It really was a happy accident that the livestream site I used to watch “Maud Pie” for the first time went bust in the middle—it actually forced me to watch the episode a second time, if just to get the parts that I missed. I was glad I did—watching the missing parts really helped me appreciate the parts that I did see that I previously misjudged, to the point that I now consider it to be one of the finer and more immediately likable episodes in Season 4 thus far and thus inspired me to write perhaps my first truly serious review of an episode.

I have split my review analysis in at least two parts. This first part will cover Maud Pie herself and the plot and theme; the second part will cover the depiction of the other characters and other miscellaneous observations on the episode (among them the dialogue, humor, and Rarity's atrocious hat). A possible third part will encompass things that I missed in the other two parts as well as try to address criticisms I have seen others make of the episode. Hopefully one can more easily digest 2,000 words at a time rather than all 6,000 or so at once.

On Maud

Let’s start with Maud, our designated plot catalyst. Even on my first viewing I loved her deadpan demeanor, which so greatly underlies her almost single-minded obsession with rocks. Probably even more impressive about her is the way she is done. Immediately we know that something isn’t quite going to work out with when she barely even notices Pinkie’s friends and instead inspects a nearby rock: “Hmm. Sedimentary.” Here we have, in an economy of words and emotion, an introduction that just nails Maud’s character almost completely and gives us a good idea on how the future events are going to play out to get us into the mindset of the Mane 6 sans Pinkie. Even though she’s all about rocks, her obsession with them never gets boring (at least not for me) as we find out her many ways of enjoying rocks, from her pet rock named Boulder (despite being very small) to rock observation in the woods to rock poetry. The only one such that bothered me was her use of rocks to peel apples. That almost seemed to make a mockery of her obsession with rocks that almost seemed unbelievable even for her. Fortunately this doesn’t last long nor gives us any real contempt of her. Perhaps her deadpan demeanor saves it since she is obviously not intending to sabotage AJ’s apples but rather innocently (although not in a cute way) doing what she thinks best. One can’t help but wonder if that’s what the Pies use to cut things down at the rock farm, if so they probably don’t use cutting tools for fruit.

In the Rainbow Dash “bonding” segment we are treated to an important foreshadowing of the climax and also an expansion of Maud’s character. Here Rainbow and Maud hold a shot-put style contest to see who can throw rocks the furthest. Much to our surprise, Maud wins by literally miles. That Maud has great prowess with rocks not only makes her obsession with rocks more believable (as it clearly indicates a talent with it, and growing up on a rock farm isn’t enough) but by giving us an effective setup to Maud saving Pinkie from her ill-fated rock slide. It is also, of course, at the right time too, when some people may get really tired of Maud obsessing all day about rocks and see it more as a gag than a characterization.

Curiously enough, it’s what the artists do for Maud that is perhaps even more impressive. We rarely see Maud’s cutie mark (and when we do it’s only at the climax and easy to miss) because she covers it up with her dress. As cutie marks are a sign of one’s talent, concealing it almost all of the time does three smart things: 1) it augments Maud’s deadpan character by not having us focus on a possible source of pride for Maud and demonstrates that it’s something that she really doesn’t want to call attention to, 2) it prevents us from being distracted speculating on her special talent so we can focus on what she actually does within the show (although we are almost certain it has to do with rocks), and 3) from that, the impact of her throwing the rock very far and saving Pinkie by hammering through the huge rock falling down is far greater—it is not as if anyone could see it coming through a cutie mark. It is at the climax that her cutie mark finally can be seen, and there couldn’t have been a better time to reveal it. (Even then we’d have to admit that Maud’s prowess with rocks is impressive even if the cutie mark was shown earlier.)

Another thing to note: Maud’s ending line about not actually liking candy but loving Pinkie Pie shows that she is considerably more empathic than we previously thought. This indicates that she understands her sister’s demeanor and is willing to support it by doing something that doesn’t necessarily interest her, or at least, the candy itself is not the issue, but rather the bonding that goes on making and trading the bracelets. A friend of mine said of this that Maud "is truly wise in the ways of friendship", but I would add to that sisterhood as well.

The biggest problem I have with Maud is that her deadpan demeanor may have been overplayed, at least in relationship to the ending, as it makes it too ambiguous whether Maud genuinely likes Pinkie’s friends now or if she is merely being as aloof as usual. At least it keeps her character consistent and to deviate from it would have been something of a predictable cliché.

