S04E13: Simple Ways

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Re: Let's Re-Watch Week 12: Simple Ways

Postby Headless Horse (?) » Sun Aug 03, 2014 4:41 pm

Stargazer wrote:Think it's fair to say that jokes like these are a shout out to a more adult audience, stuff that might go unnoticed by young kids. There have definitely been jokes like that, I daresay one for every other episode. Nothing inappropriate, just a little under the radar and quick so that older fans can have a laugh. I quite like it.


Let's not forget "All You Ever Wanted To Know About Slumber Parties But Were Afraid to Ask". :smirk:




I always picture some mom guffawing and then trying to come up with a way to avoid explaining what's so funny to her kid.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Sun Aug 03, 2014 5:14 pm

That was the first joke that really caught me off guard.
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Postby Mr. Big (?) » Sun Aug 03, 2014 6:59 pm

ROBOT B9 wrote:but I don't want to see it become like John K level imagery.

How about Rocko level? :gotcha:

(Man, so many kids cartoons are filthy)
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Sun Aug 03, 2014 7:13 pm

Eh...Rocko's a little better but I think that might be just a little too much as well.
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Postby Mechanical Ape (?) » Sun Aug 03, 2014 10:59 pm

Trend and Rarity talking "au natural" was also more than a little suggestive.

Ponies don't even wear clothes and they still managed to make it sound filthy.
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Postby Sobana (?) » Sun Aug 03, 2014 11:21 pm

That was probably the biggest scene they had like that but they have been dropping subtle things like that throughout the series. Most cartoons do. Like that scene where Mr. Cake was trying to explain how a earth pony can have a pegasusi and a unicorn baby and at the end he looked around and was like "that makes sense, right?" like he wasn't sure of the explanation himself...

If someone pays attention to it there is a lot more then you would think... I could go on to name a lot more but I don't think that would be appropriate...
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Postby Stargazer (?) » Sun Aug 03, 2014 11:57 pm

Sobana wrote:That was probably the biggest scene they had like that but they have been dropping subtle things like that throughout the series. Most cartoons do. Like that scene where Mr. Cake was trying to explain how a earth pony can have a pegasusi and a unicorn baby and at the end he looked around and was like "that makes sense, right?" like he wasn't sure of the explanation himself...

If someone pays attention to it there is a lot more then you would think... I could go on to name a lot more but I don't think that would be appropriate...

oh god I loved that scene. stuff like that makes the show better imo. And yes, plenty of other kid cartoons have quick, questionable scenes that are aimed at an adult watcher. MLP has done it best so far, because it's deliciously subtle - sometimes I won't see it until the second or third rewatch.

I think the infatuation scene was weird for me because my main reaction to the entire ep was :speakest:"Trenderhoof, get out" and then he had the audacity to do a thing like that. :unenthused:
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Postby SlateSlabrock (?) » Mon Aug 04, 2014 1:14 am

Stargazer wrote:Think it's fair to say that jokes like these are a shout out to a more adult audience, stuff that might go unnoticed by young kids.

Episode 9 would have been in the can long before the show made it to air, so I wouldn't call it a shout-out to older fans. But it's a lot like Sesame Street -- you know parents are going to be watching along with their kids, and sometimes you sneak in things for the parents to laugh at, too.
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Postby Mechanical Ape (?) » Mon Aug 04, 2014 1:22 am

To say nothing of the fact that the people who make the show are adults and they frequently like to amuse themselves. :gotcha:


(e: I hope someday, after the show's finished, they share some stories of "gags we tried to include but they wouldn't let us").
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Postby RainbowDoubleDash (?) » Mon Aug 04, 2014 2:30 am

SlateSlabrock wrote:Episode 9 would have been in the can long before the show made it to air, so I wouldn't call it a shout-out to older fans. But it's a lot like Sesame Street -- you know parents are going to be watching along with their kids, and sometimes you sneak in things for the parents to laugh at, too.


This was actually a specific thing that was once sort of brought up to Faust:

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Postby Sobana (?) » Mon Aug 04, 2014 2:40 am

Mechanical Ape wrote:I hope someday, after the show's finished, they share some stories of "gags we tried to include but they wouldn't let us".

This just might be a pipe dream but someday after this series ends I would like to see them make one adult themed episode. Not anything sexually explicit like that, I mean a more matured episode like South Park, American Dad or Family Guy. Something were they could cuss and say outrageous stuff and do things they normally couldn't on FiM. Like say Derpy's name for one. Something like "we always could talk like this we just chose not to."

