Hello my few but growing viewers! It’s that time again, time for another MLP Review and Food for Thought! This week we’ve got “Part Pooped” Episode 102, and let me tell you, it’s quite a treat for a couple of really dark reasons, but we’ll get to that.
First we open on our main cast, and we see that Twilight as grown as she is is still nervous when it comes to things like making new friends. This is odd since over the past two years she’s beaten down Clancy Brown, an omnipotent princess whose name sounded like a thrown away idea for her character in the writers room, and a set of three sirens using dark magic. ALL with the “power of friendship”, you’d think by now she’d be very chilled.
We meet this week’s Monster of the week, er I mean delegates from YakYakistan (Really, that’s the name!) and they are apparently a distant culture that hasn’t had contact or relations with the Pony Empire for sometime. A gesture of making them feel at home instantly makes them upset as it’s not PERFECT down to the last detail and through what I assume is a custom in their land, they proceed to break everything.
Our intro plays and we return to the girls fixing things that are broken, the use of tools has increased by about 300% this season and I’m quite happy about that as it shows a level of reality we missed before. The one really interesting moment of the entire scene is Rarity using….wait for it…Glue! Remember where we get glue from? Sure we don’t do that much anymore with chemistry and synthetics, but this world has shown us chemistry isn’t as advanced as our world. Makes ya wonder.
We find out through subtle exposition that each of the girls is going to be trying their best to make the delegates feel at home and that the big C (Thats Celestia) doesn’t know that they are here, or is even around (Where does she go?). As Pinkie Pie was the only one who bothered reading the script, she’ll be supervising the attempts. Starting with my favorite, AJ, she brings them to the farm to show them a good night’s rest on hay-beds. Of course, it’s not the right kind of hay and they proceed to smash things again.
Following up on these rather rude guests is Fluttershy’s attempt, and we see the cutest little animals with yak horns on them. Of course, they aren’t real horns and they soon realize it, they start to smash the animals, though thankfully since we’re on early enough, the animals are saved thanks to our rating 😛
As we start to see a pattern with our Yaks, Rainbow Dash brings them snow, and…you guessed it..it isn’t the RIGHT kind of snow and they proceed to smash and throw a fit. Even Pinkie Pie seems to give up as they have a meeting and Twilight piles more tension on Pinkie, making her believe the party she’s planning for them will make or break the relations. Pinkie Pie has a minor break down during the meeting and that brings me to my first point.
You may remember back I referenced a notorious fanfiction named Cupcakes that was oh so recently debunked thanks to Gilda being alive. Well, this brings new life to my fire to the idea that Cupcakes still holds some truth. I’ll gather my thoughts a bit further on down in the review and present them.
So, Pinkie gets inspired to go to YakYakistan to get something the delegates will love for the party, but, it’s a long trip. By train our Pink pony begins to narrate her own adventure, OUT LOUD, and we meet a few cameo stars who are no doubt thrilled to get work again! First we find out that the train is stopped by a herd of sheep and Pinkie runs into Ms. Cherry Jubilee (Who oddly enough, is coming out of an outhouse, one of the few references we have to the fact there are toilets in this world, and based on the size of it, it’s rather cramped unless everyone sits like Lyra) who gives her a ride to the Crystal Kingdom because apparently they need cherries there. Alot of them, some 400,000 by my count.
As we start running out of time, the scene quickly snaps to the girls in Ponyville who Pinkie forgot to tell where she was going. They are in her room looking for her while the delegates get ready to try some cake from Mrs. Cake (who no doubt is happy to have a scene and some lines). A series of events occurs and the girls end up hitting a switch hidden in the room and it drops them into a basement.
Now as I said, since we were running out of time we decided to cut away from Pinkie, who as she narrates the rest of her journey that’s happened off screen to save us time and presumably budget on the episode. There’s quite a few in jokes in the quick rapid fire shots we see, ranging from the fact Manehatten has a version of “Cats” playing to the fact Pinkie joined a band similar to the Beatles and may have actually been the Yoko of that group. CLEARY the only ones meant to get these jokes, are the more mature of the fan-base.
Then the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the Crystal Kingdom, and another favorite of mine, Cadance has more lines! Woot! Though not many, apparently when someone needs to go to the border, the Princess must escort them alone. Who knew? Quickly we see YakYakistan and Pinkie makes it to the doors only, to make a mistake that sends her flying backwards!
Now, back at the ranch (FEW of you will know that reference) we see the others now in Pinkie’s Batcave, where all her props, canons, lollipops and party favors seem to come from. Not only that, the girls notice that she’s got files on EVERYONE in Ponyville, their likes, dislikes and such, for the purpose of planning parties. This may seem nice on the surface, but lets take a serious look at this and lay it on top of Cupcakes.
Stay with me here…this makes sense I promise.
So, Google and several other sources cite the following for Split Personality Disorder:
- Psychological: anxiety, flashback, depression, or altered consciousness
- Behavioral: impulsivity, self-destructive behavior, or self-harm
- Mood: mood swings or feeling detached from self
- Also common: amnesia or blackout
Now, take that and compare that to Pinkie’s behavior in Party of One, which was no doubt the springboard for Cupcakes. Pinkie’s lack of interaction and isolation quickly begins a cataclysmic mental breakdown where items begin to talk to her, depression and anxiety set in. Much like what happens at the midway point in this episode.
The gist of what happens in Cupcakes is that Pinkie seems to have had, or always has had, a severe psychological issue, to the point she’s been killing ponies and taking their cutie marks, horns, wings and making a coat of many colors. The way she speaks to Rainbow Dash in that episode is delightfully detached at how awful the things she’s doing is.
So we now find out Pinkie’s got the ability and resources to create a database of Obsessive Compulsive levels, not to mention the fact she’s apparently been HIDING this room from..well everyone she’s close to. All of these things add up to the idea that Pinkie still has the ability to be what I hope she really is. Deeply disturbed and deeply troubled at times, and hiding that behind her projections of laughter and happy-go-lucky. The reason I like Cupcakes and other fictions like it is not due to the gore thats there, but the underlying implications, in it and in ones like Rainbow Factory. The reality of this world we all love may not always be the flawless gem we’re fed each Saturday.
Now, back to reality, or as close to we can get at the moment. Pinkie comes flying through the door, apparently on the largest amount of momentum known to ponykind, and finds out they’ve discovered not only that Twilight is afraid of Mexican food (what? o.0) but more importantly, she discovers the morale of the episode in a sudden flash of brilliance!
Instead of making the delegates at home with their culture, she decides to show them why this culture is so much fun as well! Quickly the lesson sinks in and our next scene we find that everything turned out OK in the end!
An interesting side note to this: during one of the delegates scenes, they give up and declare War on the ponies, vowing to come back with more forces. This is the first real mention of conflict on a massive scale, and the concept is not new to Twilight, which means that somewhere in history, the ponies have had to go to all out war. Food for thought.
So, overall I give this a 5 out of 10, it’s nice for deeper tones and overall exploration of the world again. It could be that we’re hitting our mid-stride and the episodes when sorted in the writer’s room that were weaker were put here. I wouldn’t call this awful, but I do hope we hit some more epic levels like we did at the beginning of the season!
Until next time, here’s Pinkie Pie letting the more mature of the fans know she’s aware why we’re watching…
-Watchfire