It’s that time of week again. Another week has rolled on by, and now it’s time for the next episode.

This week, that would be “A Dog and Pony Show”, by Amy Keeting Rogers. Well, I like Amy Keeting Rogers, and I like songs by David Bowie. Don’t really think I remember this one being great, but we’ll see. Let’s watch.

After I’m done listening to David Bowie.

So Rarity’s tending shop, and when someone comes in, gives her opening line: “Welcome to Rarity’s Boutique, where every garment is chic, unique, and magnifique.”, and then totally loses it, because Sapphire Shores walks in.

She’ll clearly get over being star-struck like this later, and Sapphire Shores even will be getting clothes from her in the future, as I remember.

She also apparently follows “Clotheshorse Magazine”. This is a clotheshorse, if you’re interested:

That’s actually the name of an actual magazine, too.

Rarity shows her her newest outfit, which has all sort of jewels on it, and she loves it, and will take it! And 5 more. And Rarity’s out of jewels, and faints. Seems like maybe Rarity should’ve taken some measurements, but okay.

So she’s headed out with Spike, who is going on about how awesome Sapphire Shores is (but not as awesome as you, Rarity).

Raritys also running around horn-first looking silly. But she’s using her gem finding spell. I know this was her cutie mark talent, but that hadn’t been established at this point, of course.

Spike can dig them out pretty fast - but Rarity stops him from eating them. Imagine spending all day picking out tasty treats and not being able to eat any of them…

“Come along, Spike. We have many jewels to find.” “At your service, milady.” Which immediately makes me think of a later Spike episode.

Some of these scenes are pretty goofy looking.

Did you know Spike can use his tail as a shovel?

Or a drill.

Of course, when Rarity does give him a gem, from his reaction, he just might keep it.

And who’s lurking in the bushes, but Gollum! “Yesss, gemsss. Gemsss!” “Where?” “Preciousss gemsss!”

Oh, wait, I guess those are the Diamond Dogs. They don’t sound much like David Bowie.

They seem to have decided to grab all the gems and Spike, because he’s ‘the gem hunter’.

They are more intelligent than they sound, though, as they almost immediately figure out Rarity’s calling the shots, and decide to nab her instead.

And the next jewel Rarity looks for is in the tree’s… on a dog. You would think finding gems that belong to other people would get her in trouble more often.

“Oooo... Ewww! Uh... uh... Good day, gentle... uh, fellow. Uh, I am Rarity and this is my friend Spike.”

And then this happens.

Um, yeah. Wow. Maybe some pants are in order?

Not a bad plan of theirs, though, to back her into where two other diamond dogs are waiting. Spike uses his tail as a drill on one of their tails, but it is three vs. two.

To be honest, Spike does a pretty good job of putting up a fight here. If there was one less Diamond Dog, I think Rarity would have gotten away.

We do learn that the spikes on his head are strong enough to hold his whole body weight while stuck on a tree branch, despite normally working more like hair for him.

Spike does immediately fetch the cavalry and lead everypony there, while hyperventilating into a bag.

“Good. Now tell us what you know.” “Yeah. 'Cause all you said earlier was…” “Aaaah! Rarity... woods... jewels... dogs... hole... taken... Save her!” “Not a whole lot to go on there, sport.”

So he shows them the Diamond Dog’s holes.

“Holy moly, that's a lotta holeys.”

And we get an absolutely ridiculous scene where the Diamond Dogs start filling up the holes, and we watch all of them individually try to go through holes before they are filled up in various ways.

How are the Diamond Dogs blasting dirt in their faces like this, anyways?

*in their imagination* “Oh, woe is me! Whatever shall I do? Ah! Dirt, dirt! Get away, dirt! Oh! Make it stop, make it stop! Ah! Filthy, disgusting dirt. It stings, it burns. Help! Oh, somepony save me, save me!”

So they start digging the holes out… and Diamond Dogs start popping out of the dirt, and picking them up by the tails and tossing them, tripping them, popping up and then going down to make ponies collide into each other, and so on. Again, they seem to have a fair idea of tactics and such. I’m not sure why they don’t just go ahead and capture the others here.

And what was that imaginary scene there?

Ok then.

Spike pulls the gem Rarity gave him out of one of the pockets he apparently has built into his skin, and says “I got it! I'll save you, my sweet.”. Nice trick, that.

Spike is fishing for them with the gem tied on a fishing rod. Dissolve to another imaginary scene, this one of Sir Spike the knight fighting the Diamond Dogs.

And, you know, while it’s fairly similar, that’s not the same design they used in season 9 for future Spike. I still don’t think either is a good future Spike design, though.

It’s a pretty silly daydream, too.

