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Apr
29th
2017

"Rock Solid Friendship" · 11:53pm Apr 29th, 2017

I'm excited about this episode. Are you excited? Look at how excited I am:

I do love what this episode did for Maud. She's always been one of my favorite characters, but she was a bit one-note before: bad at expressing emotions and obsessed with rocks. This episode adds a few more layers to her personality, I think. She knows that she's socially awkward, and she's scared to try making pony friends because of it.

And she's sarcastic. I don't see how else to interpret:

Starlight Glimmer: Wow. You can tell that from a line?
Maud Pie: I didn't get a rocktorate because I can shred on guitar like nopony else.

Looking back at her prior episodes, I don't remember if I suspected all along that she was at least partially being sarcastic, or if that's just something I should have seen coming. But her overly-literal replies to common questions?

Rarity: Maud, darling! It's lovely to see you again! Oh! Congratulations on your rocktorate. What are you doing now?
Maud Pie: Talking to you.

She's totally exaggerating her normal persona because she knows Rarity has the best reactions to her "overly literal" routine.

And the bit about standup comedy being one of Maud's interests? It retroactively makes her brief scene in "Make New Friends but Keep Discord" a lot funnier.

Discord: Knock knock!
[beat]
Discord: You're supposed to say "Who's there?"! This is the most basic of jokes!
Maud Pie: You're the most basic of jokes.
[ponies laughing]

"You're no Sandy Hoofman, Discord. You're no Trotney Dangerfield. Hay, you're not even Yakov Smirnoff—and all his punchlines involve smashing things."

However, that does raise the question of why Maud didn't mention poetry as one of her interests. Was that just a phase?

So we have a name now for the institute of higher learning where Maud earned her rocktorate: the Equestrian Institute of Rockology. This could contradict my story, Den Fjerde Væg, where Maud was studying for a geology degree at the Manehattan Institute of Research. And considering the subject of that story, rewriting those scenes to reference the Equestrian Institute of Rockology instead would be perfectly fitting. But I feel a more elegant solution would be to say that Maud got her bachelor's in geology from the Manehattan Institute, and then immediately went on to a higher, more specialized rocktorate in rockology at the Equestrian Institute.

Hitting Derpy on the head like that ought to be punishable with jail time, but the look of sheer joy on her face makes up for it. "Free pizza! It fell out of the box and landed facedown in the grass! Grass is my favorite topping!"

Define irony:

"A pony who wears hair curlers while she sleeps yet has a straight mane, while her sister wears nothing in her hair and has a curly mane."


Bingo time!

I'm unsure whether to count Rara or not. She didn't show up in person, but was mentioned (since Rarity was gathering the gems for a dress for Rara's album release party). That cavern that Starlight and Maud discovered counts as a "New Location", seeing as Pinkie went on and on about how it was something nopony had ever seen before.

Comments ( 5 )

Within my University are many Institutes for specialized fields like Government, Engineering, Behavioral Science, etc.
No need for contradictions. :pinkiehappy:

--Spade

I do love the way Best Pony's thought process visibly plays out over a few seconds as she decides the free pizza outweighs getting clobbered by said free pizza.

And yeah, this episode did a lot for Maud. And for Starlight, for that matter! This is the most she's ever interacted with a single non-alicorn member of the Mane Six ever.

I loved this episode!
Starlight's lines were great, Maud is always a treat, and finally some best pone up in here.
Derpy/10, best episode of the season so far.

Also I'd totally hang out in that freaking cave, man.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

It fell out of the box and landed facedown in the grass! Grass is my favorite topping!

Oh my god, you actually made this scene even cuter! :D

4514145
I loved seeing the swift sequence of reactions play out on her face.

Huh? Hi! Oof! Hey! Yay!

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