S04:E12 - Pinkie Pride

[FlutterDash4072 189]

I don't usually like musicals very much, but this episode was actually pretty good. I'd like to see more of Cheese Sandwich, he's a pretty cool guy. Weird Al did a great job with him.

[GrimCW 658]

Gotta know, and too many pages to dig through..

Anyone else catch the joke with Cheese sandwich singing Pinkies song?

not that he did it, but rather what it implied

 

 

 

 

I mean seriously, does Pinkie have a job?

 

 

TBH after the MMC episode, I figured her official role was village idiot/morale officer of sort.

Edited February 16, 2014 by GrimCW

[Pixel Stick 927]

 

 

Gotta know, and too many pages to dig through.. Anyone else catch the joke with Cheese sandwich singing Pinkies song? not that he did it, but rather what it implied

 

I'm not sure if I caught any deeper meaning in that part than just that he stole her lyrics.  Weird Al has done a number of parody polkas where he'll take one or two verses from several songs in a given genre (eg. alternative rock, etc.) and string them together in seemingly random order.  The Smile verse in the party polka here was pretty much another instance of that, along with the Spanish pinata song.

 

Beyond that, tho, I'm not sure I saw any significant joke or meaning.  What did you see?

[GrimCW 658]

@@Pixel Stick, 

Weird Al was/is known for, and commonly accused, of stealing other peoples songs. Course it was all apparently legit (though I recall hearing of a lawsuit over a couple, such as "Don't go making phony calls". )

I saw it as an inside joke toward that end of his history.

But hey, some of his derived works are better than the originals IMO

Edited February 16, 2014 by GrimCW

[Pixel Stick 927]

@@Pixel Stick,

Weird Al was/is known for, and commonly accused, of stealing other peoples songs. Course it was all apparently legit (though I recall hearing of a lawsuit over a couple, such as "Don't go making phony calls". )

I saw it as an inside joke toward that end of his history.

But hey, some of his derived works are better than the originals IMO

All depends on your point of view, I suppose. Weird Al has always been good about asking permission from the original copyright holder when he wants to either use their music or their lyrics. And there are a great many songs he wanted to parody but didn't because he couldn't get permission.

 

Personally, I saw the Smile Song joke as just a joke and in keeping with his polka style. It certainly made for a great funny moment.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Pixel Stick

[\/ 650]

Some of Cheese's singing reminds me of Wierd Al. No Idea why.

It WAS him. I knew it. He sounds great as a Pony.

[camsterman101 159]

This was an inspiring episode! 

 

You can do WHATEVER if you put you mind to it! Great morel Pinkie!    

 

~Camsterman101

[rainbowdashgal123 4]

well to me most of the songs are just singing :\ but it was good

[Shawn Parks 1,798]

well to me most of the songs are just singing

 

 

I don't really get what you are trying to convey with that statement.  You prefer songs with no lyrics?  

[Space Core 17]

Who else thinks Cheese Sandwich is best pony?

[ggg-2 3,550]

"when i throw a cheese party, be sure to not be LAME" is it just me or did the mare in that scene look EXACTLY like pinkie's mother?

[LunarEclipse1 22]

Cheese and Pinkie would make a great couple.

[Space Core 17]

Cheese and Pinkie would make a great couple.

Heh heh... I bet someone has made a Cheese Pie ship already... 0_0

[Pixel Stick 927]

After realizing I was literally the only person on the forum who thought this episode had caused MLP to jump the shark, I went back and watched it again, and paid more attention to the bits that had given me that impression.  And I gotta say, I really did come away from the second viewing liking this episode a lot more.

 

This time around, I felt like I really connected much more with Pinkie, and I appreciated the humor more.  I still think the live-action sequences felt a bit jarring, but I get what they were going for, given they were in the Goof Off and all.  I can see why everyone liked this episode so much.

 

Filli Vanilli and Rarity Takes Manehattan are currently my top favorites this season, but Pinkie Pride jumped up quite a bit as well.

