So, my review of "Maud Pie" is finally done! Here's the second part of it, where I explore some observations of the characters in the episode besides Maud and some aesthetic and other miscellaneous notes.

Click here to see the first part of my review

On the Other Characters

To say that Pinkie Pie wasn’t a blubbering fool here as she has been in other episodes this season is rather a moot point, as this is an episode that needs more than random Pinkie to even begin to work. Nonetheless, Pinkie does stand out here, at least in the beginning. Her invitation of her friends to Sugarcube Corner to help taste-test rock candy bracelets was delightfully reminiscent of the apple cider campout in “The Super Cider Squeezy 6000”, with the early morning “rush” (although it’s Pinkie that creates most of the action here) and her bouncy enthusiasm as she describes the endeavor. Her introduction of her sister Maud continues this bouncy charm, although perhaps her fast-talking doesn’t exactly convince us to take her all that seriously. In some ways, her flat-out description that, say “she likes books and is smart like Twilight” is, descriptively, almost as bland as Maud herself, and doesn’t exactly tell us much about her.

As the plot marches on, however, Pinkie seems to be surprisingly low-key in the background, especially after the rock hunt. Sure, she brings Maud around her friends’ homes to introduce her to them one by one, but she never seems to take much notice of how the friends are uncomfortable with her. Of course, this is the Pinkie Pie who continued to have fun in face of the Apple family arguing endlessly on who is to blame for ruining the road trip in “Pinkie Apple Pie”, but even so there is no active encouragement here as there was in that episode. Of course, the emphasis is supposed to be on the Remane 5’s awkwardness with her, but one can’t help but wonder where the bubbliness from the first act went.

Pinkie has always been something of an engineer (“Griffon the Brush-Off”, any time a party cannon features) but her huge Fun-Time contraption is perhaps her biggest achievement to date in this field. Perhaps she really did take some “bigness” hints from Cheese Sandwich, although not necessarily the coherence of them. Did she wonder if there would be any real bonding going on if every pony incorporated was basically confined to their own space? The idea in its execution already seemed to be a failure even before the rock slide began. Still, we got to hand it to Benvenuti for reviving an old overlooked talent of hers, and with that, certainly underlining the general characterization of Pinkie here as an absent-minded but secretly brilliant eccentric that once endeared me to her.

For the most part, the other characters are mostly characterized by their interests rather than any of the “softer” personality traits that really define a character. Still, as interests are being pitted against each other, it wouldn’t make sense for much else to distract us. A few more subtle traits do stand out. Rarity seems to have had her worst fashion day since “Rainbow Falls” here, with the ugly rock hat that she apparently threw together at the last minute before the picnic. Curiously enough, her exchange with Maud just makes it worse, when she becomes nonplussed that Pinkie’s sister is just satisfied with wearing a dirty rag over her back rather than having a fancy new dress made for her. Rarity hasn’t experienced such a flat-out rejection since “Suited for Success”—hers is probably the most convincing of the awkwardness scenes for precisely this reason—she probably has more confidence that she can satisfy a customer better than a customer can satisfy his/herself, so this is a direct blow to not just her comfort with Maud, but also her own pride. Although we don’t really know, I’d garner that Rarity was perhaps the most inclined to reject Maud on her experience.

Rainbow Dash gets a lot of character nods this episode, at least in comparison to some of the others. We know that she hasn’t lost her love of the race, as indicated by her confusion that Maud “doesn’t care about winning”. Somewhat more subtly, we have her “igneous” pun. The question of how Winston Churchill figures in the Equestrian universe aside, we’re treated to a surprising expansion of her intellectual palette. It’s likely that she’s reading quite a bit beyond the Daring Do books, browsing a bit of basic geology on the side just because she likes to read. And yet, with the exclamation “ask me how I know that!” we still get a little hint that she’s still somewhat embarrassed of being an “egghead”.

