Season 8 Episode 4 “Fake It Till’ You Make It” Review by EpicEnergy

Characters: This episode centers around Fluttershy, so I will focus solely on this character for this reason and that there are no new characters introduced. Fluttershy acts far out of character in this episode, so the question that should be asked should be based around whether this is inconsistent and whether it makes sense or not. I would argue that it is very inconsistent and makes no sense. It will be evident why I say this in the “scenes” section.

Plot: Fluttershy maintains the Manehattan boutique for Rarity and decides to act as the Saddle Row pony’s stereotypical personality to be effective. At first this works. As time progresses though, Fluttershy becomes a more and more unpleasant Saddle Row pony who eventually takes this acting to an extreme that is displeasing even for a Saddle Row pony, which renders her acting ineffective. Now for a short review on this plot. I must complement the writers because they have carefully designed the incidents so that nothing appears to be solely a plot-convenience or an arbitrary plot-device. I must also add that this main plot is laid out nicely, from beginning to end.

Scenes: I will review a few individual scenes in this section. The opening scene is great, because it occurs in Fluttershy’s animal sanctuary which is nice to have its appearance once again after its initial development in season 7. This opening also serves to further the plot, providing an explanation of the events that will ensue later in the episode. The next scene I will review occurs a while after this which has something that is plainly absurd. It’s when one of the customers tastes the lukewarm tea and instantly spits it out, and Fluttershy proceeds to lecture the raccoons very harshly afterwards. I’ll refer to this incident from now on as the “lukewarm-tea encounter”. It is at this point, I argue, where Fluttershy losses her character and unnecessarily acts excessively unpleasant. It also at this point that Fluttershy does the completely illogical, which should not have occurred. She does not apologize to the critters, and proceeds to make offensive remarks to the customers while elevating the boutique dresses to a god-like level that no one could buy because they are not worthy. There is a presented reason why Flutters does this, which is also illogical, but I’ll get to that afterwards. For now, I must address another scene before I get to the last part. In this scene, Fluttershy ignores her friends, despite them attempting to help, and kicks them out of Rarity’s shop! I know Fluttershy was acting, but acting does not mean one loses all sense of reason and not know when to stop and take things seriously! The final scene I will review is when Fluttershy admits she became too distracted with her acting, but it fails to suffice as a plausible explanation for her behavior, seeming to be more of an excuse than anything. She says, “I’m sorry, you know I was only pretending right?”. This is a terrible explanation because getting too distracted by acting and pretending to be an overexaggerated and illogical stereotypical Saddle Row pony does not justify being a detrimental employee and horrible friend. In other words, pretending to be someone offensive doesn’t justify being offensive, since harm is inflicted either way if the offended doesn’t know you’re pretending, which is exactly what happened. Also, everyone just forgives Fluttershy after her illogical explanation anyways without even speaking of how wrong her actions were. It’s implying that Fluttershy shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions at all because she was too focused on pretending to be someone she was not!!! I’ll have to subtract many points from the episode rating for this erroneous explanation, response, and implication.

Moral: I will now focus on the main moral. In case no one knows what that moral is, it simply is that one has inner strength and need not change himself/herself in order to show it. This moral is highly fantastic, because it is very true and very helpful.

Additional Areas (if applicable):

Inconsistency with the Season 1 episode “Suited for Success”: In “Suited for Success”, Fluttershy is said, by her friends, to have a freaky knowledge of sowing, which helped her create Rarity’s dress exactly as intended. This knowledge is clearly obvious when Fluttershy gives her real opinion on the dress Rarity made for her a few moments back in this season 1 episode. The inconsistency is that Fluttershy is depicted as having hardly any knowledge of fashion in season 8 episode 4, which even Fluttershy herself admits.

Episode Rating: 3/10

Conclusion: Everything about Fluttershy makes sense up to the “lukewarm-tea encounter”, and then everything goes downhill from there. The main moral is exceedingly great, as well as the general plot, but Fluttershy’s behavior is illogical along with a terrible explanation for it. In addition to those problems, this episode also contradicts the season 1 episode resulting in an irritating inconsistency. To conclude, I must give this episode a negative rating. As brutal as a 3/10 may appear, if you line it up with my rating scale you will find it is not nearly as brutal as it could be.

Rating Scale:

0 = the worst of the worst, an absolute failure

1 = an extremely horrible disaster

2 = very dreadful

3 = terrible

4 = bad

5 = mediocre

6 = good

7 = great

8 = very fantastic

9 = extremely amazing

10 = an absolute perfection