Episode Review: Feeling Pinkie Keen

Dave Polsky is a polarizing figure in the FiM fanbase. Some love his episodes, and others find them to be the worst of the series. Before Merriweather Williams came along, he was the show's lightning rod of hate. But how did this all start? Let's find out as we look at "Feeling Pinkie Keen."

TECHNICAL SPECS:

Season: 1                                                                      

Episode: 15

Written By: Dave Polsky

First Aired: February 11, 2011

SUMMARY:

While practicing some magic out in the open, Twilight and Spike notice Pinkie acting even weirder than usual. For some unfathomable reason, she’s running around with an umbrella on her head, hiding herself under big rocks without being crushed, and has an uncontrollable twitching in her tail. When the two ask her about it, she reveals that her “Pinkie Sense” is telling her that something is going to start falling from the sky. Twilight, obviously, laughs this off…until a frog Fluttershy was carrying to Froggy Bottom Bog falls on her face.

After Fluttershy leaves, and Pinkie gallops away, Spike remains amazed at this act of fortune telling. Twilight, meanwhile, just chalks it up to coincidence…until Pinkie’s tail tells her something else is going to fall. Naturally, Twi doesn’t believe her…until she falls into a ditch. Applejack then appears out of nowhere to lecture Twilight about how real the Pinkie Sense is, just before Pinkie’s ears start flapping…prompting a passing cart to splash mud all over Twilight.

While in the bath, Pinkie explains how the Pinkie Sense works: she gets little feelings in the various parts of her body, which in turn tell her different effects. The range is also quite impressive, going from “It’s my lucky day!” to “There’s an alligator in the tub.” (Oh, and we meet Gummy here as well.) Twilight, however, will have none of this. She climbs onto a nearby soapbox and decrees that all magic follows specific laws and rules, all of which Pinkie’s abilities break. Pinkie counters that she doesn’t believe because she doesn’t understand, which prompts Twilight to lock her in her basement and strap her to a computer that suddenly exists. (You should see that hydroelectric dam she’s been working on.)

However, neither Twilight or Pinkie can repeat the phenomenon…until Twi gives up and gets slammed by a door again. Enraged at just how ridiculous this all is, Twilight decides the only logical solution is to stalk Pinkie, keeping notes on her every action, until she can find proof that the Pinkie Sense is false. However, every time Pinkie predicts something, it always happens to Twilight, culminating in Derpy and Raindrops accidentally dropping a flow pot, an anvil, a hay cart, and a piano on her head. (It might have been an accident, or perhaps they learned from their AU counterparts that Twilight is a psychopath and decided to make it look like an accident.) Even worse, Pinkie knew she was following the whole time, and just assumed it was a game.

Before Twilight can pop a blood vessel, however, Pinkie’s entire body starts shaking, and unlike the other signs, she has no idea what it means; the only thing she can tell is that it’ll happen in Froggy Bottom Bog, a.k.a. the same place Fluttershy went to. Pinkie, Applejack and Spike set out to rescue her, while Twilight joins just so she can prove there is no “doozy.” And at first, everything seems fine: Fluttershy is safe, and Twilight is free to gloat…until she notices the hydra standing right behind her.

The ponies all flee to a nearby rock ledge, where a group of thin platforms will allow them access to safety. Fluttershy, AJ, Pinkie and Spike make it over, but the hydra’s attacks shorten the cliff and destroy some of the platforms, leaving Twilight with a seemingly impossible jump. Pinkie tells her to take a leap of faith, which she does…and is saved when a swamp bubble pushes her back up to the platforms, bounces her over like a ball, and it seems like they’ve discovered what the “doozy” was…until Pinkie starts shaking again.

At long last, Twilight can take no more of this manure, and in her fury evolves into Rapidash. Fortunately, her owner cancels the evolution at the right time, allowing Twilight to learn to accept the Pinkie Sense, even if she doesn’t understand it. This turns out to be the “doozy,” and everyone goes home, with Twilight dictating a letter that you don’t have to understand something completely to accept it as true. And then Celestia drops out of nowhere to pick up the message personally.

REVIEW:

First, a brief history lesson for those who weren’t around before the show’s second season was in full swing. Back when there were only twenty-six episodes to discuss endlessly, two episodes drew everyone’s ire: “Feeling Pinkie Keen” and “Over a Barrel.” Both episodes were written by Dave Polsky, who can kind of be considered the Merriweather Williams of Season One. The only difference is that Williams gradually got better, while Polsky actually got worse before his return in the third season. Nowadays, a lot of the hatred towards FPK has died down, while OaB is still pretty much reviled. But suffice to say, this is a very polarizing episode.

First, we’re not discussing the moral just yet. Oh boy, will that be a lovely topic…

One of the big differences between this episode and most of the rest of the series is the presence of Looney Tunes-esque slapstick in almost every scene. Granted, it’s a Pinkie episode, so such things are expected, and there’s nothing really wrong with this style of humor. Heck, I was practically raised on a combination of Road Runner cartoons and the Three Stooges, so I naturally love this kind of stuff. However, when you take the series as a whole, it’s rather jarring. Most of the comedy on FiM is character-based, with the different personalities of the Mane 6 clashing to create humorous situations. Here, there’s a few halfway-decent visual puns (like Twilight climbing onto an actual soapbox), and some non-piano jokes (like exploding twice), but most of the humor is drawn from watching Twilight suffer. So if you can’t stand watching Twilight suffer one physical indignity after another, this is one to skip.

