Talk:The Cart Before the Ponies/@comment-25270260-20160916170125/@comment-25613746-20161013065949

Applejack's Day Off is the better episode: it has only the one problem of too much slag in the middle part.

This episode has overall more energy, but it totally lacks logic and any compelling characters:

1. Victorious young derpy can only be explained through critical bias - her design is interesting, but there is no visible reason why Rarity's cart should be inferior.(like: it's not functional). Therefore the joke comes across as mean-spirited and unfair to both Derpy and Rarity.

2. The rules of the Derby don't make any sense: Why do traditional carts compete with the more modern ones, when they're supposed to work slower?

3. The race track is too impractical for an amateur race.

4. Applejack and Rainbow Dash are flanderized beyond belief: either being a tyrant or just ignorant to their little friends.

5. Why is Cheerilee not punishing the sisters right when they take over driving from the CMC? I'm sure that could be enforced as a rule.

6. and foremost: You can't really teach a "Your elders don't always know best"-lesson, when the elders and the youngers don't want the same thing.So the conflict the CMC put on themself isn't relevant, and you literally just hear:

"We should do something."

"Should we do something?".

"We should do something."

"Should we do something?"....

I agree that there are nice things in the background and the song isn't bad, but it's hard to focus on that if you have to endure all the harshness in the foreground.