Mlp Pinkie Apple Pie

Pinky Apple Pie is an episode which longs to engage us with its characters, but also wishes to distract us with flashy set pieces. But in the end the characters are flat and disinteresting and the set pieces don’t play into anything much. In the end the episode collapses into a weird mess of goofy character hijinks and boring tedium.

To explain in more detail, this episode really should hang around Pinkie Pie. She is the reason there is a story (or at least her ancestry is) and as the newcomer she is new wild card that going to rustle some feathers and spend more time with the Apples. The interesting dynamic of her joining in on the adventure is there fresh for the picking and it was really not achieved. I felt that Pinkie was not enough of a character in this episode. She is so oblivious and vacant to those around her and what’s going on, that I couldn’t care about her involvement in the story. She was more of a goofy gag factory that just gawped at being around the apple family whist she took pictures.

As for the Apple Family... They were alright, but the story was a little too similar to Apple Family reunion for me. Oh look the family is trying too hard to impress someone and in the end sow the seeds of their own downfall. Hubris is an interesting story, just the way it defines them and was implemented in a lackluster way again makes them feel so flat. I felt that the Apples didn’t get enough screen time or things to do, they just felt like another 4 headed hydra that went through an arc about a character who doesn’t seem to notice anything, they made such a palarva about a pony who would be entertained by a dangling string. This isn’t to say that the Apple Family was terrible. All the characters had their moments, just those moments were often in service to the obvious plot rather than to make them out much as individuals. All of them are a-ok with Pinkie joining the family and all of them happen to cock up one way or another which in the end leads them all get upset. I know it’s a ‘story’ but this show is too obsessed about hitting each plot point bluntly on the head. If the family had more defining them than all of them going on the same journey, they would feel more real, complex and interesting. 

The only Apple I have much to say about is Big Mac. I know that the bronies and writers like his yups & nopes but taking this to the extremes this episode makes him more a gimmick than a person. When we first saw him in Apple Buck season he spoke normally and later his yups & nopes spoke to his introverted personality and straightforwardness. This episode takes this gimmick and makes him out to have only have a 2 word vocabulary. I did like what they did with his body language this episode. I didn’t like how that body language was a consequence of some crippling speech affectation.

I will also say that there was a disconnect between the action and the characters. The song sets them up as working together like clockwork, then on the boat AJ says they need to impress Pinkie. Well what was that song all about? Was that not enough? She seems pretty content at the moment, all things considered.

They go through a scary cave, down a waterfall, drop a map and loose the boat. But most of these issues are interchangeable, the precise impact of them are often forgotten or mitigated. As long as the characters fail in 4 ways (for them to bicker about later) then the story is complete...

I felt that all the set pieces and goings on were really disinteresting. The lack of connection or grounding for the wacky hijinks just made them forgettable escapades that came for our amusement and left quickly afterward.

*Sigh* In the end. The characters were all flat cardboard cut outs. The story was a neat (if a little incredulous) idea riddled with pointless set pieces that left no lasting image.