Okay, it’s Friday, and there’s something I’ve got to do on Fridays.

In this case, it’s watch My Little Pony. So, earlier in this season, we had Dave Polksy’s “Feeling Pinkie Keen”, which… had all sorts of issues.

Now, we’re going to his second episode, “Over A Barrel”... which I honestly think I remember as one of the worst episodes of season 1. Oh well, we’ll see how it fares on another watching.

Again, I like some of the stuff Dave Polsky has done. I actually liked what he did as showrunner for Hanazuki: Full of Treasures. Pity about his first season on My Little Pony.

Oh well, let’s dive into this episode. I remember there being some things I liked, anyways.

So, we start out on a train, with an old west vibe going, and the silliness of it being pulled by 4 stallions. And in the last car of the train, Applejack is reading a bedtime story about trees to a tree. Such a silly pony. Bloomberg is one of her favorites, tho’.

And that's when the yellow birdie thought to himself, "Hmm. My favorite little tree isn't such a little tree anymore." So she sang her song, big and strong, and they all lived in that great, big tree happily ever after. The... end.

Did that bird's sex just change between lines?

Of course, Rarity comes in complaining about not getting preferential treatment on the train, and they start arguing. We do learn they are taking the tree to Appleloosa.

And Applejack starts talking baby talk to the tree. Fortunately, it’s time for the theme song…

Cut to nighttime, where everyone else is excitedly talking in their bunks on the train, and Rarity’s sulking, turning her head face down and putting a pillow over it. Which probably isn’t that great of an idea, as she has cucumbers over her eyes and a mud mask on her face. I bet that got all over the sheets.

Spike wants to get to sleep, too, though, and asks them all to shut up. Rainbow Dash complains about some of the popcorn not having popped, and he flames it on the spot, turning most of it to ash.

We do get the classic argument over whether Fluttershy is a tree, with Fluttershy saying “I’d like to be a tree.” and spawning memes for a long time to come. That bit was funny.

They are loud enough to get Rarity to transform into her true form, and unleash her wrath!

And Spike sneaks out of bed and goes to sleep with Bloomberg.

Cut to the morning and a buffalo stampede is going on outside the train, with them all wearing feathers, and with the old west motief, revealing to us that the theme of this episode is “cowboys and indians”. The buffaloes start bashing the side of the train.

Cue Little Strongheart’s entrance. I like Little Strongheart, actually. It’s a shame they never really returned. Think they might have been shown as a cameo with no lines someplace. She was voiced by Erin Mathews, who later voiced Gabby!

Little Strongheart starts running on top of the train, and Rainbow Dash goes up to intercept her. Little Strongheart’s pretty acrobatic, and Rainbow winds up plowing into a sign, instead, though.

She then detaches the last car and takes off with Bloomberg (and Spike)… and now I’m kinda thinking of the train shenanigans in Final Fantasy 8.

And we pull in, and everyone’s panicked, which isn’t helped by Braeburn enthusiastically greeting them.

“Hey there! Welcome to Aaaappleoosa!”

Braeburn’s really laying it on thick here, but we get a town shot. Everypony’s got hats. Lots of hats. And a bonnet. And a hat store.

Backstory time. Appleloosa was completely built in the last year.

Or maybe it’s bad pun time. We get horse-drawn carriages, then horse drawn horse-drawn carriages.

And we have the local watering hole, “The Salt Block”, and the local sheriff's office. Yay for an impromptu town tour, I guess.

We also get shown… the patch of ground they do wild wild west dances on?

And then “mild west dances”. Kill me now…

And we finally get over to the apple orchard, where the main characters unload on Braeburn with what’s happened.

More exposition time. The buffalo are unhappy about the settlers killing them, taking their land away, building over their sacred spots, making them march in long journeys some of them don’t survive to go live on the worst land, building a pipeline over their land leaking oil all over it… no, actually, they just don’t like the apple orchard, for some reason.

Switch to Rainbow Dash sneaking around. She apparently can’t wait to get her hands on that little buffalo. Gets rather surprised by Pinkie Pie, though, who then gets them both caught.

But Spike says they’re cool, so they’re cool. Apparently buffalo really like dragons, and are feeding him gemstones.

