MLP FIM Season 1 Episode 12 Review "Call of the Cutie"

The second episode written by Meghan McCarthy, and the first episode about the CMC (or, rather, Applebloom). The writer of this episode immediately made me excited, but no writer has a perfect track writer, and Meghan’s specialty is adventure stories, so I can only hope that she did well with this. Let’s see, shall we?

Scale of Ratings

 1 - Absolutely Terrible; so disgustingly bad it made me want to stop watching the show
 2 - Really Horrible
 3 - Awful
 4 - Very Bad
 5 - Bad
 6 - Below Average
 7 - Average/OK
 8 - Good
 9 - Great
10 - Amazing

Story

This episode starts with an explanation (at last) about cutie marks, and showing that Applebloom was one of the only ones in her class who still didn’t have one. After that, she pretty much just goes around doing a bunch of stuff to try and get her cutie mark for half the episode. She’s at the party after many failed attempts, and she gets made fun of again, until two other fillies with no cutie marks defended her, and then all the party guests started paying attention to the three blank flanks who decide to make their own group called the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

This story’s main appeal for me is the mostly lighthearted, fun nature of it. I loved the sequence where Rainbow was trying to help Applebloom. There’s nothing too deep about it. It was simply trying to be a fun plot for people to enjoy. And it succeeded at that. While it wasn’t super engaging or entertaining, I still liked the story, and it had a nice conclusion that led to the creation of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. One problem is that we’re not at all attached to Applebloom, so while the episode did a good job at making us empathize for her, it wasn’t quite good enough to be as engaging as some other plots where the protagonist was really struggling with something.

8/10 - Good

Characters

Applebloom was the main focus of this episode, which is cool, because every single one of the other episodes have been focused on the Mane 6. I don’t really have many thoughts on her here, though. She’s kinda just a kid trying to fit in be more grown up and. Pretty cliche, and pretty normal.

Other than in Bridle Gossip, when we see Applejack being overprotective of Applebloom, this is the first time we’ve seen Applejack being an older sister, and I think she does it quite well. Being supportive and encouraging, offering good advice, and yet not being too lax. Though Applebloom didn’t really appreciate it, Applejack was trying to help her sister in this episode, and it’s nice.

Unlike usual, I don’t have much of anything to say about Twilight in this episode. I mean, she tried giving Applebloom a fake cutie mark and she delivered the lesson, but really, she could’ve been taken out of the episode if this was post-Lesson Zero, and no meaningful change would occur. So honestly, I think this is one of her weaker appearances of the season, cause it’s not even like she was entertaining or anything.

I don’t think Rainbow did a very good job of trying to help Applebloom, even if the intentions were there. She sorta just let Applebloom try a whole bunch of random things and hoped Applebloom would instantly be so good at one of them that she’d get her cutie mark (and it seems Rainbow influenced Applebloom to continue doing this…). Though it did lead to some fun montages, it weakened her overall character. While it’s not totally unthinkable for Rainbow to have Applebloom just rush through things, she’s gotten her own cutie mark, so she should know that it doesn’t really work like that.

Thankfully, Pinkie’s attempt at helping Applebloom was more reasonable, focusing on one thing for a while (even if she didn’t know she helping Applebloom try to get a cutie mark), and her personality is just as silly and cheerful as always. She gets a thumbs up from me in this episode.

Were Rarity and Fluttershy even in the episode? If so, I forgot, so...I guess that’s a sign that they were neither good nor bad. Just forgettable. Same with Spike.

As for Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon...god, are they unlikeable! They’re seriously the most typical school bullies who are just making fun of Applebloom because they’re bullies!...well, I know that’s not entirely true, but here, it is. And it’s great. I’m a big fan of purely antagonistic characters when it’s executed well, and these two certainly were. While they didn’t do anything too evil, they were pretty much just jerks, and drove the conflict well. And they were just human enough to be believable too. They weren’t amazing, but they definitely worked well in this episode.

I also liked Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, even if they only appeared in the last 3-5 minutes. It was cool seeing ponies finally standing up to the bullies, and though they weren’t exactly given any character outside of defending Applebloom and being kids, they were fine.

All in all, I think the characters were written decently, as the main focuses (The CMC, Applejack, and the villains) were among the better written characters, and the characters in general made the episode significantly better than it could’ve been if it was a plot of a worse show.

