Well, we survived “The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well.” Now let’s see what those cruel gods send us next…

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And it’s number 24, “Party of One.” After a short break, we’re back to Pinkie episodes.

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TECHNICAL SPECS:

Season: 1
Episode: 25
Written By: Meghan McCarthy
First Aired: April 29, 2011

SUMMARY:

It’s Gummy’s first birthday, and Pinkie has delivered a singing telegram to each of her friends for the party. Naturally, everypony enjoys themselves for the most part, but each also has a bit of a problem during the party. Applejack and Pinkie Pie run into traps while bobbing for apples, Rarity is grossed out after she sees Gummy swimming in the punch she was just drinking, and Pinkie’s enthusiastic dancing sends Twilight and Fluttershy slamming into walls. At the end of the day, however, Twilight suggests that they do this again soon.

Unfortunately, Pinkie, being rather literal-minded, decides that since tomorrow is “soon,” they should hold an After-Birthday Party the following day. Whenever she brings up the idea to her friends, however, they all have reasons not to go. As she goes from pony to pony, their reasons become gradually less and less believable, until Pinkie finally puts together that they’re making excuses. And immediately after, she looks out the window of her loft apartment and spies Twilight sneaking into Sugar Cube Corner.

Using a tin-can telephone, Pinkie manages to overhear Twilight picking up something from Mrs. Cake, with explicit instructions to not let Pinkie know. Donning incredible disguises, Pie and Gummy stalk after Twlight as she hands a package over to Rarity, who in turn gives it to Fluttershy. And every time they make a stop, the ponies whisper about how glad they are that Pinkie hasn’t found out and that this thing they’re doing will be so much better than that party she’s planning. Needless to say, Pinkie feels more than a little disheartened.

Rainbow Dash soon walks by, her saddlebags stuffed with unknown contents, and sees through Pinkie’s disguise long enough to give a friendly greeting before realizing just what happened and fleeing. Unfortunately, she has learned nothing from “Griffon the Brush-Off,” and Pinkie soon proves capable of going everywhere she goes, growing more and more unhinged as they continue. Finally, Dash manages to make it into Applejack’s barn, with AJ closing the door behind them. When Pinkie tries to look inside, AJ blocks her entrance and claims the barn is undergoing renovations, complete with the rest of her friends making incredibly fake tool noises.

Unable to progress on that front, Pinkie decides to move to the next step: interrogate Spike by using a plate full of gemstones and a flood light. Unfortunately, Spike proves to be completely ignorant of what Pinkie actually wants, and in her rage, she tells him to tell her that her friends hate her parties and don’t want to be her friends anymore. So Spike does. The news shocks Pinkie to her core, causing her mane and tail to deflate and her coat to darken until she resembles herself from before the Sonic Rainboom changed her life. Spike, meanwhile, leaves her in a near-suicidal state so he can eat a bunch of gemstones.

Now that she’s cracked completely, Pinkie resumes her After-Birthday Party…with a bunch of inanimate objects. As the party continues, Pinkie sinks further and further into her psychosis, until she is capable of having an actual debate with the bucket of turnips, ball of lint, pile of rocks, and sack of flour around her. With their insistence, she decides to never speak to her friends again, mere moments before Dash comes in to take her to Sweet Apple Acres. Pinkie refuses to leave at first, while Rainbow is left very disturbed and with a deep fear of her basement. After brutally murdering Rocky, however, Dash finally manages to wrestle Pinkie down and drag her by her tail to the barn…

Where everypony else has set up a surprise party. At first, Pinkie assumes that it’s a farewell party to celebrate everypony kicking her out of the group, thanks to all the crap they’ve pulled on her all day, but everypony soon sets the record straight. It’s actually Pinkie’s birthday, and all their excuses were so they could have time to set up this event. The package from Sugar Cube Corner was a birthday cake, the items in Dash’s bags were party supplies, and the reconstruction was them setting up the party grounds. After a few seconds, Pinkie’s color and puffy hair instantly return as she joins everypony in a big hug. Twilight, meanwhile, narrates to Celestia that you shouldn’t assume the worst from your friends.