Rainbow recognises Little Strongheart, and decides to leave, grabbing Pinkie Pie by the tail, and dragging her. So much tail pulling in season one!

Little Strongheart apologizes, and explains that because of the orchard, they can’t stampede in their traditional stampeding grounds. So, how does this fit in with cows stampeding, back in Applebuck Season?

“The ponies refuse to move their trees, so we are stuck here, and it’s not fair!” Moving an entire orchard strikes me as rather difficult…

Then Rainbow Dash suddenly switches over to the buffaloes side for no reason. Back to Appleoosa.

They all take off charging to go save Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Spike… who are just kinda standing there, so they come to a halt. Fluttershy pounces on Pinkie Pie.

Little Strongheart and Braeburn seem ready to talk things out, but Rainbow Dash and Applejack are theoretically advocating for them, and start arguing. Brother. I’m getting flash-forwards to “The Non-Compete Clause”.

The main six have evidently decided not to let either group work out their own problems, and are set on trying to fix everything for themselves. And Pinkie Pie has an idea.

Namely, she decides to sing the worst song she’s ever sung (You got to share, you got to care). Now, she’s a good, or at least entertaining, singer pretty much any time she sings. Not here, though.

We do get Spike playing the piano, which is actually a G1 callback. Spike actually played the piano in the original G1 mlp movie.

The one thing of note in the song is the spot where she says both of their diets are completely vegetarian, which ends up in so many dietary debates…

Spike is the only one clapping at the end of the song.

So the buffaloes are going to stampede tomorrow, and if the orchard is still there, they’ll flatten it and the town. How do you move an orchard in a day? Not to mention it’s already been said that there’s no other flat ground around there… which makes absolutely no sense, since on the trainride there, it was practically nothing but flat ground, and that’s most of what we’ve seen around!

And everyone’s barricading windows, closing up shop, harvesting all the apples, and definitely not talking to the mane 6.

The Appleoosans make tons of pies, and put up a red flag with a tree on it.

Meanwhile the buffaloes are bashing their heads against each other, sharpening their horns, and applying war paint. Ugh.

For a minute, it looks like the buffalo might not stampede, but Pinkie Pie decides to start up that horrible song again, and they stampede at her.

And the townsfolk are fighting back.. by throwing pies at them. Why?

Not to mention the one that starts riding a buffalo.

They try for some tense and dramatic moments, all of which are ruined by how stupid the whole thing is and the fact that they are throwing pies.

Oh, tragedy! The chief has been pied! The horror! The horror!

Between this and the diamond dog episode, they really didn’t know how to deal with other races this season, did they? Technically griffins, too, actually.

And it turns out the pie he was clobbered with was tasty, and the settlers go and make a path through the orchard for them to stampede, which, if it was feasible, was something pretty obvious they could’ve already done without all this fuss. They cut down the trees, too. Shouldn’t they have transplanted them someplace else without killing them? Like into the town by buildings and such?

Applejack, is, of course, happily supervising them murdering her tree brethren. So much for her love of Bloomberg.

What actually happened to Bloomberg, anyways?

Oh, wait, there he is. They planted him. ”Bloomberg, this is yer special day. Mama's so proud of you!” Right after killing half his family, I guess.

Ah, moral time:

Dear Princess Celestia,
Friendship is a wondrous and powerful thing. Even the worst of enemies can become friends. You need understanding and compromise. You've got to share. You've got to care.

They just had to bring it back, I guess.Honestly, if they’d just let Little Strongheart and Braeburn talk things out initially, the whole fight probably wouldn’t have happened. A lot of what brought them to that point was Rainbow, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie.

Yeah, this episode still is not a favorite, though that’s not really a surprise, and would be fairly around the bottom of my list for this season.

Well, next week, we’ll get “A Bird In the Hoof”, which I think was more on the forgettable side. There was a good yakkity sax scene, and phoenixes with mustaches, so some good stuff, anyway...

That’s about it for now, though!

--Sweetie Belle

I’m not a very big fan of this episode. It’s basically the old tale of, “who’s the savage”, a story that has been done countless times in movies and TV shows. Even Avatar (the James Cameron film, not the cartoon that is one hundred kinds of awesome) had this exact same plot. It was basically Pocahontas meets Dances with Wolves, except with blue pussies instead of Native Americans. (Don’t laugh, you immature perverts!)

