Once again this review will contain spoilers. Those of you who haven't watched this episode yet, you have been warned.
So our episode begins with Fluttershy feeding her animals. As usual, Angel, er main pet, is proving difficult to feed. That is, until he comes up with his own suggestions for a meal, leading into today's title screen
When the episode begins proper we find that Fluttershy endeavours to prepare said meal but finds it difficult to keep her spot in line at the local grocery store. Things get worse for her as this eventually ends with her being unable to buy what she went there for. Fortunately for her, Rarity was nearby to charm the pony who bought the last of it to give it to her. This seems to happen several times over the next few scenes as Fluttershy goes to various stalls at the market and ends up having to be bailed out by one of her friends when the other ponies at those places take advantage of her usual shy attitude and inability to stand up for herself, like raising prices. Upon returning home, Angel reject the meal she prepares for him, which leads to her finding out about a programme by an individual named Iron Will.
Fluttershy, along with several others, then goes to the nearby hedge maze where Iron Will, who turn out to be a minotaur, makes his appearance. He vows that his programme can make anyone more assertive than they were before. So confident is he in his abilities that he promises to provide the lessons for free if his customers aren't satisfied. T demonstrate the effectiveness of his lessons, he calls Fluttershy up from the crown to show everyone that they can work. After a few pointers, Will convinces Fluttershy to behave in a more assertive manner, leading to acting more confidently towards one of Will's goat assistants.
Back at her home, Fluttershy's newfound confidence allows her to speak to others like she never would have done before, staring with a pony who waters her plants too much. However, things start to get out of hand as her self-confidence starts to grow to a point where she ends up becoming something of a bully to those around her. Things come to a head when she ends up acting this way towards Rarity and Pinkie Pie. Her behaviour doesn't stop at this though and soon enough she pretty much goes on a rampage towards anyone who even looks at her funny.
Rarity and Pinkie Pie confront her on her behaviour, but at this point Flutterhy merely sees it as another attempt to keep her down, so she rejects their advice and even throws a few harmful insults their way. When the two of then run of crying, she immediately starts to see what her new self-confidence has done to her and begins to regret her actions. Because of this, she goes home and boards herself inside in the hopes of preventing another incident. Rarity and Pinkie try to console her, but she still refuses to come out.
The two then go to Iron Will himself to confront him over what he caused Fluttershy to become, but he's more interested in his payment from Fluttershy for the lessons. The two ponies convince him to leave for the time being but there's still this issue of what will happen should Fluttershy be faced with him again when he returns. Things get worse when the sound of Fluttershy within the house convinces him to collect payment then and there. When Fluttershy emerges from her home he attempts to get his pay, but Fluttershy points out that, because of his promise earlier of not having to pay if you're not satisfied, she refuses payment. Although disappointed, Will relents and leaves.
And so the episode ends with Rarity and Pinkie being proud of Fluttershy's assertiveness without pushing too far, leading into Fluttershy sending a letter to the Princess on her lesson.
So, how does this episode hold up?
Well, in terms of the story, it's something of a mixed bag for me. Firstly, there's the issue of the episode's basic premise. With other stories where I've seen their type before, I've been able to work around the foreknowledge on what's going to happen by focusing on how entertaining the episode was. Here, while the episode was certainly entertaining, there was the added issue that on top of the fact that I could guess how the episode was going to end, there was also the issue that it's most likely not a change o the character of Fluttershy that's going to stick. Her character for the most part, has been the "sweet and kind" archetype. So having an episode designed to try and change that is, to me at least, not one that's going to appeal to it's viewers. After all, the somewhat meek qualities she has are what makes Fluttershy so likeable and unique amongst the cast, so trying to change that about her just isn't a transition I'd like to see happen.
Not only that, but there's also the issue that on many occasions now, Fluttershy has been successfully assertive towards other with no outside help. Just off the top of my head, "Stare Master" featured her assertiveness towards other on several occasions, including dangerous animals. She flat-out stood up to a dragon when the situation called for it in "Dragonshy". And as for "Sonic Rainboom" the entire sub-plot of that episode was dedicated towards Rainbow Dash trying to get her to be more assertive. It's like someone saw that episode's sub-plot and decided to make an entire episode out of it. I've said many times in past reviews that this show has started to make a habit of repeating stories it's already done, with mixed results. At this point though, while it's still able to entertain me in the way it handle's it's various episode, I'm starting to seriously worry about the show's ability to come up with new story ideas. This is a problem that's only made worse when you consider that at this point in the series, it's clear that almost all of the one-shot characters that have turned up are only arriving in Ponyville for the purposes of promoting themselves or doing things for selfish reasons. As such I'm surprised the people of this town haven't wised up to this yet, especially when this week's one-shot is such a blatant self-promoter. He's basically what the Flim-Flam brothers from "Super easy cider squeezy 6000" would have been like if they were brawn instead of brain.