REVIEW:

Out of all the Pinkie Pie episodes, this was the one I was most looking forward to revisiting. After all, this was the episode that solidified Pinkie Pie as second-best pony (until Season Two Pinkie Pie came into existence), it was the first episode to actually focus on a pony’s descent into madness, and of course, it was just plain funny. But has it held up? For the most part, yes, but there are a few niggling little things I have to bring up.

The singing telegram scene had me laughing for a good minute or so when I first saw it. For one, it’s Pinkie just being Pinkie, before that became synonymous with a total lack of empathy and general jerkass behavior. Here, she’s just bouncing along and singing a happy song about throwing her pet alligator his first birthday party. But beyond that, the scene just gets better and better as we transition every two verses to the next member of the Mane Six, with Pinkie and Gummy changing outfits every time. By the time they get to Rainbow Dash, Pinkie is visibly sweating and gasping for air, while she passes out right after she gets to Fluttershy’s house, and then again once back at her own home. Say what you will about the necessity of changing clothes every time, but Pinkie is downright dedicated to her craft.

The first party scene, in retrospect, is kind of a bit of padding, but it serves two key purposes in the end. The primary purpose is to set up for Pinkie’s actions the following day. The other reason, though, is to set itself up as a red herring for the episode’s resolution, but I’ll get to that in a moment. For the most part, though, the party is just there to show what happens at one of Pinkie’s usual shindigs, and save for a couple animation and continuity errors (like Twilight teleporting from behind a table to the dance floor and having a Cutie Mark on her inner thigh), it’s a pretty funny scene.

The next morning sets up the excuses, which gradually descend from believable to horribly bad lies:
* Twilight has to hit the books, which is what she usually does anyway. (I do like Pinkie’s “Don’t hit the books, just read them” line.)

* Applejack doesn’t actually lie; she really does have to pick apples, after all. This is also the first time we see that Applejack is a bad liar; she stammers her way through the statement, she sweats buckets, and she can’t keep a straight face when Pinkie gives her the Kubrick stare.

* We have another scene with Rarity and Spike, although it continues the trend from “Green Isn’t Your Color” where Spike will do something horrible out of his love for his sweet, only for Rarity to dismiss and push him away. Still, dumping your head into a trash can just to avoid someone is…an interesting way to let them know you’re not interested, I suppose.

* Finally, we have Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy together, as they claim that they have to housesit this afternoon. Unlike the others, though, Pinkie actually starts asking questions, if only so she can send a piece of After-Birthday Cake (that…doesn’t sound appetizing) to the house. The scene itself perhaps runs a little too long, but for the most part it’s my favorite part of this segment of the episode, especially when Dash draws a watch onto her foreleg and the two fail at keeping a straight story.

At this point, the narrative shifts to Pinkie figuring out that her friends are making up excuses (except for the one about Harry; that seems to be the only one she bought), and then stalking them to discover what they’re up to. And while I like these scenes for the most part, there is something that does bug me about it. But again, I have to wait until the resolution to explain that. Still, Twilight getting her face molded into a tin can was worth a laugh, as was Pinkie disguising herself as a hay bale with big-nosed novelty glasses.

Throughout these scenes, though, there is a definite change to Pinkie. She starts the invitations as perky as ever, bragging and singing about how much fun everypony is going to have. By the time she gets to Rarity, she’s shortened it down to just handing out invitations, and she is clearly disheartened when Dash and Fluttershy turn her down. The second act just continues this trend, first by having Pinkie hear that Twilight has been hiding something from her, and then when she overhears Rarity and Fluttershy talking about having a better plan than her party. Up to this point, Pinkie’s parties were just a funny little thing, but here, it starts to become apparent that she really depends on her friends liking her parties – and by extension, her.

The chase with Rainbow Dash bears a lot of similarities to the chase in “Griffon the Brush-Off,” but the tone is completely different. While both are mostly played for laughs, the first one was just her trying to be friendly and Dash was just trying to escape because she thought Pinkie was annoying. This time, Pinkie is getting more and more psychotic with each stop, and Dash is downright terrified of being caught by her friend. Whether this is because she doesn’t want to spoil the surprise, or because Pinkie is quite clearly out of her mind, isn’t quite clear.

