Well, it’s time for #19 on our list, “Green Isn’t Your Color.”

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TECHNICAL SPECS:

Season: 1
Episode: 20
Written By: Meghan McCarthy
First Aired: March 18, 2011

SUMMARY:

During one of their weekly spa dates, Rarity tells Fluttershy that she’s made the acquaintance of Photo Finish, one of the biggest fashion photographers in Equestria, and has managed to set up a photo shoot with her. However, she needs a model, and can’t think of a better pony than Fluttershy for the job. The Pegasus, naturally, is nervous about taking the position, but finally caves since it’ll make Rarity happy. On the day of the shoot, Twilight, Pinkie and Spike assist Rarity in preparing Fluttershy in one of her newest outfits; that is, Twilight and Pinkie mostly stand around while Spike is abused by Rarity. Still, he asks them to keep his relationship secret, and while Twilight is incredulous about hiding something everypony already knows, Pinkie reminds her that losing a friend’s trust is the fastest way to lose a friend forever.

Photo Finish finally arrives, brushing Rarity aside and jumping right to the shoot. After taking a few photos, she loudly announces that she’s found the next fashion star in Equestria before departing as swiftly as she came. Rarity is ecstatic at finally being discovered, but when she and Fluttershy show up for a second shoot, she learns that Photo Finish is interested in Fluttershy, and actually can’t stand Rarity’s gem-encrusted creations. Still, Rarity acts happy for Fluttershy’s sudden appearance on the modeling scene, despite her despair.

Soon after, Fluttershy is catapulted into fame and glory, with her face getting plastered across every fashion magazine in Equestria. Rarity, meanwhile, is left envious over how quickly her friend has obtained the status she had dreamed of her whole life. Things come to a head when Photo Finish prevents Fluttershy from meeting Rarity at the spa. A frustrated Rarity asks Twilight to keep her envy a secret before departing, only for Fluttershy to immediately arrive and also ask Twilight to keep her own misgivings of being a model a secret. Neither pony is happy, but they won’t do anything to change the situation because they think it’ll disappoint the other, and with Pinkie hovering around Twilight to make sure she keeps her mouth shut, it doesn’t seem like there will be a way out anytime soon.

Fortunately, Twilight thinks up a loophole; all Fluttershy has to do is fail at a big gig, and then she’ll be out of a career. That way, Rarity will have no reason to be jealous, and Fluttershy won’t have to suffer anymore. During Fluttershy’s latest fashion show, Twilight uses her magic to make her mess up her routine, turning the crowd (and Photo Finish) against her. Sadly, Rarity was also in the crowd, and while she enjoyed a brief moment of schadenfreude at Fluttershy’s downfall, hearing everypony turn on her causes her to start applauding. The sudden cheering turns everypony’s attention to her, and when they see how wonderful her dress is, everypony immediately starts praising Fluttershy more.

Back in Fluttershy’s dressing room, Twilight is close to the breaking point from trying to keep all their secrets, especially when Rarity arrives. Fortunately, the two finally talk honestly with each other, confess their true feelings about the situation, and realize that they could have avoided all this if they hadn’t been keeping their frustrations secret. Photo Finish soon arrives with more offers for Fluttershy, but the two of them simply leave, thus ending Fluttershy’s brief modeling career.

Unfortunately, Twilight can take no more, and blurts out Spike’s secret to Photo Finish. Spike is, naturally, upset, but he forgives her quickly enough. This leads to Twilight narrating the week’s lesson: keeping secrets is fine sometimes, but you should be honest with your friends.

REVIEW:

The opening for this episode works for a couple of reasons. First, it shows Rarity and Fluttershy simply hanging out together without the entire group, again showing that while all six are friends with each other, some of them are closer to certain other ponies in the group than others. Second, I liked the way it built up Photo Finish’s reputation and importance, going from one stage of the spa process to the next in that way only television can. Third, I liked the subtle differences between the treatments each pony gets. Rarity is very intense, with full-on massages, mud masks, her horn getting filed, and so forth. Fluttershy, meanwhile, only gets light dabs across her cheek, a slow back rub, and is overall treated far more gently. I also loved the scene where one of the Spa Ponies approaches her with a horn file, only for her to squee that she doesn’t have a bone sticking out of her forehead.

