My Little Pony - Friendship Is Magic: Episode 308 - Apple Family Reunion

Rating:

The problem with Apple Family Reunion is that it turns out ex­actly like Applejack’s plan: any potential for great interactions between rarely seen Apple family members is wasted by a bunch of dumb activities.  Thankfully none of the reunions or family gatherings I’ve gone to over the years involved building a freaking barn.  Applejack’s oblivious behavior is clearly leading to a message, but most kids won't really need to hear “don’t plan to do too much at a family party”.  They’ll learn pretty quickly that the adults just want to sit around and chat, and can come up with enough things to do by themselves to not need other activities.  Of course, the “lesson” has been growing more irrelevant as the series goes on, so lacking a meaningful one isn’t necessarily a deterrent.  Unfortu­nately, Morrow had a difficult time finding anything memorable or worth­while from the premise.  We get snippets of potential, such as Granny Smith reminiscing with family members her own age, or the natural return of Babs Seed despite it seeming like she wouldn’t be seen again.  But noth­ing is explored at all, as Applejack’s activities get in the way of anything in­teresting happening.  While there aren’t really any terrible moments to bring things down, Apple Family Reunion feels like we missed out on a fun episode and got a whole heap of nothing instead.

Despite apparently seeing one in the pilot, it’s time for the epony­mous reunion again as the episode opens.  Granny Smith explains that the reunion occurs every 100 moons since the founding of the farm however many years ago it was, which would work out to be once every 7½ years or so (depending on which lunar month is used).  Only 2½ years have passed since we met all of those mostly one-offs in the pilot, so this very premise is a huge contradic­tion to established canon and something of a plot hole.  Thankfully the time frame isn't really important to the story, and it has anyway been long enough.  The episode should be about the reunion, so that it’s happening is more important than if the time is right.

Granny Smith is now entering her 13^th decade, so Applejack volunteers to take over planning duties.  In preparation, Granny Smith shows her younger family members a picture book from the past reunions to ex­plain what goes on in one.  All of them were in the pilot, and at the very least Applejack and Big Macintosh are old enough to remember the last couple of reunions (we later see one of the family photos from a previous reunion that includes the four Ponyville Apple family members look­ing much as they do today).  Obviously this is for us more than them, but as Applejack would have been a teenager at the previous official gathering, she no doubt wasn’t paying attention to everything that went into pulling one off.

Instead of just seeing photos though, we get small animated clips (in color!) of whatever scene is being looked at.  This includes a young Granny Smith (as hot as ever) failing to sew together a section of a quilt, baby Applejack eat­ing all the apple fritters (and talking way too coherently for someone so young), and Granny Smith running a groan-inducing seven-legged race with her cousin Apple Rose.  This section has similarities to the six stories that were fit into The Cutie Mark Chronicles, and there was definitely potential for some or all of these scenes to be expanded upon.  Perhaps the episode could have been an anthology of these stories, or juxtaposed with the present day reunion.  But instead, this is all we see of these scenes, which quickly fade back into the picture book after a few seconds.  It’s doubtful that the episode would have been great were it only based on these stories, but they turn out to be much more interesting than what happens in the rest of Apple Family Reunion.  This is a large part of the reason for the ep­isode’s downfall.

After a minute of filler comes an extended second act.  Applejack montages through the actual preparation, which includes cameos from some of the mane six.  Pinkie Pie covers Applejack in gold glitter, which is kind of sexy, but nothing else spectacular or surprising really happens.  Obviously the Apple family is quite unlike my own, since everyone arrives at the same time and apparently quite punctually as well.  This includes all of the aforementioned ponies from the previous reunions, along with plenty of other fan favorites like Babs Seed, Braeburn and Apple Fritter (ironically, she is never once mentioned in the episode despite all of the talk about fritters).  Unfortunately, the pattern for this act happens right away.  Applejack’s in­troduction (which was distracting due to all of the lines coming out of the megaphone) interrupts the family greeting each other, and she spends the rest of the act similarly preventing anyone from conversing.  Ap­ple Bloom might finally get to spend some time with Babs Seed (who’s from New York, by the way) after missing out on most of One Bad Apple due to the whole bully thing, but Applejack makes sure they quickly enter and begin an un­necessarily long and complicated seven-legged race.  Apple Bloom and Babs try to catch up during the race, but they find it hard to get through more than a sentence or two with everything they’re doing.  While the two Cutie Mark Crusaders are busy with the marathon, Applejack visits the rest of her fam­ily and ruins their fun too.