 

One thing I didn't get, though: The Goof Off was clearly a Weird Al polka, but Daniel Ingram got credit for the music - in fact, the only place Weird Al got mentioned AT ALL was as the voice of Cheese Sandwich, but otherwise no contribution whatsoever to the episode.  I was really surprised by that.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Pixel Stick

[Metemponychosis 1,236]

After realizing I was literally the only person on the forum who thought this episode had caused MLP to jump the shark, I went back and watched it again, and paid more attention to the bits that had given me that impression.  And I gotta say, I really did come away from the second viewing liking this episode a lot more.

 

This time around, I felt like I really connected much more with Pinkie, and I appreciated the humor more.  I still think the live-action sequences felt a bit jarring, but I get what they were going for, given they were in the Goof Off and all.  I can see why everyone liked this episode so much.

 

Filli Vanilli and Rarity Takes Manehattan are currently my top favorites this season, but Pinkie Pride jumped up quite a bit as well.

 

One thing I didn't get, though: The Goof Off was clearly a Weird Al polka, but Daniel Ingram got credit for the music - in fact, the only place Weird Al got mentioned AT ALL was as the voice of Cheese Sandwich, but otherwise no contribution whatsoever to the episode.  I was really surprised by that.

I always think it's good when I dislike an episode and other people make me watch it again and rethink my opinions on it. I wish someone could do that with Daring Don't for me... 

 

I can see why people would be taken aback by the live action shots... But the way I see, it was that the whole thing was getting crazier and crazier until it exploded in that.

 

And the thing about the music: Well, can't Daniel Ingram imitate his style?

[Pixel Stick 927]

And the thing about the music: Well, can't Daniel Ingram imitate his style?

 

Don't get me wrong, Ingram is a brilliant musician, and I'm certain he's more than capable of writing a polka in the same wacky style as Weird Al.  I'm just surprised that Weird Al himself either didn't do the music himself, or gave credit to Ingram for doing it.  I suppose the fact that they don't give "Performed by" credits is probably the reason - I think only Weird Al could have performed a polka like that.  (And obviously, Ingram was responsible for the lyrics.)

 

Gotta give credit to Pinkie's singer, though - she did an excellent job with that.

[AcaMelody 5]

When I first saw this it was Cheese Sandwich singing his "Intro song" about him being a Super Duper Party Pony and I was like "Wow! This is a very well fan-made song!" It wasn't fan-made -.-

[Rainbow Dash 1,471]

THIS EPISODE RULED AND YOU ALL KNOW IT!!!

This episode made me love Pinkie Pie again. I always saw her as a bumbling spaz that had her problems...like she couldn't be taken seriously.  After seeing her broken after Cheese stole the show, then i began to relate to her more.

I love the direction they went with the plot. I was totally with Pinkie Pie, hating the fact her friends chose Cheese over her for party pony planner, but then it all became clear and just so...awesome when Pinkie did what she did.

As for Weird Al in the show and his music numbers, they reminded me of the Polka melodies hat he would do in his albums...mostly Straight Outta Lynwood. I think his polka essence was truly covered in this episode. 

[OptimisticNeighsayer 471]

Here's my take on "Pinkie Pride":  It was a good, even great, episode.  The problem is I just couldn't bring myself to genuinely like it like most of the fandom.

 

Many on here are right to praise this episode on any number of legitamite grounds.  Cheese Sandwich was an engaging character who seemed to have a lot of depth and charisma for a one-episode pony.  The songs did organically flow into the plot of the episode.  Weird Al was a great actor (and I'll admit he was better than I thought he would be).  Pinkie Pie wasn't the blubbering fool she had been in the previous episodes.  You could genuinely feel sorry for Pinkie's plight.  (These last two I actually only partially agree with, but we'll get to that later.)

 

Here's a funny thing about my preconceptions coming into the episode:  Before I watched it (and even before it actually came out), I had a feeling that this would already be one of the most overrated episodes in MLP:FiM to date because of the presence of Weird Al, a brony himself and a favorite among many fans.  I had found out, after the episode aired (despite having not watched it yet), that it had already gotten its own Wikipedia page, which I read and was pleasantly surprised by the praise it got apart from Weird Al's presence.  Now the episode had some real promise for me, so I was more inclined to see for myself.

