Love is a battlefield · 4:18pm May 27th, 2017
When it comes to the subject of romance, it has not exactly been the strongest suit for FiM. Even in the Equestria Girls series, the romance in that franchise was dreadful as we all saw. Sure we’ve had it be touched on before in Hearts and Hooves Day and A Canterlot Wedding, but the former kind of felt a little overly mushy and didn’t feel like a romance story, mostly because of the love potion used by the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Ironically enough, both of these romance driven episodes have Big Mac staring in them as well as the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
Hard to Say Anything unfortunately continues this trend of showing how romance isn’t one of the show’s strongest suits. An episode that basically explores another attempt of Big Mac hooking up with another mare with the CMC’s help. The only major difference this time is that it doesn’t involve any love potions. So if you can’t tell already, this is basically Hearts and Hooves Day revisited.
When Big Macintosh acts weird about going to Starlight’s old village, the Cutie Mark Crusaders decide to spy on him. When they get there, they discover that Big Mac has a crush on the baker of the town and one of the Equal Four, Sugar Belle. However, a pony named Feather Bangs comes up and is trying to swoon Sugar Belle. It falls to the CMC to help Big Mac win Sugar Belle’s heart before it’s too late.
If you thought the romance interest between Cheerilee and Big Mac was strange, then this is even weirder. Considering we’ve never seen Big Mac and Sugar Belle interact at all, this romance comes completely out of left field. I guess you can say that the more visits Big Mac made to Starlight’s village, the more he interacted with Sugar Belle. However, that is not what bothers me about this.
What does end up being a huge problem is simply everything that happened between Cheerilee and Big Mac was for nothing then. If you look at certain episodes of the show, you could see Big Mac and Cheerilee interacting with each other to some degree. We’ve seen them go on a picnic and even in Filli Vanilli, Cheerilee seemed smitten with Big Mac’s performance. So my question here is why even have that shipping tease if this episode was going to destroy it all? Why imply that something grew between Cheerilee and Big Mac and then ultimately sweep it away like that? It makes very little sense at all and makes you wonder what the point of all that was.
Feather Bangs himself is nothing to write home about. Since he’s voiced by Vincent Tong, the same guy behind Flash Sentry, he’s really just around to steal Big Mac’s love. It feels like the reason Feather Bangs is here is to be a joke about how since Vincent’s other character he voices, Flash, is a “waifu stealer” that it would be funny. If that’s the case, it’s a very weak joke since the whole “waifu stealer” thing has been worn out and isn’t as funny anymore. If they really wanted to make him funny, why not then just make him a Johnny Bravo-esque character and have all his advances be met with failure? They could have done something other than the whole waifu thing.
Even ignoring that, Feather has nothing going for him. His design is okay at best, but the rest of his character is pretty bland. He’s that perfect stallion who can do a lot of stuff better than you, and that’s really it. Nothing about him really stood out to me other than the generic “hot guy” thing. We don’t even get a reason as to what made him interested in Sugar Belle in the first place. Actually, with how similar both Flash and Feather are, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was Flash Sentry who underwent a radical surgery to look different and throw off everyone.
The story itself is nothing to write home about either. I mentioned earlier that this episode was a retread of Hearts and Hooves Day, and while it doesn’t follow the same thing point for point, it does show. The Cutie Mark Crusaders are trying to get two ponies together. Big Mac is the focus for this love. It even has a random mare none of us expected Big Mac to be paired up with. This episode follows every major plot point from H&HD.
To be fair, it does have different elements in it such as no love potions involved to make Big Mac fall in love with Sugar Belle. Not to mention it removes a lot of the mushy dialogue we saw from H&HD. It still has a lot of predictable elements such as the “hot guy” one upping the “little guy” all the time. It’s really a simplistic story that doesn’t do much with its material.
Big Mac ends up following a lot of cliches in swooning Sugar Belle. Some of them aren’t too bad such as him stopping a thief. Some of the stuff does result in a few minor chuckles, but nothing too funny. But then there are creepy moments like Big Mac trying to kiss Sugar while she is asleep like as if this was Sleeping Beauty. Pretty sure that’s not going to win Sugar Belle over there, Mac.
He even uses the old singing a song to swoon her. The song we end up getting is a mixed bag to me. Not only is Big Mac singing, but he’s technically sharing it with Feather Bangs himself. Big Mac sings in a traditional way with being sincere while Feather uses a techno mix to try to swoon Sugar Belle. We all know Big Mac can sing since he’s part of the Ponytones, but since this is his crush, he’s naturally nervous and sounds off key at points, so I’m not holding that against him.
What I will hold against it though is that it’s just dragged out for too long. Initially, the song isn’t too bad and can be funny, but the longer it went, the more irritating it got. I assume that the song was trying to make us feel the same way Sugar Belle was feeling; in this case thinking it was cute at first, but then getting annoyed by how long it was going and all the back and forth. I’ll give the song credit for making us feel the same way that Sugar Belle felt about it, but this song brings up the biggest problem with this episode; Sugar Belle herself.