Spike gets something on the line, though. He starts to get pulled into the hole, and Applejack uses her well-known tail-biting skills to bite Spike’s tail, then Twilight bites Applejack’s tail, Rainbow Dash bites Twilight’s tail, and so forth, and there was tail-biting all around.

And they all get pulled in… and the gem, line, and fishing rod all are no longer there, and they have no idea which direction to go in.

Spike yells “No!” dramatically for, what, the second or third time this episode?

So, apparently Rarity is the only one that knows that gem-finding spell. Except for Twilight, because Twilight saw her do it once and is a super magical genius like that. Trademarked and proprietary spells are no match for Twilight Sparkle!

Twilight gallops to the rescue with Spike on her back.

Meanwhile, we switch to the actual Rarity, not one of the repeated imaginary ones. She’s pleading with the Diamond Dogs to let her go, in scintillating dialogue.

Rarity: Oh please, Diamond Dogs. Please let me go.
Spot: No!
Fido: You're our precious little pony.
Rover: Forever! Muhahahaha!

Rarity capitulates pretty easily as far as finding them gems, but seems pretty miffed when they expect her to dig them out, too.

And she decides to dig extremely slowly and showily. That doesn’t usually work when ‘I’ don’t want to do something…

So they’ll make her pull things instead, like I do when we go camping. She’s not too amused.

She starts complaining about everything and whining.

So they rape and eat her. Show over. I got kinda a rapey vibe from that one earlier.

No? Maybe they stick a muzzle on her, so they don’t have to listen to her?

Stick her in a cell for a while, no food and water until she cooperates?

No, apparently they’ll wait on her hand and foot as her servants. I just get sent to my room…

They actually have a conversation about how dumb everything is at this point.

They decide to go back to the original plan, and make her haul things, while slapping her on the butt and calling her a mule.

Rarity, being a massive racist, starts going on about mules being ugly, and starts crying to get what she wants. Right, Amy Keeting Rogers wrote “Bridle Gossip”.

The Diamond Dogs seem rather confused by her racism and crying.

Meanwhile, the mane 6 are still on their way. And are immediately captured and have bridles put on them. If they could tie a rope around their mouths that quickly, why didn’t they do that to Rarity? Mind you, they seem to be able to talk perfectly fine anyways.

Naturally, they don’t have much luck and get bucked off, because they’ve had practice repeatedly bucking Spike off their backs. See “Fall Weather Friends”, also Amy Keeting Rogers.

“I'm coming for you, milady. Hi-ho, Twilight! Away!” “And just what do you think you're doing?” “Please, Twilight. Just give me this.” “Fine. *neighs*”

And they meet Rarity, who is robbing the Diamond Dogs blind, carting off all the gems in the mine, and they’ll let her leave because the power of the plot compels them.

Oh, here’s the moral. It’s almost over.

Just because somepony is ladylike doesn't make her weak. In fact, by using her wits, a seemingly defenseless pony can be the one who outsmarts and outshines them all.

Well, that’s a good moral. Wish it had been in this episode. I think I learned that you can always get your way by whining and crying enough, and that’s probably what most of the kids watching this would come out with, too.

This is kinda a show low point. Maybe next week's episode will be better?

“Green Isn’t Your Color”? Well, we’ll see how that goes. To next week!

--Sweetie Belle

Meanwhile, a long long time ago...

--Sweetie Belle

Behold the diamond dogs, now watch as we never have them featured in an episode (except occasionally in the background) ever again.

Seriously there could have been so much potential for world building with this race but Hasbro either didn't know it or didn't care.

Sad we never got David Bowie as the king of Diamond Dogs.

7148261
I still think they were actually fairly intelligent despite appearances early on, too, and were just kinda brought down by the plot later.

7148262
Now that would have been something! Of course, we need the CMC with Bowie in the costumes from Show Stoppers...

--Sweetie Belle

I've never liked this episode. I didn't like how it treated the characters who were trying to come up with creative plans and solutions (slapped muzzles on them) whereas the one that did pretty much everything wrong and ineffectual came out on top and was made to look like a heroine...

Like, Spike might still have that kinda creepy 'prince saves princess' vibe going on (which in S1 is still sorta supporter by Rarity's character), but he put real effort into going and trying to rescue his friend and did everything right; going to fetch help, thinking and stuff, and all that. Twilight remained calm throughout the whole ordeal, Rainbow and Applejack were all shown running around desperately trying to either get into the holes or try to help Spike pull himself out and everything, and even Fluttershy turned up, they used a gem to get into the dog's lair, they navigated these complex tunnels, and in the end, the show treats all that effort like dirt.

