Episode Re-Review: Hearts and Hooves Day · 6:59pm Mar 2nd, 2021
This episode had a good deal of hype surrounding its initial release, even though it ended up getting leaked by Apple ahead of its planned airdate. The Hub ran a marathon leading up to the special entitled the "We Heart Ponies Fan Favorite Mareathon", consisting of what people had voted as the ten best episodes of the show up to that point (with "Luna Eclipsed" taking the number one spot). Considering Season 2's second half had sputtering and the first half had ended with some of the most overlooked and underappreciated episodes, Meghan McCarthy really had a lot on her hands trying to keep Season 2 afloat here. Her most recent performance had been "Sweet and Elite" which was one of the last episodes people seemed to consider truly great in Season 2, so was Meghan up to the task? Or was she too falling from the pedestal fans had placed her on? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with the Cutie Mark Crusaders working on a valentine for Cheerilee inside their clubhouse. They really want to show her how much they appreciate her, so they decorate a large heart with glitter, ribbons and hoofprints. Unfortunately, it's too big to fit into an envelope and they have to bring it to the classroom on their own. There is an interesting background detail when Truffle Shuffle seems interested in giving Diamond Tiara a card, but when Diamond gets one from Silver Spoon Truffle Shuffle gives up. Anyway, the CMC show off their heart to Cheerilee and she loves it. When Sweetie Belle then comments about a special somepony, Cheerilee says she doesn't have one which is a shock to the Crusaders.
Cheerilee insists it's no big deal, she's happy just being a teacher. But the Crusaders are intent to find someone for her to spend Hearts and Hooves Day with. This leads into the song "The Perfect Stallion" which is probably best remembered for the introduction of the colt Button Mash, and almost singlehandedly launching a fan animated series based on him before Hasbro shut it down.
Some criticize the lyrics and the content since the CMC are incredibly picky and judgmental on what kind of stallion would be right for Cheerilee, and I can see how that is a bit of a problem. But they are kids, and kids in particular don't always understand the ins and outs of romance. I do think they're wrong to eliminate candidates just because of what they appear to be (just because someone looks like a clown doesn't mean that's what they are all the time, and Dr. Whooves being disqualified because he's "splashy" is artificial. If he did it on purpose though that would be a problem). Anyway, it seems like all the best candidates are taken (and they don't consider that maybe Cheerilee is into mares) but then they seem to settle on Big Macintosh. Or at least, Sweetie Belle does. Apple Bloom is quite hesitant. Kind of weird to have the little sibling be protective of their older sibling, it's usually the other way around. Apple Bloom also points out how shy Big Mac is, but Sweetie Belle proposes a work around: Get the two in a romantic setting and it'll all work out.
They do just that, but of course it doesn't quite work out since Cheerilee more or less friendzones Big Mac. The CMC wonder how it could've gone wrong, thinking that maybe it was too romantic. And then they happen to bump into Twilight, the only mane six member who will appear in this episode. It just so happens that Twilight was reading a book on the holiday, revealing that it got its start because of a love potion. The book even has the recipe. The Crusaders ask to borrow it and Twilight lets them, suspecting nothing. They then set to work on brewing up the potion which uses clouds and rainbows (not sure how you can make a drink out of that).
Somehow, mixing it with a pegasus feather turns it into a concotion that's ready to be served to two ponies not in the know. The CMC then lure Cheerilee and Big Mac back to the park they met at earlier and pass off their potion as punch. Cheerilee apologizes to Big Macintosh for the CMC putting him up to all of this, but she and him both decide to humor the Crusaders and drink what they think is punch. They consume it and fall in love. But suddenly, something goes wrong when they start making mushy love talk to each other and the CMC are visibly disgusted.
