“Ah’m gonna have a blank flank forever!”
Episode written by Meghan McCarthy
Entirely unofficial reflections by sixcardroulette
This is a full-length Ponywatching essay. For a condensed review
of this episode, check out The Shorter Ponywatching!
The Ponywatching story so far: between Christmas and New Year just gone (2014), while staying with family for the holidays, we (as in, me, my wife and our children) were introduced to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic via the newly-released-in-Britain Season 1 DVD box set.
We watched all six episodes on the first disc, increasingly impressed with the show’s smart plotting, great acting, beautiful animation, excellent jokes, thoughtful world-building and believable characters, when quite honestly we’d expected none of those things going in.
We got to the “sixth” episode, Owl’s Well That Ends Well (not yet realising the running order on these British DVDs was all jumbled up), and experienced a bit of a comedown; it wasn’t bad, and had plenty of good gags and sweet moments, but also some clunky ones and a blurred sense of identity. It ended up being our least favourite episode so far, because it averaged out as, well, average – like I say, not bad, but not extraordinary, when every other episode so far had outshone its context, the standard of the “competition”, the surrounding field of kids’ TV animation.
We saw Owl’s Well That Ends Well late on New Year’s Eve, we were all tired, it wasn’t amazing, and so we weren’t as excited as we once were to carry on, to watch some more. The “fear”, if you can call it that, was that the excellently unexpected likes of Look Before You Sleep and Griffon The Brush Off would turn out to be outliers, early experiments, and that Owl’s Well… would be a much more accurate picture of what the show was actually like. (Given our pre-existing prejudices against the My Little Pony franchise, this didn’t seem such an outlandish leap as it does now seeing it written down.)
An artist’s representation of my family watching the show.
But New Year’s Day rolled around, and it was one of those lazy New Year’s Days where everyone is sleeping off the night before, and taking long naps in the middle of the day, and I’m up looking after the children while everyone else is still in bed, and they wanted to watch something… and after a couple of shots of Handy Manny and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, I see the My Little Pony DVD box and suggest we have a look at Disc 2.
Now, I’m not prejudiced against the show any more, not like I was when we first braced ourselves to watch the first episode – I’m still expecting it to be pretty good, just not necessarily any better than those other shows. Something kind of fun to pass the time. We cued up Call of the Cutie.
Reader, we watched all five episodes on that disc in a row, back to back, sitting riveted on the sofa as people drifted in and out (and, often, back in again, to watch the pony show). We rewatched several of them again straight away for the benefit of those who’d missed them first time around. The children were loving it. I was loving it. And by the end of it, I was no longer in any doubt: I was a fan of the show.
Call of the Cutie changed the rules and won my heart. I didn’t know there was a word for it yet, but I’d become… a brony.
In which the show apparently becomes its own spin-off
A question I’ve been asking myself while writing these reflections, and I don’t yet have (or expect to ever have) a proper answer: did the crazy running order in which I first saw these episodes actually work in my favour? For sure it’s lucky I wasn’t really paying close attention the first time I watched Owl’s Well That Ends Well, because it contains a few spoilers for this one and the impact certainly would have been lessened, but leaving aside egregious continuity mistakes like that, does “my” order work better than the “real” one? Or worse? Or about the same?
I’ve read some history about this episode, and it appears that this – the 12th one broadcast – is the first one a lot of bronies saw back in the day. The show had started to collect momentum from surprised adults recommending it to their disbelieving friends, and I’m given to understand this was the first episode shown after a midseason mini-hiatus, during which time a certain amount of early evangelisation took place, meaning a lot of people tuned in for the first time to be confronted with Call of the Cutie.
I don’t know how confusing it would have been to see this after eleven episodes; it was certainly confusing to see it after six.
Confusing in a good way, though. Call of the Cutie is a brave and radical expansion of the My Little Pony universe. Major new characters, major new locations, major new concepts with major implications: all are thrown at the audience right from the start, with minimal time to prepare.
Done poorly, this could have been disastrous, coming across like an overreaching mythology dump mixed with a hamfisted toy commercial, or a wretched attempt to launch a spin-off, leaving the viewer overwhelmed and feeling short-changed.
Instead, it works wonderfully. While it isn’t the best-written episode in the canon, nonetheless it’s almost a textbook case of how to smash the boundary walls down mid-season without everything collapsing: how to leave your fictional world with endless room to expand whilst never losing the “feel” you’ve already established. Put simply, after this, it feels like anything is possible, that that tantalising thread of ambition that felt like a gleam in the eye of this crazy show in those early days has been picked up and can never be lost again.
Watch this, say Lauren Faust and her team. Watch this. We may have just spent six (or eleven) episodes building up a consistent magical world, battling in the face of anti-pony prejudice to eschew the expected shoddy toy showcase and instead turn in a smart, funny sitcom that just happens to feature pastel-coloured talking horses – and now we’re going to risk it all by totally resetting the parameters of the show, just as you were starting to get comfortable. We’ve got an even bigger picture in mind, and we’ve had it in mind since day one; we were only waiting for the right moment to unleash it. And here it is.
The Wreck of the Cutieful
Call of the Cutie, which opens in a schoolroom we’ve never seen before as a teacher we’ve never seen before gives a lesson to a bunch of students none of whom we remember meeting before, is groundbreaking in that it not only expands the series’ lore (adding a pretty unique element which helped launch the creative fandom to new heights), but also the series’ core cast (adding, effectively, three new protagonists with their own quasi-independent social circle). In the same episode.
Which crazy new thing shall we talk about first? Cutie marks, or the Crusaders?
It’s an occupational hazard, writing this blog while Season 5 is going on. Since the new season so far appears to be much concerned with the mythology and methodology of cutie marks, and arguably the greatest focus on the Crusaders since the first season, it’s entirely possible that whatever I write here will end up being hopelessly outdated by the time the season finale airs. (It’s already happened once with Griffon The Brush Off, and I’m only seven episodes in!) So, if nothing else, you can look back on these thoughts and theories in a few months’ time with the full benefit of hindsight and laugh yourself silly.
It’s oddly fitting, given what we still don’t know yet about cutie marks, that the first one we ever see named as such is itself highly ambiguous.
