Episode Re-Review: Griffon The Brush Off · 5:27pm Jan 24th, 2021
Four episodes in and the show had bobbed up and down in quality with no clear direction or sense of purpose. It had good moments and bad moments. Cindy Morrow made her writing debut here and we got our introduction to what seemed like the first one off antagonist for an episode. With the knowledge of what would happen to Gilda a few seasons down the road, has this episode gotten better, worse or stayed the same? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with Pinkie Pie babbling about something that may or may not be related to Rainbow Dash, while Twilight feigns interest. Then Rainbow Dash flies past and seems to be treating Pinkie Pie like something to avoid for no real reason. Pinkie tries to call out to Rainbow, but Rainbow doesn't bother to listen until she runs smack into a cliff side, which is what Pinkie was trying to warn Rainbow about. The next day, Pinkie is looking for Rainbow once again and Rainbow is again trying to avoid Pinkie. We get treated to a bunch of cartoon antics as Pinkie stalks Rainbow not unlike Pepe LePew from Looney Tunes. And yeah, it's hilarious, but there's no real in-universe explanation behind any of it. And it ends anti-climatically when Rainbow just gives in and agrees to do whatever Pinkie wants. I suspect this a holdover from a planned eleven minute episode and for whatever reason they didn't change it when the episode was extended to twenty two minutes. Still, nothing of substance occurs here.
Pinkie Pie tries to direct Rainbow Dash to position a cloud, and we find out it's for a prank on Spike. Rainbow kicks the cloud, causing lightning to shoot out of it and give Spike the hiccups. They are briefly worried about him, but Spike shrugs off and says he's okay since dragons are fire proof. But he does end up bombarding Princess Celestia with a lot of blank scrolls.
Rainbow then admits Pinkie's "not as lame as I thought" and agrees to help her carry out pranks on the rest of Ponyville. The pranks are pretty harmless for the most part, the only exception being when they trick Twilight with invisible ink and cause some kind of potion she's been working on to explode. They're lucky it wasn't anything dangerous. Anyway, the montage ends when we see them setting up a prank on Fluttershy involving a fake turtle. Pinkie insists they can't prank Fluttershy because she's too sensitive, and Rainbow agrees. Then Pinkie reveals she somehow managed to stain the telescope lens Rainbow was using with ink. But this too has no real bearing on the overall plot. It feels like they were going to do an episode about how pranking can go too far, but then decided against it. It's only once Pinkie heads to Rainbow's cloud house the next day and is greeted by an eagle eye stare from Gilda that the actual plot starts to kick in. Rainbow introduces Gilda and reveals that the two of them attended Junior Speedsters together as kids. After a bit of clunky exposition about what a griffon is, we get a sort of song when Rainbow and Gilda do the Junior Speedsters chant (it only sounds like a song because Gilda's bored tone clashes with Rainbow's energetic tone). After that, Rainbow tells Pinkie she wants to hang out with Gilda for a while and promises to meet up again soon, which Pinkie agrees to but is clearly unhappy about.
Pinkie literally catches up to the two later on, and after a while Gilda sends Rainbow off on a distracting show off performance while she calls Pinkie over and tells her to get lost. A lot of people complain about Gilda's outdated 90's slang, and I'll admit they do overdo it. But it does kind of help to show that Gilda is stuck in the past, and that she views Pinkie Pie as a threat solely because she might occupy Rainbow Dash's attention, making it clear that Gilda is possessive of Rainbow and thinks Rainbow Dash can't have any other friends. Somehow, though, Rainbow doesn't notice Gilda's sabotage or even Pinkie's crash landing that destroys her flying machine (Andrea Libman apparently has a degree in engineering, so this was intended to be a nod to that). Pinkie then goes to talk to Twilight, but Twilight isn't even bothering to pay her friend any attention (Twilight's role here feels really shoehorned in, are there no other friends Pinkie could talk to about Gilda?) and out of the blue assumes Pinkie's jealous. Furious at the suggestion, Pinkie storms out in protest but then stops to consider if maybe Twilight's right. It's actually one of the first looks we got into Pinkie's character and a sign that she isn't all hyperactive and random.