And that sums up my problem with this episode. This episode is nothing we haven’t seen before. It’s two sides fighting over some land. Both sides refuse to come to a compromise, thus resulting in a war.

Some parts of this episode had me confused. For example, at the beginning, Rarity says that Applejack is sleeping with Bloomberg. (Not what you think, you perverts, though I’m sure there’s a fanfic about Applejack being in love with Bloomberg and “doing things” to him.) However, when Spike goes to sleep with Bloomberg because the girls are talking too much, Applejack is nowhere to be seen. In fact, after the opening, she doesn’t pop up again until after Bloomberg has been stolen by the buffalo. Where was she? She literally poops up out of nowhere. Also, between Bloomberg and Spike getting stolen and the gang arriving at Appleloosa, Pinkie Pie somehow goes missing. Where did she go? What, did she jump out of the train to go after Rainbow Dash and Spike? I know Pinkie’s a bit stupid, but even I don’t think she’d be stupid enough to jump out of a speeding train.

I think the only thing that surprised me was Pinkie Pie, who dresses up in a hooker outfit that you see in Westerns. No, I’m not kidding. How the animators were able to get away with this is beyond me. This scene carries with it the infamous “wing boner” incident, where Rainbow Dash’s wings are flat before Pinkie shows up, then are spread throughout Pinkie’s performance. I honestly don’t think that this was intentional; I think it might have been an animation error. This show is animated using Flash, after all, and you can find loads of animation errors from the show on YouTube.

This isn’t a bad episode, per se. It’s just not one of my favorites.

7162400
Yeah...that episode was not great. I think the writers were waaay too worried about being politically correct, and not insulting any Native Americans. Which I think they failed at, quite honestly.

The whole thing with the pies? Kid's show. Although they did show violence in Twilight's epic fight with Tirek, and some scenes where the CMC fought each other, and the fight during A Canterlot Wedding, but other than those, they kept it pretty tame. I'm probably forgetting some.

As a consolation, we'll remember episodes like this when Hasbro releases that abortion Pony Life. We'll look on these with nostalgia.

7162405

Yeah...that episode was not great. I think the writers were waaay too worried about being politically correct, and not insulting any Native Americans. Which I think they failed at, quite honestly.

Amazingly enough, they apparently worked with a Native Consultant and made revisions according to his notes!

Yeah, they still failed at it. It felt like it trivialized the Native American side of things to me, really.

It may have been a kids show, but the pies just didn't work...

--Sweetie Belle

7162400 I know I'm gonna get into trouble for this, but goddamn do I love the concept of weaponisable pies.

Firstly, a hot pie fuckin hurts. It conserves temperature due to the crust but the squishy liquid inside is boiling. I've had hot pies fall on my foot splashing everywhere and it's basically agony. It looks like the ponies were using cold pies, which are clearly way less dangerous than their hot counterparts and an obvious rookie mistake in a battle scenario. Pies are also extraordinary because it basically like having both rations and ammunition in the same box; amazing space considerations. Plus, you could microbake a really sharp crust on the edges of those things; I ate a really sharp piece of bread on Thursday and I have lacerations all over the inside of my mouth. So I reckon with Equestrian cooking you could get a really deadly edge on that.

I like weaponisable food in general. You can imagine the dragons throw their sharp crystals at each other whilst also taking a bite out of them before they fashion it into a sword or something. I like the idea that there are these deadly ninja bakers and chefs who are an equivalent of pony special ops; trained to infiltrate dangerous battlefields and simultaneously kick ass but also feed the troops and improve morale. Amazing stuff.

Choppy episode, though. I've never really been a fan of the whole 'natives vs settlers' storyline, in this or elsewhere, since I feel it oversimplified and dumbed the whole concept down... It's not exactly very innovative on its own either. Like, this is why I latch onto the pie thing; it's the only really creative piece in the ep.

EDIT: Only creative piece is a bit of an exaggeration, admittedly, but I guess I'm just grumpy at having to go through ye olde natives and settlers plot again. It really does colour ones mind when you go into something thinking 'oh great this again...'