Cutie marks first, then. This is the idea which, for me, changed Friendship is Magic from a fun show set in a world of cartoon ponies, to a really obviously well-thought-out show set in a very specific world of cartoon ponies, with rules as fascinating as the very best fantasy and sci-fi settings I’ve encountered. For sure it made me sit up and pay closer attention, and for sure it’s a big factor in why I’m sitting here now writing absurdly long essays about each episode; this, in many ways, was an upping of the ante, the show really starting to properly get its hooks into me beyond the level of “surprisingly well executed sitcom” as we’ve seen so far.
I had decided to become a teacher, and the flowers symbolised my hope that I could help my future students bloom if I nurtured them with knowledge; the smiles represented the cheer I hoped to bring to my little ponies while they were learning.
Lauren Faust apparently came up with this whole cutie mark concept while she was still a kid, which means we need to go delving into the history of plastic toy ponies from the 1980s. That’s right, this episode made me go and look up the actual history of My Little Pony to see how much of this was new and revolutionary, and how much of this was in the cartoon from the beginning and I’d just missed it.
This episode made me go and look up the actual history of My Little Pony. Just let that sink in there.
Bring On The Dancing Horses
(Without wanting to sound like one of those bronies in self-denial about liking the cute ponies, protesting too much and too loudly, well, I’m really only interested in the show, not the toys – but here, the story of the toys bleeds directly into the story of the show, and so it’s time to get our flashlights and hard hats and go down this particular rabbit hole.)
So. Research – yep, that happened – tells me that back in 1981, when Hasbro first introduced the My Pretty Pony doll line which would eventually develop into My Little Pony, it was intended as more of a realistic toy horse, ten inches tall and made of hard plastic:
Picture from www.ponylandpress.com, used by kind permission.
As part of a relaunch/revision in late ’81 or early 1982, the original designer, Bonnie Zacherle, included a new element, a symbol on the big, doleful toy Shetland pony’s flank, and changed the colour scheme from a realistic brown to a bright pastel pink:
Picture from www.ponylandpress.com, used by kind permission.
The redesign also carried over to the new “little pony” line (originally marketed as a baby version to go alongside the huge one, but later retconned into an adult). The markings in particular became one of the franchise’s defining features, as well as a stroke of marketing genius; the same moulds could be used to manufacture endless variations, individual “characters” distinguished only by colour and flank symbol.
Now, some G1 fans will surely come along here and correct me if I’m wrong – my memories of the 80s-generation ponies are very hazy, limited to snatches of the TV cartoon and half-remembered toys my sisters owned! – but I don’t recall there being any official mythos linked with the flank symbols; in my mind, they were always just used as a way to tell the different ponies apart. For Lauren Faust, they had a greater significance. Horses don’t have pictures on their butts. It must mean something.
Then, in 1984, Hasbro launched its first “proper” baby pony, “Ember”; whether by design, or through budgetary or technical limitations, the Ember toy had no symbol printed on its flank, and this pattern was followed by later baby pony toys in the range. Lauren made one of those amazing leaps of logic that children are so good at, that Friendship is Magic emulates so skilfully: the baby ponies have no symbols, the adult ponies have symbols, so it must mean they don’t get the symbols until they’re older. There aren’t any blank adult ponies, so – like puberty – every pony gets a symbol. But all the symbols are different, and tied to the pony’s name and/or personality.
It takes a special kind of genius to take something so muddy and messily-conceived from their childhood, and turn it into something that not only makes complete sense, but seems completely obvious in retrospect. It takes an even more special kind of genius not to delay using an awesome idea like this until they have every last detail of the mythology worked out, because it doesn’t need to be – get the frame up now, the walls can be painted later. And it takes the most special kind of genius of all to have this kind of series-making (and “beloved-old-plastic-toy-retroactively-justifying”) concept up her sleeve, and not use it until twelve episodes in.
Oh! Oh! Oh! When she dithcovers that certain something that makes her special!
If I was planning a My Little Pony reboot at the behest of a giant plastic toy conglomerate, and that idea had come into my head – whether I’d been sitting on it for a couple of days or thirty years – well, that’s the kind of opening speech I’d have put in the very first episode. I’d have let it totally define my show from the start. I surely wouldn’t have had what almost amounts to a second pilot episode, twelve weeks in, exploring the concept while simultaneously introducing a load of new characters and hardly using any of my awesome recently-established ones that everyone had just gotten used to. And that’s what separates the likes of Lauren Faust from the likes of me.
Damn, this show really is brilliant.
Young, Gifted and… Equine
(Incidentally, how long did it take you to realise “cutie mark” is a play on words referencing “beauty mark”, readers? I’ll start: two entire seasons. One of those “OHHHHHHH! Oh yeah. Duh.” moments. But I digress.)
So, we open in a schoolroom – the first time we’d really seen children characters on this show. Which brings us to the Crusaders, and the other new horizon-expanding thing the show decides to drop on us in the first two minutes of this episode.
This first season, I’d later discover, was made under the strictures of the Hub network’s “E/I” classification, which meant an explicit need to provide “educational and informative” content for the young audience as well as entertainment. One of the flaws in Elements of Harmony, the second half of the opening two-parter, was that our intrepid band of world-saving heroines had to repeatedly act like children in “learning” lessons for the benefit of the audience, but which seemed strangely inappropriate for their implied age within the show (I mean, that’s a concept which seemingly changes according to the needs of the plot in any given week anyway, but it usually stays relatively consistent within the same episode); similarly, in Owl’s Well That Ends Well it’s tempting to read Spike’s predicament (as my wife did!) in terms of a previous only child coming to terms with the arrival of a new baby sibling, another lesson directly relatable to the target audience.
By introducing the Cutie Mark Crusaders, the show takes care of that problem in quite an elegant fashion, introducing more obvious audience surrogates who can more realistically confront the kinds of trials and tribulations facing the intended audience: school troubles, big sisters, the approach of puberty, the pressures of growing up. (Call of the Cutie, which opens with a non-allegorical and entirely literal scene of school bullying in the face of a seemingly indifferent teacher, is a pretty head-on example of their purpose.)
