Episode Re-Review: 28 Pranks Later · 4:57pm May 27th, 2021
Hey, remember "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" and how bad that episode was? How it became the first episode of the show to be truly despised? Well I guess someone thought it would be a good idea to revisit that and try to "fix" it. The story is credited to Meghan McCarthy, just like in "Flutter Brutter". But to actually write the episode a new writer was brought in in the form of F. M. DeMarco who had previously worked on the 2012 Littlest Pet Shop cartoon (FiM's sister show, it used the same animation studio and most of the same voice talents). I don't know what episodes DeMarco wrote for that show across its four seasons or why it was decided to let him write an episode based on a story or story concept Meghan McCarthy probably wrote before being called away to work on the movie. But maybe he could do a good job even though this episode is widely regarded as just as bad if not worse than what it was a revisitation of? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with Fluttershy making her way home at night with her animal friends when she ends up being scared by what she thinks is a timberwolf. But nope, it's Rainbow Dash in disguise. Fluttershy rightfully berates Rainbow for doing this for no good reason, and all Rainbow says in reply is that Fluttershy makes it too easy. Then the episode disregards how the "Boo!" jump scare is supposed to work. It doesn't work if you can see the individual trying to scare you the whole time, it only works when you don't know they're there. However, Fluttershy apparently tells the rest of the mane six (but not Spike or Starlight) and they all stage an intervention more or less.
But Rainbow Dash doesn't seem interested in listening, she even goes so far as to somehow plant a whoopie cushion on Twilight's chair without Twilight or anyone else noticing. It's odd that we got an actual whoopie cushion sound effect now but a few seasons ago they were using a bike horn as a substitute. But Twilight doesn't think this is funny at all, and then Rarity and Applejack accuse Rainbow without proof of being lazy in her pranking. Their arguments basically devolve into a "Holier than thou" mentality, claiming that you should be doing stuff that everyone agrees is funny. But here's the thing, comedy is subjective. What one person finds funny another may not. Plus, why would you accuse someone like Rainbow Dash of being lazy in her pranking? You know she'll take that as a challenge. Applejack especially should know about this given how many times she's competed against Rainbow.
We then cut to Rarity as she is apparently making an outfit for Sweetie Belle for the filly guide, the pony equivalent of the girl scouts even down to them selling cookies. The outfit is trapped atop a massive cake, which Rarity concludes must be the prank Rainbow has set up for her. But the actual prank is a fake sewing machine made of cake.
Applejack is next, and she's not taking any chances. She rigs all sorts of pots and pans to her bed so Rainbow won't be able to sneak up on her. But Rainbow Dash just somehow manages to steal the entire bed and carry it outside to the pigpen, causing Applejack to fall in the mud. Then, out of the blue, with no reason given at all, Rainbow Dash starts pranking other ponies (and even non-ponies) around town. Some of them are fairly harmless such as just making a crudely drawn image of Cheerilee on a chalkboard or tricking Spike into spending multiple blank scrolls to Princess Celestia. But the rest are not, they're borderline sadistic: Replacing Cranky's toupee with a skunk, putting a brick in Mr. Cake's sandwich and dropping a huge rock into a cart Big Macintosh is hauling up a hill. Naturally, everyone in town is quite upset about this and goes to see Pinkie Pie, the only pony who was on Rainbow Dash's side during all of this due to their mutual love of pranks.
Rainbow has been giving Pinkie kids glove treatment, and Pinkie has been playing it off. And if this was all there was to it'd be fine. But of course it's not and Pinkie Pie is told to tell Rainbow Dash to stop. She reluctantly does so after Rainbow explains her plan to prank the entire town all at once with these joke cookies that make your mouth turn all rainbow. And how does she plan to get the cookies to the townsfolk? By using the CMC's filly guide cookie drive. This includes Scootaloo, Rainbow's more or less adoptive little sister. Yes, that's right, Rainbow Dash is going to sabotage Scootaloo for the sake of trying to prove some petty point about how she puts effort into her pranks.
