My Little Pony - Friendship Is Magic: Episode 115 - Feeling Pinkie Keen

Rating:

It’s hard to believe that the first season could get any worse after Griffon The Brush-Off, Look Before You Sleep, and Fall Weather Friends, but yet it does.  Most of the writers had difficulty their first time out, but Dave Polsky “tops” them all.  He doesn’t try to hide that his misguided offering serves his agenda and no other purpose.  There isn’t a plot to Feeling Pinkie Keen, nor is there a lesson.  Apparently Polsky hates Twilight Sparkle as much as Merriwether Williams hates Rainbow Dash, since the only thing that happens in this episode is that Twilight gets embarrassed over and over again.  At least it could be argued that Dash is quite overloved by the fanbase.  I doubt Twilight is most people’s favorite pony, but she certainly doesn't deserve this.  Although I completely disagree with the “message” presented in this episode, I do want to point out that isn't the case for The Mysterious Mare Do Well.  I absolutely concur that the Dash love is ridiculous, but it’s still a terrible episode.  Feeling Pinkie Keen is an extremely poor offering no matter what your feelings about faith are.

After fourteen episodes of acting more or less normally, Pinkie Pie now suddenly finds that her various body parts twitch whenever something bad is about to happen.  This is called “Pinkie Sense”, and it’s been around forever seriously.  Never mind that this is the only first season episode to feature this “talent” of hers, and that the sense won’t reappear until The Mys­terious Mare Do Well (natch).  For this episode, it only occurs when an unfortunate happenstance is about to befall Twilight.  Which it does time and time again.  First she only gets smacked with a frog, but this builds up to the cartoon favorites of an anvil and a piano thanks to a Derpy “mishap”.  Somehow, Twilight survives all of this.

Like Spike in Winter Wrap Up, Twilight accurately critiques the episode by constantly stating how little sense it makes.  She doesn't understand that she’s stuck in a terribly written episode and all of the things that happen to her are contrivances.  “Pinkie Sense” has nothing to do with it.  Nevertheless, her frustrations continue, as hooking Pinkie up to a machine in a mad scien­tist’s lair “surprisingly” proves fruitless.

In some attempt to pretend there’s a plot here, Pinkie Pie announces something really awful is going to happen at Froggy Bottom Bog (another one-off), which is where Fluttershy currently is.  They find a four-headed hydra there, and are able to enact a miraculous escape.  But Pinkie is still twitching, so that whole ordeal was just a coincidence (oops, pretend I didn't just use that word).  Twilight finally gives in and says she “believes”, which causes Pinkie to stop twitching.  This was the “doozy” that was going to happen, so now Twilight wears an umbrella hat that couldn't possibly protect here from all of the things that fell on her during the show.  Although perhaps she was brain damaged from the whole anvil and piano thing, which would explain her conversion.

Obviously, Feeling Pinkie Keen is meant as an argument for faith.  Most religious people decide to ignore that science has proven the creation story of the Bible to be completely inaccurate, and love to revel in stories of “inexplicable” things.  This isn't the place for a discussion about the hypocrisy of religion, though.  Perhaps what is most confusing is the attempt to bring religion into a world where it clearly doesn't exist.  There is no “believing” in Celestia because she’s right there.  The princess hasn't aged in at least a thousand years, and is tasked with raising the sun and the moon (until her sis­ter’s return for the latter).  It’s pretty clear Celestia is the ponies’ god, as there’s no other explanation for what we see from her in the show.  Since their deity is right there, what else are the ponies supposed to believe in?  Maybe themselves and their talents, but that’s not what Feeling Pinkie Keen is about.  It specifically states that there are unexplainable things that you have to believe in, and clearly features the conversion of an “atheist” pony into one of faith by the end (ironic since Twilight is Celestia’s most “faithful” stu­dent).  Even though I know such a turn of events has happened before, it is extremely disgusting to see the story presented here like this.  I have actually had a religious person tell me a similar tale about an atheist’s conversion into faith based on un­explainable events that naturally didn't come with a name or any documentation, so I know what this story is when I see it.

But either way, when has My Little Pony ever been about religion?  The series depicts friendship and all its different aspects, but never whether you should or shouldn't believe in religion.  With “God” clearly on display, there isn't really any place for it on the show, so every other episode doesn't deal with the subject.  And yet, how could you take this argument for religion seriously?  My Little Pony is a freaking cartoon, and the one pony preaching faith is consistently shown to operate according to cartoon “logic”.  This is how Pinkie Pie appears anywhere at will even if it requires breaking various barriers to do so.  It’s also how Twilight is able to survive all of her injuries when she shouldn't even be alive for the third act.  Writers type something preposterous, and the animators animate it.  That’s why it’s called a cartoon and not a documentary.  There’s no “believing” in Pinkie Pie; the writers just write her that way.  Her character holds no application to real life at all.  So how could we possibly take Feeling Pinkie Keen seriously as an argument for faith?  Unless of course Polsky is trying to show how much the Bible and Pinkie Pie have in common.

While Feeling Pinkie Keen may personally offend me like no other episode of the show, that isn't really the reason for my low rating.  No matter what you believe, watching Twilight constantly get embarrassed isn't fun, and that’s literally all that happens in the episode.  With a paper thin plot and a “lesson” that belongs at Sunday School more than it does on My Little Pony, this is the poorest excuse for an episode ever aired in the series.  Noth­ing happens, none of it makes sense, and apparently we’re supposed to laugh at Twilight getting killed.  This is a Tom & Jerry/Wile E. Coyote & Roadrunner short masquerading as a My Little Pony episode, and that style got tiring long ago.

Most of the bad episodes are just painful and pointless.  Feeling Pinkie Keen is not only both of those (along with being boring, presenting a fake message that doesn't make sense in the context of the show, and again having conspicuous absences of certain main characters), but it deserves to be dropped from canon as well.  Pinkie Sense (along with the religious arguments that come with it) has no place on the show, and the writers' general refusal to ever show it again is enough proof of this.  Episodes that are so mindshakingly bad that they shouldn't be a part of the canon are the ones that get the lowest ratings, and Feeling Pinkie Keen absolutely “earns” this distinction.