The Cutie Pox
Apple Bloom's shortcut to a cutie mark backfires.
The sixth episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic's second season, written by Amy Keating Rogers, debuted on The Hub on November 12, 2011. In it, Apple Bloom, eager to get her cutie mark, consumes a magical flower. This gives her the Cutie Pox, a condition where she uncontrollably performs many different talents.
Quick Facts
- Series
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Writer
- Amy Keating Rogers
- Director
- Jayson Thiessen; James Wootton
- Air date
- 12 November 2011
- Length
- 22 minutes
Facts from the source article.
Plot
After a disappointing trip to the bowling alley where she failed to get her cutie mark and watched another pony succeed, Apple Bloom felt defeated. Wandering into the Everfree Forest, she hurt her tooth by accident. Zecora found her, brought her to the hut, and fixed the tooth with a potion. Apple Bloom then asked if a potion could give her a cutie mark, but Zecora said only time would bring one. While Zecora left to collect ingredients, Apple Bloom stayed behind and secretly made a potion using a flower called Heart's Desire. The next day at school, Apple Bloom showed up with a cutie mark and a talent for hoop tricks. Her classmates were impressed, and Cheerilee asked her to teach a lesson. While performing, a second cutie mark appeared, and she suddenly could spin plates too. Diamond Tiara thought the marks were fake, but Apple Bloom did both skills easily. That night, Applejack heard noise and found Apple Bloom tap dancing without being able to stop. She now had a third cutie mark and kept performing. Applejack took her to Twilight Sparkle, who called the condition the Cutie Pox, an unknown illness with no cure. On the way to find Zecora, Apple Bloom kept gaining more cutie marks and talents. Zecora arrived in Ponyville and said she had come to replace her missing Heart's Desire. She gave them enchanted seeds that would only bloom when someone told the truth. Apple Bloom admitted she had taken the flower and used it to make a potion that gave her cutie marks. The seeds bloomed right away, and the flower from them cured her. Apple Bloom apologized to Zecora and the others for stealing and lying. Zecora forgave her, and Twilight asked her to write a friendship report. Apple Bloom realized that shortcuts do not lead to real results, and what the heart truly wants must be earned. But soon after, she joined Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle to visit Zecora again, hoping to earn a cutie mark in potion-making.
Reception
Sherilyn Connelly, who wrote Ponyville Confidential, awarded the episode a B grade. In her SF Weekly review, she noted that this was the first time a friendship lesson in the show did not involve any of the Mane Six. She also considered the episode a fitting conclusion to the Cutie Mark Crusaders' storyline about desperately seeking their cutie marks by any method. Critic Jen A. Blue called the episode "merely pretty good" and "a bit of a let-down," viewing it as a decline from the season's earlier standout episodes. She criticized the second straight focus on the Crusaders and what she termed the "deeply problematic" tokenism of Zecora. Blue pointed out that the plot required Applejack and Twilight Sparkle to make an unreasonable logical jump when they decided to visit the zebra healer, a trip that became pointless when Zecora showed up on her own. She also noted that the episode left the origins of the Cutie Pox and the mechanics of the Heart's Desire plant unexplained. Blue saw Apple Bloom's rapid string of cutie marks as a metaphor for chasing social approval, connecting it to societal pressures on young people to gauge their worth through expected achievements. She ultimately suggested that the episode offered a more nuanced message for older viewers: Apple Bloom could only start to develop self-validation after realizing her value did not hinge on a cutie mark. The background pony on the left later got speaking lines in the episode "Slice of Life." Raymond Gallant of Freakin' Awesome Network rated the episode a 6 out of 10 and called it his least favorite of the season. He praised Apple Bloom as charismatic and hilarious and was glad to see Zecora, though he felt her rhyming sometimes felt forced. Gallant especially liked the pop culture references, particularly what he described as "Big Lebowski Ponies," and noted that the episode was more reference-heavy than any he could recall from the past. However, he found the pacing too slow in places, especially the hooping scene. He also voiced frustration that Fluttershy was absent for the second episode in a row and complained that Big McIntosh had been reduced to just repeating a catchphrase. Gallant concluded that while the episode was decent, it did not measure up to the stronger episodes seen recently.
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