Fluttershy getting dressed was amusing for the most part, but the real importance here is to set up Spike’s “secret.” Rarity’s treatment of him basically fuels my interpretation of their relationship in the first season; Spike pines for her in a state of perpetual puppy love, while Rarity either doesn’t notice or is mostly dismissive of his feelings. Still, the episode gives itself some wiggle room by having Rarity apologize for being short with everypony because of her nerves. And then we get the second source of conflict this episode, as Pinkie proves to take secret keeping very seriously. While it could be excused as being part of her obsession with keeping Pinkie Promises (which are also introduced this episode), we also see it extend to when Rarity confesses her feelings and no such promise was made. According to Pinkie, giving someone a secret shows that you trust them, and losing a friend’s trust is the fastest way to lose a friend…say it with me now:

This brings us to another reason I love this episode, and by extension this show, so much. Many shows aimed at adults and kids alike have a disturbingly juvenile concept of secret keeping and its importance in society, where giving away a secret – even for perfectly good reasons – is tantamount to murdering baby seals. This is not a new concept, either; I can still remember shows from when I was a kid that made the same basic blunder. Here, however, the idea is given a whole lot more thought and consideration. But I’m getting ahead of myself a little.

Photo Finish tends to be considered a parody of Lady Gaga, and I can see where people would get that idea, but in reality she’s inspired by Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour. I’m guessing that the accent was just their way to sneak past any possible lawsuits. Regardless of who she was based on, Photo Finish’s character is introduced and established very quickly, with her brushing off Rarity and immediately starting the shoot. We also start to see where things between the photographer and designer are falling apart; Rarity wants Fluttershy to show pizzazz, but Photo prefers her to be her usual meek, quiet self. And just as quickly as she came, she goes, but not before giving a very vague remark that she’s found the next fashion star in Ponyville. This excites Rarity so much that she celebrates by stomping on Spike’s tail, which now suddenly hurts him. (Perhaps dragon scales are thinner down by the tail area.)

Of course, this is when the rug gets pulled out from under Rarity’s hooves. And while I probably should be jumping to her defense, Photo Finish does have a point. Fluttershy is a very quiet pony with a simple, delicate nature, while Rarity’s outfits for the most part are showy and in-your-face. Still, even for someone who just spent the last review calling Rarity “scum,” watching her get her hopes raised and crushed in short order is more than a little heartbreaking. Even worse, however, is how she tries to put up a happy face in Fluttershy’s presence. By the time she’s sewed up her black cloak and asked for the others to leave, it’s obvious she needs a hug and a good cry. Fortunately, Spike is on hand to provide us with a bit more levity, excusing Twilight and Pinkie from the room…before trying to have her all alone to himself.

What happens next is the usual fame montage. Fluttershy’s first fashion show is amusing in how the preparations Photo Finish puts her through mirror similar comments Rarity made, as well as Photo giving a similar “pep talk” to the one Fluttershy gave Rainbow Dash in “Sonic Rainboom.” Of course, she puts up a good show so that Rarity will be happy, thus raising the irony points of this episode by five points. After that comes the photos, and with that, her face is plastered everywhere, from magazine covers to apple crates at Sweet Apple Acres. She even advertises carrot juice, which I’m torn between either chalking up as an affront to her friend’s apple-vending ways or an indictment of just how much of the stuff she gives Angel. Either way, the point is to show her becoming inescapably famous, while Rarity – the pony who wanted this attention and pushed Fluttershy to model to begin with – grows increasingly envious.

Fluttershy gets her own reason to hate the situation, however, when the price of celebrity rears its ugly head. Needless to say, getting hounded by screaming fans and paparazzi is not Fluttershy’s idea of a good time. But when she tries to hide in Carousel Boutique, she and Rarity continue to lie to each other to save the other’s feelings, despite being absolutely miserable.

