My Little Pony - Friendship Is Magic: Episode 123 - The Cutie Mark Chronicles

 Rating:

Sonic Rainboom slyly mentions Rainbow Dash accomplishing one when she was a filly, but it neglects to go into de­tails.  Seven episodes later, we finally get to see how it happened.  The Cutie Mark Chronicles’ placement near the end of the season is a smart one, as it ties up a number of threads.  Our least favorite characters give up trying to kill themselves for the moment and decide just to ask the mane six how they got their cutie marks.  The stories they hear suggest the marks only appear as a result of exposure to radiation or a near-death experience.  No wonder an exasperated Scootaloo takes little from these bizarrely unhelpful stories, likely concluding cutie marks aren’t really worth all that the mane six had to go through to get them.  Free-falling onto a swarm of butterflies from 30,000 feet is debatably preferable to a trip to the tattoo parlor down the street, though.  Of course, it’s more likely the latter is exactly what the mane six did, and they just embellished a bit for the children’s sake.  Nevertheless, the stories in The Cutie Mark Chronicles are compelling no matter if they're actually canon or not, and that makes the episode one of the best in the first season.

The Cutie Mark Chronicles is structured as a six-part anthology held together by the frame­work of the Cutie Mark Crusaders searching for Rainbow Dash.  Each of the ponies offer their cutie mark stories in succession, which gives us a rare glimpse of their younger selves.  Many hint at much larger stories present, and might have enough to be their own episodes.  But only the relevant part of each story is shown, as the Cutie Mark Crusaders quickly move on toward their goal of finding the one good story from the bestest pony.  It doesn’t take long for us to no­tice that the main catalyst for the cutie mark in each of their stories was the aftermath of a sonic rainboom.

Young Applejack heads for the big city, cutting out what must have been a tumultuous time at home.  Her same-named aunt and uncle (…) practically pull off a My Fair Lady (including the only time we don’t hear Applejack with a southern accent), but the dinner bell mercifully saves her from mak­ing an arse out of herself.  Up early as she was likely used to on the farm, Applejack sees a rainbow pointing toward Ponyville and takes it as a sign that she belongs at home.  This nets her a “surprising” apple cutie mark upon rejoining the family business.  (Although we do see her aunt and uncle, Applejack’s parents are still nowhere to be found, even though Apple Bloom had yet to be born.)

Fluttershy understandably has a tough time among the other ponies in Clouds­dale who aren’t as gifted of fliers.  The two colts who called Dash “Rainbow Crash” got an early start, dubbing the yellow pony “Klutz­ershy” after a fall.  The young Dash comes to her defense (her put­downs smartly aren’t all that great yet), and ends up challenging them to a race.  Fluttershy is tasked with being the hot flag-girl starter, and having likely played one of the Need For Speed games before, figured standing right in front of the contestants posed no problems.  Although I’ve tried to do this myself in those games and failed every time, the ponies zip past Flut­tershy and send her plummeting to her death.  Since what you don’t know about physics can’t hurt you, a blanket of butterflies saves Fluttershy inches before she hits the ground.  The subsequent rainboom scares the crap out of all of them, but Fluttershy realizes she can relate to these groundlings better than her own brethren.  She calms her animal friends down, and out pop three butterfly tats.

Rarity’s “crisis” might be of the fashion world variety, but from her point of view it’s certainly the equal of the other stories.  She designed the cos­tumes for a crappy student play, but it was obvious something was missing.  All of Rarity's efforts to fix them were fruitless, until suddenly her horn devel­oped a mind of its own and dragged her out of the house (the guys know what I’m talking about).  For more than a day (and apparently past the open­ing night of the play), she was pulled out to the desert to stop in front of a familiar looking monolith (cue the Richard Strauss).  Unleashing a great rant no one was around to hear, Rarity is shocked when an explo­sion from a certain event breaks open the monolith to find it full of jewels.  She sticks them all over the costumes, and somehow it works.  The cos­tumes look better than they should, and the opening night cancellation is for­given.  Rarity realizes she has what it takes to be a fashion designer, and out pop three jewels (clearly this has nothing to do with suggesting she should be a geologist instead).  A disgusted Scootaloo doesn’t want to hear Rarity equating cutie marks with discovering who you are, so the Cutie Mark Crusaders con­tinue their quest.  (Notice how Larson made it all the way through this scene without ever using the word “fabulous”.)