Characterization is kind of all over the map here. Fluttershy and Applejack are fine, although AJ should have shown more concern when Twilight literally fell down a flight of stairs into her apple cellar. Pinkie has this weird tendency to shift between being goofy and silly, and suddenly becoming stone-serious whenever the topic of the episode is brought up. Twilight, however, suffers the worst fate. In the past, she was shown as being very scientific-minded in her studies. Here, she is the very epitome of a bad scientist; she makes her hypothesis, and then ignores any evidence that proves her wrong. In fact, the only time she tries to actually study what causes the Pinkie Sense is when she’s using the computer, and when that fails, she doesn’t try to take the machine outside or induce the effects, but instead just rage quits and throws a fit like a toddler. Remember, Twilight loves learning and expanding her knowledge of the world. If she hadn't been pegged as the villain, she would have been making a more thorough attempt to replicate the Pinkie Sense's effects so she could learn more about this strange power; what she wouldn't do is try to knock something down because it hurts her world view slightly. It’s a very jarring shift for her, and the only reason it’s done is so that the slapstick can be justified. "Lesson Zero" did much of the same thing, but at least that episode had more to it than "Let's drop stuff on Twilight because that is funny."

Oh, and Spike says, “Holy guacamole,” a couple times. It’s…not a very good catchphrase. Pinkie’s “Okie-Dokie-Loki,” on the other hand, is awesome.

There are a few other highlights of note, especially with the hydra scene. Twilight going Leeroy Jenkins on it was amusing, as were the visuals and sounds when she was being bounced over the platforms and into the stone wall. And let’s not forget her entire body becoming wreathed in flames from her rage, and even smoldering and smoking immediately after she cools off. Oh, and this episode introduced Gummy, my absolute favorite pet. He just doesn’t give a feather about anything.

Pinkie’s newfound “Pinkie Sense” is a fun idea, but it’s not really introduced all that well. As a large part of the episode’s plot is about the Pinkie Sense being impossible to explain rationally, there’s no real effort made to explain what it is or even when it will go off. Other episodes have Pinkie behaving perfectly fine even when something that should set it off by this episode’s logic happens. Season Two, however, did make better use of it: Pinkie uses her powers to dodge obstacles in “The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well,” and the reasoning behind when and where it will go off is explained in “It’s About Time.” Here, it’s more of a plot device designed to get Twilight into the position she’s in so she can learn a lesson.

Unfortunately, that segues us into the biggest source of controversy: the moral.

There are quite a few ways to describe Polsky’s writing style in this series, but “subtle” isn’t one of them. The best episodes of FiM are the ones that make the moral the product of the episode’s events, and not the reason for them. That is, you don’t write the episode around a particular lesson, but instead make the lesson an organic part of the story. This is clearly an example of the former. The message “You just have to believe” is hammered over and over again, to the point where it almost becomes a mantra. In fact, the actual moral is delivered twice, once after the Rapidash scene and again during the letter.

And then we get to the BIG controversy: religion. Yes, religion.

This is mostly the product of teens and young adults with far too much time on their hands overanalyzing a little girl’s show. The actual message has nothing to do with religion, but instead was about accepting things even if you don’t completely understand them. Unfortunately, Polsky chose the exact wrong language to deliver the moral. The idea of a scientist trying to disprove something they don’t understand because they don’t understand it is one of the oldest tropes of religious anti-intellectual propaganda, and since Twilight is clearly in the wrong, that can seemingly give Pinkie’s “You just have to BELIEVE!” side a lot more weight in the spirituality department. Even worse, the word “belief” is tossed around like a hot potato, to the point where it starts losing its original meaning and starts feeling more and more like a spiritual term. And then you have this line:

Yeah, bringing the word “faith” into the discussion just makes it worse. Even Lauren Faust herself found the implications less than appealing once someone brought them to light, although she did argue that it wasn’t the original intention. In short, Polsky screwed up.

Again, I must state that I don’t agree with this interpretation of the Aesop. This really feels like a knee-jerk reaction caused by a very poor choice in word usage. However, there is something else wrong with the moral: it’s barely there. The lesson really has nothing to do with anything, and the episode would have honestly been stronger without it. But this was the E/I era, so they had to include something at the end.

Oh, and this was the first official appearance of a cross-eyed Derpy Hooves since the first half of the pilot, thereby making it the first episode with a Shout Out to the fandom.

CONCLUSION:

As much as I complain about this episode’s flaws, I still kind of like it. Oh sure, it’s quite a mess, but I still enjoy some of the jokes, the slapstick can be funny at times, and once you take the whole religion controversy out of it, there’s really nothing objectionable in it. That being said, this is a polarizing episode for a reason. If your sense of humor doesn’t include cheap slapstick gags, and you have a tendency to think too much about what the show’s trying to teach our kids, this might be a good one to skip.

---

Well…this one should be interesting to discuss. That is, if everyone hasn’t already worn themselves out on this one.

By the way, as it turns out, you can explode twice. You just need the right guy to blow you up:

...What?