YMMV / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S6 E7 "Newbie Dash"

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: If your friends' playful joking is deeply affecting you, you should probably just be honest with them.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Did Dash's old teacher really laugh along with the bullies calling her "Rainbow Crash" back in flight school, or, as this is a flashback, is Dash simply misremembering the event in the worst possible light?
• Base-Breaking Character: As per usual for the fandom, there are camps about the Wonderbolts' behavior during the episode:
  • One group thought that their treatment of Dash was unnecessarily petty (it doesn't help that the nickname they gave her is the same one that her childhood bullies came up with) and that their constant insults were childish and unprofessional.
  • Another group notes that hazing the newbie is a pretty standard tradition in nearly any sort of team based activity (especially as every other member of the Wonderbolts had been through it too). Not to mention that the Wonderbolts weren't aware of all the emotional baggage that the nickname had for Rainbow Dash.
  • A third camp is of the opinion that the hazing the newbie tradition works, but the fact no one bothered to explain (or even try to explain) the tradition to Rainbow until the very end (not even Soarin or Spitfire, who Rainbow is personal friends with) when she brings it up made them look more jerkish than they needed to be. Others point out that Rainbow didn't bother to tell any of them how much it bothered her even when one tried to comfort her about her performance, or ask at all about the other's nicknames.
  • A fourth camp feels the Wonderbolts' actions would have been fine on its own, but their repeated instances of questionable behavior in previous episodes causes a problem by not providing enough of a contrast with the nicknames to make it come off as friendly instead of them being jerks.
  • A fifth camp understands that hazing is a tradition in team sports...but that it's immoral and rather than vindicating it, the episode should've called it out.
• Broken Aesop: The Aesops of not let embarrassing moments effect you and not put standing out ahead of the team. Rainbow Dash's Embarrassing Nickname was hurting her and in turn her teammates before she tried to stand out, and it's her attempts to stand out that result in her resolving the issue by talking it out with her team when they confront her on it. This argues the opposite Aesop that things would have been better for everyone if she acted on her embarrassment and stood out by explaining her issues sooner.
• Broken Base:
  • After five seasons of build up, Dash finally gets to be a Wonderbolt and achieve her dream... and it's devoted to her getting a bad nickname and trying to deal with it. On top of that, the completion of her dream happens in the lead-in to the show. Some feel it's a good episode, as it reflects the first experiences of a lot of people in this type of work; others feel it's a waste of the episode where Rainbow finally reaches her dreams and a lot more could have been done with it. This includes some who liked the episode and found it So Okay, It's Average.
  • The fact that Starlight Glimmer is missing from the episode without any mention or any explanation has rattled a couple cages. Some claim she is irrelevant to the plot, but then at the same time, the other group contend that there was nothing stopping her from showing up in the crowd or in the background, and think it's awfully jarring for a character considered by some people to be the Sixth Ranger to just disappear from existence.
  • Rainbow Dash's impressions of her five best friends became a real sticking point among the fans. Some say that it was a disrespectful and embarrassing moment that brought down the episode while others say it was a very adorable moment that shows how talented she is at mimicking the other five ponies of the mane six.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • You could literally hear everyone come up with an unflattering nickname for Spitfire when she chose not to divulge her Embarrassing Nickname to the audience.
  • Since she mysteriously vanished without a trace, where did Starlight Glimmer disappear to? The previous episode simply provides more fuel to what could have happened.
  • Rainbow Dash is now officially a Wonderbolt, that alone is likely to get a lot of fan works.
  • This episode has also gotten its share of Accusation Fics aimed at the Wonderbolts for how they treated Rainbow Dash throughout the episode.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The spectacle of Dash crashing during a performance as a Wonderbolt is a lot more morbid when a few weeks later both the Blue Angels (whom the Wonderbolts are based off of) and their US Air Force counterparts the Thunderbirds suffer crashes on the same day, the Blue Angels' crash resulting in the death of one of their pilots.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Pinkie saying that at least Rainbow wasn't nicknamed "Rainbow Trash" is unintentionally funny as that was Trixie's insulting nickname for her in Turnabout Storm.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: This is the first Season Six episode to use the Friendship Is Magic theme song for the end credits, after all the other episodes used something completely different. Some fans thought the use of alternate soundtracks was a welcome change and gave episodes a little extra something to stand out, and they aren't pleased with this.
• So Okay, It's Average: Even some of the folks that like the episode didn't find it all that standout, just serviceable.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Some believe Starlight Glimmer's total disappearance from this episode wasted a potential episode plot where Rainbow Dash introduces Starlight Glimmer to the Wonderbolts (Rainbow Dash freaks out on Starlight's Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure in the last episode), instead of the treadmill storyline this episode went with, and would've expanded on her Character Development.
  • The return of her embarassing nickname from flight school would have been a perfect opportunity for Rainbow to finally get over her childhood trauma, and talking to the Wonderbolts about it would have been a good bonding experience and helped assure her of her growth since childhood. Instead she never explains the reason the name bugs her to them, and while they do bond with her over embarassing nicknames, it's at the very end of the episode and isn't given as much impact as it could.
• The Woobie: Rainbow Dash! Thankfully, while she does go through hell in recalling her childhood traumas, the Wonderbolts eventually understand. Even so, many viewers sympathized with Rainbow Dash in this episode. It doesn't help that she tears up multiple times.