My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Season 8 Episode 18: "Yakity-Sax" (SPOILERS) · 6:33pm Jul 20th, 2018
In which Pinkie Pie really blows at blowing.
Thanks to Discovery Family's decision to randomly drop unannounced new content in the middle of Friday afternoons throughout the summer, we have a new episode before the hiatus ends!
I see a lot of people bitching about that, but why are you bitching? It's something nice they're doing for the kids, who are the real target audience, so...shut it, ya mooks.
Anyway! On we go.
Fluttershy and Angel are out picking flowers when they hear what sounds like a bunch of wounded animals. Fluttershy quickly and bravely charges to the rescue--only to discover it's just Pinkie Pie playing the bagpipes. Badly.
Ach, me haggis is risin'.
Anyway, Pinkie's Yakyakistani bagpipes (they call it a 'uvidaphone' but I'm calling it bagpipes because it's bagpipes, dammit) are a noise pollution menace throughout Ponyville, where the entire town is annoyed by Pinkie's piping.
So here we have the basic sitcom plot of "person has new musical instrument but sounds horrible playing it and is annoying everybody else with it but nobody's saying anything". We get a montage of Pinkie's poisonous piping perturbing ponies practically everywhere. After far too long of this, her friends all decide they need to do something about it. But when it comes time to confront her, they all chicken out. When they do finally tell her, she has a very Pinkie reaction: all smiles and cheers and happy faces in front of her friends, but in private, she curls up in a blanket and cries.
Poor Pinkie.
Days pass, and Pinkie shows up in town, straight-maned and gloomy. Her friends decide to try to cheer her up by reminding her of all the things she's good at doing so she'll forget all about the uvidaphone. Meanwhile, Pinkie is a literal party pooper--she's become a black hole of gloom, and all the fun things that are usually right up her alley are turning into disasters around her. Despite her friends' best efforts, she's turned into a washed-out, joyless sad sack. As a last-ditch effort, Twilight decides to throw a Pinkie Pie Appreciation Party.
But it turns out Pinkie Pie's decided to leave Ponyville and move to Yakyakistan, without bothering to tell anypony! Yikes.
So of course the rest of the Mane Six head to Yakyakistan to try to guilt-trip Pinkie into coming back to Ponyville, and of course, her reason for moving there was a massive overreaction to brutal honesty.
So Pinkie's deep sadness isn't so easy to get rid of. She REALLY wants to play the uvidaphone. Her friends tell her that if it makes her happy to play, she should go right ahead and play, no matter if she's good at it or not.
So the episode ends with Pinkie still sucking at the uvidaphone, but sucking at it with passion. I guess?
Eh. Weak sitcom plot, forced moral, and the whole "extreme overreaction" moral was WAY over the top. Top that off with this being a really slow episode, and I can only really give it about a 6/10.
Hiatus ends in two weeks, folks! Get ready for more pony!
Honestly, Pinkie's reaction being extreme is something I can forgive because it's PINKIE. That's kind of what she does.
As for the rest of the episode, I actually think it's pretty good.
Not the best of the season or series, but not the worst of the season either. It's right at 7th place of the season for me.
I loved Rarity saying "Apple-solutetly" as it comes across as one of those lines that may have very well been an error but they kept it anyway.
Also freaken continuity... from within the same season! Goodness knows they didn't have to reference "Horse Play" but I appreciate they made the connection.
4904486
I think it was absolutely a flub Tabitha made that they decided to just throw in.
4904488 Wouldn't surprise me if it was. Nicole Dubac confirmed that Tabitha ab-libed the line "Repeatie Belle" in "Marks for Effort". And the show has done improve before.
As for the episode itself, it was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. But it's in the same boat as "The Parent Map" that whatever idea was there got muddled when they switched plots after the first act. And the moral, well it's a half finished one. Not giving up is where the moral begins but not where it ends.
I'm actually looking for it, since my tv provider has been a piece of shit for the last 3 MONTHS, and going down on a regular basis, usually on the weekends. I NEED MY OCELLUS FIX, DAMMIT. AND NETFLIX ISN'T UP TO DATE YET. THEY'RE STILL ON SEASON 7.
