Episode Re-Review: Bats! · 2:14pm Mar 29th, 2021
So after "Power Ponies" floundered, Season 4 needed to get back on track fast if it didn't want to end up stuck in the doldrums. Previous seasons had shown how it only took one bad or underwhelming episode to kill a season's momentum for a considerable period of time, given how Season 1 hit an abrupt dry spell after "Sonic Rainboom" that wasn't broken up for good until "Party of One", and Season 2's first half tumbled down hard with" Hearth's Warming Eve" with "Family Appreciation Day" and "Baby Cakes" unable to truly break the dry spell and some would say it took until "Hurricane Fluttershy" for things to truly get back on track. So we had an episode that was originally erronously credited to Meghan McCarthy, when in fact it was Merriweather Williams who wrote it. And at no point did Meghan alter the story, it was all Merriweather's doing. But Merriweather had last been involved in the mess that was "Spike At Your Service" and her overall track record was pretty weak with some arguing she never wrote a good episode (either on her own or with someone else). Still, most people seem to like this episode despite it being an abrupt swan song for the show's most controversial writer up to this point. So it must've done something right, right? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with Applejack waiting for the sunrise, and when it does she goes trotting out to an orchard since it's the start of another applebucking season. Yet when she kicks a tree she finds the apples all dried up and mushy, and realizes that something is wrong. She rings a bell from atop the barn which summons all her friends (Spike included) to Sweet Apple Acres. But where's the rest of the Apple family you might wonder? Well, the episode opts to inexplicably put them on a bus even though this is a plot that they should be involved in. Anyway, the emergency turns out to be an invasion of vampire fruit bats, not like the normal ones we saw in "Apple Family Reunion". These bats suck the juice out of apples and leave them all dried up. And Applejack reveals that she heard from Granny Smith about how the last time they showed up, the vampire fruit bats ruined an entire crop. Everyone is horrified, though Rainbow Dash is only upset because this means no cider. So all Rainbow cares about is whether or not there'll be cider for her, not that her friend's way of life could be upended and she and her family could be forced into poverty.
Well, Fluttershy is opposed to Applejack's plan to get rid of the bats even after Applejack has shown why they're a danger and why she can't have them sticking around. Heck, she's got her own giant apple she's growing up for an upcoming fair out of town and she doesn't want the bats getting at it. So Fluttershy tries to persuade Applejack to let the bats have some of the orchard, claiming that they spit seeds all over the place which will help the trees grow faster. I know they're working around the idea of animal droppings and how some can be used as fertilizer, but this makes absolutely no sense. And Applejack rightfully points out the flaw: Letting the bats have free reign means the orchard will be destroyed before new trees can be planted. Heck, Fluttershy is unable to communicate with them effectively but still opposes Applejack's plan even though Applejack has so far only expressed a desire to drive the bats out of the orchard and not outright exterminate them. Even assuming that that's the case and the episode can't say it outright, a farmer who wants to use pest control to protect their crops is well within their rights to do so. Again, it's Applejack's livelihood that's at stake. It's also not unlike farmers killing wild animals that threaten their livestock. It's unfortunate but it has to be done. And apparently, Fluttershy thinks that this is unacceptable regardless of the circumstances.
This leads into the song "Stop The Bats", which starts exploiting every trick it can think of to make us sympathize with Fluttershy despite her arguments being weak and despite the fact that she has lost her biggest bargaining chip in being unable to communicate with the bats. They always show Applejack with dark lighting to make her seem in the wrong, while Fluttershy is always shown in bright lighting to make her seem right. So Applejack is in the wrong when she should be right and Fluttershy is in the right when she should be wrong. Of course, Applejack's lines are all about her own assumptions about the bats, which it must be asked: How does she know all of this? There is Batman symbology, including the iconic bat symbol but then out of the blue the rest of the mane six all side with Applejack at the end of the song. Only Rarity bothers to offer up an explanation for siding with Applejack, everyone else is just going along with it because the plot says so. And again it's only so we the audience will side with Fluttershy by seeing her all alone. But you know how they could make it easier to take her side? By having her actually have a compelling argument and not showing us that she has nothing to negotiate with. The moment we see she can't communicate with the bats her entire argument devolves into a sort of "Broken Window" philosophy, claiming that if you break a window you create jobs since someone will have to spend money to hire people to fix that window. But it ignores what the person would've done with the money had the window not been broken.