 

So when I finally got around to watching this episode, I really was expecting to like it.  Unfortunately, things didn't go quite as planned.

 

As I said before, I liked the many of the episode qualities that many others praised.  However... let's start with the songs first.  I knew that the episode was going to have a lot of songs, but for some reason I figured that they would all be short little ditties.  What I should have read more carefully was that "Pinkie Pride" was a full-out musical episode.  That wouldn't have been terrible, except that many of them seemed to just not be to my taste.  The first song seemed to recall the "Smile Song" too much, which I, unlike the rest of the fandom, can't stand listening to.  Cheese's intro song was not nearly as annoying, but it wasn't as catchy as the Flim-Flam Bros' song, although I will give it points for really establishing his character.  Pinkie's next song had more problems in its context rather than the actual music, but it seemed to fill me with real warmth and sympathy, only for it to get old quickly.  "The Goof-Off" was perhaps the most enjoyable song for me, but it seemed to do everything you expected it to, just enough to make me convinced that Cheese and Pinkie were really fighting a duel.  And finally, Cheese's confession song.  (I won't even start about "Make a Wish", which just seemed to be a bland filler song to round out the ending.)  Like "Pinkie's Lament", I did feel for the song (in fact the overally impact was far greater than the firmer), but got too boring melody-wise quickly.  In short, I just couldn't enjoy what I was actually hearing enough to make me look past it.

 

And now for the actual plot itself:  It just seemed extremely trivial.  Even more than "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" (which I actually enjoy very much despite this fault), it is clear from the get-go that had Pinkie been more cool-headed about the town's newcomer (and she wasn't influenced by any other pony unlike in SSCS6000 with AJ which would explain why AJ wasn't so cool-headed there), they would have found a mutual solution very early on to keep problems from happening in the first place.  It also was never apparent that Cheese wanted to displace Pinkie, so it's really all Pinkie's fault that the problems happened.

 

For some reason, Pinkie never helped me feel any real sympathy for her.

 

And that leads to the next thing that bothered me about the episode.  I know that Pinkie strongly identifies herself as being a great party planner, but it just didn't seem believable to me, or at least not well conveyed, that she was distressed over Cheese Sandwich getting all of the attention.  If it was there, the way it was presented just didn't give me any convincing dialogue or conflict on Pinkie's part, it just sort of "happened".  After reading over the transcript, it almost seemed she threw in the towel too early.

 

And there's another thing that I know other people complained about:  Why weren't Pinkie's friends more defensive of Pinkie?  Okay, they were impressed by what Cheese could do.  Still, it just plain disturbed me.  I feel like at least one of them could have done more to comfort her.

 

The aspect of that that disturbs me the most, however, is the blatantly materialistic nature of Cheese's parties and how it compares with Pinkie's.  I've always had the impression that Pinkie knows that half of any party is the company that one is around and that the Mane Six appreciate that aspect just as much (for example, see "Griffon the Brush-Off", "Party of One", and "Sweet and Elite").  I kind of got the feeling that the Mane Six should have known that they were really abandoning their friend in favor of Cheese, as if spectacle was now the most important part of a party.  It's not totally unbelievable that they would be attracted to Cheese's parties more given the dialogue and what Rainbow Dash wanted, but I feel somehow that the others would be loyal enough to Pinkie to have them be a little more hesitant on joining with the Cheese bandwagon.

 

On a side note, I almost feel like the original party Pinkie put on was far from her best work (at least judging from that atrociously drawn banner), and seemed just an excuse to make Cheese seem that much better.

 

I could see it coming that Cheese was inspired by Pinkie (hay, he had to be in order to top her in any way!) from quite a long ways away, and for some reason it actually dampered my enjoyment of the episode.

 

There are other aesthetic things that just personally bugged me.  The live action scenes were a welcome surprise but a little jarring.  In many of the scenes that demonstrated party planning ability, it just seemed to come off as an odd mixture of disgust of excess and fun.  And for some reason, I didn't think an all-out musical was the best thing for this episode.  Pinkie may be good with music, but the sheer number made it seem excessive.  And though it's merely personal taste, I didn't feel they contributed to a theme of "laughter".

