My Little Pony - Friendship Is Magic: Episode 304 - One Bad Apple

Rating:

 

One Bad Apple reminded me of a recent photo of the beloved with her two sisters and her cousin from California.  The three sis­ters look like the average Christian women they theoretically are, while the cou­sin can be described as more classically “hot”.  No doubt this cousin felt the same way that two-off Babs Seed does in this episode, as both city girls likely can’t believe that they are actually related to the freak shows in the country.  Babs arrives from New York to find that her blank flank sta­tus means she has something in common with the three uncoolest po­nies in town, who are then shocked when she jumps ship out of the blue.  They proceed to coldly bully the crap out of each other, and then just as quickly decide to pretend the entire episode didn’t happen.  This would have been a good development if Babs became a needed addition to the Cutie Mark Crusaders, but the show is over and it’s time for her to leave.  Seriously though, she’s totally going to start the Manehattan branch of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, because that will stop the bullying and end all of her problems.

 

I'll let you guess which is which.

Although One Bad Apple takes great pains to get through with only minimal in­volvement from the mane six, the extended fo­cus on the Cutie Mark Crusaders isn't necessarily a problem.  At least it feels like a third season episode and tries to make some progress on something new, sort of.  Certainly the bullying angle is a problem for many younger kids, but not much was offered in the way of a solution or even commentary.  Naturally right be­fore she’s about to receive her comeuppance, we learn that Babs was herself bullied in Manehattan, and that her visit was a vacation from her troubles.  This is apparently supposed to justify her earlier behavior, which is really inexcusable since she knows exactly what that feels like.  The mes­sage comes off like it’s okay to bully someone if you’re getting bullied too, when the whole point of the episode is that this kind of response doesn’t solve anything.  Consequently, Babs receives a complete reprieve while the Cutie Mark Crusaders end up in the mud for what frankly was justified given the way they were treated.  Perhaps the better message was that they should’ve just done nothing and let their plan unfold, which would have been less work and more satisfying.  What was the point of an all-nighter if you’re just going to feel bad about it in the morning?

This is an issue that does need addressing, but there aren’t a whole lot of feas­ible solutions.  The popular adage of standing up for yourself would only work if you’re capable of winning a fight with a bully, and they don’t usually choose someone bigger as their targets.  Then comes the ethical ques­tion of going down to the bully’s level, but I’m not too big on ethics as long as the job gets done and you can live with what you did (which does include avoiding consequences).  I had problems with fellow students back in the day, but my solution was to withdraw into myself and quit be­ing so talkative.  While it did stop the bullying (and I still have plenty I could be made fun of for), I also don’t have any friends anymore.  Like I said, as long as you can live with it, but most people wouldn’t desire to go my route for understandable reasons.

Plenty of documentaries have been made detailing much worse bullying situations than seen in One Bad Apple, but it’s hard to give advice to remedy them that doesn’t involve breaking laws.  Bullying is a complex issue that doesn’t have an easy answer.  Not that the episode claims to have a solution, but it doesn’t of­fer much in solutions either.  The Cutie Mark Crusaders actually try my route, but living with a bully (as Apple Bloom must do) kind of makes it hard to avoid them.  Both Apple Bloom and Scootaloo resist telling Applejack because they don’t want to be “tattle-tales”, but only care because Babs Seed chided them about doing so.  While the tendency for younger kids to run to their parents for every little thing is quite annoying, it was worth doing in this case simply because Babs didn’t want them to.  Their con­stant refusal meant it was going to happen at some point, and that some­thing momentous would occur when it did.  But still, as the one be­ing picked on, you may have to resort to using whatever you can when force isn’t going to work.  Furthermore, Babs isn’t Apple Bloom’s sister, but just a cousin they’ve never met before and will only see once again at the upcoming reunion.  The brother/sister code most certainly isn’t in effect here, so tattle away if you’re unfairly getting bullied.

The synopsis and early re­sponses might have suggested a dud, but One Bad Apple was never that terrible.  It feels new and is mildly engaging and interesting, and does attempt to deal with an issue many kids will face.  But at the same time, there wasn’t a lot of substance either, and the show was almost completely compromised by a dreary and predictable third act.  The twist that Babs was herself bullied doesn’t really make her any more likable, and it was obvious this great plan the Cutie Mark Crusaders came up with wasn’t going to happen once they started chasing after the pa­rade float Babs was riding.  Babs probably wouldn't embrace her blank flank status so quickly after one “generous” act, while her fellow axis of evil partners Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon only show up at the train station in the last act so that they could take a bath in the mud.  Which I guess is a little kinky, but still.

Cindy Morrow has been a hit-or-miss kind of writer on My Little Pony, and while One Bad Apple is of the miss variety, it’s far from the lows she’s hit before (Griffon The Brush-Off, Sisterhooves Social).  The episode isn’t nearly as painful or flawed as those outings, but a lot more could have been explored than what it ended up doing.  The message One Bad Apple attempts to send is con­fused, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders don’t inspire the level of interest that the mane six do even if their arc is generally better.  Showing the mane six at the im­promptu parade and finding ways for them not to talk feels like a cop out, which is a problem the show often has (apparently for monetary reasons).  All the worse is that this scene is added to characters we don’t care about doing stupid things, while another one-off comes and goes in poorly developed fashion. 

I certainly don’t want to denigrate the issue of bullying, but what exactly are children being bullied supposed to take from One Bad Apple?  Be­ing quiet, fighting back, and tattling all didn’t work for the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who were only saved because the bully had a shocking change of heart.  Kids shouldn’t expect this to happen ever, which makes the focus somewhat ironic.  Even though My Little Pony is ostensibly made for young people, there’s always been enough for the legions of older viewers to enjoy as well.  Despite not being a part of the show’s intended demographic, this is the first time I thought “this is a children’s show”.  There was just something about the simplistic attitude overall, along with the strange feeling that we were watching an episode of a different series.  As it stands, One Bad Apple is part of a rather uninspired start to the third season that seems like the dump­ing of whatever episodes the producers had lying around as opposed to trying to make anything substantial.  But mediocrity is at least better than the depths witnessed before (and are probably also upcoming based on past history).  The episode wasn’t all bad (even the decidedly ‘80s song full of clichés was catchy in a Daria kind of way), but it does nothing to stem the feeling of a once fresh show suddenly running out of ideas.