I will say that "Stop The Bats" is a decent song if you're just listening to the lyrics and ignoring everything else, and oddly enough one of Applejack's lines is "Mean as sin" which would imply religion (heaven is a bit more ambigious). Anyway, after the song we briefly get Pinkie Pie singing a variation of "Winter Wrap Up" but changing the lyrics to "Fruit bat roundup", and then we have Twilight propose a solution: She'll use a spell to take away the vampire fruit bats' desire to suck the juice out of apples, effectively brainwashing them into becoming something else. And at no point do we learn that the spell is just temporary, it's a permanent change that could very well kill the bats and ruin the ecosystem. It's during this time that we get a retcon of "The Stare" to where Fluttershy can control it, but she seems to regard it as a last ditch thing to use if nothing else works.
Why she didn't use it on the bats earlier, I have no idea. More concerning though is that Fluttershy herself feels this is wrong, but instead of standing up for what she believes in she lets herself be peer pressured by her friends into compromising her beliefs. So she uses her stare to make the bats freeze in place while Twilight performs the spell (after everyone else rounds up the bats), and it seems like it works. But of course the episode isn't over yet so we know something else is gonna go wrong. The next day, Applejack supposedly goes through the exact same part of the orchard due to recycling the animation, and they don't bother to change it to make it look different. So initially, her kicking the trees makes it seem like she's forgetting that she's in a part of the orchard the bats already ruined but the narrative declares that it's a different part. So when the apples fall and splat, Applejack assumes Twilight's spell didn't work. Except it did, the vampire fruit bats have no desire to eat apples or suck their juice, so something else got to the apples instead. The only solution is to have a late night stakeout with flashlights that display a mane six member's cutie mark just like the bat signal.
Pinkie Pie briefly catches Fluttershy sniffing at an apple but it's brushed off, then each mane six member sets off to patrol a different section of the orchard. There are some developments, mostly comedic such as Rainbow Dash attacking a scarecrow after seeing its outline in the dark and Rarity seeing something in the sky and panicking. But the big development comes when Applejack calls everyone to her location to reveal that Fluttershy has become a bat pony. Rarity even dubs it Flutterbat. Pinkie Pie then screams, thinking that Fluttershy is going to come after her friends as a bat and even digs into the ground, using her mane like a drill to escape.
Of course Flutterbat only cares about apples and is too fast to catch normally. Applejack does thankfully care more about getting her friend back than about losing her orchard, which goes to show that she had no reason to be made into a strawman (or if you prefer a strawmare) since she was only doing what she was rightfully entitled to do to protect her and her family's way of life and only source of income. Pinkie Pie then comments about not having Fluttershy to use her stare on herself, which gives Twilight an idea. In order for it to work though, Applejack has to carve into the apple she was growing so its scent will lure Flutterbat over. Then, when Flutterbat draws near the rest of the mane six (but not Spike even though he was present with the group in scenes prior, though I guess it's consistent with the pilot and him needing to sleep), they use mirrors to trick her into staring at herself and thus intimidating herself into helplessness.
This gives Twilight the chance to come forward and turn Fluttershy back to normal. Fluttershy is in a bit of a daze and doesn't remember her transformation, and Pinkie Pie explains to her in a roundabout way what happened.
