a laugh from all her friends, who are all avid readers despite not being eggheads like Twilight, or antisocial like Twilight, or formerly friendless and clinically insane like Twilight. After they leave, Dash tries to keep herself occupied, but runs out of things to do in less than a minute. Finally left with no other choice, she reluctantly gives in and begins reading the book.

While searching for the Sapphire Stone, Daring-Do had ended up deep in the jungle, her wing broken after a recent crash. When confronted by a series of dangerous jungle cats, she escapes by hopping over the inexplicable housecat and bolting for dear life. Alas, a massive chasm blocks her passage, but some low-hanging vines allow her to swing over and land on the other side, where an ancient, foreboding temple awaits…

To Dash’s amazement, she becomes hooked on the story almost immediately. But when she remembers what she called her friends (especially Twilight), she realizes that she cannot let them know, lest she be branded a hypocrite and have all her pride taken away. Still, she continues reading as Daring-Do avoids a series of standard temple hazards, before finally emerging in the chamber containing the legendary Sapphire Statue. However, there’s one more…

Her reading is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of Twilight and Fluttershy, bearing Dash’s favorite board game. Still wanting to get back to her book, however, Dash throws the game, quickly throws the box back together, and then fakes a nap to get them to leave. Once they’ve been chased off, she returns to Daring examining the tiled floor before her. Each step depicts an animal, and stepping on the wrong spot will set off an arrow trap. However, she deduces that the rats are the right spot, and soon enough has reached the dais bearing the Sapphire Statue. Removing the artifact, however, causes the temple to begin to fill with lava, and Daring barely makes it to an opening in the roof before a sudden geyser of hot air sends her sailing back into the jungle…and at the feet of Pinkie Pie.

Pinkie, Applejack and Rarity arrive for another visit, just in time for Dash’s dinner. This time, the Pegasus makes a mess of herself, disgusting the others into leaving. Once they’re gone, she resumes reading about Ahuizotl, Daring’s nemesis, taking the statue for himself and tying her to an overly-elaborate death trap. Just then, however, the doctor arrives (after Dash had spent an entire night reading) to tell her that she’s being [strike]checked[/strike] thrown out, leaving her with no way to finish the book without humiliating herself in front of Twilight.

That night, she puts on her finest catsuit and sneaks inside. Alas, there’s another pony in her bed, but the book’s right underneath. She quickly opens up to Daring struggling to escape, while a spider complains that somepony’s trying to steal his slippers. When Dash tries to escape, however, the various personnel are alerted, and she’s forced to reenact Daring’s jungle escape to leave, losing the book in the process.

After a chase through Ponyville, she’s finally cornered by the staff (and an escaped mental patient) in front of Twilight’s library. With no way out, Dash finally admits she snuck back in to finish the book, but rather than ridicule, her friends tell her that there’s nothing wrong with enjoying reading. Twilight loans her the book, plus several other entries, and Dash has Spike write a letter with the day’s lesson: you shouldn’t knock something before you try it.

Daring escapes the implausible trap with her implausible hat, and manages to swipe the Sapphire Statue just in time to save the world. And so, with another amazing adventure concluded, Daring-Do gallops into the night and Dash starts the next book, Daring-Do and the Griffin’s Goblet.

REVIEW:

As I’ve said before, the best morals in FiM are the ones that grow organically from the episode, and not ones that have the episode built around them. “Read It and Weep” is strange in that it has both kinds on display. In addition, it also has two stories, switching back-and-forth between Rainbow Dash hiding her newfound passion and Daring-Do’s adventure. So how does it work out? Well, let’s take a look. I mean, that’s the whole reason we’re here, isn’t it?

The prologue is almost excessive in its simplicity. With the exception of one really quick shot of Dash zooming around, it’s just Twilight, Rarity and Pinkie staring at the camera in front of a static background. It just looks so incredibly cheap, to the point where I have to assume that they sacrificed this scene so they could afford to do the rest of the episode. Pinkie twisting her neck about like a corkscrew until her body starts spinning to right itself is fairly funny in its own right, but the real thing that’s important here is Dash slamming into the ground – again, off-screen. Well, considering all the stuff she’s crashed into over the show, it must have been one heck of a collision to break a wing.