Wondering just what's going on, the CMC search through the book again and find out that actually the love potion was a love poison. It's revealed that it was whipped up by a prince for a princess he loved, but it caused the kingdom they ruled to fall apart since they were unable to not be around each other to perform their royal duties. I believe the image shown while Sweetie Belle is explaining it shows an alicorn, which means that other alicorns were canonical by this point (at least in the past). But I have to ask, why would they put a recipe for a love poison into a book and not even put in a disclaimer or a warning about not brewing it? There's a reason why "Don't try this at home" warnings exist, because if you don't include them you know someone is going to be dumb enough to try it and then sue for damages if they get hurt (or worse).
Apple Bloom points out that Cheerilee and Big Macintosh will cause trouble for Ponyville if they can't perform their responsibilities, and while she's overexaggerating she does make a point. Fortunately there's a cure, they just need to keep both ponies from looking into each other's eyes for an hour and the spell will be broken. The CMC then find the two love birds at Sugarcube Corner where even Mrs. Cake seems visibly uncomfortable by the display of affection. But considering she showed off her own children a few episodes ago and she and her husband have pet nicknames for each other I don't think she's one to talk (and I highly doubt this is the first time she's seen couples so affectionative in her line of work). However, she concludes that at the rate things are going Cheerilee and Big Macintosh will probably end up getting married, expressing her belief that they'll need catering. Fortunately, Mrs. Cake's suggestion gives Sweetie Belle an idea. Use a wedding (or rather the preparations for one) to keep the two apart for an hour and break the spell.
Sweetie takes Cheerilee to Carousel Boutique to try on dresses, throwing up a barricade in the dressing room to keep Cheerilee from escaping (even using Rarity's fainting couch and a kitchen sink). Meanwhile, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo take Big Macintosh to a jewelry store in Ponyville to pick out a diamond for an engagement ring (or considering what we'd see in "The Big Mac Question" it could be a necklace). But Apple Bloom finds it hard to come up with ways to make diamonds sell bad, and while momentarily distracted checking the time she allows for Big Mac to make a purchase and escape. Apple Bloom then sends Scootaloo on to warn Sweetie Belle while Apple Bloom tries to slow her brother down. She does this by trying to tie him to various heavy things, but he's so determined to make it to Cheerilee that he just keeps going (even pulling an entire house with Berry Punch inside it).
Fortunately, Sweetie and Scootaloo were able to use the advanced warning to dig a trench and put a mattress into it. Big Mac falls into the trench and it seems like all will be well since it's been almost an hour. But at the last minute Cheerilee manages to break through the barricade and the CMC have to literally stand in her way to keep her from spotting Big Mac. It seems like their efforts will be for naught when they get knocked into the air, but fortunately Cheerilee is going too fast and plows into Big Mac's face as she lands in the pit. The clock strikes the hour and the spell is broken as Cheerilee demands to know why she looks like she's "getting married at the bottom of a pit".
The CMC come clean and confess, acknowledging that they had good intentions but that no one can force others to be in love. Cheerilee then says that they can think about how sorry they are while doing Big Mac's chores, and Big Macintosh agrees that it sounds like a reasonable punishment. However, the only one Cheerilee for sure has the authority to punish is Apple Bloom. Big Macintosh has given his consent, and since Apple Bloom doesn't have parents Big Mac is very much a legal guardian for her. Scootaloo is iffy, depending on whether or not her parents were around Cheerilee could have permission, but Sweetie Belle for sure is a no since neither her parents or Rarity are on hoof. In fact, Rarity's absence is particularly odd considering Carousel Boutique was a big part of the climax, and you would think a holiday involving romance would be right up Rarity's alley. It's never even explained where she was. Was she on another date hoping that it would turn out better than Prince Blueblood?