I just want to see how they would act in that setting if only for one episode...
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Postby Discord (?) » Mon Aug 04, 2014 4:50 am

Sobana wrote:This just might be a pipe dream but someday after this series ends I would like to see them make one adult themed episode. Not anything sexually explicit like that, I mean a more matured episode like South Park, American Dad or Family Guy. Something were they could cuss and say outrageous stuff and do things they normally couldn't on FiM. Like say Derpy's name for one. Something like "we always could talk like this we just chose not to."

I just want to see how they would act in that setting if only for one episode...


I think this is a bad idea because it completely ignores a large part of what makes FiM so special and appealing.

It offers something unique in the media landscape that is rarely done with such quality- sincerity, and optimism. FiM is so refreshing because it is so different from your aforementioned shows, and most popular media today, which tends to be cynical, "dark", and "edgy".

If you want South Park, American Dad, or Family Guy, just watch those shows. I'd rather watch the ponies talk more about how they're friends. :allears:
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Mon Aug 04, 2014 6:26 am

Yeah, it's unabashed optimism is what makes this show so great for me. :allears:
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Postby Sobana (?) » Mon Aug 04, 2014 8:23 am

Discord wrote:
I think this is a bad idea because it completely ignores a large part of what makes FiM so special and appealing.

It offers something unique in the media landscape that is rarely done with such quality- sincerity, and optimism. FiM is so refreshing because it is so different from your aforementioned shows, and most popular media today, which tends to be cynical, "dark", and "edgy".

If you want South Park, American Dad, or Family Guy, just watch those shows. I'd rather watch the ponies talk more about how they're friends. :allears:


I never said it would be a good idea, just that I wanted to see it. I bet Robot Chicken will eventually get to it. :-P
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Postby Dexanth (?) » Tue Aug 05, 2014 6:23 pm

SlateSlabrock wrote:Episode 9 would have been in the can long before the show made it to air, so I wouldn't call it a shout-out to older fans. But it's a lot like Sesame Street -- you know parents are going to be watching along with their kids, and sometimes you sneak in things for the parents to laugh at, too.


They've always snuck in gags like that, though often times it's things they find funny, which makes their work more fun, and so on - and if the audience likes it, that's a plus!
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Tue Aug 05, 2014 6:42 pm

Yeah, little references like that are enjoyable and there's nothing wrong with that sort of thing.
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Postby Mechanical Ape (?) » Tue Aug 05, 2014 8:32 pm

:heehaw: "SIMPLE ... WAAAY-AAAYS!"

Every time I see the title in writing, I hear Rarity saying it in that outrageous twang of hers. Each and every time. This has been happening ever since the episode aired, how do I stop it?
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Postby Stargazer (?) » Tue Aug 05, 2014 8:41 pm

Mechanical Ape wrote::heehaw: "SIMPLE ... WAAAY-AAAYS!"

Every time I see the title in writing, I hear Rarity saying it in that outrageous twang of hers. Each and every time. This has been happening ever since the episode aired, how do I stop it?

This seems like a fantastic thing, unsure why you would want it to be stopped :-P

Realtalk: I can never find the Raritwang funny. All the awards to Ms. Tabitha for performing so well, but for me, it was just confusing and I was turned off by it. But I only really liked the first 10 minutes of this ep, anyway, so :pinkieshrug:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Tue Aug 05, 2014 9:23 pm

I've said it before, but that accent makes my skin crawl any time I even so much as remember how Rarihick talked. It was supposed to be hammed the fuck up, though, so I still think it's hilarious.
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Postby Mechanical Ape (?) » Tue Aug 05, 2014 9:54 pm

The awfulness is part of the point and it's actually pretty brilliant work on Tabitha's part, since there are layers of awful at work.

I've heard Tabitha give interviews and it's fascinating how she just constantly slides from one speaking style to another -- sometimes sounding more American, sometimes more English, or else one of the many many voices she does -- but always a smooth flow from one style to the next.

:heehaw: is not like that. It's more herky-jerky. Tabitha does it like Rarity is trying to hick-talk about 80% of the time, but then Rarity will forget, or just not know how to proceed, and talk like her normal self for the duration of a single word or phrase. AJ's "Apple Jewel" accent is consistent (she is not insane in her scenes), but Rarity goes about her persona like you would expect someone who is out of her mind and has no clear idea what she's doing. She's not even doing an Applejack impression, it's some insane cargo-cult version of "country" because apparently Trend likes this for reasons unfathomable to her, so she's hitting what she sees as the defining features, which include:

1. Talking loud.
2. Randomly mispronouncing words (like "show"), even when none of the country folk she knows pronounce them that way, because crazy-Rarity doesn't think country folk have a genuine accent, it's just English spoken badly.