That they still end up as rounded characters in their own right, each eventually able (as a group and individually) to easily bear the weight of carrying an episode, is a nice surprise. Just as none of the Mane Six are cardboard “token girl” cut-outs, or part of a simpering, homogenous “Stuff Girls Like” whole, so the Crusaders never become Token Schoolchildren either: they’re three very different personalities, and by and large they stay true to those personalities whenever they’re on-screen (the very few exceptions, I see as being analogous to the way the writers will casually throw in visual jokes and non-sequiturs for Pinkie Pie).
I can understand how people were supposedly put off by the Crusaders in the early days (especially if this confusing rule-changer of an episode was the first one they ever saw, especially if they’d been primed by friends and online hype to expect something more along the lines of the adult sitcom premises of earlier episodes). For sure, the Crusaders almost feel like a spin-off being set up before our eyes, and their young age gives rise to a lot more “cute little pony” behaviour than the previous main cast had allowed the writers (who’d until now been stuck with Spike as the only youngster, and he’s already established as an unexpectedly snarky and mature character, more of an adolescent than a kid).
Even today, a lot of bronies seem to see them as a sore point, a Wesley Crusher for the new generation (and when I was at school, nobody wanted to be Wesley, and nobody who watched Star Trek was excited to see someone “just like us!” up there on screen); when that perennial “what’s the best episode to show potential bronies?” question arises, amid all the conflicting advice, there’s always one constant: nothing involving the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
Freeze frame bonus from Friendship is Magic, Part 1! “Special magical connection”, eat your heart out.
Well, get a load of this: I like the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and I liked them right from the start. What does that say about me? I’ve no idea. But I wasn’t just impressed that the show was introducing new characters mid-flow to correct what I’d felt was an inherent flaw (and thereby freeing the Mane Six from some restrictions!); as well as their structural, storytelling function, I liked the Crusaders as characters in their own right.
Blackboard Jungle
Apple Bloom has a bit of an advantage here in that she gets virtually a whole episode to introduce herself to the audience, albeit an audience simultaneously getting their heads around the concept of cutie marks. Here’s where the writers distinguish themselves straight away, and it underlines the importance of proper preparation before pen ever meets paper: we couldn’t have any of the established characters “learn” this apparently elementary (but actually radical) stuff, and so Apple Bloom is introduced as a more plausible audience cipher. If she hadn’t been part of the plan from the very start, it would have been necessary to invent her.
As is the case on a much broader level with the show as a whole, Meghan McCarthy (featuring for the first time here on Ponywatching) and the other writers couldn’t start with a blank sheet of paper, but rather had certain points they needed to hit. For the show as a whole, that’s whatever toy Hasbro is demanding they hawk this month, or (in this first series) the need to incorporate some of that “educational and informational” content to satisfy Standards and Practices. For this episode in particular, it’s to introduce, broadly explain, and then explore the concept of the cutie mark. How do the writers deal with the imposition of these restrictions on the script? By quite literally taking us back to school, with a lesson about cutie marks.
(Also, it’s a really believable lesson – I love the class’ reactions to Cheerilee showing them pictures of herself first as a foal, then as a teenager in full 80s disco outfit complete with legwarmers and frizzy, permed mane.)
“Look at her hair!”
Anyway. It’s interesting to me that this lesson is taking place after most of the class already have their marks, and yet Apple Bloom’s enthralled reaction as she concentrates and takes copious notes suggests that this information is largely new to her – so it’s possible ponies get their cutie marks before knowing what’s happening to them (another puberty analogue!)
We’ve already seen abusive characters in the past, most notably in the form of Gilda the highly unpleasant griffon from Griffon The Brush Off – but by introducing a more specific audience surrogate in Apple Bloom, the show gets the chance to explore the issue of bullying without metaphor or clumsy age-shifting. Apple Bloom isn’t the most popular child in school, and her bullies aren’t symbolic, they’re actual bullies, two incredibly obnoxious little sods named Silver Spoon and (particularly) Diamond Tiara:
(Fun fact: Googling the uncensored phrase “f*ck off, Diamond Tiara” (with quotes) brings up 114 hits as of the time of writing).
While Apple Bloom is trying to learn – for good reason, as we’ll find out in a second – Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon keep annoyingly pssst!-ing her to pass a note; she tries to ignore them, but they get increasingly intrusive until finally Apple Bloom gives in and tries to pass the note. Within milliseconds of her doing so, Cheerilee barks at her for interrupting the lesson and demands to see what was so important – bonus points for Apple Bloom completely freezing on the spot rather than coming up with a clever excuse:
Uh…. I… umm….?
Cheerilee is uncharacteristically useless here, which makes it a bit of a shame this is our first introduction to her. Sure, I had a fairly specific geek-memory grade-school flashback shudder when Apple Bloom gets called out instantly for trying to pass the note (hey, it happens! The one time you remonstrate with the idiots at the back of the class who’ve been arsing about for five straight mintues is the exact moment the teacher decides to come over and you’re hopelessly busted while the others all feign innocence)… but that’s just dumb luck.
…Remind you of anypony?! 🙂
However, even glossing over her entirely unnecessarily providing the bullies with the (excellent) taunt “blank flank” on a plate, the fact she’s clearly within earshot as Diamond Tiara mocks Apple Bloom, even turning to react when Tiara laughs, but chooses to do nothing about it? That just makes it seem like she’s part of the problem. And I really like Cheerilee, and the Crusaders all look up to her, so I don’t want her to be part of the problem.
On a wider level, in retrospect the whole setup is kind of clumsy – why doesn’t Apple Bloom know Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle already? If they go to the same school, why are Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon so keen to pick on Apple Bloom as the only one in the class without her cutie mark? There are only, like, nine ponies in the class! And if they don’t go to the same school… well, that just poses further, messier questions!
(In fact, it appears someone on the show had the same idea – one of the ponies in the establishing schoolroom shot which opens the episode is clearly a recoloured version of Scootaloo, complete with random cutie mark, while a palette-swapped Sweetie Belle is visible from another angle (although oddly the alternate colouring sometimes disappears, leaving Sweetie very clearly in shot); to me, this all strongly suggests (though not conclusively) that both Crusaders were originally featured in the scene before someone reconsidered, not wanting to diminish the impact of what was to come. It worked on us, because we didn’t notice the first time.)