In addition to this, it just seems incredibly out of character for Fluttershy to behave the way she does once her assertiveness lessons start to affect her. I know that her eventually return to the way she was would have been part of the lesson-of-the-day and all, but there is a big difference between being assertive and being a bully. And I'd have thought that Fluttershy of all people would understand that, especially have been the victim of bully characters several times now. Going from one extreme to the other like this comes off less as assertive and more along the lines of what Discord did to her back in "Return of Harmony". Fluttershy even commented during that episode how remorseful she was at having behaved like that and yet for some reason she can't see that it's exactly what she's doing now of her own free will. If ever there was an out-of-character thing for her to do, this would be it. And the fact that she can't even see it until the end just makes the issue even worse for me.
However, I give credit where it's due with regard to what the episode's done, or rather what I think it's tried to do. The character of Iron Will and what he attempted to do in this episode is clearly an attempt to satirise self-help programmes and the people who run them, to portray them as either not know what they're talking about or just in it for themselves. Now as a person who's always had this opinion of these kinds of people, this is a message I can get behind. And if that's what the writers were attempting to do, to try and take down those kinds of programmes, then I salute them.
As the episode focuses on Fluttershy I'd like to talk about her character for a moment. Like many of the main cast this season it's been a while since she got an episode of her own, with the closest she got being her helping of Rainbow Dash back in "May the best pet win". Here, I'm sorry to report that she doesn't come across as well as she has in past episodes. Now that's not to say she's shown in a bad light here, far from it. But many of her major scenes are things I've seen her do or say many times before in other episodes, so it just came across as more of the same to me. And while I understand her wish to become more assertive as a person, it's once again undermined by her previous assertiveness in other episodes. Assertive is essentially the opposite of what this character is about and what makes her so loved by the audience of this show. Now that's not so say that she shouldn't want to become more assertive towards others, but the fact that she started this episode so uncomfortable with this fundamental aspect of her character makes it seem like the thing we love her for so much is a bad thing to love her for, and that just doesn't seem right to me.
Also, and I know I'm going off on a tangent here, but when I heard what the premise for the episode would be, I honestly though it would involve some sort of "friend jealousy" sub-plot involving Rainbow Dash, similar to how Pinkie behaved in "Griffon the brush-off". This is largely because, as I said earlier, an entire sub-plot of one of Rainbow's earlier episodes was her attempts to get Fluttershy to be more assertive. Now this new guys comes along and she ends up doing just that under his guidance. I fully expected it to be the kind of story wherein she'd learn about some negative aspect of the one-shot character then try to help Fluttershy because of it, again just like Pinkie did. So while I can honestly say this episode defied my expectations, I'm not sure if that was a good thing in this case.
As for the other characters, there's not that much to say about them. They all play to their various strengths much like they do in any episode where they're not the focus. However, I will say that the character of Angel is really starting to get on my nerves at this point. I mean his behaviour at the start of this story was just inexcusable. The way he treated Fluttershy was like some spoiled child who throws a tantrum whenever he doesn't get his way. I know his basic purpose in this series was to be a counter to Fluttershy's usual meek personality, but here it crosses the line into outright unlikeability. Hopefully I won't have to see much of him in future episodes.
Now as this episode features a prominent new character, I think it's time to talk about Iron Will for a moment. Here is another case of the episode underwhelming me. Within his first scene I knew everything I needed to know about this guy. He's the archetypical "trainer" character, like those coaches from sports movies. The guys who pushes the main character forward towards their goal. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't come across as a good example of this archetype. Rather, he comes of more like some sort of bullying gym coach. The kind of sporty individual who won't accept anything less that what he expects and makes people feel inadequate because of it. Now let me say right now that I've seen far worse characters like this in the past, so I'm going to go a little easy on Will here. But nevertheless there wasn't anything about this guy to make him memorable in my mind other than the fact that he was "the assertive one". Overall he just didn't compare to other one-shot characters we've had so far. Sure, many of them weren't very interesting but at least they had enough about them to make them stand out. Will, unfortunately, does not. I found absolutely nothing about this guy that I either liked nor wanted to remember. He was overbearing, unlikeable and had no qualities that would make me want to have him make a second appearance. I would honestly have tolerated him if his actions were out of a genuine desire to make Fluttershy less of a pushover, but it's made pretty clear that it was all for self-serving reasons, so he's got nothing for me.