So Tabitha brings all this crazy together into a Rarity who is attempting, poorly, to imitate her interpretation of a stereotype that exists only in her own head -- and doing it inconsistently. That's a lot of nuance for a VA to bring. And the results are hilariously horrible.
Last edited by Mechanical Ape on Tue Aug 05, 2014 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Tears (?) » Tue Aug 05, 2014 9:59 pm

Where did she grow up? I keep thinking Joburg or Capetown, but maybe I am completely misremembering
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Postby SlateSlabrock (?) » Tue Aug 05, 2014 10:04 pm

Tears wrote:Where did she grow up? I keep thinking Joburg or Capetown, but maybe I am completely misremembering

Wikipedia says she is an American-born Canadian. Her site says:
Born between Outer Mongolia and Cape Cod via an unlikely genetic collision, Tabitha has lived in Lesotho, Swaziland, and rural Nova Scotia.
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Postby Tears (?) » Tue Aug 05, 2014 10:31 pm

That's it, thanks Slate!

It's weird because she doesn't have any clipped Afrikaans-ness to her accent. Maybe it explains the slight rootlessness of her accent that Mechanical Ape wrote about so interestingly above.
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Postby PictishBeast (?) » Wed Aug 06, 2014 12:32 am

Mechanical Ape wrote:She's not even doing an Applejack impression, it's some insane cargo-cult version of "country" because apparently Trend likes this for reasons unfathomable to her


This is a great post, but I disagree on this one point. I think by the time Rarity goes completely nuts she's no longer trying to impress Trend, she's simply going "fuck you" to Applejack. In other words the horribleness of the accent is cruelly intentional. (And that's why Rarity is best pony :vogue: )

It's like someone trying to mock a Republican by doing the "DEY TOOK UR JERBS" voice.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Wed Aug 06, 2014 1:21 am

PictishBeast wrote:
This is a great post, but I disagree on this one point. I think by the time Rarity goes completely nuts she's no longer trying to impress Trend, she's simply going "fuck you" to Applejack. In other words the horribleness of the accent is cruelly intentional. (And that's why Rarity is best pony :vogue: )

It's like someone trying to mock a Republican by doing the "DEY TOOK UR JERBS" voice.

I don't think she was directly upset with Applejack so much as she was upset with Trenderhoof for liking Applejack. Sheer cruelty like you describe seems more like the sort of thing that New Fluttershy would have done, had Applejack been there at the end of PYHD instead of Rarity or Pinkie Pie.
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Postby Headless Horse (?) » Wed Aug 06, 2014 1:30 am

I agree wholeheartedly with everything Mechanical Ape and (unsurprisingly, because he is my clone) PictishBeast said, and wish I'd been in time to say them myself. Because I totally would have, you mark my words.

That said (by proxy), though...

I find that while Tabitha's performance is a tour de force and amazingly fun for all the aforementioned reasons, it is unfortunately the highlight in what becomes a rather lackluster and poorly edited mess after about the first half. The whole faceoff between Rarihick and Applejewel feels like it's supposed to be one of the show's crowning achievements of dialogue, akin to the dishing outside Rarity's door in Suited For Success, but it just doesn't feel right to me—like, I can't get my head quite around the motivations of the two players. AJ is reciting these lines about her refined tastes and her shiny hooves, interleaved with Rarity reciting her lines about how much she loves being a countrified slob. But they're not reacting to each other. They're not goading each other organically to progressively greater heights of pique, like RD and AJ in Fall Weather Friends—they're just reading off a teleprompter. When Rarity yells I LOVE BEING COVERED IN MUD, it's supposed to be a climactic moment of truth—but to me it just sounds like she's reading a line. She's doing a bang-up job of it, sure, but she's still just reading some words someone put in her mouth. I don't get why she's getting more and more worked up to the point where she feels she has to jump in mud. What's she proving? To who? Why does getting progressively more extreme about her outlandish claims lend them more weight, when she knows that AJ knows that they both know each other too well for any of this to make sense anyway? Why doesn't she show a little frustration, like having her persona crack, instead of just doubling and quadrupling down on this deception schtick that she knows isn't fooling anyone, least of all the one person it's aimed at?

And then when she suddenly gets jolted back to reality by the mud on AJ's dress, the record-scratch mood shift that's supposed to happen just ... I dunno, doesn't. Like, maybe there isn't enough music underscoring the rising tension and the sudden deflation or something. But it doesn't really feel like Rarity is herself again, any more than it really felt like she was someone else in the scene leading up to it. There wasn't enough spontaneity to either the build-up or the let-down, nor was there enough work done at the directorial level to guide my emotions up and down the roller-coaster. I've been spoiled by other episodes that do it much better, I guess. Just look at Best Night Ever or Look Before You Sleep or The Last Roundup for prime examples of what I know the show can do.

