Deconstruction is Magic: A My Little Pony Retrospective (S1E13&14)

Grrrrrrrrrrrrreetings everypony, and welcome back to Deconstruction is Magic, my Retrospective/Review/Analysis of every episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is magic ever. I missed a blog yesterday due to finishing up a new fic, so here's a double bill for you. We start our analysis with Fall-Weather Friends! Without wasting any more time, let's get on with the analysis! I am the Mage of Mind, reminding you, as always, that even a cheeseburger can be deconstructed to its source.

This episode is another story that focuses primarily on the dynamic between two members of the Mane Six, in this case, Rainbow Dash and Applejack. Given that they are both physically fit ponies who are both athletes in one form or another, it makes sense for them to have a friendly rivalry/competitive streak between them. Rainbow Dash puts a ton of stock into winning her competitions, though we don't get to learn why in this episode. What we do see is how much she ends up caring more about victory than the spirit of the competition itself!

Applejack, by contrast, does want the competitions to be all in good fun. However, what she cannot stand to see is dishonesty (go figure). So, when Rainbow Dash starts cheating by using her wings as an advantage, This is what pushes her over the edge from respecting Rainbow Dash as her equal, to winning as a matter of personal pride! This partially relates to another trait on the autism spectrum: hyper-fixation, though this is more of a similarity than a direct representation.

(Today on: "Pedantic Applejack Reads the Dictionary"!)

Hyper-fixation, as the name implies, is where a person gets completely fixated on any given task, often to the detriment of all others. In this scenario, Applejack is so fixated on beating Rainbow Dash, she stops thinking about the Running of the Leaves race as a whole! This makes Applejack one of the most developed characters so far, giving her a stubborn streak that often gets in the way of reason, as we've seen in a previous episode, Applebuck Season.

The race itself is another interesting bit of worldbuilding, taking aspects from an earlier episode, Winter Wrap-Up. Because the seasons are changed manually, the ROTL is used as a means of shedding the dead leaves from the trees in autumn. Why the dead leaves don't fall themselves is never explained, but it's a minor detail that's easy to overlook for the story itself. What's more interesting about the race is that it's a marathon, rather than a sprint. This is where Twilight's prior theory reading comes in handy, because while it's not stated explicitly due to the target audience, she knows the difference between aerobic respiration and anaerobic respiration.

("I'm here to prevent somepony awakening Yog-Sathoth, what do you think I'm doing here?!")

While it is a somewhat complicated topic, the episode keeps it simple for kids by illustrating it as a short sprint vs. a long distance run. Rainbow Dash is an excellent sprinter, and so only needs a short burst of energy to send her speeding along over a short span of time, thus she doesn't need to constantly re-oxygenate her blood to replenish that energy. Twilight, on the other hoof, does pace herself, keeping her speed relatively slow, so that her body has time to replenish oxygen and turn it into energy in her bloodstream. Because she doesn't use all her energy at once, she is able to get a high position in the race by the end, while other ponies are left exhausted!

This also serves a character development point, showing the hubris of both Rainbow Dash and Applejack. Because Twilight is not an athlete like them, they scoff at the notion of her getting anywhere. This demonstrates why simple athletic ability isn't the be-all-end-all of winning races. It's about understanding how the body works in order to get the most out of it. In addition, both AJ and RD keep expecting each other to cheat in order to succeed, they become a self-fulfilling prophecy. They interpret their own lack of situational awareness as the other cheating, so they end up going on a wacky-races style cheating spree to ensure the other loses! And, like Dick Dastardly before them, their cheating ends up costing them the race.

(Fool! How dare you question the logic of the mighty arrow?!)}

While Spike and Pinkie Pie leaning on the fourth wall at times is funny, their purpose is largely to be comic relief filler. Spike can justify his dialogue by being co-commentator, even when there isn't much of an audience in the race itself. It would've been more interesting if they commented on more than just Rainbow Dash and Applejack's position, perhaps even commenting on terrain features that may add to the difficulty of the race. But this is small potatoes compared to my bigger complaint: That of Rainbow Dash's shallowness.

If this were the only time we see Rainbow Dash, I would question how likeable she is as a character, given how obnoxious she can get about her competitive nature. She doesn't have many redeeming qualities in this episode, even if by the end we do see her realize the error of her ways - at least, for now. I think this would've been a golden opportunity for Rainbow to get more development, exploring why she hates losing, and why losing to Applejack is of particular importance. She rarely, if ever, compliments Applejack on her victories in the Iron Pony competition, making her to be little more than a sore loser. For any average show, this would be fine, but I know the writers can do better.