Who are those mysterious ponies in the front row?
But this episode, and this scene, is really all about first impressions, while all of this carping is based on stuff we noticed or thought about later. We didn’t start questioning this sort of thing – or, indeed, the wider mythos of just what it means to get a cutie mark (predestination? Sign of true calling? Bestowing of talent? Benign curse?) – until much further down the line. For now, I was just impressed with the storytelling.
Holding back characters like Apple Bloom and Cheerilee, so that when we have an exposition dump to work through, they can still open the action in this hitherto-unseen schoolhouse, with a lesson about cutie marks, delivered both in-universe and out, is an elegant solution to those restrictions I mentioned; honestly, even though there’s a lot of exposition needed here to carry the burden of introducing this concept, well, it was enough for me. It hooked me.
Just in case anyone hadn’t picked up on it yet, the camera zooms in on Apple Bloom’s flank, and sure enough, she’s not got her cutie mark yet. We zoom out slowly, keeping focus on Apple Bloom as the shot gets wider and wider to encompass a class of happy laughing and chatting ponies (including the weirdly-recoloured ones in the front row), while a clearly perturbed Apple Bloom frowns in worry.
Time to look at the actual episode, I guess. Cue the theme music!
In which Apple Bloom discovers a new life goal
So Apple Bloom and her fellow “blank flank” Twist, a pony with thick glasses who speaks with a pronounced and squeaky lisp, leave the schoolroom together and are immediately rounded on by the two little antagonists.
I don’t think that’s too harsh a word. Diamond Tiara – the apparent ringleader, and more ghastly of the two – for me represents one of the show’s most potent adversaries; sure, she doesn’t stomp about trying to enslave the world or destroy empires or whatever, but she’s such a believable, realistic threat, she’s virtually indestructible (for sure, the Magic of Friendship (TM) would help her immeasurably, but nobody’s going to blast a filly with a rainbow laser), and what’s even more grindingly depressing, the threat she poses is so… banal.
Tiara isn’t doing this for any grand purpose, other than maintaining her place of power in her little classroom clique; she simply makes others’ lives miserable for the sake of it. She doesn’t hate Apple Bloom on any kind of personal level beyond the exercise of schoolyard power, but they’re enemies nonetheless, pointlessly and destructively.
(ostentatious pause for effect)
Ooh, I really don’t like her.
There’s an element of class to this, as well – Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, as their (determinative?) names rather suggest, are wealthy and overprivileged, and – while we’ll later discover the Apple family are not only likely among the biggest and wealthiest landowners in Ponyville (albeit with most of their money tied up in land) but also directly responsible for Diamond Tiara’s family fortune – for now their bullying takes on an unpleasantly sneering edge as well, the two mid-Atlantic snobs looking down on the farm girl with the rural mannerisms and strong Southern accent.
Still, props to the writers for creating such realistic school villains. I especially like the fact that it’s so casually dropped into conversation that Diamond Tiara has in fact only just got her cutie mark: she’s the perfect encapsulation of the latecomer bully. I envisage Tiara as someone who, having secretly felt horribly insecure about her continuing place at the head of the pack, now not only acts as though she was super-confident the whole time, but also lashes out at those in whose (horse) shoes she was only recently standing.
“Bump! Bump! Sugarlump rump!” (giggles)
(sotto voce) Gimme a break.
Twist, who gets it in the neck from the bullies as badly as anyone, seems even younger than her classmates. She’s sugary and sweet and almost obtrusively inoffensive, trying to cheer up Apple Bloom with a heavily lampshaded offer of some of her home-made candy, to no avail.
I feel kind of bad for Twist in this episode. It’s never really clear how close a friendship she and Apple Bloom share, but it only ever really feels like a relationship born of convenience rather than anything else; the only thing these two have in common with each other is taken away ten minutes in, and after that, she’s scarcely ever seen again; Apple Bloom moves on, and Twist disappears to become the star of her own unseen story. In a show that’s at heart about friendship, and which even in the few episodes we’ve seen so far has seen fit to explore the idea that friendships aren’t always entirely mutual, it’s kind of interesting to see one fall by the wayside without drama.
Apples To The Core
I hadn’t actually realised who Apple Bloom even was until this point – of course she’d been introduced in the blizzard of names and cutie marks when Twilight Sparkle first visited Sweet Apple Acres back in episode 1, but we’d long since forgotten her between, and so it was a surprise to see Apple Bloom on the farm with her sister Applejack in the next scene:
Yes, even though Cheerilee explicitly called her “Apple Bloom” right at the start there, and even though she’s got the same non-specific Southern accent as Applejack, I somehow hadn’t put the two together until now. Duh, me.
Anyway. Apple Bloom may or may not have even known what a cutie mark was until that day’s lesson, but it very quickly becomes her number one priority in life, even if nobody outside her immediate social circle seems particularly bothered – another neat parallel to the whole “puberty analogy” thing.
Don’t get yer mane in a tangle. You’ll get yer cutie mark. Everypony gets one eventually!
Course you can. Y’know, I was the last pony in my class to get my cutie mark… and I couldn’t be prouder of it! I knew my future was to run Sweet Apple Acres, and these bright shiny apples sealed the deal.
Unlike Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, Applejack is realistic – maybe it’s meant to be telling that she was the last in her class to get her cutie mark (which, we’ll later see, was because she needed to leave home and find herself before she could appreciate her true calling), but also I like that this episode sets up yet another fascinating inter-pony dynamic for the show (and we weren’t short of them to begin with) – Applejack acting as a kind of mother figure for her little sister, in the conspicuous absence of their actual parents. Here, she tries her best to reassure Apple Bloom that there’s nothing “wrong” with her.
Come to think of it, Granny Smith was the last one in her class, too! Huh, same with Big McIntosh.
Of course, it doesn’t have the desired effect, as with so many of Applejack’s attempts at surrogate-parenting; I’ve said before that Applejack is my favourite pony, and alongside Look Before You Sleep and the next one, this was one of the key early episodes that formed my initial impressions of her. From Call of the Cutie, I built up a mental portrait of her as a hardworking, well-meaning but slightly out of her depth young single parent, having to balance a demanding full-time job with raising a tweenage daughter, though luckily she can count on her close family to pitch in as much as everypony can.