There is not all that much to say about Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, or Applejack here—they are either flatly about books, animals, or apples. Twilight is a bit more refined though, as 1) her social graces that she has developed over her time in Ponyville haven’t been forgotten, and 2) she plays the role of the big puzzle-solver with her realization of what she and her friends have in common with Maud. Why the latter seemed to please me I don’t know, as it seems to be one of those moments where she becomes too smart in order to tidy up at least one of the plot’s loose ends. But at least this is truly in the spirit of friendship, which she has studied and would have a natural interest in promoting. Perhaps the question about why all the Mane 6 would suddenly become friends with Maud via their love of Pinkie Pie is more of a question of the others going along with Twilight when she realizes this. Then again, Friendship is a sort of an inexplicable Magic.

Miscellaneous Observations

The deadpan humor perhaps is among the episode’s strongest points. They help serve the awkwardness of the situation well as it contrasts Maud with the more bouncy Mane 6. Personally, I didn’t find the jokes getting old, as each time it was handled quite differently, whether it is through a collective search for a rock, the making of a dress out of an old dirty rag against the “better” taste of the fashionista, or throwing a rock further than anypony should be able to throw it and still not getting excited about it. Some of these have more layers than others, as hinted at previously, built up and revealed, and thus kept me quite interested throughout. The rock poems in particular really struck me. They had somewhat of an avant-garde styling but with a feeling that the poem is exactly what is being said, telling little more than the existence of the rock and its color. As Fancypants might say, “rustically charming”.

The dialogue was very good for the most part, although there were times when the writing fell into the “tell, don’t show” trap such as the Remane 5’s discussion of Maud saving Pinkie and what it means. One would have liked a more subtle awe at Maud’s power rather than just telling the audience what just happened. It’s easy, of course, to explain this as just their attempt to make sense of the situation by just expressing whatever comes to mind, but in some ways, it still felt a bit unnatural. It was good, however, that the moral is mostly left unstated, leaving the audience to better reflect on the actual content of the story to determine what the authors were trying to say. The only problem with this one, is that the ideas of looking past one’s idiosyncrasies to embrace them for who they are and learn to appreciate that was certainly one for the journal. Maybe in a pre-season 4 episode it would have become a letter to the Princess, but now since the Mane 6 are writing for posterity, it seems somewhat too trivial to write. That still seems unlikely to me, as many of the journal entries thus have been quite personally stated.

The appearance of the pets was quite a nice treat. Although they only appear for one scene, it was quite a nice allusion to the playdates that were apparently regular in “May the Best Pet Win!” but have seen to fallen out of the radar. (Then again, it was more of a picnic that the pets were invited to, but I’m sure play was at least part of the agenda.) And it was certainly amusing to see the pets feel both a bit neglected after Maud comes into the scene but also tired—not sure why, because it was sort of an awkward way for the Remane 5 to give the first true sign that something was not working between them and Maud. Who knows, it might just be part of the general feeling of awkwardness we are to experience.

The similarities with “A Friend in Deed” also extend to Pinkie’s description of Maud and the rock candy tradition. In the episode, we see a sequence where Pinkie tries to make sense of Cranky Doodle’s rejection of Pinkie through a series of faux-construction-paper cutout animations describing the process by which Pinkie makes friends, only to realize that the last step (becoming friends) hasn’t been fulfilled. In “Maud Pie” we are treated to a series of crayon drawings of Pinkie learning to make the rock candy bracelets, and then her assertion that the others will soon become “best of friends” with the rock candy bracelets made. Of course, the dissonance is not realized until later, but we still get a sense of foreboding even here that Pinkie’s ideal plans will just not work out sometimes.

The art and animation in this episode is mostly passable but not stellar. Rainbow’s face when protesting “He’s a rock”, probably meant to allude to the old Flutterage face in “The Best Night Ever” seems to be rather awkwardly drawn to the point where it seemed pasted on. I also kind of expected the rock candy to shine in the light more, at least in the end where it could even allude to the classic “spark” of friendship just to reinforce the moral with a bit of kitsch. Then again, it wouldn’t be deadpan enough.

Concluding Thoughts

With well-done (if somewhat unconventional for the show) humor and an abundance of subtle nods to past episodes and character developments, Benvenuti puts out a very interesting first effort that was definitely worth the needed rewatch. With a couple tweaks to the moral and ending so the connection between the Mane 6 and Maud could be stronger, this would definitely fit in one of the finest episodes of the season. Even with that it still ranks high with me.