No song this week so I won't be talking about one.
Humour now and as you'd expect from a story such as this, many of the jokes and humourous situations comes from Fluttershy's repeated attempts to become assertive towards others and failing to do so. I've seen many kinds of shows where situations like this were played up for laughs but here I'm afraid it doesn't work. The reason being is that in other shows, many of the people who make me laugh by failing to do things are people or characters that I don't like. Fluttershy on the other hand is a characters I like, so seeing her fail at things she tries her hardest at is not going to be funny for me. If you're into that kind of humour, good for you, but it just doesn't work for me. However, this episode did have a few funny moment here and there, thankfully provided by Pinkie Pie. In fact I can personally cite her brief exchange with Iron Will and tricking him via "the old joke of getting your opponent to agree to the thing he was trying to stop" cliche as my personally top funny moment of the episode. Sure it was cliche, but it was funny nevertheless.
Moral-of-the-day now and this week, as you'd imagine, the lesson is that you can be an assertive person and stand up for yourself without having to go too far and cross over into aggressive territory. Personally, I like this lesson. I've met many people in my life who've crossed this line, especially young children. So from personal experience I'd say that this is a good thing for kids to be taught.
Overall, this episodes just doesn't cut it for me. I know I said a lot of negative things about this episode today but in all honesty there were some rather entertaining moments here than there. Fluttershy carries the story well and her attempts to become a more assertive person were at least entertaining and interesting enough to keep me watching. But like I said, a lack of humour I could identify with and a premise with which I disagreed keeps me from feeling very strongly towards this episode. Not to mention all of the character moments that gave me a great deal of frustration when watching it. While I can honestly say that I'm glad I watched it, I can't say that I'll be giving it a second viewing. It's just a disappointing episode for me, especially in comparison to the success that was "A friend in deed" last time.
Join me next time when Twilight receives a warning from an unexpected source in episode twenty of season two, "It's about time".
So our episode begins with Fluttershy feeding her animals. As usual, Angel, er main pet, is proving difficult to feed. That is, until he comes up with his own suggestions for a meal, leading into today's title screen
When the episode begins proper we find that Fluttershy endeavours to prepare said meal but finds it difficult to keep her spot in line at the local grocery store. Things get worse for her as this eventually ends with her being unable to buy what she went there for. Fortunately for her, Rarity was nearby to charm the pony who bought the last of it to give it to her. This seems to happen several times over the next few scenes as Fluttershy goes to various stalls at the market and ends up having to be bailed out by one of her friends when the other ponies at those places take advantage of her usual shy attitude and inability to stand up for herself, like raising prices. Upon returning home, Angel reject the meal she prepares for him, which leads to her finding out about a programme by an individual named Iron Will.
Fluttershy, along with several others, then goes to the nearby hedge maze where Iron Will, who turn out to be a minotaur, makes his appearance. He vows that his programme can make anyone more assertive than they were before. So confident is he in his abilities that he promises to provide the lessons for free if his customers aren't satisfied. T demonstrate the effectiveness of his lessons, he calls Fluttershy up from the crown to show everyone that they can work. After a few pointers, Will convinces Fluttershy to behave in a more assertive manner, leading to acting more confidently towards one of Will's goat assistants.
Back at her home, Fluttershy's newfound confidence allows her to speak to others like she never would have done before, staring with a pony who waters her plants too much. However, things start to get out of hand as her self-confidence starts to grow to a point where she ends up becoming something of a bully to those around her. Things come to a head when she ends up acting this way towards Rarity and Pinkie Pie. Her behaviour doesn't stop at this though and soon enough she pretty much goes on a rampage towards anyone who even looks at her funny.
Rarity and Pinkie Pie confront her on her behaviour, but at this point Flutterhy merely sees it as another attempt to keep her down, so she rejects their advice and even throws a few harmful insults their way. When the two of then run of crying, she immediately starts to see what her new self-confidence has done to her and begins to regret her actions. Because of this, she goes home and boards herself inside in the hopes of preventing another incident. Rarity and Pinkie try to console her, but she still refuses to come out.