And then I realise that on the one hand I’m analysing the realistic family portrayal of a group of cartoon farmer ponies, and on the other hand I also kind of want to be part of a family like that, and I realise this show is not only better than I’d expected, it’s also better than I’d given it credit so far.
A Family Affair
So, AJ’s words of wisdom cut little ice with Apple Bloom, who from now on – not just in this episode, but to an extent for the rest of the show’s run, as of the time of writing – will be at least partly defined by her quest to gain her cutie mark. (Quite how big that “partly” is is a theme I’ll come back to a few more times yet.)
It’s not even an obsession with discovering what one’s true purpose in life might be; Apple Bloom is apparently motivated as much by simply wanting to get a cutie mark, any cutie mark, as she is by finding out what the future holds for her. The rest of this episode sees an increasingly frantic Apple Bloom trying to earn her mark in time for Tiara’s cuteceañera, calling in the assistance of four of the Mane Six; I don’t know why Fluttershy doesn’t get a turn, but Rarity is left out for narrative reasons (which themselves only become clear in later episodes when we find out just who Sweetie Belle is).
Anyhow. Hilariously – and perhaps adding further evidence to the “didn’t know much about cutie marks” theory – Apple Bloom seems not to have noticed the recurring theme of the Apple family, which finally strikes her as she talks to her sister Applejack while working on the Apple family’s apple farm, which is called Sweet Apple Acres.
…Runs in the family. Runs in the family! RUNS IN THE FAMILY! You’ve got apples for your cutie mark, Granny Smith has an apple pie, Big McIntosh has an apple half… my unique talent must have somethin’ to do with apples!
She makes me feel a bit less dumb for not realising she was Applejack’s sister.
Oh yeah – as I write this blog, I occasionally make a note of things my children laughed at which might have otherwise gone unnoticed. Here’s one of them:
(crash!)
What A Way To Make A Living
The episode divides neatly into segments from here on in as Apple Bloom consults one of our main established characters for advice and assistance; three of them are sitcom set-pieces, and the first comes with Apple Bloom “helping” Applejack sell apples from a market stall.
Sweet Apple Acres really is a boon for storytellers, as it gives AJ (and the whole Apple family) multiple job scenarios to give rise to comedy and drama scenes; depending on the episode, we see Applejack planting, farming, processing, cooking, selling or wholesaling apples and apple-related products for a living, without ever really delving into what the family business model is meant to be besides them having permanent access to a vast quantity of raw apples. Today, Applejack is a market trader selling apples directly to the public, and it’s just about believable.
So, AJ (presumably against her better judgement) brings Apple Bloom along to market for the morning, to learn one of the family’s many trades:
(She underlines the point by grabbing a tennis racquet with her mouth and “serving” an apple at speed into the distance, quickly followed by an offscreen “Hey!”)
This little scene is funny for two reasons: Apple Bloom’s clueless and wildly inappropriate sales techniques, and Applejack’s increasingly frustrated reaction as she tries to save face in front of her regular customers.
After Apple Bloom hassles one of them to the extent it feels like a shakedown (having reluctantly bought an apple, he throws a large amount of coins down and runs away without taking his change), she triumphantly declares that her work is done:
I want to see fan art of that “satisfied customer” cutie mark. Of course, no such thing has happened.
…I’m sorry, ma’am. Ma’am!
…
But Apple Bloom isn’t listening – she’s already busy surreptitiously unloading a huge amount of apples into Bon Bon’s saddlebag.
I didn’t put those in my bag!
Applejack (element of honesty, remember!) rushes in to put a stop to the attempted swindle and to try and smooth things over, giving away vast quantities of free apples in an attempt at pacifying the irate customer:
(stony-faced silence)
Forced “smiles” all around.
Having had to write off what looked like several hundred bits’ worth of apples, Applejack tries to send Apple Bloom home, which leads to a lovely little scene between the sisters; AJ barks irritably at her, Apple Bloom gets defensive, stomps her hoof and refuses to leave, and so – much like she did with Rarity in the finale of Look Before You Sleep – Applejack, not without sympathy, takes a softer and more effective approach.
Maybe it’s because I wasn’t expecting any adult/child interactions in the show, never mind sweetly realistic ones, but this one really felt like it hit the ground running. Smash cut to me sitting on the sofa with my children watching this for the first time, we’re all enjoying it (I’ve no qualms about admitting that much by this point!), but I’m also appreciating how well the writers have caught the right tone. Applejack plays the strict parent with both gravitas and understanding, Apple Bloom the rebellious child who still appreciates AJ is only looking out for her. And I’m asking why seemingly the children’s show that’s got this stuff closest to being right is the one that’s meant to be a brazen toy commercial featuring magical horses.
Let’s Twist Again
AJ, being a very good sister, takes a softer tack and so draws any sting from Apple Bloom’s resounding failure. Having established that Apple Bloom isn’t the only filly in her class without a cutie mark, she suggests she go to the cuteceañera with Twist; there’s something really sweet about Ashleigh Ball’s delivery here which suggests that Applejack is speaking from experience:
Hold on there, young’un, there’s still time for a bit more comedy:
“HEY! Who’s been using my racquet?!”
And so Apple Bloom flounces off to find Twist, and Except, with crushing inevitability, Twist has only gone and gotten her cutie mark overnight; Apple Bloom’s reaction is believable, if not particularly edifying. Rather than be happy for her friend, she goes into a depressive sulk, despite Twist’s continued attempts to be friendly:
With exquisitely cruel timing, the bullies choose that particular moment to walk past:
Twisting the knife like that is such a realistic depiction of what bullies can be like. No threat of violence, no undue pressure, just cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Poor, distraught Apple Bloom, I’m cringing for her here. She heads off for a cry, and we head off for an act break.
In which Apple Bloom starts to panic
Apple Bloom sits teary-eyed in the shade, and Rainbow Dash’s cheerful face appears from the top of the frame.
Wow, looks like somepony’s got a dark cloud hanging over her head!