So the Crusaders do Big Macintosh's chores, and since he has free time he decides to go out with Cheerilee. They give each other pet nicknames like "Sugar Bear" and "Cutie Pie" which makes the CMC think the spell didn't wear off, but of course Cheerilee and Big Mac are just messing with them. If this were all we ever saw of their relationship I don't think most people would've been bothered by its eventual discarding in favor of Big Mac ultimately getting together with Sugar Belle.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Well, its biggest strength comes in the fact that it was the first group based CMC episode where cutie marks weren't involved at all. The CMC set out to play matchmaker not because they want to earn their cutie marks but because they legitimately want to find a special somepony for their teacher. And the fact that they themselves cause the problem and have to fix it themselves does a lot to help make them more sympathetic and tolerable. No one is there to bail them out or tell them what they did wrong, they have to come to that conclusion by themselves. The mushy love talk can get overbearing, and romance was definitely not a strong suit for either Meghan McCarthy or the show in general. But the real problem is the revelation that the love potion recipe is actually a love poison, and that it was included in a book that Twilight was reading. I'm not gonna blame Twilight for not noticing since she likely hadn't read all the way through, but I do have to ask who thought it was a good idea to put a love poison recipe into a book? Did they think somepony wouldn't try to brew it either knowing or not knowing of the consequences? And at the very end, Cheerilee only for sure has authority to punish Apple Bloom. It would've worked better if that was what she decided to do, but then Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo willingly volunteered to share in the punishment because they helped contribute to the problem. If there was a mane six member who needed to be in this episode it was Rarity, both because of Carousel Boutique and because romance is a big part of her character and motivations. It's not like Tabitha St. Germain wasn't available either, because she voiced Mrs. Cake. So in the end, this episode gets a borderline B+/A-.
But now we're gonna get into somewhat of a rocky patch as we get to some rather infamous episodes, first up is "A Friend In Deed" which is praised for its song but not much else.
This is one of the funniest episodes of the season, and easily my second or third favorite (number one has always been Lesson Zero. Number two sometimes flip flops between this and ACW)
Have you ever thought that Mrs. Cake was thrown off by the fact that Big Mac and Cheerily were acting all mushy gushy as if they had been together for years when it seems like they were barely even friends just the day before? That would be a total 180 that seemed to come out of nowhere and I can't really blame her for being a bit freaked out. And not just because the pet names being used were so cringeworthy and vomit-inducing...
I agree that this was another major step forward for the show- a comedy that was actually consistently funny and had a solid premise. I in particular am going to come out and defend the mushy wuvy-dovey dialogue and the potion book.
That dialogue, I thought, was very deliberately done and kind of the central premise/joke of the episode, with bystanders either being immediately weirded out by it or quickly growing to dislike it... And that joke works, in particular because it's the show moving more towards self-awareness, conceptual humor, and a little cynicism instead of just relying on cartoon sight gags. There were more of those than I thought were necessary, too, but progress is progress and this was significant progress.
I also don't have any problem with Twilight Sparkle carrying around books on love poison and allowing the CMC to read them. Even just a regular college chemistry textbook contains instructions that can be used to produce some extremely poisonous things, and Twilight obviously has some pretty occult interests (the entire reason for her being in Ponyville, of course, starting out with her finding a description of Nightmare Moon that presumably existed nowhere but in the Unnamed Opener Book). I don't think she expected the recipe to be so easy to understand and use, if she even suspected it was there, and us academic types love sharing information on our fields of study. Technically this is poor judgement on Twilight's part since, even if the book didn't contain potion instructions, it could easily contain other content inappropriate for 10-year-olds, but it seems like exactly the sort of poor judgement a bookish adult in an academic field would realistically show.
The whole idea of the love potion / love poison was also pretty cool, both because it's another way the episode satirizes "fantasy setting for little girls"/"fairy tail romance" tropes; and because it pulls few punches in describing the serious, borderline apocalyptic consequences such a thing could have in the wrong place (albeit secondhand).
The didactic elements also felt a lot more subdued, probably because the story has a legitimate problem that is portrayed as serious but not being inflated to falsely apocalyptic proportions; and because this is a CMC episode where dumb kids are acting like dumb kids and the world reacts to this normally, as opposed to adults acting like dumb kids and the reactions being either nonexistent or overblown.
My take on Twilight giving the CMC her book despite it containing a recipe for a love potion is she might've assumed that after the events of The Cutie Pox, the trio (especially Apple Bloom) would know how dangerous potions can be and wouldn't dare try to make said love potion out of fear it would result in a similar incident to the cutie mark one.