Griffon the Brush Off
Pranks test a friendship when an old griffon friend visits.
"Griffon the Brush Off" is the fifth episode of the first season of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. It originally aired on The Hub on November 12, 2010, and was written by Cindy Morrow. The episode centers on Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash's friendship being tested when Rainbow Dash's old friend Gilda, a griffon, arrives and treats other ponies poorly.
Quick Facts
- Series
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Writer
- Cindy Morrow
- Director
- Jayson Thiessen; James Wootton
- Air date
- 12 November 2010
- Length
- 22 minutes
Facts from the source article.
Plot
Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash play pranks on their friends, painting Applejack's apples with water colors, replacing Twilight's quill ink with disappearing ink, and hiding sneezing powder in flowers for Rarity. The next morning, Pinkie visits Rainbow's cloud house in Cloudsdale and meets Gilda, a griffon from Junior Speedster Flight Camp. Rainbow promises to join Pinkie after flying with Gilda, but Gilda secretly foils Pinkie's attempts to follow them and later tells Pinkie to "buzz off", saying Rainbow does not need a "dweeb" now that she is in town. Twilight dismisses Pinkie's concerns about Gilda's behavior as jealousy. Pinkie then observes Gilda scaring Granny Smith, stealing an apple, and berating Fluttershy. Determined to solve the problem, Pinkie throws a welcome party at Sugarcube Corner that features pranks. Gilda falls for a hoofshake buzzer, slips on cake during "Pin the Tail on the Pony", and blames Pinkie. Gilda loses her temper and tells Rainbow to leave with her, but Rainbow reveals she set up the pranks. Gilda storms out, and Rainbow reconciles with Pinkie through a buzzer-rigged hoofshake.
Reception
Sherilyn Connelly, author of Ponyville Confidential, gave the episode a "C+" rating, describing it as another example of outsiders causing trouble in Ponyville and leaving without learning any lessons. In SF Weekly, Connelly noted that neither Gilda nor Trixie change their ways at the ends of their episodes, calling that "life." Author Jen A. Blue described the episode as "passable, but not hugely impressive," and characterized writer Cindy Morrow as "reliably mediocre." Blue analyzed the episode through the lens of "Geek Social Fallacies," an essay by Michael Suileabhain-Wilson, arguing that Pinkie, Rainbow Dash, and Gilda demonstrate these fallacies: Pinkie believes friends must do everything together, Rainbow cannot communicate boundaries, and Gilda assumes friendship is transitive. Blue wrote that the episode inadvertently resonated with brony viewers because it referenced geek culture before the brony fandom rose.
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