This continues to the spa, where Fluttershy is late thanks to being held up by Photo Finish. For a brief moment, Rarity wishes that Fluttershy’s career would just die off, but she quickly catches and admonishes herself for even thinking such things. Unfortunately for poor Twilight, she’s the only pony around for them to confide in, and when she tries to tell Fluttershy how Rarity feels, Pinkie pops up remind her that losing a friend’s trust will lose them…

And thus we have the central conflict for the episode. Both friends hate what’s going on, and could easily solve the situation by talking it out, but since they think the other one’s happy, they’re willing to suffer for the sake of their friendship. Twilight, meanwhile, is caught in the middle of all this, and despite being in a position to start fixing the problem, she’s held down by Pinkie Pie, who places far too much emphasis on secrets and the keeping thereof. I think Fluttershy sums it up quite nicely here:

Fortunately, Twilight has an idea, which she then runs by her cruel master Pinkie Pie to see if it violates any of the previous secrets. Pinkie responds with a ridiculously long pantomime of her own, representing her own deep desire to keep any secrets. It’s not a long or important scene, but it’s fun, and it’s nice to have Pinkie be used in this episode in a way that doesn’t just drive up the conflict.

And so we have my favorite scene in the entire episode: Twilight tripping up Fluttershy on the runway. While the physical humor with Fluttershy picking her nose and scratching herself like a dog is fine enough, what really elevates this is Rarity. After finally showing up to one of Fluttershy’s shows, she initially seems happy enough to see her fail, but once everypony turns on her friend completely, she changes her tune and starts supporting her. It’s only at this moment that Rarity finally gets the attention she wanted the entire episode, as the other ponies in attendance all applaud her dress and figure that, if she knows that much about fashion, then she’s right to call Fluttershy’s display a “new kind of modeling.” The delicious irony, of course, is that Rarity just sank their chances to get Fluttershy out of a career she hated, but once again, she’s willing to lay back and suffer for her friend’s happiness. Fluttershy’s response?

Finally, the two just sit down and talk out their problems. Now that they know how the other feels, they’re more than willing to ditch Photo Finish (who has no idea what just happened) and go back to just being friends again. It’s a little on the sappy side, but overall it’s a touching enough moment and brings the disastrous affair to a satisfying conclusion. However, what makes this work even better is Twilight’s breakdown over how stupid everypony’s behaving. Every time she starts to blurt out the one sentence that will solve the problem, she plugs her mouth up, until she finally resorts to plunging her head in a flower pot. But once the two leaves, she pulls her head out and shouts that Spike has a crush on Rarity, causing Pinkie to appear in the mirror (it’s Pinkie, just roll with it) and admonish her for revealing that secret everypony else knows.

If I have one complaint about the ending, it’s that the continuity between shots is all over the place, especially with regards to Spike. One minute, he’s standing outside the tub Twilight’s soaking in, and in the next he’s inside the sauna, only to later be inside the sauna and fanning Rarity. The moral, however, is one of the things I really love about this episode.

As mentioned above, many shows have a tendency to place secrets above everything else, and tend to impose the same threats that Pinkie Pie makes on their characters. What this episode does, however, is show how hurtful it can be to keep your feelings about things hidden from your friends. All Twilight had to do was reveal the truth, and everything would have been solved. She couldn’t do that, however, without setting Pinkie off, and thus drove herself mad as she watched two of her best friends suffer from something she could have tried to fix. The point of the episode is that keeping things secret can cause far more harm than good, and that there’s a difference between hiding a silly crush and something that could hurt you and your friends in the long run.

CONCLUSION:

“Green Isn’t Your Color” is one of my favorite episodes of the first season, and would definitely rank in the top five for the show overall. This episode strikes a perfect balance between pure comedy and an examination of the characters. The moral is very mature and doesn’t paint a simple black-and-white image of keeping secrets. The fact that I can’t find any sort of major faults here, even after going over the whole thing with my Eyes of +6 Nitpicking, should be testament enough to how much I love this one.

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Well, I got good news and bad news.

The good news is, we’re only three episodes away from the end.

The bad news is, this is the last episode on the list that I’m 100% purely positive with.