The two then go to Iron Will himself to confront him over what he caused Fluttershy to become, but he's more interested in his payment from Fluttershy for the lessons. The two ponies convince him to leave for the time being but there's still this issue of what will happen should Fluttershy be faced with him again when he returns. Things get worse when the sound of Fluttershy within the house convinces him to collect payment then and there. When Fluttershy emerges from her home he attempts to get his pay, but Fluttershy points out that, because of his promise earlier of not having to pay if you're not satisfied, she refuses payment. Although disappointed, Will relents and leaves.
And so the episode ends with Rarity and Pinkie being proud of Fluttershy's assertiveness without pushing too far, leading into Fluttershy sending a letter to the Princess on her lesson.
So, how does this episode hold up?
Well, in terms of the story, it's something of a mixed bag for me. Firstly, there's the issue of the episode's basic premise. With other stories where I've seen their type before, I've been able to work around the foreknowledge on what's going to happen by focusing on how entertaining the episode was. Here, while the episode was certainly entertaining, there was the added issue that on top of the fact that I could guess how the episode was going to end, there was also the issue that it's most likely not a change o the character of Fluttershy that's going to stick. Her character for the most part, has been the "sweet and kind" archetype. So having an episode designed to try and change that is, to me at least, not one that's going to appeal to it's viewers. After all, the somewhat meek qualities she has are what makes Fluttershy so likeable and unique amongst the cast, so trying to change that about her just isn't a transition I'd like to see happen.
Not only that, but there's also the issue that on many occasions now, Fluttershy has been successfully assertive towards other with no outside help. Just off the top of my head, "Stare Master" featured her assertiveness towards other on several occasions, including dangerous animals. She flat-out stood up to a dragon when the situation called for it in "Dragonshy". And as for "Sonic Rainboom" the entire sub-plot of that episode was dedicated towards Rainbow Dash trying to get her to be more assertive. It's like someone saw that episode's sub-plot and decided to make an entire episode out of it. I've said many times in past reviews that this show has started to make a habit of repeating stories it's already done, with mixed results. At this point though, while it's still able to entertain me in the way it handle's it's various episode, I'm starting to seriously worry about the show's ability to come up with new story ideas. This is a problem that's only made worse when you consider that at this point in the series, it's clear that almost all of the one-shot characters that have turned up are only arriving in Ponyville for the purposes of promoting themselves or doing things for selfish reasons. As such I'm surprised the people of this town haven't wised up to this yet, especially when this week's one-shot is such a blatant self-promoter. He's basically what the Flim-Flam brothers from "Super easy cider squeezy 6000" would have been like if they were brawn instead of brain.
In addition to this, it just seems incredibly out of character for Fluttershy to behave the way she does once her assertiveness lessons start to affect her. I know that her eventually return to the way she was would have been part of the lesson-of-the-day and all, but there is a big difference between being assertive and being a bully. And I'd have thought that Fluttershy of all people would understand that, especially have been the victim of bully characters several times now. Going from one extreme to the other like this comes off less as assertive and more along the lines of what Discord did to her back in "Return of Harmony". Fluttershy even commented during that episode how remorseful she was at having behaved like that and yet for some reason she can't see that it's exactly what she's doing now of her own free will. If ever there was an out-of-character thing for her to do, this would be it. And the fact that she can't even see it until the end just makes the issue even worse for me.
However, I give credit where it's due with regard to what the episode's done, or rather what I think it's tried to do. The character of Iron Will and what he attempted to do in this episode is clearly an attempt to satirise self-help programmes and the people who run them, to portray them as either not know what they're talking about or just in it for themselves. Now as a person who's always had this opinion of these kinds of people, this is a message I can get behind. And if that's what the writers were attempting to do, to try and take down those kinds of programmes, then I salute them.
As the episode focuses on Fluttershy I'd like to talk about her character for a moment. Like many of the main cast this season it's been a while since she got an episode of her own, with the closest she got being her helping of Rainbow Dash back in "May the best pet win". Here, I'm sorry to report that she doesn't come across as well as she has in past episodes. Now that's not to say she's shown in a bad light here, far from it. But many of her major scenes are things I've seen her do or say many times before in other episodes, so it just came across as more of the same to me. And while I understand her wish to become more assertive as a person, it's once again undermined by her previous assertiveness in other episodes. Assertive is essentially the opposite of what this character is about and what makes her so loved by the audience of this show. Now that's not so say that she shouldn't want to become more assertive towards others, but the fact that she started this episode so uncomfortable with this fundamental aspect of her character makes it seem like the thing we love her for so much is a bad thing to love her for, and that just doesn't seem right to me.