 

So did I like it in the end?  It's hard to tell.  I know I should really give the episode a second shot, but something about it just seemed to bug me enough not to see it again any time soon.  What keeps it from me not liking it, however, is what it did well and how coherent it actually was writing-wise given the plot devices it used.  Further, I doubt that it would have been as effective, at least for the general population, if it wasn't done the way it was.

 

Like I said, it was an excellent episode, but not for me.

 

You may now throw your tomatoes.

Edited March 5, 2014 by OptimisticNeighsayer

[Singe 2,109]

This isn't the first time Pinkie's pride actually happened. In Season 2 when she was babysitting and her reaction to Twilight.

[True Rarity 1,239]

Five words: Best Pinke Pie episode EVER!!!!!!

I loved this episode very much, and now ship CheesePie more than anything else.

Each and every song gave me chills at least once, especially "Pinkie's Lament". I've heard the song three times now, and the high note near the end never ceases to send shivers up and down my spine.

 

Favorite part: Rainbow Dash's birth-iversary bash

Favorite line: "Then it's 3:10 to goof off!"

[Whatevs 376]

As much as I like this episode, something puzzles me.

People say it adds depth and development to Pinkie as a character, but I don't see that.

Aside from her snapping herself out and deciding to challenge Cheese on her own.

 

I ask particularly since people say this about a lot of Pinkie things (her micro being a big example) when the work in question does not actually do so.

[Pixel Stick 927]

As much as I like this episode, something puzzles me.

People say it adds depth and development to Pinkie as a character, but I don't see that.

Aside from her snapping herself out and deciding to challenge Cheese on her own.

 

I ask particularly since people say this about a lot of Pinkie things (her micro being a big example) when the work in question does not actually do so.

Well, for my part, I don't believe this episode added very much to Pinkie's depth as a character so much as it demonstrated her already-existing depth to a pretty good level. She isn't necessarily the deepest, most intelligent or living character this time around - she's had other episodes like A Friend In Deed that show that much better, IMO. But she isn't a completely shallow nutcase either - she had real feelings and desires, and she has justifiable pride. She also has empathy, something she seems to conspicuously lack much of the rest of the time.

 

So, did this add any depth to her? Not really. But I think it helped to remind us that she does still have some depth. It isn't totally lost to the "screaming idiot" image that she's been given in pretty much every episode where she wasn't the main focus this season.

[Whatevs 376]

Well, for my part, I don't believe this episode added very much to Pinkie's depth as a character so much as it demonstrated her already-existing depth to a pretty good level. She isn't necessarily the deepest, most intelligent or living character this time around - she's had other episodes like A Friend In Deed that show that much better, IMO. But she isn't a completely shallow nutcase either - she had real feelings and desires, and she has justifiable pride. She also has empathy, something she seems to conspicuously lack much of the rest of the time.

 

So, did this add any depth to her? Not really. But I think it helped to remind us that she does still have some depth. It isn't totally lost to the "screaming idiot" image that she's been given in pretty much every episode where she wasn't the main focus this season.

I see.

I suspect I simply feel that people overrate her depth in confluence with their headcanons.

[Pixel Stick 927]

I see.

I suspect I simply feel that people overrate her depth in confluence with their headcanons.

Perhaps. Pinkie is the undisputed goofball of the Mane 6, but when the show focuses specifically on her, I think we see a very charming character who genuinely wants nothing more than to make everyone else happy. She gets her greatest happiness and joy from seeing others have a good time, from her closest friends to a complete stranger (Cranky), to month-old babies. Who among us can't relate to that?

 

The problem I see with Pinkie, though, is that when she's NOT the center of attention, the writers seem to have pigeonholed her into the role of a shallow, hyperactive ditz who demonstrates the level of intelligence and emotional depth of a six-year-old. Season 4 has done this to an extreme. Which is why episodes like Pinkie Pride are refreshing reminders that there's more to Pinkie's personality than just screaming, bouncing and obsessing over chocolate frosting.

Edited March 16, 2014 by Pixel Stick