(Among other parts. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more, say no more?)

Conclusion

Fall Weather Friends is a bit of a mixed bag, but overall positive. It gives Applejack more dimensions to her character, in addition to many fantastic moments of slapstick comedy, with many tributes to classic cartoons. While I would've liked to have Rainbow Dash show more aspects of her character, and for Pinkie Pie to do more than comment on our two focal characters, these don't deminish the fun of the overall episode. There is nothing offensively bad here, so this episode gets a final score of 7/10.

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Next up, we have another meme-generating episode, with Suited for Success!

This is an episode of two halves to its moral, which makes it interesting in how it presents both sides of the interpersonal conflict responsible, albeit to different degrees. Rarity is a perfectionist, wanting her dressed to be absolutely what her clients want, or in this case, her friends. But she is also an artist by trade, knowing quite a great deal about what makes a dress look good. In the world of MLP, most characters are nude for about 90% of the time. So, fashion is less about overall protection from the elements, and more about personal expression. They're meant to accentuate a pony's form, rather than to hide it. So, Rarity's designs are often subtle, not completely covering every inch of a pony's body like a pre-teen's Gaia Online avatar.

This is the conflict that Rarity finds herself in. She's torn between making her friends happy, while also wanting them to express exactly why they aren't satisfied with her dresses. They want to be polite about it, but Rarity pressures them into saying more, so their demands keep going up and up. While indeed her friends get carried away, Rarity could have perhaps averted the fashion tragedy that ensues.

(Behold! The world's most distracting objects!)

Excessive workload is another issue Rarity has. Even though the Grand Galloping Gala is an undetermined amount of time away, the insists on getting all five additional dresses done ASAP. Tabitha Saint. Germain really helps to bring out how much passion and creativity she puts into her dress making, as evident by the song Art of the Dress. When you are invested in a creative task, it's easy to lose track of time, especially when it comes to commissions. This is why Rarity's friends are not entirely in the wrong for wanting more of a personalized touch. The problem becomes when they are too focused on the minor details, as opposed to the grand overall vision.

In some episodes, Rarity is portrayed as overly emotional. But in this episode, her dramatic depression is entirely justified. She has been publicly humiliated, not just in front of all of Ponyville, but also in front of a high-class fashion pony! She feels like her dreams have been crushed, all because she got carried away with her own generosity. While I do wish her friends had spoken up about their demands earlier, I do think they make up for this by inviting Hoity Toity to Carousel Boutique, giving him a personal fashion show.

(See kids, this is what we call in the trade a "douche-bag".)

Hoity Toity is largely the face of my main problem with this episode. He literally comes out of nowhere, right as Rarity has finished her overly-designed dresses. This is absolutely a plot contrivance, as there is no reason given for him being here, beyond that the plot needs him to be for the sake of conflict. He could have been given any reason for being in Ponyville, such as being there on an overnight stop on his Canterlot. Even his train breaking down would be a much more believable excuse for his involvement, rather than him just existing in ponyville when it's dramatically convenient!

I also wish the episode had given more weight to Rarity's demands for her friend's critique. It's an aspect of the episode which, I feel, goes largely unacknowledged, even when she is explicitly backing Fluttershy into a corner to get her to talk! The episode has generally done a good job displaying this through the dialogue, but seems to largely exclude it from the overall moral. It's framed as "Trying to please everypony", which I find to be a bit of an understatement. Truthfully, this critique is relatively small, since I think that kids are smart enough to understand where both Rarity and her friends went wrong.

(Kitchen appliances are funny, now. Let that sink in!)

Conclusion

I am, perhaps, a little harsh on this episode, though this is largely due to how much fun it was! The few flops in the writing it makes prevent it from achieving its full potential, much like the demanded-dresses themselves. Even so, it has some of the best jokes in the season so far, if not the entire show! Add to this the grand details of how a stereotypically feminine activity becomes a full art, and you have an episode that is remembered fondly for very good reason. I give Suited for Success a final rating of 8/10.

What did you think of these episodes? Am I grasping at straws for critiques? Feel free to let me know in the comments on this blog! Until next time, take care all~.