What does one peddle at the Taint Fair?

7162400

Now, we’re going to his second episode, “Over A Barrel”... which I honestly think I remember as one of the worst episodes of season 1. Oh well, we’ll see how it fares on another watching.

A lot of people said this, to the point I believed it for a while - but when I actually rated all of Season 1 last year, it managed to match most of the season while it was FPK and Dog & Pony Show which fell to the bottom. I do have a theory for my improved opinion of it, which I'll reveal later - but it could be I just listened to others too much, or allowed the episode's controversial aspects to overshadow it's merits.

(As an opening point of technicality, this is the first episode of the show not to feature Ponyville at all. Just thought it warranted mentioning.)

And of course it also introduces the Equestrian railroad system, which clearly connects to even new and far-flung colonies. Still a bit of early weirdness there, though...

And in the last car of the train, Applejack is reading a bedtime story about trees to a tree.

We do get the classic argument over whether Fluttershy is a tree, with Fluttershy saying “I’d like to be a tree.” and spawning memes for a long time to come. That bit was funny.

One neat thing about the Mane 6/7 is that you can get a lot of mileage out of just sticking them all together in the same room and having them interact. At least, with a good writer (which Polsky can be sometimes).

Cue Little Strongheart’s entrance. I like Little Strongheart, actually.

I do too - but I wish her design was a little less unique. When I first saw her I don't think I was even sure she was a buffalo.

And we pull in, and everyone’s panicked, which isn’t helped by Braeburn enthusiastically greeting them.

Ah, Braeburn. Our first real member of the more extended Apple Family, and it's kind of hard not to like him - he's so nice! And energetic - honestly, if Cheese hadn't existed, he might have been one of the best matches for Pinkie.

I do love the sense we get of Appleoosa, and the whole "Mild West" in general - it not actually being west of much on the official maps is one reason I tend to ignore them.

Apparently buffalo really like dragons, and are feeding him gemstones.

An interesting cultural tidbit that might have been nice to return too once we knew more about dragons. I wonder how much luck Sludge might have over that way?

So much tail pulling in season one!

Must have a very high tensile strength...

Little Strongheart apologizes, and explains that because of the orchard, they can’t stampede in their traditional stampeding grounds. So, how does this fit in with cows stampeding, back in Applebuck Season?

Probably just ponies conflating very different practices under the same word.

“The ponies refuse to move their trees, so we are stuck here, and it’s not fair!” Moving an entire orchard strikes me as rather difficult…

For mere humans, perhaps - but these are earthponies. Could have been a chance for the show to make clear early on what they were capable of...

Namely, she decides to sing the worst song she’s ever sung (You got to share, you got to care). Now, she’s a good, or at least entertaining, singer pretty much any time she sings. Not here, though.

In-universe reaction may be poor, but I can't tell much difference in quality myself.

And the townsfolk are fighting back.. by throwing pies at them. Why?

Only so many options at that rating, and ray guns would be kind of anachronistic.

Between this and the diamond dog episode, they really didn’t know how to deal with other races this season, did they? Technically griffins, too, actually.

Faust's original concepts weren't the best, but as things actually turned out, I'm not sure if what we got here is better or worse than what we got later.

Actually, this ties into one reason I think I like this episode more in retrospect - it's basically a deconstruction of several later episodes, 5 seasons in advance. Ones where a bunch of nonponies are being all unfriendly until a few of our cast show up to teach them a lesson. But here, not only is half the problem (if not more) caused bi ponies, but our heroines meddling is the opposite of useful, as you pointed out..

Honestly, if they’d just let Little Strongheart and Braeburn talk things out initially, the whole fight probably wouldn’t have happened. A lot of what brought them to that point was Rainbow, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie.

So yeah, I think in light of later seasons this is a better and more important episode than ever. Really, would it even have many complaints if not for the cowponies and Indians theme?

7162403

And that sums up my problem with this episode. This episode is nothing we haven’t seen before. It’s two sides fighting over some land. Both sides refuse to come to a compromise, thus resulting in a war.

Everyone has to meet the old classics somewhere. And when you put them in a kids show, odds are it will be some viewer's first exposure.