Fitting I suppose, given their location. That it's all done in favour to make Rarity, who performs by far the worst out of all of them, look good and make whining and irritating tactics look good really grates.

I get the vibe that it's supposed to be funny how Rarity being a whiny waste of space defeats the clueless dumb dogs, and I know that there are at least a few folks who enjoyed this ep (and I don't want to take that away or anything), but I didn't laugh, and I didn't like the ep. I rank it well below other eps that the rest of the fandom seems to much prefer taking aim at.

As far as I'm concerned, it only gets better after this, though. Rarity's character gets a real turning point after the S1 finale and I, for one, can't wait.

7148252

“Welcome to Rarity’s Boutique, where every garment is chic, unique, and magnifique.”

Notice she didn't say Carousel Boutique, which is the actual name of the building.

7148263 I just find it annoying that Hasbro can add races to the show but not go into further detail on them in said show. This applies to: diamond dogs, buffalo, breezies (granted that might have been a smart choice), and as far as I know (because I still haven't finished season 9) the Kirin.

It would have been nice to explore these races and their cultures in further detail.

At least that's how I feel.

7148252
Yep - we're done establishing the CMC, and it's time to return to our main heroines - and for the first time in a major role, the show's sole hero! (Well, maybe more aspirant hero at this point...)

because Sapphire Shores walks in.

Our first of a few "Ponies of Pop" and the only one not voiced by a real star - but arguably feeling a bit more natural for it. I actually do have a bit of headcanon for her, although I only came up with it after her return in Season 4 - here and now, she's just our quest-giver.

(Oh, and as fan of in-universe media, you can probably guess I liked Clotheshorse magazine. Pity continuity was still to loose at this point for it to be a proper hint towards the next episode.)

Seems like maybe Rarity should’ve taken some measurements, but okay.

I'm guessing anyone who reads the right magazines knows Sapphire's measurements.

So she’s headed out with Spike, who is going on about how awesome Sapphire Shores is (but not as awesome as you, Rarity).

His co-starring debut - and all out alone in the middle of nowhere with the pon he loves! What could go wrong?

Raritys also running around horn-first looking silly. But she’s using her gem finding spell. I know this was her cutie mark talent, but that hadn’t been established at this point, of course.

Ah, a unicorn using magic. So Season 1.

Did you know Spike can use his tail as a shovel? Or a drill.

the pockets he apparently has built into his skin

#underuseddragonpowers

Oh, wait, I guess those are the Diamond Dogs. They don’t sound much like David Bowie.

They seem to have decided to grab all the gems and Spike, because he’s ‘the gem hunter’.

They are more intelligent than they sound, though, as they almost immediately figure out Rarity’s calling the shots, and decide to nab her instead.

Ah, diamond dogs - one of a few Season 1 races which failed to ever be picked-up/expanded (save maybe in the comics). And so we're left with mainly just a bunch of questions and no real idea how typical this band of gem hunters is. Do the kidnap ponies often? How much do ponies know about them? How far under Equestria do their caverns stretch?

We do learn that the spikes on his head are strong enough to hold his whole body weight while stuck on a tree branch, despite normally working more like hair for him.

...this show. Just... this show. And especially this season...

Pretty good action in this episode too. And the fantasies are amusing, if not flattering.

So, apparently Rarity is the only one that knows that gem-finding spell. Except for Twilight, because Twilight saw her do it once and is a super magical genius like that. Trademarked and proprietary spells are no match for Twilight Sparkle!

Which is fine, as long as she doesn't go around monopolising them...

And yeah - Rarity is at full form and even the diamond dogs are amusing, but whining shouldn't have worked, either from a realism sense or more important, the sense of what-on-earth-do-you-think-you're-teaching-little-girls-to-do-when-held-captive-by-large-thuggish-men. (I mean, Rarity could probably take them all, but I don't know if she can sta in-rating too.) I did kind of like the mule joke even though I probably shouldn't have.

...this show. (And where did Spike get this sort of idea?)

So yeah - a very fun episode with a bungled moral much more dangerous than FPK's. If this had come first, might it have spared Polsky his reputation?

7148311
Certainly an apt summary of this episode's flaws, however one weighs them against it's merits.

Perhaps it would have better demonstrated both Rarity's wits and her Element for her to make a deal with the dogs?

7148342
Don't forget zebra and minotaurs. But then, I don't think ever race needs expanding on necessarily.

7148436 The list of things the episode could have done to make it better is pretty long...

Out of sheer principle, I strongly dislike the episode effectively putting Rarity's 'methods' above the actual legit heroism displayed by the others. Even without changing what it is Rarity does, at least making it so Twilight and Spike's (and the others, of course) efforts aren't wasted compared to whining would have been nice. An indication that Rarity was perhaps stalling instead of just resolving the situation better than Twilight & Co. would have been a start.

