HEADSPACE: Brotherhooves Social

So I've been wanting to make HEADSPACE a regular thing I do, but there hasn't much that I've wanted to weigh my opinions on, except maybe Amiibo's and TF2's Gun Mettle Update.  So I'm just grateful that at the end of the day, I can rely on those Darn Bronies to give me something to talk about...


So the My Little Pony Episode "Brotherhooves Social" recently came out, and it focused on Applebloom and her brother Big Mac, who dresses up as his sister's female cousin Orchard Blossom so that Applebloom can compete in the games, since Applejack is in Manehattan on a Friendship Mission, shown in the last episode.  It's a very simple concept, played mostly for laughs, with a deep underlying message that is truly heartfelt and important, and it all bundles together as one of Big Mac's best episodes of the series.  To be honest, it's not the greatest episode ever, since that title probably should go to the leaked episode "Scare Master", but there's nothing overly wrong with this episode.  In fact, it's moral is possibly one of the strongest the show has ever delivered, and it did make me tear up, which the show has never made me do before.

So naturally, the Brony Community is almost immediately decrying this episode as one of the worst of the series.  <SIGH>.

'Brotherhooves Social' is right now being accused of being a "Trans-Phobic" episode, because they have Big Mac in a dress, speaking in a falsetto voice and pretending to be a woman, since as far as the audience is concerned, Stallions can't enter the Sisterhooves Social.  Given that the Brony Community tends to have a Tumblr-esque way of thinking these days, I can't say that I'm overly surprised that people are getting extremely offended at a joke that was done all the time by Bugs Bunny 70 odd years ago, and many other characters since then.  In fact, that may be the actual problem here; the fact that Big Mac in a Dress is played up as a Joke, in a series that is mainly about comedy and making people laugh.  The show creators are not in the wrong here, as they're just using one of the more vintage jokes in their arsenal to help tie a narrative together and deliver an outstanding moral.  Sure, it's not Politically Correct, and no matter what you create, someone will be offended, because humans are all different and crazy in their own unique way, but the real question is "Is this Episode Harmful in it's Message or it's Delivery?"  The Answer is obviously NO.

If you want an example of episodes that have been done poorly, I can provide you with quite a few.  "Wonderbolts Academy" was a fairly good character building episode for Rainbow Dash, but the lack of redemption for Lightning Bliss does sour the ending a wee bit, especially if you read the script for the alternate ending, which saw the character learning a lesson herself, instead of learning nothing and being tossed out of the Academy, because jerks will always be jerks no matter what, right? -___-

"The Mysterious Mare-do-well" actually has a fairly good message, but the delivery is not done overly well, due to Rainbow's friends coming off as Hypocrites.  Brony Reviewer Josh Scorcher did point out that the episode's delivery wasn't as bad as it seemed, and while I'm inclined to agree with him, the scene in Sugarcube Corner is still the Mane Six bragging about themselves, no matter how you slice it.

"Appleoosa's Most Wanted" is another episode that uses another vintage trope that is honestly never funny; in which the Adults are all idiots, the Children really know what's going on, but the Adults refuse to listen because the Children "are too young to be getting involved with these affairs."  To be perfectly honest, this episode left me with a rather bad taste in my mouth over how cliche it was, and how everyone's intelligence plummeted.  "Somepony to Watch over Me" is also guilty of this, and possibly does it a whole lot worse, with only a cool looking Chimera as a redeeming factor, that immediately squanders it by not having it tie into the moral, when the potential to was there.

"Rainbow Falls" is egregiously horrid with a poor execution and a forced Moral, and it brought both Rainbow Dash and the Wonderbolts to a new low.  Even when "Rarity Investigates" put them in a much better light, it still doesn't redeem the actions of any of the characters involved with that mess.

And of course, I'd be foolish to leave out "Do Princesses dream of Magic Sheep", which botches what could have been a very good, if not great episode on depression, and had the potential to build up the relationship between the royal sisters, but decides to leave out Celestia entirely, and it converts its message from one of depression to one about self harm, and because of that, the whole thing actually becomes a harmful message; probably the first in the series that could genuinely hurt someone that followed the moral of this episode.  The delivery is also not very good, being rather generic for most of the Mane Six, and clearly there to fill time and create an excuse for the final scene to happen.  Worst Episode of the series.

And the less we say of "Slice of Life", the better.


So with all of those examples of bad episodes, does Brotherhooves Social fit in there?  Not really.  It's probably closest to 'Mysterious Mare-Do-Well", due to it not being obvious with some of the subtext, which has led to a lot of the labelling of this episode being Trans-Phobic.  To be clear, I would be right there with all of you if this episode had done a few things differently, namely the ending...

So at the end of the episode, Big Mac's disguise falls apart and it's revealed that he's a stallion.  Big Mac and Applebloom are disqualified from the Social, but not because Big Mac is a guy.  In fact, the Judges already knew that he was a guy, and simply chose to not bring it up, allowing him to compete however he wanted, since the social is apparently very relaxed on what defines a "sisterly bond".  However, they are disqualified due to Big Mac's unsportsman-like actions in destroying the course and putting the other competitors in harms way during the race.  Some people seem to have a problem with the fact that the Judges knew all along that Big Mac was a guy, but at the same time, I argue that if they had questioned his decision to enter as a woman, knowing that he was a man, that it would have actually been a little trans-phobic.  And as for the ending, that would have only been Trans-phobic if they had disqualified him for ALSO being a man, alongside destroying the course.  However even though everyone knew he was a guy in a dress, nobody actually questioned him.  Sure, he did get some odd looks from the other competitors, but that was most likely them thinking "Um... he does know that men are allowed to compete, right?" or even more likely, "Dear god his Falsetto singing is cringe levels of bad."  In my mind, this episode portrayed the citizens of Ponyville in a more accepting light, and while some parts of it were indeed cringe comedy, it was a lot more bearable than some of the parts in "Equestria Games" with Spike, who really deserves a decent episode that doesn't try to paint him in a bad light for being who he is, or for simply being a young boy surrounded by young adult women, because we already got that character years ago with Simon from Trollz, and we do not need another Simon.

I feel like I've gone off topic...  Anyways, Brotherhooves Social is a genuinely good Episode whose message is very heartfelt and meaningful, especially to an older sibling like myself, and it deserves a lot better than how the brony community is treating it right now.




But... that's just my thoughts on the matter.