I know it's been noted (by Josh Haber, no less) that there was a lot of stuff left on the cutting-room floor in this one, and I'm sure I can blame a rushed hack-job on a new writer's script for most of the textural issues I have. But ultimately it ends up just not leaving me with a very positive impression of the entertainment I've just had; and the final stinger is so ambitiously convoluted in its wording and so oddly drawn out that it just leaves me feeling confused:

:vogue: Real friends will like you for who you are, and changing yourself to impress them is no way to make new ones.


*visual stuff happens, I'm busy looking at how the storyboard sketches of the gala and the cider tasting and so on get transformed into scenes of reality, and I fail to process the line I've just heard*


:iiaia: And when you're as fabulous as I am...

* What? What were we talking about? *

:wink: ...It's practically a crime!

* uhh... wait. Am I really this stupid? I don't know what the hell she's talking about. What's a crime? Did she just say something about fabulous? What was before that? *

* ...Oh it's the end? Shit, credits. What the hell did I even just watch? Crap, now I need to form an opinion about it? *


Note to Josh Haber: when you're writing a cartoon script, you can't get fancy. Lines gotta be tight, yo.

This is good writing, but it's not good cartoon writing. You know what I mean?
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Postby Sobana (?) » Wed Aug 06, 2014 3:00 am

Headless Horse wrote:The whole faceoff between Rarihick and Applejewel feels like it's supposed to be one of the show's crowning achievements of dialogue, akin to the dishing outside Rarity's door in Suited For Success, but it just doesn't feel right to me—like, I can't get my head quite around the motivations of the two players. AJ is reciting these lines about her refined tastes and her shiny hooves, interleaved with Rarity reciting her lines about how much she loves being a countrified slob. But they're not reacting to each other. They're not goading each other organically to progressively greater heights of pique, like RD and AJ in Fall Weather Friends—they're just reading off a teleprompter. When Rarity yells I LOVE BEING COVERED IN MUD, it's supposed to be a climactic moment of truth—but to me it just sounds like she's reading a line. She's doing a bang-up job of it, sure, but she's still just reading some words someone put in her mouth. I don't get why she's getting more and more worked up to the point where she feels she has to jump in mud. What's she proving? To who? Why does getting progressively more extreme about her outlandish claims lend them more weight, when she knows that AJ knows that they both know each other too well for any of this to make sense anyway? Why doesn't she show a little frustration, like having her persona crack, instead of just doubling and quadrupling down on this deception schtick that she knows isn't fooling anyone, least of all the one person it's aimed at?


That is not the impression I got at all. Think of it less as equals trading off blows and more like Applejack just trolling Rarity for an emotional response until she can no longer pull off her bluff. It just reinforces how well they know each other and just how close their relationship is.

:flirt: "You know I'm just being silly and I can tell you're being silly and I know you know you're being silly."

:heehaw: "We both know I'm being silly but I'm going to pretend I'm serious. I know I can make this work if I take it seriously enough. Just look at what extremes I will go to to prove how serious I am."

They both knew what they were doing but applejack knew Rarity enough that if she is going to end this behavior she has to let it play it's course out. Like they didn't need words to convey what they felt because they already knew this was just something that had to happen...
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Wed Aug 06, 2014 5:54 am

See, I always thought Rarity began trying to mimic Applejack but it ended up snowballing into...well, what she became by the third act. :pinkieshrug:
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Postby TheNegaverser (?) » Thu Aug 07, 2014 4:56 am

This episode was a lot of fun. Tabitha is amazing, and this episode was too, by proxy! :wink:
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Postby Niels Olof (?) » Sat Aug 09, 2014 6:11 pm

The latter part of the episode continues not to make any sense, or appeal to me at all.

If Rarity was angry with Applejack, she has abundantly demonstrated previously that she can be quite vicious in a pique (e.g., Best Night Ever or Rarity Takes Manehattan) without descending into hickdom. That, of course, would have been rather unpleasant, and not the comedy that this episode purports to be. If she was trying to impress Trenderhoof, it would be far more likely for her to go more fabulous (pastoral being a perfect match for her sensibilities) rather than... Nashville Chic. She is profoundly aware of her own brand (something she has spent her life building), and the rapidity with which she abandons it here is risible, and not in a good sense.
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Postby Wayoshi (?) » Sat Aug 09, 2014 7:20 pm

The episode flanderizes the characters (in the sense that their interesting secondary details on top of their base personalities are non-existent) to stoop to the love triangle plot.

I understand people enjoying Trenderhoof's quirks, a couple of AJ lines and Rarity's performance. It just feels like a dumb pony episode instead of a usual smart one.
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