Alternatively, yes, as you aptly suggest, Rarity making a deal would have been good. There's even an argument that that was the sensible thing to do; she was diggin on their turf and nicking their shit, and if the diamond dogs hadn't exhausted all of the sympathy the audience and myself had for them by kidnapping and enslaving a pony for greed, one could argue that Rarity was actually the one who had initiated the conflict.

The diamond dogs having some kind of division amongst themselves could have been good. For example if one of them actually took a liking to Rarity, then actually Rarity using words could have potentially looked an awful lot better, since that would have implied she was able to not only accurately identify a sympathetic member of the dogs, but convince them to help her. Then when Twilight and Co arrive, they could have been a tipping point in a conflict between the Dogs and Rarity. I get the feel that this is what the show would have probably gone for in later seasons.

Alternatively, Rarity could have ran. She could have distracted the dogs with her whining and then legged it, again letting Twilight & Co's efforts to get into the lair not be a waste of time (they then could have gotten her out without having to fight the dogs).

Like, there's a lot I could imagine that would make it better, because the episode is in my opinion really bad. Small changes in context would have at least made it more palatable, but I guess at this stage the show was still struggling to find its legs in places.

7148436 True, even though we see... shot, I forgot his name, a few times later, we never really learn much about the minotaurs. I like to think that many of the minotaurs are like Mr. Torgue from the Borderlands franchise.

7148455
I still mainly like it - perhaps because I don't consider everyone else's heroism wasted if Rarity doesn't need help. It's a show after all - no opportunity for a character to be awesome is wasted if we the audience see it. And I don't think the episode devalues their effort - if Rarity hadn't saved herself, they could have done the job too just fine. No, the problem as I see it isn't that she saved herself, but how.

7148459
i suspect both minoturs and zebras come from far away, across the sea.

7148505 You see, that is a place I would love to explore. Too bad the show is over.

I guess we'll just have to write fanfiction of it.

7148524
Given what the show did to griffons and changelings, perhaps the minotaurs and zebras are glad of their distance?

(Although the comics are going there at least.)

7148505 My quibble stems from the fact that I don't think Rarity either could nor deserved to have saved herself, which in fact renders her friends coming to rescue her very necessary. Of course, the episode appears to disagree with me. Perhaps I should whine more often in difficult spots, and go to help friends in tough situations less...

I appreciate that, outside of this episode, Rarity is actually shown to be one of the more competent characters, displaying skill in martial arts, intelligence, and strong charisma. If she had utilised any one of those three characteristics, or combination thereof, I'd likely be far less vitriolic. Not.... this.

In any case, it doesn't matter. I've come to terms with the fact that I'm one of only folk who vocally dislike this episode a long time ago... And that's fine. It's not like Rarity doesn't get a kick in the rear for this kind of entitled behaviour later, when she runs into Prince Blueblood, so in terms of general character growth, I'm generally begrudgingly okay with accepting that Rarity whining her way out of a bad situation is a thing that happened, though I do my best not to talk about it.

7148710
Well yeah - what grates is that Rarity totally could save herself - just not in the way shown here. (And they could even still keep the diva bit, because she uses it twice here.)

7148710
There, there you are not alone. Season one Rarity was still searching herself and this episode is far from her best appearance. She wasn't exactly high on popularity list back then and this kind of behavior is why. But bad traits are part of the package that are characters.

You know, maybe people didn't complain much about this episode back in the day since Rarity wasn't that popular so no-one was outraged in her name? That's my guess, I wasn't fan back then since I didn't find show appealing when I watched it first time.

7148816
Rarity was pretty big after Suited for Success hit. Maybe Sonic Rainboom cost her a bit of that, but not much IMO. (But then, i always liked her...) And from what I recall, most of us took the episode's moral as given - the second thoughts came later.

7148882
Pretty big is arguable. Art of the Dress certainly made her liked but still she was far from popularity that Dash and Pinkie had for example, those two were hard to ignore even if you never watched the show back in 2011. But lets be honest, neither you or me can make a real claim when we are both latecomers and weren't there to see fandom up close back then. It was different time, people were more open to enjoying things back then.

7148927
I'm a latecomer to active roles only - I've been a brony for over 9 years. And yes, people did enjoy things more easily - although we still had controversies, the weren't on the same scale.

7148784 To be fair, diva Rarity is a big part of why I actually like her. It's pretty fun in a lot of other scenarios, as I'm certain I'll have ample opportunity to gush about when we get to some later episodes.

7148981
Exactly why I wouldn't ditch it - just have it be a bit less effective.