All throughout the episode, Sugar Belle has shown that she is interested in Big Mac. She’s the one who calls on him specifically to deliver apples and other goods to the village. She is the one who wants to see him whenever she can. It makes you wonder then why the story isn’t about Sugar Belle trying to confess to Big Mac about her feelings. The story would have been a lot stronger is the roles were reversed. Why have it be about Big Mac trying to confess his feelings when Sugar Belle is the one constantly calling him up to the village?
You could still have the romance between the two, but just have things reversed. Have Sugar Belle enlist the CMC’s help in winning Big Mac’s heart. If they wanted to still have a love triangle, they could have had Cheerilee be part of it, and at the end just have Big Mac tell Cheerilee he saw her as a friend only. Not only would the story have been better, but it would have fixed the romance plot holes of CheeriMac from the past seasons. We could have even had a song between Sugar and Cheerilee for Big Mac.
This brings up another problem with Sugar. After the song ends, she claims that she doesn’t like big romantic gestures. So then why didn’t she tells Feather Bangs to go away and cut it out? If she wasn’t interested in stuff like that, she would have turned down Feather’s advances much earlier. Was she doing it out of pity for him? Maybe you can argue he wouldn’t take no for an answer, but we saw her be swooned by some of Feather’s actions such as the big chariot. It’s not only a big plot hole, but makes Sugar Belle out to be a hypocrite as well.
Even the ending makes little sense at all. When Sugar Belle and Big Mac hook up, instead of kissing, they decide to nuzzle noses. Which makes no sense since we’ve seen Shining Armor and Cadence kiss each other. What is that only reserved for those getting married? If you’re going to make them a couple, at least have them kiss at least to seal the deal.
Then there’s the matter of Feather Bangs who is told by the CMC she likes Big Mac, but they tell him about the three mares who follow him are interested in him. Weirdly enough, he loses his cool and admits to the CMC he doesn’t know how to talk to the mares properly. Which makes you wonder then why Feather Bangs was trying to win Sugar’s heart. So if he had been successful, what would have been step two then in this whole scheme? I guess Feather’s plan was:
1: Swoon Sugar Belle to like him
2: ?????????
3: Profit!
Brilliant love strategy there, Feather. You’re really off to the races with your ways of winning a mare over. So the CMC are now left to help Feather with the mares that have been following him. Again, you got to wonder since we know nothing about this guy, you got to wonder what makes these mares like him. More importantly, why he never noticed them until now.
Hard to Say Anything is more like hard to enjoy at all. It’s not a dreaful episode, but it didn’t leave much of an impression on me at the end. As a revisit to Hearts and Hooves Day, I’m not sure how to feel about whether it’s better or worse than it. It removes a lot of the sappy stuff from H&HD, but this episode has its own mushy stuff that feels off at parts. I can tell you though that this episode isn’t that good though.
I appreciate the show exploring a bit more on romance, but aside from the love focus on Shining Armor and Cadence, the show continues its mediocre way of handling romance. It’s not the worst romance story I’ve ever seen, but it leaves a lot to be desired. From a story telling and narrative perspective, it could have been much stronger if Sugar Belle was the main focus and the one trying to win Big Mac’s heart.
Feather Bangs ends up being another Flash Sentry like character. He’s bland, boring, and all he ends up being is just the running gag of the “waifu stealer” joke that’s been done to death. The story ends up following the cliched small guy overcoming the big guy for romance. Mix that in with Sugar Belle being hypocritical, and you got yourselves an episode that’s passable at best, boring at worst.
In terms of where it stands among the ranking list, this episode barely, and I mean barely, etches out Fluttershy Leans In, but not by much. At least this episode has a conflict to it unlike the Fluttershy episode. This is just an uneventful episode with a romance story that feels cliched and lackluster. There’s little to enjoy coming out of this episode and while the moral about not interfering with love is good, the CMC should already know that from the last time they played matchmaker.
I’m not one against romance being shown at all. We have seen it in FiM with Shining and Cadence after all. However, perhaps the show should next time focus on another pony instead of Big Mac and the CMC. It’s pretty bad when fan fic romance stories end up being better love stories than both romantic episodes the show has done. That is an accomplishment the show shouldn’t be proud of.
FINAL SCORE: 5.5 out of 10 (C)
Season seven episode ranking list from best to worst:
Parental Glideance
Rock Solid Friendship
Flurry of Emotions
Celestial Advice
Forever Filly
All Bottled Up
Hard to Say Anything (NEW)
Fluttershy Leans In
two more episode left!
Ok when I say this episode, I was thinking, ok was he bringing those apples to Marble Pie, cause if so then job well done on his part. But when I saw Sugar Belle one thing came to mind.
Our ships. There sinking!
Also
May I remind you about two other characters from a mainstream anime that did this?(And that the only show I know that did this)
I may not know how Mac fall for Sugar Belle but I'm going to take a guess. It was ether love at first sight bullshit. Or highschool romance with Big Mac being the underdog, and Sugar Belle being the popular hot girl in school and the Justen Bevaer lookalike being the popular boy.