Help! My Heart is Full of Pony! - Party of One · 5:36am Apr 23rd, 2021
When the show was still new, Party of One was my favourite episode. It took the series to new heights of weirdness, and managed to tell a very simple story in a very compelling way. Children - very small children especially - get immersed in the action of a story when the structure has a certain amount of repetition. Party of One opens with Pinkie Pie inviting all five of her friends to Gummy's birthday party, one at a time. When she gets the idea to invite them all to an after-birthday party the very next day, she likewise asks each of her friends one at a time. It's a predictable cycle with slight variations for each character, and certain strains of familiarity. Twilight, Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash all respond the same way, "This afternoon? As in...this afternoon this afternoon." And then they offer various excuses.
As she becomes suspicious of those excuses, Pinkie Pie spies on each of them, and again catches them all sneaking around behind her back...one at a time.
Party of One uses varied repetition to build a storytelling rhythm, to create tension, and most of all, to subvert expectations. This pre-kindergarten, Nick-Jr.-style structure crescendos into Pinkie Pie's complete mental break where she interrogates Spike, and holds a party with a bunch of inanimate objects whom she imagines to be her friends. It's twisted - more messed up than any other thing that My Little Pony had done at that time.
The way it unfolds is genius. It's also a landmark episode for the series as a whole. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic would eventually tell the story of a total psychotic break for each and every character. Party of One was the gold standard for all the insanity episodes that were to follow. However, that's a complicated subject for another essay entirely.
Rewatching Party of One now, long after the series is over, I'm struck by a profound realization. Pinkie Pie forgot her own birthday. When the episode first aired, that was, of course, something of a quirk. It characterized Pinkie brilliantly: always thinking of others, never thinking of herself (at least when it comes to spreading good cheer).
The purpose of a Pinkie Party, after all, is to make others happy. We learned about Pinkie's philosophy of laughter in "Smile Smile Smile," and those themes continued to be present throughout the entire series. Spreading cheer is the primary way through which Pinkie Pie derives both joy for herself in the immediate, and existential meaning in the long term.
Since this episode aired, we have found out that Pinkie Pie takes this mission to an extreme. She has everypony's birthdays memorized. She has a secret party planning cave where she keeps intricate files detailing the party preferences of all of Ponyville, right down to the last sprinkle. Knowing this about Pinkie Pie really amplifies the ending of Party of One.
It's almost sad. And yet strikingly beautiful. In all her years, the only birthday that Pinkie Pie ever forgot was her own.
Discuss.
-Sprocket
If you enjoy essays like these, please consider supporting my work on Patreon. You can also follow Heart Full of Pony on Tumblr
Thank you, as usual, for your insights and thoughts. :)
Hindsight really is a benefit for this one. We knew Pinkie was her own blind spot, but it took years to fully appreciate just how wide her field of vision really was.