On the Plot and Theme

Let’s leave Maud to her rocks for a moment and focus on the plot (no, I won’t go there). This is the one part where rewatching the episode completely overturned a perception I had. I had actually been a little late to the episode because I had to bike to a public library and log in to one of their computers to livestream the episode. (My own dorm had its electricity shut off for maintenance and everywhere else on the school campus was closed.) The rock friendship bracelets I originally dismissed as a corny and completely girly gimmick, something I had thought this show has so often deliberately tried to avoid. Fortunately Benvenuti and McCarthy haven’t thrown out the show’s defiance of girly stereotyping, and I had simply foolishly believed that I didn’t miss much from the beginning, given some of the other weak episode beginnings this season. Making friendship bracelets is still a girly thing, but it’s given far greater significance than just “oh, here’s an idea, Maud likes rocks, let’s make rock friendship bracelets!” We are clearly shown that it is a tradition that Pinkie and her sister hold dear and that it would be simply poor not to have it shared with her good friends. It’s sort of funny how the other Mane 5’s time as taste testers had made them less enthusiastic about making rock candy bracelets, at least until Pinkie tells them of the tradition. Even then they aren’t totally hyped, although hopeful. After all, they want to please Pinkie as well as her sister. This perfectly sets up everything, as can only be shown further on in this review.

And things go wrong when Maud arrives, of course. Significant to mention is the first line we hear her say and the Mane 5’s reaction. Admit it, it is really difficult to make friends if you don’t care to even introduce yourself and instead occupy yourself identifying a random rock. This is perhaps even more of a turn-off than her demeanor and obsession with rocks for anyone. Maud literally has less social grace and savvy than when Twilight first came to Ponyville! And given that we are dealing with a group that is centered around friendship, Maud’s mannerisms do little to help them. Fortunately Twilight has developed enough social grace of her own to try to look past that and introduce herself and her friends. Yet no chemistry happens. I need not tell what happens next as it just repeats what I have said earlier.

Eventually, the rock candy bracelets become full circle with the rest of the plot—once the Mane 5 realize that they do have something in common with Maud, namely, their love of Pinkie Pie, they take to making them anyway. This ending has several layers to it. The “bonding” part is perhaps the most obvious, although it just goes beyond the lukewarm reception the Mane 5 originally gave Maud. I presume that Maud had at least some expectation that the rock candy necklaces would be made, especially since they are a tradition between Maud and Pinkie that was obviously going to be shared. What is significant here is that even though the Mane 5 tried to be best friends with Maud, they did so in a rather one-sided manner, letting their expectations of Maud get in the way of actually taking an interest in her before they could truly judge her. The rock candy bracelets should actually have been the first step to making friends with her. (A weakness of this view, of course, is that it diminishes the ritual that Pinkie had in mind. However, given that Maud is fond of rocks, recognizing and accepting that fact and going there (rather than trying to avoid it by focusing on even more difficult traits) may in fact help bypass other barriers to friend-making. That she showed slightly more enthusiasm at the end regarding the rock candy seemed to make evident this point. Besides, Pinkie already spilled most of the beans early on because the other Mane 5 are already among her best and closest friends, so the qualification of “something only the bestest and closest friends can share” would not be obviously betrayed here.)

Perhaps more important is how in some ways, rejecting Maud was, in a way, rejecting Pinkie Pie as well. As we’ve seen in a number of episodes, the most recent being “Pinkie Apple Pie”, Pinkie stands for an optimistic acceptance of all quirks and looking past conflicts to emphasize the relationship that ponies have with each other, naturally spreading happiness. Looking at this light, it is not just upsetting to her that Maud has been rejected, but her whole raison d’être gets dealt a huge blow, especially from her friends directly telling her that they cannot be friends with Maud. Thus we are even gladder to see the Mane 5 admit their own mistake as it directly relates to Pinkie Pie, a close friend, rather than just Maud, the new friend. This way also helps drives home how the Mane 5 realize that they do care for Pinkie as something they have in common with Maud. (To put differently, given how Pinkie was sort of naïve in trying to get the other Mane 5 to like Maud, their opinion of Pinkie was subconsciously lowered by not liking Maud, and something that was thankfully saved by Maud saving Pinkie.)

As evident from this we can find another weakness of the plot and theme—it seems to blindly negate the more subtle reasons that the Mane 5 didn’t initially warm up to Maud. Maud is not completely innocent in not making herself initially likeable to the others, as indicated by the rather self-absorbed introduction, not to mention that Maud doesn’t adjust her own behavior in order to make herself more likeable. In other words, the Mane 5 were actually quite justified in not warming up to Maud. At best I would argue that with the Mane 5 as hosts and Maud as the guest, the Mane 5 had more responsibility to adjust their behavior than Maud did of her own, a sort of a social grace faux pas that seemed to be unfortunately committed upon seeing Maud’s strange behavior. (And again, they had to be sensitive to Pinkie.)

Overall, I find the plot to be maturely and quite tightly handled, despite some qualms with how we are supposed to judge Maud ourselves and whether the Mane 5 were justified in doing so, but that doesn't bother me too much.

Click to go to Part 2