For some reason, they stop at Twilight Sparkle instead, and Scootaloo’s re­action shows that she realizes it was a mistake right away.  Twilight’s par­ents sign her up for school with the never-aging princess (at least Twi­light seems to be pitched between her parents’ colors, and looks a lot like her mom), but she’s totally bombing the entrance exam.  Show­ing no ability whatsoever despite weeks of hitting the books, Twilight gives up, but then an atomic bomb explodes in the vicinity.  The sudden blast of radiation ignites Twilight’s magic, which levitates the judges, turns her parents into plants, and not only busts Spike out of his egg, but artifi­cially grows him as well.  Trying not to have any interest in who attends her school, Princess Celestia can’t help but notice the dragon head poking out of a hole in her roof, and she storms into the exam room to demand Twilight’s parents pay for the damage and to kick the naughty little brat out once and for all.  Oh wait, I mean she gives Twilight a full scholarship on the spot and agrees to teach her herself.  Con­sidering the amount of money private lessons from the supreme ruler of everything cost, Twilight is understandably still jumping for joy to this very day.  Oh, did I say atomic bomb before?  It was that sonic rainboom again.  I just couldn’t tell from all the damage it caused.

Once again, Pinkie Pie's cartoon logic is consistently handled.  She joins the Cutie Mark Crusaders out of nowhere (with hel­met) to relate her own story.  Having not noticed all the money they weren’t making, her parents were rock farmers, with Pinkie Pie and her sis­ters forced to help out in the family “business”.  The rainboom exploded one day (before breakfast?), which gave Pinkie the first happy feeling of her life.  She decided to throw a party for her family the next day, and the rest is history.  Not wanting to expose the Cutie Mark Crusaders to the pressures of adulthood, Pinkie Pie skips the part where she found out she was adopted and left her home and family never to return.  Ignoring their last name and any­thing resembling business sense, the Pies went bankrupt and died early deaths, while her sisters are probably working as prostitutes somewhere.  And that’s how Pinkie made Equestria. (Pinkie Pie being adopted actually makes a lot of sense.  She looks nothing like her parents or sisters, who are much blander in color and couldn’t have possibly produced a pink pony.  Considering how different she is in looks and personality from the rest of her “family”, I’m looking forward to the episode where Pinkie seeks out her real parents.)

The Cutie Mark Crusaders finally find Rainbow Dash, whose story turns out pretty much like you thought it would.  She beat the crap out of those colts in rain­boom fashion, and realized her love of doing so in the middle of flying faster than the speed of sound.  Naturally this earned her a bitchin’ rainbow lightning tat.  With the other mane six members in attendance for some reason, they all real­ize that this one sonic rainboom was essentially the most important event in all of their lives, and somehow brought them together before they officially met.  Thoroughly unimpressed, Scootaloo drags the other Cutie Mark Crusaders back to the zipline for another go. 

Surprisingly enough, there is a definite con­nection between The Cutie Mark Chronicles and the great trilogy-capping Trois Couleurs: Rouge.  At one point in the latter, we learn that the main characters from all three movies randomly appeared on a ferry that otherwise has nothing to do with any of the plots.  This seems a preposterous contrivance, but only from our perspective.  If we started on the ferry, and made movies about the people who were on it, things wouldn’t be nearly as weird.    Likewise, it feels unlikely that all of the mane six were af­fected by one event, but only because we’re looking back at it from the present.  From before it happened, it makes sense that something needed to occur to bring our beloved ponies together, or perhaps it was only the ponies who were affected that ended up becoming friends. 

