See * for disclaimer

Somepony to Watch Over Me (March 8th 2014 22 minutes)

Summary: Apple Bloom yet again has to put up with Applejack the Control Freak.

From the muttered voices, it sounds like Granny Smith is doing most of the talking.

As Tudor as the various buildings in Ponyville are, it's interesting to see that some of the beams are curved. That's more typical of regions/cultures with lots of shipbuilding. In this case it would be beams salvaged from ships, or ones that turned out incorrectly curved during ship construction. Or they were expecting the building to have a lot more stress on it than normal, and were hoping that arch shapes would be lend more resilience than regular triangles. Given how often they have to rebuild their barns... yeah, I can see that. But curving large timber consistently like that (and there are two places in frame where they've done it, so it is consistent) takes specialized skills usually from shipbuilding. We've seen modern ferries in this show, but we've not really seen a proper marina yet to see what kind of ships they use.

Pretty tough pies to be handled like that. I like the specialized selling carts, given the amount of mobile retail they seem to do. There's a lot of room beneath/behind the shelves as well for more product kept more secure. Nice. The artists unfortunately have likely never seen actual carts or wagons, as the shafts should be attached to the front axle not to the front board of the wagon. It's a pretty typical cartoon convention though.

Very modern field pack Applejack is using. Curious that she has one, but Big Mac doesn't.

Great Aunt Pineapple? Did we see her during any of the reunions? I don't remember seeing any other relatively elderly ponies not previously identified.

There are subtle cues that Ponyville has expanded, that we've seen throughout this season. More foals in the playground, a more crowded marketplace, new construction, and now Ponyville has a taxi service.

The wood burning stove has a permanently affixed bellows. That's atypical for a farmhouse, but not for a commercial setup like a bakery. Given that they churn out pies for sale in distant towns now, that makes sense.

I... what? Hats and bows closet? Okay.

Applejack has often shown signs of being a control freak. She must have been suppressing it for awhile now for it to pop up this strongly. That, or there's something else going on that we are not aware of. She's definitely under some sort of unusual stress.

Refrigerator, not icebox. I would have expected them to call it an icebox given it's appearance, and their accents. At least, the people I know from southern United States still use that term.

So this is Applejack's version of a psychotic break?

Actually, we replaced most of the wheelbarrows on our farm with two-wheeled barrows for similar reasons. It allows me to one-hand the barrow while still dealing with tools in my other hand.

Providing AJ is colorblind...

HA! No time for a song indeed. Well done.

Just as a note, hay bales are not soft. At all. The bailing machine compresses them quite a bit. Those are bailed interestingly though. That's a very long stalked hay in order for the twine to go around just the long side like that. Usually the twine goes around the short side, and for bales that size around multiple sides.

"Like she does everything... with sass!" Heh.

I like the expressions the fillies are getting now.

A hoof of ricotta? American ricotta is normally made for cow's milk, but actual Italian ricotta is made mostly from sheep or goat milk.

If those maps are correct, they're sending both Big Mac and Apple Bloom north, into the region next to the Galloping Gorge. But the terrain she's passing through seems more like Froggy Bottom Bog to me, which should be south. Unless the maps were drawn using the X as the origin point rather than the destination?

That's the fire swamp! We'll never survive.

Nonsense! You're only saying that because no one ever has.

Okay, Chimera. Oddly enough, *not* the D&D version, but a slightly more classical version with the snake head on the tail. (The D&D version usually has a dragon head on the opposite shoulder to the goat head.) Also, a tiger body instead of a lion. With sabretooth fangs. Sabretooth Tigers are actually quite different from regular Tigers, so this is odd all around. However, even classically the chimera had different heads in different regions. The Hittite version had a human head instead of a goat head, for example.

Interestingly enough though, associating the Chimera with flaming terrain like this *is* classical. In legend, the Chimera is normally found in regions with permanent gas vents burning methane such as the near the Temple of Hephaestus in Lycia.

And it talks! Okay, that puts it in a different category than the Manticore and other creatures of it's ilk, and moves it into the Gryphon/Minotaur territory.

The artist did get the detail on the goat's eyes right. The pupil for goats and sheep are odd, being a narrow rectangular shape going left to right. Actually most ruminants have this, but due to coloration it's more obvious in goats and the like.

Applejack in dominatrix boots. Really, DHX? Really?

That resembles a pungi, the traditional flute used for snake charming. However, it's missing a detail. Pungi normally have a second reedpipe running alongside the melody pipe that acts as a drone. You can hear the drone in what AJ is playing though, so perhaps the drone is under the melody pipe on this version so we can't see it.

Ha! I want one. I want spring-loaded folding chair like that!

Okay, that's why they wanted ricotta specifically. Goat cheese for the goat head.

Cajun ponies. That's new. Okay, so they *must* have gone south and are now on the far side of Froggy Bottom Bog.

That would be a big selling point actually. In my experience Cajun people tend to be *very* family orientated, and even a hint of 'my sister' or 'my momma' or something like that as part of the sales pitch does wonders.