The hospital scene is basically what everyone who has ever been, or has visited anyone else who’s been in a hospital has gone through. Rainbow Dash, who we’ve established hates being constrained for more than a few moments, throws a fit about being stuck for only a few days. The others try to cheer her up with false reassurance, such as praising the awful food, complimenting the curtains, and showing her the other pony in the room, who’s somehow gotten himself/herself stuck in a full body cast. Also, we have this classic Pinkie line:

Actually, I wouldn’t mind seeing that. ♪ Spider-Dash, Spider-Dash…♪

All of this leads to Twilight presenting Rainbow with the first book in the series:

We’ve all done this at some point, as well. It’s just a very natural desire to share what we love with our friends and those around us. Some of us probably started watching this show and joined this fandom because someone else pointed us in this direction, whether by word of mouth or simply with a forum avatar. Granted, Twilight shoving the book in her face and then leaning in close screams of desperation and is how you shouldn’t do this kind of thing, but whatever.

Unfortunately, this is where the episode starts running into the biggest problem: Rainbow Dash doesn’t read. At all. I don’t mean she can’t read, but rather that she refuses to do so on the grounds that it’s just uncool. Her friends respond to this with a lecture about how awesome reading is and how everyone watching at home should just turn off their televisions and computers and read a good book – but only after the show’s done, after all. Seeing an episode like this in this series just saddens me. I love reading and writing; after all, I wouldn’t be writing these reviews if I didn’t. I also love things that promote this attitude, especially in a world where more and more people simply aren’t choosing to read. However, the way the episode handles it is to shove the Aesop down the audience’s throats until they give up and pick up a book already. It goes back to my comment about the difference between letting a lesson grow organically and building an episode directly around a specific message. This Aesop is very much handled in the latter style, and it hurts the episode as a whole.

Also, why is Dash opposed to reading? Because she’s an athlete? Back in the first season, she was willing to wear dresses, participate in fashion shows, and perform other non-jock related tasks. The second season, however, seemed to change her character so that it revolved entirely around her athleticism and tomboyish nature, and it’s at its apex here. If it was just by itself, I could write it off as just being another facet to her character, but considering the amount of things they do to her this season, it’s obvious that this was just introduced for the sake of the stereotype.

Anyway, the montage is fairly standard, but still enjoyable. Dash playing with the ball is a nice callback, although I’m fairly sure she could just climb out and pick it back up. (It’s her wing that’s broken, after all.) The her attempts to eat the terrible food are also fairly cute, as is her playing with the lights. The real clincher, however, is when she does all this in less than a minute. Welcome to hospitals, folks.

Her will finally broken, she dives into the book. The actual story of Daring-Do begins with her already locating the statue, but crash landing in the jungle and suffering a similar injury to Dash. This, of course, instantly endears Rainbow Dash to the character, and gets her to go from looking resentful at having to look at words to actually becoming rather excited to keep going. And that’s why hooks are really, really important.

The real highlight of the episode, and the thing that saves it for me, are the Daring-Do segments. The actual story doesn’t really seem like much (I’m amazed they made a novel out of what we’re seeing), but the style in which it’s done, the way the animation is handled, and the overall tone of these scenes just make it a classic. Daring-Do is a pony Indiana Jones, which was almost enough to sell me on these parts alone. The scenes are filtered to resemble old film, which also matches the Republic serial theme the original movies went for. And finally, Daring’s adventure makes absolutely no sense, just like Indiana Jones. It’s just a lot of fun.

One other thing of note is Daring-Do’s character design. She is very clearly based on Rainbow Dash, albeit with a yellow coat and black-and-grey mane. For the most part, it matches what we saw of the cover, but at the same time it could also stand for Rainbow Dash’s involvement in the story. Throughout the various segments, she’s become completely immersed in the tale, to the point where the outside distractions that break her away either echo through her mind or are spoken by characters in the story. Basically, Rainbow has projected herself onto Daring-Do, and is living the adventure with her.

As for the actual Daring-Do segments, they’re pretty much straight parodies of standard Indiana Jones-esque adventures. Her escaping the cats is your basic “hero outsmarts the wildlife” trope, albeit with a housecat for some reason. Naturally, she swings on vines, which are required for every jungle. The temple is basically a big hallway full of death traps, and the sheer number of various things they’ve thrown together is truly astonishing. (Seriously, ceiling alligators? That is a clear commitment to murdering anyone who, you know, wants to use the temple as a temple.)

(There’s also a brief animation error in this sequence. When she gets past the closing door, and the walls start shaking, Daring simply goes, “Ugh.” Her mouth flaps, however, don’t match up with what she’s saying. Apparently the original recording wasn’t useable, so they had to reshoot but didn’t have time or could afford to redo the scene. A similar thing occurs later with Applejack telling Dash to, “Go ahead and eat up,” without moving her mouth.)

