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I've been heavily craving season 1 of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic lately, probably largely because I haven't been overly thrilled with season 3. I want to buy the season 1 boxset on Amazon, but for the time being I don't have enough to spare.
I own one episode of season 1, Applebuck Season, which came with one of my figures (Diamond Rose, I think). It's not a favorite episode at all, but I was longing for season 1 so bad that I dug it out anyway. Watching it made me ponder on a couple of things.
- Rainbow Dash really is adorable in the episode, especially when she squees about how awesome her trick will be with Applejack helping her. Awww. I love her fangirling tendencies.
- Even though I love that Apple wanted to help the other Ponies (even when she really, physically couldn't), I kept thinking how her unselfishness was being marred by her selfishness and pride over the apple orchard. Her insistence on refusing all help and harvesting all by herself just to prove to Big Mac that she could do it was very aggravating once her subsequent exhaustion started affecting others. She knew very well that she was responsible for all those Ponies getting sick (unintentional though it was). Otherwise, she wouldn't have brushed Twilight off saying she didn't need a lecture.
And she really didn't seem to want to help Fluttershy with the bunnies. She was in a sour mood that whole time and acted like the whole thing was beyond stupid. Her cute, tired cheerfulness from trying to help Rainbow and Pinkie was gone. Possibly it was because of feeling horrible about accidentally giving all those Ponies food poisoning, but if she really felt that bad about it, she should have been more humble afterwards. Instead it just made her angrier and more stubbornly proud than ever that she was going to do all the harvesting herself. And ironically, after saving the town from a stampede at the beginning of the episode, she caused a second stampede with the bunnies that wreaked a lot of havoc everywhere and destroyed a lot of Ponies' important crops.
Is it wrong of me that I really think there should have been more serious repercussions for Applejack at the end? She caused a lot of damage that could have been avoided if she hadn't been so selfishly prideful. And that aspect wasn't even really addressed at all. They just emphasized how wonderful Applejack was, always trying to help everyone but being too stubborn to accept help herself. It really wasn't as simple as that, and I don't think that even in a kid's show, it should have been presented as such. Not when so many Ponies were hurt or harmed in some way.
Apple totally should have offered to pay for the other Ponies' medical bills or help them with their destroyed harvests, or something. I can't believe she wouldn't want to make amends, if she was being written properly. I guess the bottom line is, Apple is the type of Pony who takes responsibility for her actions, and the way this episode was written, she just wasn't doing so. Even after she acknowledged she needed help, there was no real mention of the trouble and Apple kind of brushed off her stubborn behavior (a bit, a mite). Brushing it off would have been okay if it hadn't caused such serious damage. As it was, brushing it off just deepened the problem by making her seem nonchalant and unaware of the extent of the trouble, and she was most definitely aware.
I would love to see someone write an addendum to this episode tackling the whole matter and doing justice to it.
I own one episode of season 1, Applebuck Season, which came with one of my figures (Diamond Rose, I think). It's not a favorite episode at all, but I was longing for season 1 so bad that I dug it out anyway. Watching it made me ponder on a couple of things.
- Rainbow Dash really is adorable in the episode, especially when she squees about how awesome her trick will be with Applejack helping her. Awww. I love her fangirling tendencies.
- Even though I love that Apple wanted to help the other Ponies (even when she really, physically couldn't), I kept thinking how her unselfishness was being marred by her selfishness and pride over the apple orchard. Her insistence on refusing all help and harvesting all by herself just to prove to Big Mac that she could do it was very aggravating once her subsequent exhaustion started affecting others. She knew very well that she was responsible for all those Ponies getting sick (unintentional though it was). Otherwise, she wouldn't have brushed Twilight off saying she didn't need a lecture.
And she really didn't seem to want to help Fluttershy with the bunnies. She was in a sour mood that whole time and acted like the whole thing was beyond stupid. Her cute, tired cheerfulness from trying to help Rainbow and Pinkie was gone. Possibly it was because of feeling horrible about accidentally giving all those Ponies food poisoning, but if she really felt that bad about it, she should have been more humble afterwards. Instead it just made her angrier and more stubbornly proud than ever that she was going to do all the harvesting herself. And ironically, after saving the town from a stampede at the beginning of the episode, she caused a second stampede with the bunnies that wreaked a lot of havoc everywhere and destroyed a lot of Ponies' important crops.
Is it wrong of me that I really think there should have been more serious repercussions for Applejack at the end? She caused a lot of damage that could have been avoided if she hadn't been so selfishly prideful. And that aspect wasn't even really addressed at all. They just emphasized how wonderful Applejack was, always trying to help everyone but being too stubborn to accept help herself. It really wasn't as simple as that, and I don't think that even in a kid's show, it should have been presented as such. Not when so many Ponies were hurt or harmed in some way.
Apple totally should have offered to pay for the other Ponies' medical bills or help them with their destroyed harvests, or something. I can't believe she wouldn't want to make amends, if she was being written properly. I guess the bottom line is, Apple is the type of Pony who takes responsibility for her actions, and the way this episode was written, she just wasn't doing so. Even after she acknowledged she needed help, there was no real mention of the trouble and Apple kind of brushed off her stubborn behavior (a bit, a mite). Brushing it off would have been okay if it hadn't caused such serious damage. As it was, brushing it off just deepened the problem by making her seem nonchalant and unaware of the extent of the trouble, and she was most definitely aware.
I would love to see someone write an addendum to this episode tackling the whole matter and doing justice to it.