8/10 - Good

Themes

This episode’s moral is that you shouldn’t think that your differences are necessarily a bad thing, and that they can actually help you make friends and realize how special you are. This lesson is a very helpful modern day moral. A lot of people are so obsessed with fitting in that they lock away a part of their true selves, when you shouldn’t have to do that if A. you’re not a despicable person and B. you have real friends.

The whole episode has a theme of growing up, with Applebloom wanting to basically reach puberty and get her cutie mark. I’m mostly fine with themes of growing up, even if I don’t really love it, and it was fine in this episode, even if it didn’t really make the episode exceptional in any way.

Pretty much as always, this episode’s themes are very strong, and very helpful for lots of kids, and even adults. While the moral is definitely one more aimed at kids, some adults still need to learn that they don’t need to normalize themselves to live in society.

8.5/10 - Really Good

Misc.

For the most part, this episode looked really good. I especially liked the animation during the scenes where Rainbow was “training” Applebloom. It had a lot of really fun colors and movement. But that’s all that’s really stand out about it. At least for someone like me, who is very much not an animator.

The music was also pretty good. Again, mostly during the scenes where Rainbow tried to help Applebloom. It was energetic, stylish, intense, etc., and always perfectly set the mood for the particular thing Applebloom was trying.

The song was also pretty good for a Season 1 Pinkie song. I mean, it still has all the weaknesses of them, in that it’s not particularly memorable, meaningful, and has a pretty simple composition, but it’s catchy, fun, helped speed up the scene, and it didn’t stay for too long or too short a time.

For the most part, the voice acting was on point, and really consistent with the rest of the series (AKA very good), but there were a few voices I had some issues with. And no, one of them isn’t Applebloom. I know I always complain about the Apples early on sounding a little off, but for some reason, and I really don’t know why, Applebloom’s voice didn’t bother me at all in this episode. Unfortunately, another one of the CMC is the problem. If you’ve recently rewatched the episode, I think you’ll know what I mean. No, not Scootaloo. Sweetie Belle. Her voice is just so...squeaky. It almost hurts my ears. I know it’s probably just supposed to be cute. I can understand what they were going for, but I just don’t think it worked well. I didn’t mind it before, but after being so used to current Sweetie Belle, this is really jarring. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for this to be fixed, but in this episode, it’s pretty painful.

How well has this episode aged?...well, I think it’s aged...okay. It’s definitely one of the more kiddish plots of the show, but it’s still fairly amusing for me to watch it now. Though as I mentioned before, things like Sweetie’s squeaky voice, Rainbow deciding to just throw a bunch of tasks at Applebloom, etc., definitely bother me now more than before.

And this is of course an episode that worked much better when I watched it as a child. I remember it being one of the more memorable episodes for me because it introduced cutie marks and the CMC.

Speaking of, what do I think of the way cutie marks and the CMC were introduced? Well, I think they were introduced well enough. They both felt like natural parts of the story weren’t just shoehorned in for the sake of setting up these two important aspects of MLP.

The misc. parts of this episode were handled well enough, and mostly boosted the experience of this episode.

8.5/10 - Really Good

Conclusion

Story - 8/10
Characters - 8/10
Themes - 8.5/10
Misc. - 8.5/10
Overall - 33/40 - Really Good

While this episode is a step down from Winter Wrap Up, which was excellent, it’s also significantly better than Swarm of The Century, and generally being pretty run-of-the-mill in terms of Season 1 episodes. Which mostly makes sense.

Personal Rating - 8/10 - Good
Can it be? Yes, I actually didn’t have a cliffhanger that amounted to nothing right before the personal rating! Though maybe this time it wouldn’t have been entirely inappropriate...anyways, I think this is a good episode. But I can’t say I think it’s a really good episode, because nothing about it was that funny, or entertaining, or engaging. The only part of the episode I could say is really good was the montage, and that’s such a short part of a mostly good episode that it can’t bump this episode up. Though the themes, animation, and music were quite strong, they weren’t significant enough parts of the episode to boost the episode up the the next rank either. It just wasn’t too memorable overall, despite the important things it set up.

But enough about that. I’d like to hear your thoughts on the first episode about cutie marks and whether or not you agree with me. Otherwise, see you this Wednesday (or whenever you read the next review).