And he used to watch a cartoon where a teenage boy who turned into a sports car whenever he was exposed to "extreme heat" and would turn back to human when exposed to 'extreme cold." One episode started with him having some kind of wild dream and waking up in car form, and having to drive himself into the bathroom to take a cold shower before his mom caught him.
Metaphor much?
After the jump, he'll break down another episode and discuss what makes it good, what makes it bad, and what makes it just outright crazy. This week's theme? Kids and rock and r- ...wait, this doesn't work in text. Hold on. I'm going to need some help here. Take it away, Mr. Charles Brown.
Play Song
But first, we have to get through the story. Don't worry, we'll get to the music soon.
We open on Applejack leading the CMC (Cutie Mark Crusaders, for those who forgot the last post about this show) deep into the family's orchard land. It appears that, like all groups of children, the CMC is anxious to have their own base of operations to work from. I actually had one like this. I built it myself in the roots of a huge tree on the edge of a small hill with the help of a neighbor friend.
Anyway, it seems Applejack is giving the CMC her old club house that she "had when she was their age." Now, either weather tears these places down really quickly in this world, or Applejack is much, much older than her sister than I initially expected.
In the space of a minute, we see a shutter fall off a window, part of the roof collapse, and a wall fall in when Applejack leans upon it. Now, I might not be the foremost expert when it comes to child safety, but telling a group of children "here's a ramshackle dump, it's up to you guys to do complex construction work to make it not just usable, but safe again." Of course, I didn't grow up on a farm, either. Maybe this is taught to you when you're really little.
We get back from our title sequence for what's actually a pretty neat scene. Scootaloo (the winged one, if, like me, you had a hard time telling the CMC apart originally) is up to a huge project which involves drawing a complex map of the local area. After this, she jumps on her scooter (get it? Get it?) and takes off, using her wings to propel herself. To a few neat guitar riffs, we see her zip along the ground, hit a ramp with a few spins, and even jump, Neo in The Matrix-style over a low hanging tree branch.
In other words, a talent that could easily earn one a cutie mark. But man, how much would that suck if you were born with the natural gift to fly, but what you were best at involved limiting yourself with that one natural advantage? It'd be like telling Michael Phelps "Okay, yeah, sure, you might be built for swimming, but I think what you'd be best at is the Slip N Slide competition we're having."
Apple Bloom has also been busy in the time it took Scootaloo to draw a single map. The tree house is completely fixed up, her having "fixed the broken shutter, sanded all the splinters, rebuilt the roof, painted it..." Can I just point out that this is a creature without hands? I have this disturbing mental image of someone trying to use sandpaper with their mouth. Nnngh. Not pleasant.
Oh, and Sweetie Belle? What's she been doing this whole time? Well, she's been cleaning the area up! And dusting the woods with her tail! ...so yeah, someone managed to take the "Well, maybe you can't see all the hard work I did, but I promise it was hard" job. But she is also working on a CMC theme song, which Applejack gets a peek of when she stops by to peek in at them.
This leads us to another montage of the CMC attempting to find what they're good at (cause, y'know, it couldn't possibly be building construction, stunt riding, or singing or anything), involving trips to various points around Ponyville. Sadly, it seems they're not meant to be pig farmers (...I'm going to discuss this later), taffy makers, hairstylists, mountain climbers, scuba divers, or librarians.
They also fail at, and this is my personal favorite, demonstrating psychic powers by using a set-up similar to Peter Venkman's set-up at the beginning of Ghostbusters.
Obviously it doesn't work, because there's no judicious application of electricity to when they get a card wrong.
Twilight Sparkle points out to the kids that they might want to start focusing more on things that they already know they're good at instead of picking random job titles out of a hat to determine what they want to be.
You know, like how in high school I had no idea what I wanted to be when they forced us to look up schools related to our chosen job paths, so I half-heartedly looked to see if any schools had training in Pacific salmon farming. Sadly, there were none.
Fortunately for the kids, though, their school has a talent show coming up, so surely they can figure out an act to perform!