And we pan out to reveal:
Yeah, everyone saw it coming a mile away and groaned, but hey, it’s still funny. Go on then, have your laugh, you earned it. Anyway, we get the first moment of Rainbow Dash being the cool big sister; not only does she step in right away to “coach” Apple Bloom, but the activities she chooses for her imply a certain amount of respect for the filly’s abilities. Either that, or she’s just a jock who thinks everyone likes the same stuff she does. Either way: Rainbow Dash, everypony!
Cutie mark? I can get you a cutie mark like that!
Hey! Who are you gonna listen to? Applejack? …Or the pony who was first in her class to get a cutie mark?
Dash’s contemptuous impersonation of Applejack as she says her name – complete with vacant, wall-eyed expression and leg-flailing “bucking” mime:
…was understandable, given we hadn’t really seen the show’s two tomboy ponies interact much yet (for us, Applebuck Season isn’t for another couple of DVDs yet!), but still pretty rude given she’s talking to Applejack’s beloved sister. Maybe she doesn’t know how close Applejack and Apple Bloom are? Or maybe they’re already so close that Rainbow can do this sort of thing without causing offence? But that’s a story for another day.
So Apple Bloom accepts Rainbow Dash as her coach. Dash, whose athletic abilities are never in question, has already been shown – in the pilot, and also the early scenes of Griffon the Brush Off – to be both a little lazy and a little impatient, as well as inclined towards an “act now, think later” attitude to problem-solving, and (of course) tremendously self-centred. All of that combines in her advice to Apple Bloom, telling her to effectively junk what she’s learned so far, because:
It strikes me that it’s arguable, given how little information Cheerilee gave about the process, that Rainbow Dash’s bad advice here is at least partly what drives not only this episode but all of the Crusaders’ episodes in the future, in terms of actively keeping them from successfully pursuing their cutie marks; Scootaloo (who hero-worships Rainbow Dash anyway, to the point of basically wanting to be her) is similarly disdainful of the (obviously correct!) “finding who you really are” and “concentrate on what you already love doing” business, in favour of Rainbow’s throwing-stuff-against-the-wall approach waiting for an epiphany, on the post hoc grounds that it apparently worked for her.
Anyway, we get a kind of funny montage of Rainbow Dash coaching Apple Bloom through various activities, each of which she starts off well enough before failing miserably: juggling, hang gliding, karate, kite-flying, Ultra Pony Roller Derby… all without success.
I get the feeling this whole sequence was probably a bit funnier on the page than it ends up on screen, but it’s still pretty good as montages go. It just doesn’t really translate to a written wrap-up. (Strange – doing these essays, I can sometimes get several paragraphs out of a single line, and then almost nothing out of several minutes of screen time).
By the end of it, Apple Bloom is exhausted and visibly demoralised. While Rainbow Dash searches her Twilight-esque checklist for something else they can try, once more, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon choose that exact time to walk past. Unwilling to deal with their nonsense right now, Apple Bloom dives behind a tree while the two bullies (who may or may not have seen her – the scene works well either way) stroll along talking very loudly and pointedly:
Rainbow Dash, buried in her checklist, didn’t notice any of this, but Apple Bloom is starting to really panic.
Enter Ponyville’s resident non-sequitur delivery system.
…You look like you’d be good at eating cupcakes!
This idea clearly catches Apple Bloom’s imagination, especially after a long afternoon of extreme sports and martial arts. Her trying to let Rainbow Dash down gently is a great little moment:
Cake Walk
Of course, Pinkie is just about as nuts as we’ve yet seen her; Apple Bloom follows her in the expectation of eating cupcakes, which wasn’t what Pinkie was offering at all, but she just goes along with it anyway:
I don’t have any cupcakes?!
(gasp) But you look like you’d be good at helping me make some!
Cue a great little song about cupcakes, the first one we’d heard since Pinkie’s original giggle at the ghostly number back in the pilot. Bear in mind we hadn’t seen Winter Wrap Up and so missed the wonderfully cathartic moment when the show truly commits to being a musical and bursts into song for the first time; for us, this was the first example of the show sidestepping a boring passage of exposition or hard work by using a song, and it felt like it only happened because we’d already had one montage this episode and so doing another one straight after in the kitchen just wouldn’t have worked.
But we didn’t mind, because this song is not only stupidly catchy (my children request it often on Youtube, which makes me burn with a particular disdain for the person who made the video of the same name about Pinkie secretly being a serial killer), it also gives rise to a really beautiful animation sequence.
And that’s the art of the ca-a-a-ake!
Pinkie is like some sort of kitchen ballerina, apparently lighter than air as she bounces around and stretches and dances, with a surprising deftness of touch, balancing and spinning a tray on her nose, nonchalantly launching a spoon of vanilla extract spiralling across the screen in a graceful parabola. She’s also a highly competent baker; one of the things I like about this show is how it underlines each of the ponies is actually very good at their jobs, however strangely they might act. Just as with Fluttershy in the cold open to Swarm of the Century, it’s lovely to see Pinkie full of joy and completely in her element – and, like I said, it’s all beautifully animated.
She also violates the laws of physics, not only appearing impossibly out of the edges of the frame (a Pinkie Pie hallmark by now), but also actually appearing on screen multiple times in the same shot:
Too many Pinkie Pies.
It’s glorious.
We cut from the song’s triumphant conclusion – cupcakes! Cupcakes! CUPCAKES! – to a kitchen warzone, Apple Bloom apparently having used every utensil, appliance, pot and bowl in the place in her efforts to make the said cakes. She grabs the latest batch of cakes, burning herself as she takes the hot tray out of the oven (with the potholder in her mouth, adorably) …
…and they’re inedible charcoal. Although Pinkie Pie is undaunted, declaring they look “much better than the last batch” (which perhaps thankfully we didn’t see), and gamely taking a huge bite (complete with audible horrible crunch noise that does not suggest tasty cupcakes).
Apple Bloom is distraught, until Pinkie Pie points out there’s something on her flank:
Of course not.
I love that she’s so completely, innocently unaware of how harshly she’s just dashed Apple Bloom’s hopes:
At which point Twilight Sparkle walks in on the carnage, which is lucky, because Apple Bloom looks like she’s about to have some sort of breakdown.