The scene at the barn is mostly a repeat of Applejack’s excuse from earlier. Once again, she is not lying, per se. Dash was bringing supplies, and the rest of the ponies were helping renovate the barn. The construction noises were also funny, if only because they match the phone noise from Monster A-Go-Go in believability, and because AJ and Pinkie were having a tug-of-war to get inside. Again, though, there is something that bugs me here, but we’ll get to that in the resolution.

And then we get the worst scene in the episode, if only because Spike is horribly written here. While Spike has always been a bit of a brat, in this moment he was truly wretched. It was obvious that he didn’t know anything about the party, but when Pinkie told him to tell her that her friends hate her, he does exactly that. Now, if he had just been scared into acting like that and was apologetic afterwards, I wouldn’t have cared enough to complain, but right after Pinkie breaks down, all he does is gorge on the gems. Yes, Spike is a little kid, but he has been shown to care about the Mane 6 before, and this is just a very low moment for him.

And of course, this is where the most famous moment in the episode occurs. The now-darkened Pinkie’s party with the inanimate objects was by far the most flat-out terrifying moment of the first season, and would only be matched by, ironically, the Trainspotting scene from “Baby Cakes.” Just seeing Pinkie like that is depressing and horrifying at the same time. She twitches back and forth between fantasy and reality, her eyes roll about in her head, and of course, she’s having a debate with a bucket of turnips and a sack of flour. The music doesn’t help, especially as it starts changing as she becomes more and more nutty.

And oh yeah, someone wrote this thing about Pinkie killing Rainbow Dash. So when Dash showed up to take her to the party…yeah, a great collective laugh and sigh was heard from around the Bronydom. I have to say, I love Dash’s reaction to Pinkie’s total madness, from just staring wide-eyed at the scene, to trying to laugh it off, and finally just sinking into it herself briefly.

Now we get to the surprise party and my one big issue with this episode. While it’s nice and heartwarming on its own, when combined with everything that happened earlier in the episode, it doesn’t sit quite right when you include everything that led up to this point. Perhaps it’s just because Pinkie’s the only one that knows how to set up a surprise party, but for whatever reason, the Mane 6 dropped the ball here. Why was nopony sent out to keep Pinkie company? Why didn’t they drop the plan once they saw how distraught Pinkie was? Surprise parties are actually rather complicated things to plan and set up, and one of the key rules is to have someone serve as a diversion for the guest of honor. They go out together, have some fun for completely unrelated reasons, and just keep them busy until it’s the right time. If just one of them had done that, then this whole mess could have been averted. But then again, we would have had no show.

Second off, why did Pinkie forget her birthday? I can see her decided not to celebrate it so she could throw a party for somepony else, or because there was something else going on that was more important, but to forget the day completely? And if you take the whole series into consideration, “A Friend in Deed” kind of messes this up, since it shows that Pinkie has a near-perfect memory and attention to detail. She knows exactly how many days to everyone’s birthday, so again, how could she forget it here?

And finally – and this is the cynic in me talking so feel free to express your hate – the moral wasn’t quite what I had hoped it would be. “Don’t distrust your friends” isn’t a bad message by any means, if rather short-sighted in some ways, but the rest of the episode feels like it’s building up to, “Just because everyone doesn’t want to party with you every day doesn’t mean they hate you.” And honestly, that’s a much stronger, more adult moral than what we got. The ponies don’t want to go to another party because they have jobs and schoolwork they have to get done first, and because they just had a party last night and wore themselves out. It could have even reinforced the lesson from “Green Isn’t Your Color” and said that it’s all right to turn down an invitation, but you should be honest about it and not string your friends along. Still, that’s an incredibly minor blemish on what is, for the most part, a very solid episode.

CONCLUSION:

This is one of the few MLP episodes to strike the right balance between comedy and drama. What makes this episode wonderful isn’t just that it’s full of good jokes, but that we get to learn and feel for Pinkie more than ever. “Griffon the Brush-Off” set up her character, but this one finished her. And then Season Two…

You know what? Good episode, just watch.

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Well, that’s another one down. Don’t know if this review’s as good as the others, but this one was a little harder to review than I thought. Huh.

See you next time!