7162405

Yeah...that episode was not great. I think the writers were waaay too worried about being politically correct, and not insulting any Native Americans. Which I think they failed at, quite honestly.

In what way do you feel political correctness held them back?

7162403 You wanna know something? The writer of this episode, Dave Polsky, used to work for South Park early on. And given how weird and out of place a lot of the humor is here, it wouldn't surprise me if this episode was born out of an idea he had while still working for South Park. Especially with the supposed authority figures being useless and the whole conflict being exaggerated. But you know what makes it work there? South Park calls out both sides, it doesn't make one side completely in the right. It might also explain the really out there humor, especially when it makes our characters act dumber than usual.

7162498

Ah, Braeburn. Our first real member of the more extended Apple Family, and it's kind of hard not to like him - he's so nice! And energetic - honestly, if Cheese hadn't existed, he might have been one of the best matches for Pinkie.

The most I seem remember was him getting paired up with Rarity of all ponies most often, or Little Strongheart. What's odd is that here it looks like Applejack can't stand him in the least, but in all subsequent appearances that kind of hostility is nowhere to be seen, not even in "Appleloosa's Most Wanted".

This is still perhaps the best joke in the whole show from one of the funniest episodes in season one.
No, I do not take constructive criticism. Yes, fight me. Pies at dawn.

7162411
This guy, this guy gets it. The potential for food-based warfare is huge and I wish more fanstuff utilized it.
Consider: Manehattan drive-pies. Needing a license to make pastries sometimes. The phrase it's "cobblerin' time".

This honestly ranks as one of my least favorite episodes. There's some decent gags in there (the horse-drawn horse-drawn carriage is brilliant), but the overall message is Problematic At Best.

Like by the end of the episode you have the natives demanding unreasonable things of the settlers, repeatedly being the aggressors and starting fights against how the settlers are portrayed as just defending themselves and it ends with the natives going "Oh, if you give us some trinkets/pies and let us use a narrow strip of our own land we're okay with everything" which hot damn is one hell of a take for anybody with even passing knowledge of settler/First Nations relationships. I mean, it's a kid's show and obviously there's a lot you can't/shouldn't go into but that is some wild stuff to say when you're actively making allusions to real world situations.

7162546
On the other hand, it was the settlers who waltzed in and assumed the land was free for the taking. It's just that unlike in real life, they were willing to rethink that a bit when someone said otherwise. It was this that helped convince me that ponies were better than humans - but still prone to the same flaws.

7162500
The whole idea of settlers displacing Native Americans is still a sensitive issue, and I'm thinking they trivialized the struggle with a pie fight. I realize this is ultimately a kids' show, but it concerns me that one of America's darkest moments will be seen through the eyes of comedy.

7163835 I have to agree. It's not like the show never showed violence, when we got glimpses of war in "The Cutie Re-Mark Part 1" we got to see actual violence and consequences.

7163835
I get that this will be a more sensitive issue for some people (mostly Americans) than it is for me.

7163883
Season 1 had a lower rating. The use of the word "egghead" was questioned.

7164082 Even so, reducing "war" down to a glorified food fight is insulting, especially when a pie to the face is treated as a bullet wound for no reason at all.

7164635
It can have appeal in an absurdist way. And it wasn't all played safe - I don't think those buffalo were sharpening their horns to catch pies on them.

7164643 Still, this kind of desensitizing isn't funny or even dramatic, like everything else in this episode it feels way too weird and out of place. As I said before this feels like it was trying to go for a South Park style, without realizing why that kind of comedy works (and that it's probably not possible to recreate it anywhere else).

7164682
Never seen South Park nor want to, but it fit FIM's style well enough for me. I mean, you really don't expect serious fights from a TV-Y7 show. And while the real events may be serious, Western themes aren't generally treated as inherently so.

7162400
I realized something, why does this episode take place in a desert? I mean the native habitat of the Buffalo aka the Bison prairies and plains. Unless the Tribe was migrating through the desert to reach another grasslands or something.

7170028
Because the iconic West is dry and dusty, with cacti and tumbleweeds. Although your explanation for buffalo migration is a good one - perhaps they rotate between different area in different seasons to prevent overgrazing?

7170086
Good points.

7224314 You already posted this exact same point.