Cutie In The Eye Of The Beholder
So, it’s time for Twilight to be roped in as a fourth cutie mark mentor; logically it might have made sense for Apple Bloom to consult the librarian and find out more about how the cutie mark process works, but dramatically that could have been both boring and unnecessarily constrictive – however much us geeks would love to have this stuff clarified once and for all! – and besides, we’re running short on time. Accordingly, Twilight’s assigned role (by Apple Bloom as much as the needs of the show) is to fix things with magic, not books, and she only gets a brief cameo to try.
Even the steam/smoke looks malodorous.
…No, thank you. (off Apple Bloom’s look) …Not that they don’t look… delicious.
Tara Strong gives yet another outstanding reading there.
Oh no, Apple Bloom. A cutie mark is something a pony has to discover for herself.
But Apple Bloom won’t take no for an answer, and so, worn down by relentless pestering, Twilight gives it her best shot (quite literally – she gets into a pre-snap stance, aims her horn at Apple Bloom’s flank, and scrunches up her face with the effort). Sure enough, a cutie mark appears…
I was faintly disappointed it wasn’t the Satisfied Customer one.
…and promptly immediately disappears again.
Twilight tries again, as cutie mark after cutie mark after cutie mark appears and disappears, each time accompanied with a satisfying ptwoeeeooing! noise, thirteen times by my count, before Apple Bloom gives it up as hopeless. Pan across to an exhausted, sweating Twilight Sparkle, almost collapsed from the exertion:
(panting) I… told you… that not even magic can make a cutie mark appear before its time!
Poor Apple Bloom; she already knew that, but she’s desperate enough to have tried anyway, and she’s crushed. We zoom in, the frame tightly cropped to Apple Bloom’s face as she walks out of the room:
…And we zoom out again, to find Apple Bloom has somehow wandered right into the middle of the party she was vowing to skip:
In which Apple Bloom is Apple Doomed
The cleverness of this setup kind of sailed over my head first time out. On later re-watchings, with the benefit of having seen Applebuck Season in particular, it still took me a second to piece this together, even while Apple Bloom is looking around her in disbelief: Pinkie is a baker and a party planner, and so it’s entirely natural she’d be hosting and catering the party, and that Apple Bloom simply forgot this detail in her rush to obtain a cupcake-eating cutie mark. Meanwhile, Twilight was only in the kitchen because she’s about to go to the party next door as a chaperone. I do love a show that rewards rewatching. I wasn’t expecting My Little Pony to be a prime example.
But however we got there, Apple Bloom turning up at the party without yet having received her cutie mark wasn’t really much of a surprise; narrative-wise, it was being set up as almost an inevitable outcome. What did surprise me – and it probably shouldn’t have done, since the show has already built a history of never taking the easy way out! – was that this coming-of-age storyline wasn’t actually wrapped up by the time the episode ended.
(Of course, if you’d told me that we’d have to wait – spoiler alert! – at least another four full seasons without any kind of resolution, I’m not sure what my reaction would have been. For sure I was assuming Apple Bloom would get her mark by the end of this episode, and then by the end of the next one she’s in, and so on for a few more episodes yet, until it finally clicked just how long a long game the writers were playing here.)
Here’s how I blithely assumed the episode would play out: Apple Bloom finds the courage to face up to Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, comes to a realisation that there are lots of things she’s already good at, her cutie mark appears alongside some sort of moral about it being hard to have confidence in your true talent, or something. Not exactly an “easy” way out (these are hardly lightweight themes to be tossing around, after all) but an acceptably neat one from a narrative point of view.
Instead, none of that happens. As ever, the show chooses a stranger, tougher, but ultimately more rewarding path. Apple Bloom panics and tries to leave without being noticed; twice she almost escapes, and twice she somehow snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. The first time is an elaborate comic setup – she tries to hide herself amid the festivities (there’s a superb little moment where one of the guests takes a bite of a beautifully iced cupcake, only to discover with a disgusted spit-take that it’s one of Apple Bloom’s “charred gristle” efforts from the previous scene, which Pinkie has apparently decorated and served up anyway!).
She hides behind a series of things that are quickly moved – most confusingly, a bunch of balloons which are promptly popped by this guy:
Inviting this guy to a party seems like a health and safety paperwork nightmare.
…before eventually hiding under the drinks table, which she tries to use to shield her from view the last twenty yards to the front door. Cue another hilarious moment: a pony sees the drinks table unattended, looks around furtively to make sure nobody’s watching, then helps herself to a big slurp directly from the punch bowl before wiping her mouth and nonchalantly strolling away.
I found out later that fan lore has dubbed this pony Berry Punch, Ponyville’s resident high-functioning town drunk. For now, it was enough that some random pony with a bunch of grapes as her cutie mark (a fruit farmer? A vintner?) just took a drink right out of the bowl. And wiped her mouth afterwards with her hoof. And then walked off as though nothing happened. Honestly, I was laughing so much at this point, mainly because I just wasn’t expecting this amount of awesome little visual jokes.
But back to poor Apple Bloom, who’s almost made it to the threshold…
…only to bump into her sister, who very publicly dumps her right back on the other side of the room.
And just to round off Apple Bloom’s frustration, Applejack notices Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon hovering menacingly in the far corner:
I didn’t like that moment, because Applejack is normally so in tune with what’s going on in a given situation, it feels wrong that she’d not only mistake Apple Bloom’s bullies for her friends, but also completely fail to pick up on her vibe of uneasiness. My head has papered over these cracks by imagining that Apple Bloom has never told Applejack about how these horrible spiteful little brats have treated her, because otherwise surely AJ would have some choice words for them and their parents.
Thrown back into the mix, and out in the open, and with Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon circling like sharks who can smell blood, Apple Bloom grabs a tablecloth to whip into a makeshift dress. She looks ridiculous, especially in a crowd of ponies wearing party outfits and – inexplicably – decorative saddles, but she obviously prefers that to feeling self-conscious about her blank flank.
Despite her earlier boast, Tiara’s dress does not, in fact, show off her cutie mark at all.
F*ck off, Diamond Tiara.