The team starts gathering (and in some cases, stealing) some supplies they'll need for their act, and can I point out that they get a fan from a male pony named "Mr. Breezy?" Brilliant. Their goal is to do a huge musical number, and it's at this point I'll admit the joke gets a little bit strained. When it's recommended that she sing because she's a brilliant singer, Sweetie Belle turns it down for costume design and scenery construction. Scootaloo, who the others point out is really athletic and would make a great choreographer, chooses to instead sing the solo. So, it falls to Apple Bloom, who knows nothing about dancing (but likes Kung-Fu, and "that's like dancing, right?") is in charge of their moves.
...so, yeah, for a while we get to see three young ponies completely botch each job they try to do as they start to assemble this act together. Apple Bloom can't manage two steps without falling over, Sweetie Belle can't figure out that you should wash the paintbrush between colors, and Scootaloo does what I think is a brilliant impression of Don Music.
Time progresses, and it's the night of the talent show. We get a rather pathetic magic act with the two worst characters (Snips and Snails, in case you forgot), and we get a glimpse at pony morbidity when Apple Bloom freaks out when Sweetie Belle says "break a leg" to two roller skaters. I'm sure the joke went over most kids heads, but I thought it was funny.
And then it's their time to perform.
There are no words for how this is both mind-bogglingly amazing and quite simply one of the most painful things to watch in a cartoon. Ever. Ever.
I mean, I'm just going to put this picture here to give you a hint of what the show is like.
Yeah.
Now, I know it's tough to intentionally sing off-key for a performance when you're actually a decent singer, so watching this performance start at "hoo-boy" and degrade to "dear lord" shows a sharp attention to just how bad things can get for a stage show. I'm not entirely convinced I didn't see a tiny Stonehenge in the background.
But I'll admit, I had to zip ahead through this scene, because it just keeps getting worse. The sets crumble, the singing gets worse and worse, and it's just a fiasco.
Which isn't really what the kids were going for, so when the whole audience bursts out laughing at them, they're pretty dejected. They don't get to sneak away, though, as their teacher herds them back on stage for the awards ceremony.
But suddenly, in a huge twist, the CMC win the final award! I mean, sure, it's for best comedy act, but as long as you don't tell anybody it wasn't supposed to be funny, then you won't wind up like Tommy Wiseau.
Sadly, they still don't get their cutie marks, but as they tell Twilight, they learned an important lesson about not trying too hard, sticking to what they're good at...and then announce they're going to be a comedy team.
...I wonder how much longer they can milk this premise.
The Good:
Honestly, my favorite part was some of the background humor. The Ghostbusters, The Matrix, and what I'm sure is a nod to my favorite ultimate 90s movie Airborne are all well placed and don't feel forced.
It is nice to see the CMC grow, but I'm going to have to talk about this more in my last bit. I do think, though, that the best expressions and emotional moments came from Applejack and Twilight Sparkle as they watched the CMC prepare for their act (particularly Applejack's nervousness right before the awards were given).
Whoever the musical designer and songwriter was deserves some points as well. I picked out hints of a lot of 80s rock songs (I'm pretty sure I heard Don't Stop Believing and I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight, for example). However, that brings us to...
The Bad:
Urgh, that performance was painful. I get it was supposed to be bad, but there's a fine line between intentionally bad and unintentionally worse than bad. Out of everything I watched so far, that was probably the part that I would never show anybody watching this for the first time.
The animation also had some issues this time. So far, I've been able to forget that this is "flash animation" done quickly and cheaply, but a few instances (when Sweetie Belle is explaining that she made up that song for the CMC is a big example), it had a few flashes back to the "older" style of flash animation. It just didn't look tight.
Overall:
If I was ranking these episodes (and I'm not), this one would probably be near the bottom. Maybe it's just having one CMC episode right after the other, maybe it was having that on top of a song that crossed the line to just unpleasant to watch, but this is the first episode that I think needed to be sent back and redone.
It could just be that this was shown in a poor order, but I really think that the show works best when there's some space between focusing on one or a group of characters. If I had two Pinkie Pie episodes, I might feel a bit tired of her. I would probably feel the same with two of any character in a row, unless they were able to show more than one distinct side of their personality.
Also, maybe it's time to advance the "will they get their cutie marks" plot a bit. I think they're running out of ideas of what these kids can legally get away with when it comes to outlandish careers.
So, we got past that. Next time, instead of 80s power ballads, we'll get David Bowie references!
...man, someone must have been listening to their iPod a lot while writing these scripts.
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