Pinkie Pie does tell Rainbow Dash wisely to stop, claiming that she's done more than enough. But even having the pony who used to be on her side now telling her no isn't enough to make Rainbow change her mind. However, the next day Pinkie Pie is apparently sick in bed and the cookies are the only thing that really seem to help. Rainbow Dash isn't too concerned about this, all she can think about is her prank against all of Ponyville. So it's basically like if you took the beginning of Bittersweet, and turned it around so that Rainbow Dash didn't care about Pinkie Pie.
it's only after Rainbow spends the whole day not so subtlely laughing about her prank that she starts to feel bad about having potentially made Pinkie sick. She goes to check on Pinkie at Sugarcube Corner that night only to find that Mrs. Cake has turned into a zombie. And so have the Cake Twins and Pinkie Pie (though strangely enough, we don't see Mr. Cake at all even though he was a target of Rainbow Dash's pranks earlier). And the joke cookies have apparently infected everypony who's eaten them, turning them into cookie crazed zombies.
Rainbow manages to round up the few non-infected ponies (Rarity, Applejack and the CMC) and brings them all to Sweet Apple Acres, barricading them inside the barn as she confesses to her intended prank. And then Rarity, Applejack and the CMC mention that they've already eaten the cookies and they start acting like zombies too. To make matters worse, the rest of the zombie army breaks down the barn door and Rainbow Dash is cornered with no way out. It sure is a good thing she doesn't think to grab an axe or a shovel or something, and doesn't have access to any kind of firearms or explosives.
Fortunately, it all turns out to have been a prank conducted by the entire town of Ponyville. Pinkie Pie tipped them off about what Rainbow Dash was planning to do with the joke cookies, so they all decided to go for the "Scare 'em straight" routine to teach her a lesson. Yet Rainbow initially acts like she hasn't learned her lesson at all and is just thinking of how she'll top it, and then insists that she's just joking.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Well, it did "fix" one aspect of "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well". That aspect was the rest of the mane six not staging an intervention or talking to Rainbow Dash before jumping straight to the nuclear option of teaching her a lesson. Here, they try to talk to her first and she doesn't listen. But unfortunately, the rest of the mane six stupidly frame their arguments as a matter of laziness and claim that Rainbow Dash should stick to something everyone will find funny. So of course Rainbow sees that as a challenge, meaning the rest of the mane six look like idiots. From there though, it somehow makes everything worse because Rainbow goes out of her way to target even those who never did anything to her and ignores all pleas to stop. Yet when she ends up on the receiving end of a prank, we lose sympathy for the towns ponies because Rainbow Dash finally starts to worry that she made everyone sick and turn into zombies. The logic seems to be "Two wrongs make a right" even though they obviously don't.
I mean, they're lucky Rainbow Dash didn't try to fight back and opted for the flight option instead. If the point was to teach her a lesson about being careful with her pranking, there had to be a better way to do it than what the townsfolk opted to do here. I don't even know what the intended moral is supposed to be other than "Never prank anyone because they might take it the wrong way and come after you because of it, regardless of what it was you did". I don't know how much of this is Meghan McCarthy's fault, versus how much of this is F. M. DeMarco's fault. I don't know who signed off on what. Maybe Meghan's original story idea was less mean spirited and confused and DeMarco made it worse? As it stands, fixing only one aspect of "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" but somehow making it worse in almost every other aspect is quite insulting. So this episode gets a D.
And now we have an episode that was going to more or less try to tackle racism, in a sense. Needless to say "The Times They Are a Changeling" was an episode that was insanely risky to attempt.
there was an actual fic where dashie does fight back kills twilight with a shovel and pretty much gets herself killed and the entire town hit with a megaspell killing the inhabitants....dont remember what it was called but a lot of the comments were blaming pinkie pie for getting ponyville turned to ash
While this isn't a great episode, I feel it's a pretty fun one.
That's what Voice of Reason said when he put this episode in the "Lost in Translation" category of his and Thespio's Worst Episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic video. He pointed out how the intended moral was meant to say "Treat others the way you want to be treated and know who your audience is", but the execution makes it come off less like that and more like it was saying "Don't even make an attempt at being funny, because you might hurt someone's feelings." He also compared the townsponies scaring Rainbow Dash with a zombie apocalypse to the equivalent of getting Silver Quill to stop telling puns by telling a pun so bad that it gives him an aneurysm.
I actually like this episode. Though I will say that this should've been in an earlier season, like Season 2 or 3.