While this episode doesn’t necessarily express anything that wasn’t in Trois Couleurs: Rouge, it’s almost just as effective in doing so.  The belief in reli­gion and destiny obscures just how much of our existence happened due to coincidence, from universal constants to the random accumulation of stars and planets to genetic mutations and evolution to all of the little things that had to happen for your parents to meet and have sex at the exact time they did.  Many of our friends came into our life for similarly coincidental reasons; often for just happening to be born around the same time and location.  In light of this, it’s completely acceptable that all of the main po­nies were at an important place in their lives when a singular event affected them forever and ultimately led them on the road to meeting each other (granted Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy are surprisingly old friends).

The Cutie Mark Chronicles is a perfect example of the kind of episode that Larson does best.  Not only are the nine main ponies all in­volved, but we learn important and interesting information about all of the mane six’s backstories.  These are mostly deep enough that they could also have been fleshed out into longer versions without losing any interest.  While the introduction of Rarity’s parents in Sister­hooves Social only raises questions that shouldn’t be asked, any appear­ances of parents here make sense and don’t conflict with the everyday life seen in the show.  Twilight’s parents actually look like her, and it's possible Pinkie Pie might have been adopted even though that’s not implied.  Apple­jack’s parents are still wherever they are now, and Rainbow Dash’s and Fluttershy’s probably weren’t around when their children were outside play­ing (or almost getting killed, as kids are often wont to do).  Rarity was apparently working on a school project, so her parents were probably at work or wherever.  Somewhat unexpectedly, the mane six had to struggle to get where they are today, and it wasn’t easy to discover what seems so obvious now.

Not everything is perfect, though.  The Fluttershy song seems a bit fillerish and is not one of the show’s best, and the actual time of the rainboom changes between stories (there was at least some effort to syn­chronize them though).  Applejack’s story seems to definitively place the rain­boom at sometime shortly after sunrise, but all of the events we see probably wouldn't be happening so early in the morning.  It’s already light out for Rainbow Dash’s and Fluttershy’s stories, but still dark for Twi­light’s examination.  When Spike bursts through the roof, suddenly it’s noontime, but dark again moments later.  Pinkie Pie’s parents ring some­thing of a lunch or dinner bell, but how much farming gets done before break­fast?  Rarity actually announces the play is the next day, but later misspeaks in voice-over that it was that night she was working.  We see a full day pass, but this does situate the rainboom time to be in the morning as op­posed to afternoon.  Since memory isn’t always accurate, perhaps some of the inconsistencies in stories were by design.  However, a 5 or 6am exam time for Twilight is much too early to be believed.  Also slightly confusing is that the mane six spoke of the sonic rainboom in the earlier episode, but didn’t make the connection then that the one time this happened in history also affected all of their cutie marks.  Apparently they just didn’t realize what they saw was a sonic rainboom, although I’m not sure what made the difference this time.  Messing up the exact time of the rainboom is a minor issue overall, but it still must be raised in fairness.

While the details may not be quite perfect, and the show functioned as more of an anthology than a complete story, The Cutie Mark Chronicles is still one of the series’ best episodes.  Larson understood the characters early, and de­livers valuable backstory for each that makes sense for their chosen car­eers without bringing up unwanted questions.  The Cutie Mark Crusaders aren’t the freaks they think themselves to be for not having cutie marks yet, since their experience is actually quite common.  Also demonstrated (as Rouge did) is just how much of our life is based off of coincidence, and that maybe certain problems only exist because the right one hasn’t hap­pened yet (or didn’t happen).  The “sonic rainboom” thread may not be quite an arc, but it’s as close as the series has come in the first three seasons outside of the Grand Galloping Gala, and that makes this episode more direct and thrilling than it otherwise would have been.  This was a lot to pack into one show, but Larson did it in a way that didn’t feel rushed or short­changed.  And while many of the series’ episodes treat things like a child­ren’s show, this is one of the few that is equally interesting for adults as well, or at least is capable of sending a message to both parties.  The prob­lems keep it from being great, but The Cutie Mark Chronicles is one of many Larson-penned epi­sodes that demonstrate what the series can be, and how good it could as well.