For those that missed the announcement last week, the Episode Rewatch series has returned! Every Saturday morning at 4:00 AM PST, we will be revisiting old episodes! Along with episode links for you to join in, we will do a brief history on what the fandom reacted with, complete with fan works, reception, and more dank memes than a 2016 high school yearbook. This show grew tremendously quickly out of it's overwhelming amount of reaction images and fan creations. It's only natural to celebrate it.
Now go! Get your lesson on racial differences and Flutterguy below!
Before I dive into the real meat of this one, can we just celebrate how ridiculously snarky and sarcastic Twilight was in the early days? She does it sometimes now, but the way she completely destroys her overly-superstitious silly friends with a mountain of logic at the beginning of this episode is something we rarely get to see.
Just look at that CLASSIC reaction image. I saved that way back during the dawn of pony. Almost my entire Twilight folder was stuff like that. Snarky ass Twilight with deadpan and sarcastic expressions.
And books. Lots of happy about books.
If this episode was created in the last year as opposed to way back in 2010, I almost think Hasbro would have been wary of running it thanks to current modern events. It's one of the things MLP did really well in the early seasons, covering potentially explosive topics but piling adorable cartoon equines on top to teach a lesson and temper the potential drama.
The lesson in giving other races a chance was a good one. Think about how crazy it is that a nation like Equestria, with all of it's intrinsic friendliness could be so unwelcoming to a fellow equine that was only slightly different than them. It wasn't even really about the evil enchantress thing at first either. They legitimately saw Zecora as a creepy, "garishly" striped monstrosity that came once as week to a ghost town filled with freaked out ponies. No one even considered saying hi or asking what she wanted at any point before Apple Bloom and Twilight came in and changed some minds.
Six seasons later and we really don't know much about Zecora. Back then she was absolutely bombarded with fanon lore, fanfiction, and every possible ship you can imagine. I know I'm not the only one that assumed some day all of that would be wrong, but... we still haven't come to it yet. I'm hoping we get it some day.
Poison Joke was another one of those big lore-building tools we exploited the crap out of. SO MANY background and side characters were poison joked by us. We had Lyra with a hand for a tail, Colgate (Minuette) with gigantic ugly teeth, and even a fanfic about stoner Trixie extracting various substances from the plant and walking around Ponyville blazed out of her mind in glorious 3rd pony dictator mode. These were literally all greentext 4chan stories I can't find though. That's how long ago it was.
Tiny Applejack was another big hit, and the way she ponied up and rode Rainbow was fun in it's own right. ...Not for those reasons*, but because something season one did really well was keeping these characters horses. I've noticed a lessening of pony puns, mannerisms, and general vibe over the course of this show's existence. They used to take advantage of their equine nature constantly back then, and the fandom absolutely loved it.
In some ways, this may be one of the reasons why they were so reluctant to interact with Zecora in the first place. Heavily evolved prey animals would probably have all sorts of jumpy danger instincts that would make them wary of anything different.
(...Mayybe kinda for those reasons, this was the early 4chan fandom after all~)
Of course, nothing made more waves than Evil Enchantress. For a ~15 second song, we had countless remixes in everything from Eurobeat to the most wubbiest of dubstep. Pile that on with Flutterbutter and her super deep man voice and you had the perfect storm for a meme apocalypse.
Background pony-wise, the flower sisters were the real winners here. Their freakouts became a stuff of brony legend with the image above being crapped and reused countless times over the years for various things. Before this one they had a slight following, but it really gave us more "character" to play with for the trio.
And they were of course followed closely by Lotus. Piles and Piles of Spa Pony content was pumped out thanks to this one and her incredibly luxurious accent.
Overall, Bridle Gossip is the perfect example of one of the greats of season one. It has almost flawless pacing with an introduction to a brand new race and a whole bunch of great character interaction moments between the mane 6 and Apple Bloom. I didn't know anyone that disliked it when it aired. It really was a spotlight on why we were all here.
And an ARMY OF TRIXIE
Go watch it over here!
mlp season 1 episode 9 - Bridle Gossip by 0nana00
