Episode Re-Review: Non-Compete Clause · 3:41pm May 18th
Well, the next several episodes to be re-reviewed are going to be tough to get through, many of them contain some of Season 8's worst missteps or otherwise blunders. But I gotta get through them. This episode marked the debut of yet another new writer in the form of Kim Beyer-Johnson, who among her previous writing credits wrote for Transformers: Rescue Bots, which aired on The Hub and Discovery Family between 2012 and 2016 before Hasbro pulled the plug on it. She would go on to write two "Encore Shorts" for "The Best Gift Ever", and the "Rainbow Roadtrip" special, as well as return for one Season 9 episode in the form of "Sweet and Smoky". None of her writing endevors really stand out for the better on this show, and she would unfortunately be forever defined by her debut here. This episode is quite infamous, arugably the new "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" or "Rainbow Falls". Is it really that bad given that it's an Applejack and Rainbow Dash episode, something shippers still go nuts for? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins at the School of Friendship for once, more specifically with Twilight gathering all her friends just to reveal that Fluttershy has yet again won teacher of the month, even though Fluttershy has no clue how she keeps winning all the time. It's not quite a "Win by nothing" kind of situation, though, she just does what she does and it keeps working for her.
Rainbow Dash and Applejack are naturally quite envious of this, they both think they should be teacher of the month. Not because they think they're doing a better job than Fluttershy, but because they seem to think they should get the award because potatoes.
Well, Twilight decides to give them a chance to prove themselves, because Rainbow Dash and Applejack both volunteer to take the students on a field trip to demonstrate teamwork and working together. And the episode insists on bringing up the fact that both Rainbow and Applejack should have experience being part of a team, so this field trip should be right up their alley. But of course, once the field trip starts, Rainbow Dash and Applejack launch right into being competitive, and rope the student/young six into it. The students naturally are quite puzzled by the behavior from their "professors", particularly Gallus and Smolder who wonder how exactly they're supposed to be learning. Here's the thing, though, lampshading your problems doesn't make them go away. If you know your story has a major flaw, then you need to look it over and think about maybe doing it differently, or even scrapping it all together. Pointing out how it makes no sense only makes you look worse for going through with it anyway.
Eventually, Applejack and Rainbow opt to try to break a record while having the students in competing longboats. Unsurprisingly, they crash into a rock and capsize. Then, just when you think things couldn't possibly get worse, they do. Yona (who was previously shown to be afraid of the water, and neither Rainbow or Applejack comforted her at any point) reveals that she can't swim and starts to drown.
And what do our "heroes" do during this?! Nothing! They just stand there, necessitating Ocellus and Silverstream to transform and rescue Yona! Yes, that's right, Applejack and Rainbow Dash are apparently so fixated on competing that they can't be bothered to save anyone else, nevermind all the times where they demonstrated that they would never delibertly endanger others for the sake of a competition.
Not long after this, Twilight shows up. She doesn't quite know about Yona drowning, but she's still anything but pleased with what she's seen so far. She rightfully berates both Rainbow and Applejack for being so competitive that they endangered the students, and threatens to kick them off the field trip. But of course, if she actually followed through on that threat, there would be no episode. And if it's that easy to solve the problem, then the episode's story should've been reconsidered. This is as bad as "Green Isn't Your Color" outright showing what the solution should be, then going to painful lengths to show why it's not going to be considered. Or as bad as "The Show Stoppers" revealing what the CMC are good at and what their special talents could be, then spends time showing they ignoring the painfully obvious for the sake of trying to go for dramatic irony. But eight seasons in, this kind of sloppy writting shouldn't be happening.
So instead, Twilight lets herself be talked into giving Applejack and Rainbow Dash a second chance, nevermind the fact that Neighsay specifically said her friends weren't qualified to be teachers and warned about lives being put in danger. Again, you're not supposed to make your strawman critic right, because then he's not a strawman even if you dress him up as such.
The episode then spends a lot of time showing Applejack and Rainbow Dash trying "not" to compete and differ to the other, which means they're compensating too much in the opposite direction and can't do anything at all. Yet it's painfully obvious that they're still trying to compete even if they're saying otherwise. Ultimately, they end up falling off a cliff to prove a point, and in danger of falling into water with dangerous fish. Yet they're not even allowed to save themselves, that's how useless they are in this episode.
Nope, instead the student/young six have to save them, because they're apparently the only ones this episode wants to paint in a good light for any meaningful amount of time. Applejack and Rainbow Dash are grateful for the rescue, but they don't even really apologize for what their earlier actions caused. When they come back from the field trip afterwards, they initially seem to feel bad, but their attitudes improve when the students claim that everything Rainbow and Applejack did was specifically to show how "not" to work together. But when Twilight presses them on this afterward, Applejack and Rainbow Dash reveal that they've learned nothing, and the episode ends with them still arguing about who was better.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Do I even have to say it?
This episode seems to have taken inspiration from "Equestria Girls: Mirror Magic" in that it wanted to shill the student/young six so badly. And that meant they apparently had to nerf everyone else just to make these characters look good by comparison. I mean really, Applejack and Rainbow Dash are so bad here that they outright endanger others without remorse, and do nothing when others are in very real danger because of it. They can't even save themselves, the student/young six have to do it for them. And even assuming that we'd seen more of these characters up to this point (even though we really hadn't), this is not the way to make them lovable or likable. You don't shove characters in our faces and make the other characters look bad by comparison. If the show could get that right with the pillars, there is zero reason they couldn't do the same here. And there's not even anything funny about what our heroes are doing. Watching children be put in harm's way over a contest is not funny at all.
Heck, the episode itself points out how Applejack and Rainbow Dash are supposed to be beyond this sort of behavior by now. Rainbow especially because she's part of an actual team, and should arguably have learned from her horrendous debut that you don't have to compete or try to stand out, you follow orders and do what the team asks of you, it's not about your own ego. What made this story concept work all the back in "Fall Weather Friends" was not only that Applejack and Rainbow Dash's friendship was not as developed as it was here, but their competitive ways only ever hurt themselves, no one else. And on top of that, they learned their lesson by the end about needlessly competing to the point where they lose track of what matters. But for whatever reason, they decided to revisit this with one of the encore shorts, in which Applejack and Rainbow Dash decided to outright ask Fluttershy how she kept winning teacher of the month. And yet somehow that was more enjoyable than this episode. This episode easily gets an F-! This is an episode that really shouldn't have left the cutting room floor, there were tons of better ideas that could've been reworked to fit the school.
And since I covered the next two episodes in a row already, we're now jumping ahead to "Marks for Effort", a CMC episode that served to introduce the painfully obvious twist villain Cozy Glow, a twist villain created solely for the sake of having a twist and having no character, motivation, or personality besides that.
I definitely agree with you on this. “Non-Compete Clause” is a terrible episode, and the worst part is that it basically represents icing on a cake for why Seasons 8 & 9 ultimately came across as “counterfeit seasons” more than anything else.
I'll admit:
I like this episode a lot more than most people probably do.
It's not one of my favorites of the season, but I can't help but have fun watching it.
In other words, Appejack and Rainbow Dash come off as "Karma Houdinis" in this episode.
Probably because it was only three minutes long, meaning it didn't overstay its welcome.
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It also helps that the short didn't have Rainbow Dash and Applejack competing against each other either and genuinely trying to win the students over in ways that don't put them in danger.