Episode written by Meghan McCarthy
Entirely unofficial reflections by sixcardroulette
This is The Shorter Ponywatching. For a really long, in-depth essay
on this episode, check out the full length reflection!
This was a game-changer when it came to my becoming a fan of My Little Pony. If it seems to be almost turning into its own spin-off at times, it also introduces not one but two important new elements to expand Lauren Faust’s amazing fantasy universe: cutie marks, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
Before I watched this episode, based on the last one we watched (Owl’s Well That Ends Well), I thought Friendship is Magic would be good and everything – a sweet and clever sitcom that just happened to feature magical horses as its protagonists. After Call of the Cutie, it was like anything was possible, as if that tantalising thread of ambition that felt like a gleam in the eye of this crazy show in those early days had been picked up and could never be lost again. At the end of Call of the Cutie, I was a fan.
The concept of cutie marks was one of those genuine, literal “sit up and take notice” TV moments for me; Bonnie Zacherle’s brilliant original design had incorporated symbols on the flanks of her toy ponies, almost right from the start, dating back to the days of My Pretty Pony:
Picture from www.ponylandpress.com, used by kind permission.
…But it was a young Lauren Faust who took that, and the fact that the “baby” ponies in the range didn’t have them, and turned that into her own personal mythology, where the symbol, the “cutie mark” – how long did it take you to work out it was a pun on “beauty mark”, readers?! – represented a pony’s purpose in life, the thing for which they had a (possibly previously undiscovered) passion and aptitude, and only came when they understood what made them special. At a stroke, the show’s universe is expanded over every horizon, giving rise to deep philosophical questions aplenty. Awesome.
If I’d come up with something brilliant like that, I’d have introduced it right at the very start of episode one, not twelve (or seven, or whatever) episodes in – which is what distinguishes a genius like Lauren Faust from the likes of me.
The other big new feature, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, avatars for the intended audience of young girls, gives the writers some breathing room when writing for our main characters – no need for them to learn and teach incongruous directly-applicable life lessons about school and bullying and being scared when there are actual schoolgirl characters in play. (And also, as happens here, giving a legitimate excuse for some exposition that might otherwise have seemed ham-handed, lessons being taught on-screen for the benefit of the characters and the audience.) Again, introducing them so relatively late in the game is a bold stroke, and not without risks.
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.
Thing is, though, I like the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and not just for their narrative role, but as characters in their own right. Apple Bloom, who we track throughout this episode as she first learns about and then desperately yearns for her own cutie mark, is the first young character we meet other than Spike, and she’s plenty engaging, not least when she’s being bullied.
Yeah, there are bullies here, very convincing antagonists named Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon; for me, they represent some of the most threatening adversaries in the show, because even though they don’t stomp about trying to conquer empires or destroy worlds, their threat is so believable, and so banal. They’re very well written, as cruel as only schoolyard bullies can be as they torment Apple Bloom for her “blank flank”.
The encounter also sets up the central conflict of the episode: Apple Bloom is passive-aggressively invited to Diamond Tiara’s “cuteceañera” (I love this stuff!) and doesn’t want to be the only one at the party who hasn’t got her mark yet. Cue a rushed and increasingly desperate attempt to rush the process in time for the party.
At first, I assumed the episode would be wrapped up neatly by the end, with Apple Bloom (who turns out to be Applejack’s sister, leading to all kinds of touching moments between the siblings as AJ plays surrogate mother) finding the strength to stick up for herself, learning a big lesson, and in the process earning her cutie mark.
Instead, this is a story where Apple Bloom fails to gain her cutie mark, despite enlisting the help of four of the Mane Six in a series of unsuccessful attempts; she doesn’t even get to a place where she understands how she’ll get her mark. Still, she comes out on top: she makes two new friends, and gets the better of the bullies in a public showdown without winning any kind of dramatic victory.
First off, Applejack (correctly) advises her that she can’t force these things, that she’ll just have to wait, that every pony gets a cutie mark but only when the time is right. A disastrous (but pretty funny) stint trying to sell apples on Applejack’s market stall only underlines the point, but it still cuts no ice.
Unsatisfied, she consults Rainbow Dash…
Wow, looks like somepony’s got a dark cloud hanging over her head!
And we pan out to reveal:
Rainbow Dash gives Apple Bloom some bad advice, which 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:
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).
Pinkie Pie is next to try, via a fantastically catchy and beautifully-animated song sequence; bear in mind that due to the crazy viewing order of British DVDs, 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.
# All you gotta do is take a cup of flour, add it to the mix!
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.
Twilight Sparkle also reluctantly pitches in with some magic, but it’s no good. Apple Bloom turns up at the party (by accident, hilariously), and after a doomed attempt first to escape, and then to pretend she actually does have her cutie mark, she ends up cornered by 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.
And then cue an awesome moment: two hitherto-unseen ponies step up to Apple Bloom’s defence, calling out the bullies in public in glorious fashion. For the first time all episode, they play up the positive side of being a blank flank: that it means your future isn’t yet written, that you still have the opportunity to be anything.
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 and Silver Spoon are, 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.
Hey! This is my party! Why are you two on her side?!
…Because…:
Call me an idiot, but I truly didn’t see that coming, and it floored me.
The episode thus introduces three new major characters to the mix – but when Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle appear at the end, we’ve spent the whole show learning 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 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.
I’ve since learned that a lot of bronies aren’t overly enamoured with either the Crusaders in general or this episode in particular – perhaps uncomfortable with being so starkly reminded they’re watching a show made for children, something that wasn’t a factor for us watching as a family? Anyway, far from putting me off, Call Of The Cutie raised my respect for the show tenfold, and was absolutely instrumental in turning me from someone who enjoyed the show to a proper and self-proclaimed fan.
While it isn’t necessarily the best-written episode – there are some plot holes and confusing questions which are glossed over on first viewing to get us to the climactic party scene with its impact intact – it’s nonetheless 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.
I also really liked the lesson at the end, which is both good stuff on a standard level and on a couple of metaphorical ones: the puberty metaphor that underpins all of the Crusaders stories, and also the idea of liking the show in the first place (it put my mind at ease over my son’s increasing enthusiasm for the pretty ponies). Is that going to be a problem? Was this meant for him? Is it going to cause problems at school?
“Dearest Princess Celestia: I’m happy to report that one of your youngest subjects has learned a valuable lesson about friendship. Sometimes, the thing you think will cause you to lose friends and feel left out…”
(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.
In pretty much any other episode, it would have to be the Cupcakes song, and the awesome animation that accompanies it. Here, though, there can only be one winner: the moment where Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle not only step up to stand with Apple Bloom in her darkest hour, but then reveal themselves to be fellow blank flanks, sparking a new and wonderful friendship. It’s awesome, there’s no getting away from it; one of my all-time favourite scenes from the entire run of the show.
I should really pick one of the awesome moments of redemption, or the very worthy moral, but I have to choose some comedy:
You’re sure you don’t want me to stick around ’til the end of the market?
“HEY! Who’s been using my racquet?!”
Yeah. I’m sure.
Brick jokes are the best jokes.
I was really impressed by this one, both as a story (again refusing to take the pat, easy way out when logic offered it as an escape), and for its implications for the future of the show, introducing a great new central concept and opening up all manner of new and exciting avenues for stories, its impact almost impossible to understimate. If subsequent viewings show up some previously-unnoticed narrative flaws, it’s still a huge amount of fun in its own right. Plus, the comic set-pieces: apple selling, training montage, “Cupcakes”. I love it.
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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