Sometime later, Pinkie watches Gilda when she's on her own in the town square. She sees Gilda steal an apple from a cart and eat it, and scare Granny Smith (accidentally). But she tries to believe that Gilda might just be misunderstood and not intending to cause trouble. However, when Fluttershy bumps into Gilda, Gilda is enraged and yells at Fluttershy, scaring her away. And this is what causes Pinkie to decide that Gilda's gone too far and that "extreme measures" must be taken.
It seems like Pinkie's idea of "extreme measures" is a party for Gilda, and it looks like she's setting it up to expose Gilda for the bully she is all the while Pinkie feigns innocence. Gilda sure seems to think that's the case, especially once she starts falling for pranks that seem to have conviently been set up for her such as a joy buzzer, trick candles or a can of rubber snakes. It all culminates when Gilda is given the honor of going first at pin the tail on the pony and is blindfolded. Thinking that Pinkie's trying to set her up again, she ignores Pinkie's instructions and ends up stumbling into the kitchen. This causes Gilda to snap and show her true colors in front of everyone. But then Rainbow Dash reveals that the pranks were all her doing and weren't necessarily meant for Gilda, it was just bad luck Gilda set them all off. And Pinkie Pie threw the party not to expose Gilda, but to try and get her to change her ways.
Rainbow makes it clear she's disappointed in Gilda's behavior, and Gilda issues the ultimatum of "It's me or them". When Rainbow sides with her new friends, Gilda storms out in frustration and presumably leaves Ponyville. Some say Rainbow Dash was wrong to turn her back on Gilda and kick her out of her life, but I think they ignore the fact that it was Gilda who put pressure on Rainbow to choose in the first place. Rainbow Dash never told Gilda to leave, Gilda chose to do so when Rainbow scolded her for her bad behavior. So it was Gilda who chose to end the friendship. Granted, someone could've tried to intervene and give both sides a chance to cool down, but I'm not sure if Gilda would've listened. Rainbow Dash then apologizes to Pinkie Pie for Gilda's behavior, and Twilight apologizes for doubting Pinkie, which Pinkie shrugs off fairly easily. Twilight then appears to be thinking of the letter she'll be sending to Princess Celestia about how important it is to know what your friends are truly like and trust that they won't try to take advantage of your friendship, and for some reason she decides to send the invisible ink to Princess Celestia along with the letter for Celestia to write her reply. I somehow doubt Twilight knows about Princess Celestia's apparent fun loving nature at this point.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Really, it feels like two or three different episodes meshed quite poorly into one. First we have an unrelated story about everyone avoiding Pinkie Pie, then a mostly unrelated story about pranking, and then when Gilda shows up it switches from a story about letting your friends have other friends to the importance of knowing what your friends are like and making sure they're not a bad influence. That constant changing of the story feels really jarring and confusing, it would've worked a lot better if Gilda's arrival was what the episode started off on, and then you could have some of the other plots told through flashbacks when Gilda asks about Rainbow's other friends. There's also the very shoehorned in role of Twilight, who just seems to be ignoring her friend for no real reason other than because she can. The party is perhaps the best thing about the whole episode because as Dr. Wolf recently pointed out in his own re-review of the episode, instead of it being the usual story about exposing a bully, Pinkie Pie is sincere about wanting to befriend Gilda and it's just bad luck that Gilda falls for the pranks. Gilda herself is a mixed bag, she can be good in some scenes but in others I can see how her outdated 90's slang drives people crazy. This episode is stuck at a flat C, not really good but not really bad either, it's just kind of there.
Well, next up is the first real clunker for the show and still one of its worst episodes overall, "Boast Busters". And it's the debut of Trixie who by the show's end would become arguably one of the worst written characters.
I think one thing that really saves the episode is the moral. It's one of the better morals in the whole show I think.
To this day, this is still among my least favorite episodes of the show.
There are a handful of episodes that have come out after that I dislike more, but it says something that this one held that title for years, and it was only with hindsight that I decided I like those episodes less (including one that's arguably better written overall, but has one GLARING issue that destroys it for me)
And it's all because of Gilda.
I actually feel like the episode would have been more enjoyable if it was about the pranking spree instead of Gilda.
5441310 Is it because of Gilda's outdated 90's slang?
5441319
That, and her voice just kinda bugs me in general.
Which, I'll admit, might be a bit hypocritical considering Dash also uses outdated slang at times and has a voice that (while I love) can be kinda annoying.