Desperate and clutching at straws, Apple Bloom decides to flat out lie her way out of the confrontation; besides telling the truth and facing up to her tormentors, the only other path open to her is a massively implausible stretch, saying she got her cutie mark earlier that day. I like that she thinks fast, anyway – pressed by the bullies to show them her new mark, she comes up with a quick excuse:
Well played. Tiara isn’t totally buying it, but nor is she completely confident that Apple Bloom’s threat is made up; after a quick cost/benefit calculation (she’s going to grow up to be quite the natural leader, this one), she decides to play it safe:
Forced “smiles” run in the family too, it would seem.
And Apple Bloom leaves in apparent triumph with a big smile, before her face immediately snaps back to concern as soon as they can’t see her. She knows this is a temporary short-term fix, trading potential humiliation tomorrow for some respite today. (Besides, who knows, maybe she’ll get her mark overnight, and it really will be “so unbelievably amazing”? It could happen, right?)
She heads straight for the front door – don’t look nobody directly in the eye, but don’t look away neither – with her head held high and her gait as confident as she can manage, resisting the urge to break into a terrified run, and she’s almost there… almost there!… and then she trips on her tablecloth “dress”, and goes flying into the record player.
Leaving aside the question of just how and why the ponies have a record player at all, it lends a superbly plausible gloss on the old “music stops abruptly with a loud needle scratch” trope – Apple Bloom literally knocks the needle off the record, causing everyone to look around at her. Not least Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, who both zoom into the frame with sadistic little grins on their faces.
I like the way they just appear like that, it’s incredibly menacing.
Apple Bloom’s quiet, defeated “(oh, no!)” is one of the saddest things in the whole series.
There’s nothing to do here but squirm as the bullies catch Apple Bloom in a lie, and gleefully give her – and us – both barrels.
And everyone laughs, and Apple Bloom cowers and wishes the ground would swallow her up. “Poor Apple Bloom”, as my daughter said.
And then, one of the most awesome moments in the entire run of the show.
The Cavalry Arrives
(…you know, ‘cos they’re… horses?)
“You got a problem with blank flanks?”
I still remember, vividly, how I felt hearing that for the first time. Someone in the audience is going to stand up to Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon? And that wasn’t an adult’s voice, either. Who said that?
I said, you got a problem with blank flanks?
Diamond Tiara is visibly taken aback that someone has – perhaps for the first time ever – dared to stand up to her. For once, she loses her composure, and she has no response. It’s up to her lieutenant to splutter a half-formed riposte:
…No, it means she’s full of potential.
Do you know, that honestly, hand on heart, hadn’t occurred to me once: everypony has been working on the assumption that a cutie mark could be deterministic, locking its owner onto a particular inevitable path, but nopony until now questioned whether that was necessarily a good thing. Put simply, that’s the first time anyone in this episode has talked about the good in being a blank flank, and it’s liberating.
The crowd’s nervous laugh mirrored my own there; the bullies are clearly raging, but they’ve been well and truly told off, and it’s glorious. Why have Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo stepped in to defend Apple Bloom? They don’t even know her or who she is. They surely know who Diamond Tiara is, and the potential consequences of crossing her, especially at her own party when she could legitimately play the sympathy card… but sometimes, enough is enough.
Call me an idiot, but I truly didn’t see that coming, and it floored me. (Which is why I was so glad I hadn’t noticed Scootaloo’s cameo in Owl’s Well That Ends Well, and presumably why the animators made the changes to obscure Scoots and Sweetie in the opening here.)
We thought we were the only two!
At this, Diamond Tiara splutters into reaction and shouts at Twilight. If only she knew what was going to happen in a couple of seasons’ time, she might have held her tongue…
And they got all the time in the world to figure it out. Not just an afternoon!
I love everything about this resolution. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle are already friends, but they needed a third to complete the team, and to face the world embracing their lack of a cutie mark… and now there are three of them. Apple Bloom isn’t alone and won’t be alone, not just in this episode, but forever. Think how easy it would have been for her to learn a lesson without introducing two more new major characters into the mix, or for Sweetie Belle or Scootaloo to barely feature again – indeed, that’s the fate which really did befall poor, forgotten Twist.
(Although she’s clearly having a good time anyway. I was genuinely glad about that.)
Instead, it turns out this episode was actually less about what it’s like to be Apple Bloom, and more what it’s like to be a blank flank, and why children shouldn’t build up their fears over being different until they grow too big and crush them… and so in fact it’s already introduced us, in a way, to Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, by introducing us to the world they inhabit. The manner of their on-screen arrival, their coming to Apple Bloom’s rescue in such a beautiful moment, cements them as heroes – but even before they appear, without realising it, we’ve been conditioned to want to really like these two. And now, these three.
How could we not be? We’re totally alike. We don’t have cutie marks, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon drive us crazy…
Totally crazy!
(Compare and contrast to what we’ve seen between the older ponies in previous episodes. Friendship lesson taught by implication rather than explicit statement: young kids make friends far more easily than teenagers and adults.)
So the show doesn’t wrap everything up in a neat little bow, and I’m delighted with that. Instead, it seems to be setting up its own spin-off, barely months into its existence; the three youngsters form a secret society, the CuteTastically Fantastics Cutie Mark Crusaders, to work together and earn their cutie marks.
They’re awesome. I’m glad the purported spin-off never happened (not that I know whether it was ever actually something which was officially mooted, or just fan speculation?) – because I think these three give the writers a lot more breathing room to develop stories for the rest of the cast, and because I like seeing what happens to these three ponies in this universe. Individually, I like them all, but I also like the fact that they can combine and blend into a single giggly, bouncy entity at will too; and most of all, I like that they’re indefatigable, that no matter how many times they fail, they never give up.
…And That’s How Equestria Was Made
What a difference 22 minutes can make. I went into this one with low expectations; by the end, I was left extremely impressed, with my respect for the show having gone up several notches. I started to process the thought: I was just blown away by an episode of My Little Pony.
I was just blown away by an episode of My Little Pony.
Whoa.
And I looked over at my son, who was also watching with rapt attention, and suddenly had another thought – wow, my son likes My Little Pony too. Is that going to be a problem? Was this meant for him? Is it going to cause problems at school?
(reading) “…can actually be the thing that helps you make your closest friends and realize how special you are.”
You know what? He’s going to be fine.
We want to watch the next one. Heck, no pretence now: I want to watch the next one. This may not be the greatest episode of My Little Pony, but personally? I’ll rank it as, for me, perhaps the most important.
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