Also, and I know I'm going off on a tangent here, but when I heard what the premise for the episode would be, I honestly though it would involve some sort of "friend jealousy" sub-plot involving Rainbow Dash, similar to how Pinkie behaved in "Griffon the brush-off". This is largely because, as I said earlier, an entire sub-plot of one of Rainbow's earlier episodes was her attempts to get Fluttershy to be more assertive. Now this new guys comes along and she ends up doing just that under his guidance. I fully expected it to be the kind of story wherein she'd learn about some negative aspect of the one-shot character then try to help Fluttershy because of it, again just like Pinkie did. So while I can honestly say this episode defied my expectations, I'm not sure if that was a good thing in this case.
As for the other characters, there's not that much to say about them. They all play to their various strengths much like they do in any episode where they're not the focus. However, I will say that the character of Angel is really starting to get on my nerves at this point. I mean his behaviour at the start of this story was just inexcusable. The way he treated Fluttershy was like some spoiled child who throws a tantrum whenever he doesn't get his way. I know his basic purpose in this series was to be a counter to Fluttershy's usual meek personality, but here it crosses the line into outright unlikeability. Hopefully I won't have to see much of him in future episodes.
Now as this episode features a prominent new character, I think it's time to talk about Iron Will for a moment. Here is another case of the episode underwhelming me. Within his first scene I knew everything I needed to know about this guy. He's the archetypical "trainer" character, like those coaches from sports movies. The guys who pushes the main character forward towards their goal. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't come across as a good example of this archetype. Rather, he comes of more like some sort of bullying gym coach. The kind of sporty individual who won't accept anything less that what he expects and makes people feel inadequate because of it. Now let me say right now that I've seen far worse characters like this in the past, so I'm going to go a little easy on Will here. But nevertheless there wasn't anything about this guy to make him memorable in my mind other than the fact that he was "the assertive one". Overall he just didn't compare to other one-shot characters we've had so far. Sure, many of them weren't very interesting but at least they had enough about them to make them stand out. Will, unfortunately, does not. I found absolutely nothing about this guy that I either liked nor wanted to remember. He was overbearing, unlikeable and had no qualities that would make me want to have him make a second appearance. I would honestly have tolerated him if his actions were out of a genuine desire to make Fluttershy less of a pushover, but it's made pretty clear that it was all for self-serving reasons, so he's got nothing for me.
No song this week so I won't be talking about one.
Humour now and as you'd expect from a story such as this, many of the jokes and humourous situations comes from Fluttershy's repeated attempts to become assertive towards others and failing to do so. I've seen many kinds of shows where situations like this were played up for laughs but here I'm afraid it doesn't work. The reason being is that in other shows, many of the people who make me laugh by failing to do things are people or characters that I don't like. Fluttershy on the other hand is a characters I like, so seeing her fail at things she tries her hardest at is not going to be funny for me. If you're into that kind of humour, good for you, but it just doesn't work for me. However, this episode did have a few funny moment here and there, thankfully provided by Pinkie Pie. In fact I can personally cite her brief exchange with Iron Will and tricking him via "the old joke of getting your opponent to agree to the thing he was trying to stop" cliche as my personally top funny moment of the episode. Sure it was cliche, but it was funny nevertheless.
Moral-of-the-day now and this week, as you'd imagine, the lesson is that you can be an assertive person and stand up for yourself without having to go too far and cross over into aggressive territory. Personally, I like this lesson. I've met many people in my life who've crossed this line, especially young children. So from personal experience I'd say that this is a good thing for kids to be taught.
Overall, this episodes just doesn't cut it for me. I know I said a lot of negative things about this episode today but in all honesty there were some rather entertaining moments here than there. Fluttershy carries the story well and her attempts to become a more assertive person were at least entertaining and interesting enough to keep me watching. But like I said, a lack of humour I could identify with and a premise with which I disagreed keeps me from feeling very strongly towards this episode. Not to mention all of the character moments that gave me a great deal of frustration when watching it. While I can honestly say that I'm glad I watched it, I can't say that I'll be giving it a second viewing. It's just a disappointing episode for me, especially in comparison to the success that was "A friend in deed" last time.
Join me next time when Twilight receives a warning from an unexpected source in episode twenty of season two, "It's about time".
