Tag Archives: cheerilee

Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 69: The Cart Before the Ponies + 28 Pranks Later

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Introduction / Navigation

< Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 >

Season 6, Episodes 14-15

Warning: this post contains the most negative review of any episode I have written thus far. The second review, not the first one.

Season 6 Episode 14: The Cart Before the Ponies

In five words: Crusaders’ sisters ruin the fun.

Premise: The Cutie Mark Crusaders participate in a derby competition where they have to build their own carts. They each get help from their big sisters, who all take over the project and make it theirs.

Detailed run-through:

After all the adult fan-oriented humor of the last episode, it’s quite the whiplash to hear a bunch of foals say “good morning, Miss Cheerilee!” Unlike in the Crusaders’ episodes of season 1, which featured tons of generic background fillies, all but one of the foals in the class is a named character, and the unnamed one is a colt with a clearly distinct design.

The class is very confused when Cheerilee tells them they’re going to learn advanced physics. Then when she says it’s going to be for this year’s Applewood Derby, they all cheer in excitement. I bet Cheerilee wrote a whole bunch of advanced math formulas on the chalkboard just as a prank to the class, so she could see their relieved and delighted faces when they learn about the derby.

I’m further convinced the math formulas were a joke when Cheerilee puts a much simpler blueprint over the chalkboard. Each of the foals in her class will be provided a block of apple wood that they have to make a cart out of in one day, and they can each choose an older pony to help them—the Crusaders all know who they’ll pick. There are three different awards for the race: fastest, most traditional, and most creative. It seems obvious which of the Crusaders would want to win each prize… right?

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 17: Read It and Weep + Hearts and Hooves Day

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Introduction

< Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 >

Season 2, Episodes 16-17

Season 2 Episode 16: Read It and Weep

This review contains spoilers for season 4, but only in the overall thoughts section. Still coloring the title red to signify as much.

In five words: Allegory for becoming a brony.

Premise: At the hospital, Rainbow Dash finds herself captivated in a book that she had aggressively waved off, but she refuses to admit it to any of her friends. Does this sound familiar???

Detailed run-through:

Warning you now: this review will be more than a little self-indulgent because the entire episode reminds me of how I became a brony. It’ll be one of my reviews where the detailed run-through is extra super detailed.

Imagine what it’s like watching this episode for the first time, unaware of what it’s about. Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity watch Rainbow Dash perform stunts in the sky, until she gets out of control and injures herself. We don’t see the injury, but rather hear sound effects and reactions from the ponies shown above, loosely indicating that it’s not something good. This cleverly leads up to the dire circumstances that cause Rainbow Dash to become the in-universe equivalent of a brony.

For a pony as action-oriented as Rainbow Dash, a hospital may as well be a prison. She’s forced to stay there for a few days, and she is incredibly unhappy about it. Rainbow Dash’s imminent obsession with Daring Do comes about through circumstances that would be dire and grueling specifically for her—circumstances that cause her to reach the absolute peak of boredom. This episode is much like a story that takes place in prison, except more kid-friendly. Then again, people often use “prison” as a figure of speech anyway.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 5: Call of the Cutie + Fall Weather Friends

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Introduction

< Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 >

Season 1, Episodes 12-13

Season 1 Episode 12: Call of the Cutie

This review will contain spoilers for up to season 8! The reason why is because this episode introduces the Cutie Mark Crusaders and thus makes for a good one to analyze in light of what they do in later seasons.

In five words: Cutie Mark Crusaders’ introductory episode.

Premise: Apple Bloom goes on the first of many quests to earn her cutie mark and meets two new friends who also don’t have their cutie marks at the end. Those three dub themselves the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

Detailed run-through (and by detailed, I mean DETAILED):

This shot near the very beginning of the episode has quite a bit to unpack—one silly thing and one less silly thing.

The silly thing is that two of the ponies in the front row are just recolored versions of Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, which is lazy even by season 1 standards. Well, the Scootaloo recolor does lack wings, but that arguably makes it even lazier. While the pony in the middle of the front row is a minor character named Twist, the other two are total enigmas—almost as enigmatic as the three sitting in the back, who all look about the same aside from coloring and don’t have names as far as I know. Early installment weirdness is clearly at play here.

The less silly thing is that Apple Bloom is seated in the middle row between Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, and I can take a guess at why that is. Cheerilee probably noticed those two were giggling to each other in class constantly and thus decided to put Apple Bloom between them as a buffer of sorts. To Cheerilee, Apple Bloom is probably the “oh yeah, that one” of the class, since she hasn’t met her two best friends in the world yet and thus is kind of lonely, not helped one bit by the two classmates she has to sit in between always picking on her for not having her cutie mark.

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