So... support your friends' unhealthy habits?
This was a weird one, between the numerous montages, the glacial pace, and one of the worst cases of Pinkie in her depressive phase I've ever seen. At least I got support for earth pony necromancy out of it.
Agreed on the rating, it was a pretty mediocre episode.
I feel like the moral itself is all kinds of screwed up.
Yes, do what makes you happy, even if you are not perfect at it.
BUT when what you do literally brings harm upon others, Fluttershy's sleep deprivation and harming business in Ponyville, then you should at the VERY least keep it in private, so you aren't a menace to society.
4904556
Netflix is dropping My Little Pony.
4904683
It isn't. I know it SAYS "Available until 8/16/18", but this is just the annual contract renewal thing. It does this EVERY YEAR.
This pile of ordure should have been called "Flanderization GET!!! (The Pinkie Pie Edition)" to go with the earlier "Let's flatten any character voiced by Ashleigh Ball" atrocity.
RIP my ears.
4904696
It might be. Season 7 still isn't available in my country. Last year, season 6 was available before season 7 started airing. Fucking bullshit.
4904667
It's one of those morals that can get really complicated so they keep it simple for kids shows. Similar to "Honesty is the best policy".
4904727
In the US, MLP goes "Expiring X/X/XX" once a year on Netflix, and never expires. I can't speak to other countries, but this is a normal part of the rights renegotiation process. It's telling to note that none of the Equestria Girls stuff is listed as expiring.
4904482 Pinkie Pie being Pinkie is a poor excuse for her immaturity, especially considering she has demonstrated on numerous occasions to be far better than how she acted here. It's one thing to get upset when your friends tell you you suck at something, it's another thing entirely to up and leave because of that one thing even when there are dozens of other things you can do that no one else can.
I bitch because they randomly dropped a new episode in the middle of a Friday afternoon. I had a really shitty day today, and some brand-spankin' new pony would've been a pick-me-up. I barely remember there's these Friday "surprises" -- especially since last week, it was one of those new Littlest Pet Shop episodes. Add to that it's not being replayed this weekend, and I'm salty, yeah.
Stupid real life requiring me to work to pay bills.
4904836
The way I see it is that Pinkie often works in extremes, so the suspension of disbelief when it comes to how she acts can be stretched much farther than with other characters.
We could have used Yona here. Or, you know, the fact that Pinkie Pie and the others weren't doing *any* teaching. Or that they ran off to Yakyakistan to pick her up and left the school in *whose* hooves? Starlight's?
This is honestly not the least bit surprising. It's just the latest case in the trend of terrible "lessons" the show has been teaching these past few seasons. To recap:
Critics are evil jerks and nobody should care what they think.
The non-child fans all suck and shouldn't express their desires or opinions.
Background characters are important too.
Quality should not be expected because nobody's perfect.
Your childhood heroes are misogynistic psychoes, if they're male.
Tyrants can be forgiven if they are female and say they're sorry.
It's okay to blame violent psychosis on your parents, again if you're female.
Criminals who sell your friends into slavery are not something to warn anyone about.
Global strife can be solved by a combination of thought police and public schooling.
It's okay to harass the creator of your favorite medium out of retirement, if you're female.
It's not okay to mind control people, but you can be forgiven easily, if you're female.
It's not okay to betray your home country and lead a tyrant's army to invade both it and uncounted others, but you can be forgiven if you're female.
It's not okay to destroy nations, mind control people, and abuse children. But you can be forgiven for all of that if you're female.
And now enabling your friends' bad behavior is okay if they're emotionally unstable, presumably with the same caveat as the others.
Did I miss anything?
You know... there needs to be a sequel episode where they see her after she's gotten good at it and pulls off some epic musical solo.
or maybe a Pony Postscript chapter?
I thought the moral was that if you really love doing something, even if you're horrible at it, you should keep doing it if it makes you happy no matter how much it greatly inconveniences and irritates everyone around you.