Fillies, gentlecolts, and foals of all ages. Welcome once again to another edition of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic recap/review. This week’s episode focused on everyone’s favorite adorably shy pony, Fluttershy. Which means by this point, you know what the general premise of the story’s moral is about. Let’s be honest, Fluttershy’s stories usually revolve around her either conquering fears, or learning proper assertiveness. Will this week’s episode be any different? Let’s find out with the awesomely titled “Filli Vanilli”
The Ponytones
We open the episode at Fluttershy’s cottage as she greets the new day and her animal friends with a very Snow White-esque song. However her happiness is cut short when she realizes her friends also heard her singing, which makes her paranoia go to an all time high. It turns out after all these years, and all the songs she’s sung, they’ve never heard her perform such a beautiful solo. Rarity is so impressed, she asks Fluttershy to perform as part of the Ponytones quartet, who Fluttershy has booked for her pet center benefit. After a questionably mean spirited moment from Pinkie, making Fluttershy feel more paranoid about performing, Fluttershy declines Rarity’s offer, telling her friends that she has stage fright, and would much prefer watching the Ponytones perform from the safety of the crowd.
At the rehearsal for the benefit, we see the Ponytones, which consists of Rarity, two new ponies (listed as Toe Tapper and Torch Song) and their bass singer Big Macintosh, who is actually a pretty amazing singer. Everything seems to be going fine as the rehearsal goes well. But the next day, Big Mac shows up in terrible shape, and it’s revealed that he can no longer sing due to losing his voice. Turns out that after the rehearsal, he would compete in the annual Ponyville turkey call, in an attempt to defend his title of six years. But would lose to Pinkie Pie. Rarity tells Fluttershy that they can’t perform if they don’t have a way to cure Big Mac, and Fluttershy comes up with a remedy to the problem.
Zecora suggest some poison joke to remedy the situation
They head to Zecora’s to see if she can cure Big Mac’s ailing voice, but her remedy won’t work in time. However, she does have one way to ensure the Ponytones can still perform. We’re reminded of the events of “Bridle Gossip”, where the mane six wandered into the poison joke flower, which inflicted the ponies with humorous after effects. The most memorable of them all was a deepening of Fluttershy’s voice, turning her into Flutterguy. Zecora offers to use some of the poison joke plant to mix a brew which will deepen Fluttershy’s voice once more. However, there’s still the issue of Fluttershy’s stage fright. Rarity suggests that Fluttershy performs behind a curtain, and Big Mac lip syncs to her voice.
We get to the pet center performance, and it turns out a success. In fact, it becomes so much of a success that the Ponytones are being asked to perform at other events. Rarity declines the offers, fearing that Fluttershy will feel pressured, but Fluttershy doesn’t want to disappoint anypony. And with each performance, Fluttershy becomes more and more excited, and having way more fun. Eventually Big Mac’s voice returns, and Fluttershy is sad once more since that means that she can no longer perform. Rarity and Big Mac allow her once more time to perform, however this turns out to be a disaster, as Fluttershy is so into performing that she accidentally knocks the curtain down.
Fluttershy's fears get the best of her again.
Despite the cheers of the crowd, all Fluttershy sees is her fears of stage fright get teh better of her once more, sending her running off the stage in tears. After a hilarious exchange between Applejack and Big Mac, the mane six go to talk with Fluttershy. However, Pinkie just makes things worse by bluntly stating all the things that Fluttershy was worried about, sending her running off in tears once more.
Rarity tries to ask Fluttershy why she’s like this, especially considering that it was Fluttershy who wanted the ponytones to perform at every single event. Eventually Fluttershy begins to slowly face her fears as she performs in front of her friends and animals. However, that’s as far as she can get right now, stating that it’s going to take “baby steps”. We end the episode with the moral that you shouldn’t let your fears stop you from doing something you love.
Another enjoyable musical episode with lots of great humor. But how does it fare with the pros and cons?
PRO
Flutterguy is still a hilarious gimmick. Having a shy pony with such a light voice like Fluttershys suddenly sound like a deep voiced black man will never get old. However, it should be noted that this time around, the voice was done by two different VAs for the vocal and singing roles. Original Flutterguy voice actor Blu Mankuma is currently deathly ill, so your thoughts and prayers would definitely be great at this time.
The “got the music in you” song was one of the show’s catchiest so far. We’ve seen plenty of differing styles of songs throughout the series, so getting an a capella quartet is fresh and fun to listen to. Doesn’t hurt that the main singer is Big Macintosh, and also Flutterguy.
I like how they wrote Rarity in this episode, as very supportive of Fluttershy. She didn’t really push Fluttershy into the situation (you could argue the “for the animals” line was pushing her a bit), but she knew about how much she loved singing, and kept going with it to support her friend.
Lots of continuity nods in this episode, with the most notable being the return of poison joke, and a little nod to the relationship between Cheerilee and Big Macintosh.
CON
One real major con to this episode, and I’ve seen that I’m far from the only one who’s had a problem with this, and that’s Pinkie Pie. She felt way too mean spirited, even if that wasn’t her intention, and even if episode writer Amy Keating Rogers claims that it’s just Pinkie Pie being her normally blunt self. But for me, I’m reminded of episodes of the show where Pinkie was blunt, but not to the point of hurting somepony’s feelings. In fact, I’m reminded of “Griffon the Brush Off” where Pinkie didn’t want to prank Fluttershy for fear of hurting her feelings. I just really didn’t like it honestly, just like I’ve honestly not like a lot of non-episode focus Pinkie this season.
And I could make a con that the plot seems a bit contrived since we’ve seen Fluttershy perform on stage in the Hearth’s Warming play, as well as the fact that she’s going to compete in the Equestria Games, and while that’s not singing, it’s still performing in front of a large crowd. But those are really nitpicks that don’t affect the quality of the episode as much.
In the end, Filli Vanilli was a fun episode. Fluttershy was cute, the main song was catchy, and Flutterguy is just entertaining as heck. As we’re now officially into the second half of season 2, it’s so far become one of the best seasons of the series to date, and if we’re due for more fun episodes like this, I can’t wait for whatever is in store.
RATING: 8 out of 10
Next Week, I think we’re all due for a little “Twilight Time”. Twilight Sparkle is thrilled to help the cutie mark crusaders with their studies. However the young fillies soon realize that having a magical princess pony as their friend could have some interesting advantages. Just what do the crusaders have in plan? Find out next week.
Until next time, everypony!