The next day, Applejack designates part of the orchard as a sanctuary for the vampire fruit bats and apologizes to Fluttershy for not listening to her. Except Applejack did, Fluttershy made her point clear and demonstrated how bad it was. The problem is not a lack of communication, the problem is that one side is clearly in the right because it's her livelihood at stake while the other side has no way to actually make her proposed solution work. The real problem might be Fluttershy's lack of a backbone, her refusal to stand up for what she believed in right or wrong. If you're willing to compromise your beliefs despite how strongly you hold them, others will know and some may even take advantage of it. Compromise can be fine, but it can just as important to decide where and when to draw the line. If you go along with something you think is wrong and don't speak up about it, you're just as responsible for what happens because you chose to look the other way. And this was never even close to threatening to break Applejack and Fluttershy's friendship even while they're writing about the whole thing in the journal. Then we have Pinkie Pie use fake fangs to pretend to be a bat pony, and the last thing we see is Fluttershy apparently still having a bat fang in her mouth. But we never see it brought up ever again, it's forgotten just like the mysterious shadow at the end of "Castle Mane-Ia" and the enchanted comic from the previous episode.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? I'll be completely honest, I know it's an unpopular opinion and others do like this episode but I do not. Fluttershy's character growth in Season 3 and on display during "Princess Twilight Sparkle" when she put Discord in his place no problem is completely reset. Fluttershy is somehow unable to stand up for herself even when she's the only one who believes that the solution being proposed is wrong. Yet Fluttershy ends up rewarded for selling out her beliefs and caving in to peer pressure by getting exactly what she wanted. Applejack, the one in the right, is painted in the wrong and ends up having to give up everything because of it. But again, a farmer who wants to use pest control to protect their crops or kill a wild animal that endangers their livestock is well within their rights to do so (as long as the wild animal has set foot onto the farm's property). It's unfortunate but that's what must be done in order for the farmer to make a living. Yes, there are humane solutions and humane ways to do it. But Applejack never indicates that she wants to exterminate the bats completely, and if that's what the episode is trying to imply it's way too subtle and vague about it for it to work. The rest of the mane six are shoehorned in for no real reason for most of the episode, I could buy they being called in at night when the vampire fruit bats aren't the culprit, but the Apple family as a whole needed to be involved in this episode for at least the daytime scenes because they too are threatened by this. This feels like it was written from the perspective of some PETA advocate, a group that thinks the Pokemon games encourage animal abuse because you capture them and make them battle, but it ignores the many examples in game of you being encouraged to care for the animals/Pokemon (including some that could only evolve if you raise their happiness to the max).
It also feels like an episode that built backwards from a concept: What if Fluttershy was a bat? But if so there had to be better ways to pull it off rather than the cliche of Twilight screwing up a spell and using the exact same failed method she used on the parasprites. "Stop The Bats" and some of the imagery, along with the design of Flutterbat herself may be the only things saving this episode, but even then it's not enough to get this episode above the rank of E.
Well, things are going to thankfully pick up with the next episode "Rarity Takes Manehattan" which saw Dave Polsky undergo a writing metamorphsis, and was Rarity's long overdue return to the spotlight.
Well, at least the song was a good homage to Danny Elfman.
The bats can eat other things than apples you know.
...least it gave us FlutterBat?
While this episode isn't that great, I still have a lot of fun with it, especially thanks to the song and Dash
And AJ's "Mean as sin" line definitely sticks out like a sore thumb
5485477 I guess this episode canonically established that she has a cider addiction?
5485479
I thought "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" already displayed that addiction.
I would say Applejack made it seem like she wanted to kill all of the bats, since even one left could do a lot of damage. Also even if it's within a human farmer's rights doesn't mean it's the best solution. Especially in Equestria when there are clearly better solutions.
The Apple family being gone was explained.
Also the peer pressure was not nearly as strong in keep calm and flutter on compared to this episode. They were chanting to her to stop the bats. That's part of why the song is so good. It makes the pressure feel very strong so it makes Fluttershy giving in much more believable and understandable.
5485519 Still, if Fluttershy herself believes that what her friends want is wrong, she should stand up for it. No matter how much her friends might pressure her she can still say no. If she gives in and goes along with it, she's compromising her beliefs because of said peer pressure.
5485461
Exactly. They're called vampire fruit bats, not vampire apple bats.
Also, give Twilight some credit here. At least she researched the spell beforehand instead of just casting it willy-nilly like she did with the parasprites.
5485564
And even then Twilight reverses the spell by the end of the episode.
5485564 Still, if it didn't work on the parasprites why would something similar work on the vampire fruit bats?
5485541
Yeah if she was perfect. But pre-season 5 Fluttershy is far from perfect. That's part of the episode's lesson isn't it?
5485588
Because it's been a long time and they're not the same animal or spell.
5485651 I don't expect perfection, I expect consistency. If she's that easily pressured then she shouldn't be able to tell Discord to stop being bad or tell her friends not to turn him to stone.
5485660
Making her desire known isn't the hard part (usually). She made it known just as quickly this episode, and argued for it too. But when there's more insistence involved, one side is gonna give in. And Fluttershy was on that losing side. Did you expect for the Mane 6 to finish that song and then Fluttershy's like, "Sorry, but no." She's not that assertive yet.