Mini Re-Reviews: "May the Best Pet Win!" - Season 2 Episode 7

APPLEJACK: "Rainbow Dash and those animatronics of those critters have been staring at the matte painting of the gorge for a while now. Do you reckon we should tell them the director got this shot?"
OWLOWISCIOUS: "Whoo."
SPIKE: "Owlowiscious is right. Leave them there for a bit. This is great material for social media posters to tease when promotion for this Season starts!"
RARITY: "Why Spike, that is a brilliant tactical idea! You're not only a great assistant to Twilight, you'd make a great assistant director too!"

"May the Best Pet Win!" (the exclamation mark matters) is a curious episode. It's not the one directly following it, which covers largely similar grounds in terms of Rainbow Dash's ego getting the best of her and the episode largely being an exercise in humility for the speedy horse. Ask around, and you'll hear from many viewers and fans that Rainbow Dash being a butt during much of the first half of Season 2 irked them quite a bit, until the delight of an episode that is "Read It and Weep". The episode after today's subject is usually cited as the main culprit, but today's target has received some scrutiny. As you might expect if you know me, I find that such claims, while not unwarranted (there are a handful of moments in this episode that do painy Rainbow in not such a good light), are overblown. Without knowledge of Episode 8, this one fares just fine. More then fine - I of course prefer "Read It and Weep", but this is one I've always really liked, and while this objective re-viewing took some small scratches out of its armour, that viewpoint still stands.

After a, as Rainbow Dash puts it, "freaky town" dream, that ends with an overt Alien homage that shocks her into freefall and then waking up, Rainbow notices the other five ponies are frolicking around with their pets, and, upon enquiry, finds out they have a regular pet playdate around this time every week, but never asked her because she likes to nap then. Oh yeah, and she doesn't have a pet of her own. At first she dismiss it as no biggie, but after observing them all while pretending to be napping, she blurts out that doesn't mean she never wants a pet. Cue Fluttershy whipping around right away with the most adorable delighted grin that, between it and her dialogue as she drags Dash off to her cottage to chose from the menagerie, makes it clear she's been wanting Rainbow to say for a very long time.

Truth be told, the episode jumped into the song following all that more abruptly then I remembered, which seems a bit odd given it's a long one (just over 3 and a half minutes) and trimming it by a bit would have helped. To be clear, the pet song is one I adore unabashedly, but it does belong to two categories of songs normally of the lesser variety in FiM: that of plot-serving songs (up to now, most of those have been Pinkie ditties, not full-blown musical numbers) as opposed to character-furthering songs, and the songs that are more then singing their words (the 'prosey' songs, if you will). But even if it's not one I'm likely to put on a list of best songs, it still clicks as a visual experience (audio too; it is in my playlists, just more so as a visual one), which sets a good precedence for the sequence to follow. Between the wide variety of pet designs showed off that ooze with personality, and the variety of visual gags (as well as one Easter Eggs towards the end that I'm sure had many fans exploding, as they often did whenever she appeared), it's a fun one.

The middle third of the episode concerns Rainbow Dash having all the suitable airborne pets, ranging from a bee all the way up to an eagle, compete in tests of skill and various other attributes that she values (just check a thesaurus for 'awesome', you'll find most of them there). Some of this segment can lay it on a bit thick with Rainbow Dash not getting the point of a pet's only valuable trait being companionship. That said, I find the episode's lesson in humility and all that far too effectively executed and meaningful to get annoyed at this segment for having her be somewhat egotistic. Besides which, it's a fun one: all the different animals came with a wide range of gags in their various attempts to win the different competitions (if you pay attention to the winners of each, you'll notice the four finalists did fare the best, but almost everyone did well at something), and no matter how much of the specifics here were Charlotte Fullerton's work, the storyboard artists clearly added a lot too. It is a cartoons, and so the visual should matter, as they do here. And bless Tank for trying so hard; with Fluttershy's sideways evidence as to him having been passed over as a pet many times before, you really root for him in this story of The Tortoise and the Pegasus. His attempt to beat Opal was gold, and would have worked were it not for the butterfly. And Rainbow's sideways remark that Twilight could not be her pet, while sporting radical sunglasses? Yeah, that's a thing.

The final race between Rainbow Dash and the four finalists (a bat, owl, falcon and eagle, with Tank crawling it anyway) through Gastly Gorge can't help but be thrilling as it uses Ride of the Valkyries, even if, between the thorn maze and the giant eels, it has a few more moments that don't speak well of RD's contest that was designed for her to win, as she basically admits once her wing gets pinned by a rock. Hey, turns out Tank's ridiculously strong, to lift a boulder up with just his head! That probably contributed to Rainbow's turnaround a bit. I find her attitude throughout the episode easy to take because it's mostly well-balanced and she adorable humble and grateful at the end. You can bet I was smiling just like Tank throughout most of this denouement. In fact, this ending is so much more satisfying with the knowledge of "Tanks For the Memories" in the future - that helps it far more then "The Mysterious Mare Do-Well" hinders it). And at least the falcon takes the loss quite humbly (that the others potential pets were allowed visual moments of wanting to be a pet too helped make some of them winning character in their own right - my favourite has to be the bat, though.

Rainbow does learn that what you want isn't always what you need, and I appreciate that. On the script level, the episode could have done with some refining and tightening, for it would be richer beyond the admittedly delightful gag-fest much of this is, if the song and pre-race contest were trimmed, and a bit more space were given to showing the other ponies and how their relationships with their pets contrasts heavily with what Rainbow envisions a pet being. And as mentioned, there are a few cases of Rainbow's ego going slightly too far. Still, we have here a delightful and effective episode on its own right, and even if I like it more then it probably deserves, it still deserves a 8/10 on its own merits. I've learned with this series not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

[Discord retches, exclaiming "Ugh, gag me!"]

STRAY OBSERVATIONS
- A bit of a line-confusion towards the end - Fluttershy mistook Tank for a turtle instead of a tortoise, when the proceeding shots made it more likely to be Pinkie, given she was looking through the binoculars and all. That's "The Stare Master"-CMC levels of mixup there.
- Rainbow-as-coach is a awesome coy visual touch, and one I'm glad popped up here and there in later seasons.
- For all that the other five and their pets don't get much focus at all, the little bits lots of them get are all winners. From Rarity having no control over Opal, to Pinkie and Gummy getting on like a house on fire, with the alligator being something of a brain slug for half the opening scene, they're all there. It's the first we've seen of much of them in a while (Gummy's first this season, Winona's first since "Applebuck Season"), and the grand return of Owlowiscious, who never really had as close a relationship with Twilight as he did here, alas. But, it's nice.
- Oh, there's a not to Tron too. You gotta love that; by this point, it's one most of us get even if few of us have seen the original film. Of course I have, but a lot haven't.

Comments

[Singularity Dream]

My favorite blink and you'll miss it moment in that episode is the fact that all of the winged critters can sit on clouds. Which I don't think was ever shown again, but I liked the idea that anything that could fly could treat clouds as solid instead of just pegasi.