Somehow, this all leads to the recently-raised barn being brought down via a hayride.  Apple Fritter should be pissed after all of the work she put in during Too Many Pinkie Pies is rendered moot, but the re­tired Granny Smith is much more consoling.  Applejack’s “brilliant” idea for a solution is to force her entire family to reraise the barn even though they weren’t at fault for the destruction.  Apparently a catchy song is enough to convince them to do an unnecessary job for free, since the epi­sode’s second montage concludes with a sparkling-new barn (the song ac­tually isn’t all that terrible despite the overuse of “1, 2, 3, 4” in the lyrics.  It works better as a country song, but loses steam with the slower ending).  They take the family picture after all, and Granny Smith declares the reunion a success.  She then lets her actual feelings be known by sarcastically responding to Applejack’s “couple of hiccups” comment with “just a couple” and winking at the camera.  To be fair, Granny Smith only said the reunion was memorable and not good, since the whole family will no doubt never be able to forget that one reunion Applejack single-handedly ruined with a bunch of silly activities that resulted in property damage.

Apple Family Reunion is actually one of the better episodes for Granny Smith, who seems extremely coherent while showing flashes of the cute­ness she previously had.  We also find out that she has friends her age in the family, which makes her more than the crazy old loner she’s been por­trayed as before.  Even the inevitable scene of the elderly ponies not being able to hear each other is fairly done, since the loud sewing machines made it impossible for anyone to hear accurately (of course, what sewing ma­chine is that loud in the first place?).  But again, Applejack’s meddling pre­vented us from learning anything more about these ponies.  As Applejack ob­served earlier, they probably won’t make it to the next reunion, so this was a huge missed opportunity.

Morrow could have gone a number of different ways in portraying the Ap­ple family reunion, but she mostly decided not to take any of them.  Per­haps the problem had to do with trying to fit a lesson into the episode in­stead of just letting things happen naturally.  We needed to see the family in­teracting as they normally would, which would let us learn things we oth­erwise wouldn’t have a chance to.  Instead, there wasn’t an opportunity to discover much since Applejack’s stupidity prevented anything interesting from happening.  Even worse is that the “lesson” pretty much applies to no one, as kids would never be left in charge of planning a family gathering, while the adults are probably too tired from work to put in this much effort.  So that means Apple Family Reunion wastes time on a silly and unneeded lesson (complete with a letter writing scene that already feels obsolete), two montages, and a filler scene of Ap­plejack and Apple Bloom not being able to get some sleep that only exists to make the first act closer in length to the others.  All of this was at the expense of much better scenes of the family interacting, which were de­stroyed by Applejack being an idiot.

These are problems that all exist at the writing level, which is why my re­views concentrate on the writers so often.  Morrow had the in­gredients for a solid episode, but chose the completely wrong direction to go.  The opportunity to learn about the Apple family was lost in favor of teaching a lesson most people already know.  At least there weren’t any terrible scenes, which makes Apple Family Reunion pass­able to watch.  Unfortunately, My Little Pony is a series full of missed opportunities, with Apple Family Reunion being the prime exam­ple.  Instead of trying to push the series like certain other writers, Morrow went the safe route by choosing not to develop anything in favor of a standard “lesson” arc.  Even if she’s written worse episodes, Ap­ple Family Reunion is nothing less than a huge disappointment.