Discussion Recap / MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS3E4OneBadApple

Unfortunately a realistic approach to bullying would amount to 'bullies are adult child abusers in training - and adults can often do nothing to stop it' which would never be greenlite for a kids show.

The fact that DT & SS were happy being friends with Babs is something I found very realistic. They don't really care about flanks being blank or not, they care about hurting other children for fun, and they will happily be friends with anyone or anything who shares this hobby.

Although there were some fun moments in this one, it struck me as one of the weaker episodes because of the idea that "if you retaliate in any way against someone who's insulting and stealing from you, you're just as bad as the bully". Granted, the CMC's choice of prank was dumb — send Babs over a cliff? — but it only even worked because Babs was willing to physically attack them. Seemed to me like a naive, sadly ineffective moral.

A more grown-up version of the story would have had the adults tell the CMC that their clubhouse isn't really theirs and never has been, and that they have to share everything with someone who's a total jerk to them. But that's coming from someone outside the target demographic, and hits close to home for topics beyond schoolyard bullying.

@ Snow:

If by "grown-up", you mean "Wangsty Teenager", then sure.

This isn't The '50s anymore, there's a fairly large movement to not stick heads in the sand when bullying shows up. And nuance is always a good thing, even if Babs didn't have enough screen time to be really fleshed out.

Regarding the clubhouse: doesn't AJ say something like, "Hey kids, this used to be my old clubhouse! It's kind of a fixer-upper but it's yours now!" in Show Stoppers? So it really is theirs, or at least on the Apple property. Y'know, the same way Apple Bloom's bed is hers, or her room. I mean, technically she doesn't legally own it, but....

@Snow: It wasn't the fact that they CMC were retaliating, it's that their retaliation involved jumping straight to an extreme (and potentially dangerous) form of retribution without so much as attempting any other solutions.

Sniff again. Babs is a fairly serious character, but a defining trait is that the topic is approached with grim seriousness.

And the RL government does not advocate telling your parental figures, actually, instead some crap about making amends with the bully...which never happens, as Babs comes around herself.

Yeah, there was far too much humor in the episode to qualify. The main defining trait of a VSE is that the show drops its usual tone to emphasize the seriousness of the issue. The issue is relevant and emotionally based, but the show treats it with the same tone and level of humor of every other episode.

There's also an implication that the show wouldn't normally tackle such an issue, and doesn't usually deliver morals anyway. In this case, bullying is something well within the show's typical range of subject matter, and the entire point of the show is to deliver morals. This particular episode simply didn't deviate from the show's established pattern enough to qualify as a VSE.