YMMV / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S1 E6 "Boast Busters"

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
  • Though the official moral is that it isn't arrogant to use your talent when you need to, another lesson might be "those who boast outside of their talent range will eventually be called on it".
  • Or, "no matter how talented you are, if your ego is as big as the Ursa Major, you will not amuse anyone".
  • Trixie doesn't so much get in trouble for boasting as she does for lying. Had she not told a fib about beating an Ursa Major, there would had never been anything to prove her wrong.
  • Despite the ponies' hypocrisy, the show does punish them for challenging Trixie. Only Twilight successfully upstages her, but indirectly and without much intent of humiliating her, giving off the Aesop of not going around picking fights or looking for trouble. A person's bad attitude will eventually come back to haunt them.
  • The moral could be taken as "It's not what you know but who you know". Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, Snips, and Snails all know the townsfolk and get off with minimal to no repercussions at best for their churlish actions while Trixie, the outsider, loses her home, career, and all her possessions.
• Broken Base: While Trixie herself was well-received in her majority, the episode itself is polarizing. Some love the episode specifically because it introduced Trixie and just like it for its own merits, others hate it for the mentioned problems.
• Draco in Leather Pants: This episode had fans protesting Trixie was just a simple traveling entertainer whose audience was being unnecessarily mocking and hostile, that she was justified in humiliating Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash in front of their friends and neighbors, and that she was unjustly punished at the end of the episode, largely ignoring that she's a boastful, lying egomaniac both on- and off-stage who uses her magic to bring other ponies down while putting herself up. While the Mane Six did rush to conclusions when it came to judging Trixie, they were still correct about Trixie being a boastful jerk as Trixie's reaction to their naysaying proved them right. And while Trixie did seem guilty about one of her lies indirectly leading to an Ursa Minor attacking Ponyville and admirably tried to fight it off, but after the threat is dealt with by Twilight Sparkle, she's right back to being all bluff and bravado,. In addition, Trixie was the one who provoked Applejack and Rarity by calling Applejack "Hayseed" and saying that Rarity's mane was a rat's nest (though admittedly, not until after Rainbow Dash jumped on stage and provoked her). Rarity initially refused to challenge Trixie, but Trixie insulted her. Even in Rainbow's case, Trixie went too far by calling her a loser and humiliating her.
• Fan Wank: Trixie's actions at the beginning of the episode where she humiliates Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Applejack by using her magic to belittle their talents gets a lot of this from defenders, in which they claim that all Trixie was doing was shutting up hecklers and vandals that were rudely disrupting her act. But, considering that Trixie initiated a challenge against them and used her magic to belittle their own talents and humiliate them in front of the Ponyville residents while being very unsubtle about it, it really does make that claim very far-fetched since all she could have done was tell them not to disrupt her act when they were booing her.
• Fridge Brilliance: It's fortunate for the episode's aesop that Fluttershy wasn't around when Snips and Snails brought the Ursa Minor to town, seeing as how she's great with all animals except dragons.
• Genius Bonus: In regards to the Ursa specifically:
  • Astronomy buffs might notice that the Ursa has a certain constellation on its flank...
  • Also, the Ursa Minor has a long tail, just like in the myth of the constellation. This could also be seen as Foreshadowing for the reveal at the end.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Snips and Snails enter a cave in search of an Ursa Major, and end up with an Ursa Minor chasing them back to Ponyville. Several years later, the 2017 movie would introduce Tempest Shadow, who had been attacked by an Ursa Minor as a foal and as a result had her horn broken, rendering her unable to cast spells normally (and for which Equestria's medical community apparently has no meaningful remedy). Taking that into consideration, things could have gone MUCH worse for Snips and Snails.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In this episode, Twilight's genuine magic beats out Trixie's parlor tricks. Two seasons later, Twilight's parlor tricks beat out Trixie's genuine magic. She just cannot catch a break.
  • Rarity's disgust at having green hair. When Season 4 introduces the "friendship rainbow" which incorporates the colors of the Mane Six's coats, Rarity's white occupies the middle position in the spectrum where green would normally go.
• Karmic Overkill: For all of Trixie's arrogant Jerkass behavior, having her home destroyed and her career ruined was way too harsh in the eyes of many fans. Especially considering that her blatant boasting would not have caused any real trouble if not for Snips and Snails taking Spike's advice out of context.
• Ron the Death Eater: Some viewers portray Applejack and Rarity as being jerks in this episode who, along with Rainbow, deserved Trixie humiliating them for heckling her act and trying to upstage her. This is completely ignoring the fact that Trixie provoked them by calling Applejack "hayseed" and saying that Rarity's mane was a rat's nest. Rarity especially since she didn't heckle Trixie at all and just remarked that she was boastful, and initially refused to challenge Trixie, and only did so after she insulted her. Rainbow meanwhile only harassed Trixie out of peer pressure or after she'd picked on the others (and even then was at least self-aware about it).
• The Scrappy: This episode introduced Snips and Snails who are among the most loathed characters in the fandom. Fans don't like how they stupidly brought a huge threat to Ponyville and didn't get any comeuppance for it. Their only saving grace is how they took responsibility for their actions and were willing to accept whatever punishment they had coming to them, even if it wasn’t much of a punishment (and even got rewarded with moustaches).
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The music when Rarity demonstrates using magic to create beauty tries to sound like the "Autumn - I" movement of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Trixie did indeed come off as annoyingly obnoxious at the start of the episode due to her exaggerating her accomplishments and being an arrogant jerk who humiliated and insulted Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Applejack for petty reasons. The resolve of the episode's plot where the ursa minor attacks and Trixie, clearly frightened of it, tries to fight it off and is forced to admit her boasts were hollow and loses her stagewagon, leaving her homeless. While she's clearly not a nice pony and does deserve some Laser-Guided Karma, losing her home seems like a bit much.
• The Woobie:
  • Twilight Sparkle thought her friends would hate her after showing her magic since Trixie's magic show.
  • Rarity, who has her mane called a rat's nest by Trixie, gets it turned into an ugly green color, and runs off crying.