Her crossing the tile floor is where I have to raise a red flag. I loved the arrows making a perfect silhouette of a jumping pony, but the solution isn’t valid. The idea is that all of the animals are predators except for the rats, and only those tiles are safe to walk on. However, rats are predators. They’re omnivorous, yes, but they’re still predators. Still, it leads to a great subversion of the “bag of sand” scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Of course, like every ancient civilization, the people who built this rigged their temple to explode if anypony ever dared to move the statue, thus destroying the thing they were protecting and ensuring that none could ever use the site again. This sequence is probably my favorite of all the Daring-Do parts, with only the death trap coming close. And like everything that’s awesome, it ends with something even better: Ahuizotl, the villain of the story. (I loved Dash’s reaction to his sudden appearance:)

Another thing for writers to learn: just throwing in a villain can really knock someone out of the immersion. Anyway, Ahuizotl is, in fact, a real creature from Aztec mythology, and the design they use in the show is fairly accurate to how he appears in legend. Like all stupid villains, he just takes the statue and leaves Daring in an incredibly complex death trap, with sand, spikes, snakes, and spiders all closing in to kill her. But all it takes is one implausible toss of the hat and some incredibly precise ricochets to knock the switch back up and turn the death trap off, allowing Daring to escape and retrieve the statue, thus giving us a Scooby-Doo style ending.

Now, why did I sum up the entire story there? Because the other plot feels like it just gets in the way. The only reason Rainbow Dash is acting like this is because she’s afraid her friends will ridicule her like she did them for reading, despite the fact that they’ve known each other this long and she should know better. So for the rest of the second act, she just acts as rudely as possible to get them to leave; better to let your friends think you’re a jerk than to admit your brain functions. In fact, the only one of these visits I like is Twilight and Fluttershy, if only for showing the pony version of Battleship. (I wonder if this one got a movie with space aliens, too.)

Of course, we needed something to pad the episode out, so Dash gets thrown out of the hospital after only a day, despite the doctors telling her she needed a couple of days to recover. Besides the fact that the scene just feels really off animation-wise, the fact is that it’s just there to pad out the story and force in more drama. The part where Dash tries to get back in by faking an injury is the same thing.

Finally, we get to the break-in, which is pretty much where Dash’s character finally breaks down completely. She could just, you know, buy the book, you know. That way, none of her friends have to know what she’s doing. But no, breaking into a hospital makes the most sense. Of course, her room is now occupied by…a bald pony. (I guess cancer exists in Equestria, as well.) This leads to the best part of Dash’s story, where she starts running into situations similar to Daring’s exploits and uses similar solutions. However, the reality differs significantly from the story; when she jumps over the filly nurse, her wing acts up, causing her to crash into the book cart and lose what she came here to get to begin with. And when she swings over the gap, it turns out to have an actual bridge just a bit to her right.

The chase ends at the library, by which point nearly everypony in town has been awoken by her running around. Now cornered, Dash admits the truth: she likes reading, and is therefore an egghead. She seems to be opening herself up to the same treatment she gave Twilight earlier, but instead is told that there’s nothing wrong with reading and that she shouldn’t be causing a ruckus over something like this. It’s a nice message, but like before, it just feels very forced and unnatural. It gets worse once they go inside, where Twilight tells Dash that just because you’re athletic doesn’t mean you’re not smart. Again, it just seems like they’re conforming to stereotypes rather than defying them.

By the way, I loved this:

What’s weird here, though, is that while the “reading is fun” moral falls flat for me, the other one actually works quite well. Far too many people dismiss things without giving them an honest chance, whether it be a movie, a book, a fanfic, or even this show. Again, this is something we’ve all been through at one point or another, the moral is very well-executed, and besides the forced reading Aesop and poking fun at Spike, the ending works quite well. And we end with one of Dash’s most adorable moments:

CONCLUSION:

This episode just leaves me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the Daring-Do segments are great, the stated Aesop is very well done, and there are some laughs to be had. On the other hand, the Rainbow Dash plot feels like it’s in the way and the show takes a sledgehammer-to-the-face approach to the message about reading. If they had toned down the preaching about how reading is awesome a bit, perhaps made Dash out to be less of a stock jock, it would have been a stronger episode. As it stands, I recommend it if only for the Daring-Do story. Otherwise, it’s just okay.

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By the way, the episode’s working title was “Reading Rainbow.” I think you know why the legal department objected…