Look Before You Sleep

Look Before You Sleep is the eighth episode of the first season and first aired on December 3rd 2010.

Writer: Charlotte Fullerton

It is notable for being the only episode in which all six main ponies do not appear. Instead, three of the leads (Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie) are absent from the episode.

Episode Summary
Ponyville needed a rainstorm to make up for a missed scheduled drizzle the other day, and the ponies proceeded to clean up the town square by pruning all of the trees of their branches. This leads to an argument between Rarity and Applejack. The former was slow on the uptake, but wanted to make sure everything is beautifully perfect, while the latter preferred to just get the job done quickly. While deciding to avoid saying something they would regret, they tried to find shelter when the storm began.

They were beckoned by Twilight Sparkle to stay at her place until the storm is over. She was on her own while Spike was back in Canterlot on "royal business". She saw this as an opportunity to set up her first-ever [albeit by-the-book] slumber party. Not wanting to do anything to ruin it, Rarity and Applejack tried to put their differences aside, but their different behaviors made it difficult to get along. In fact, they referenced each other in an attempt to create a ghost story, dared each other in "Truth or Dare", and turned a pillow fight into a "pillow war".

Their argument continued as the lights went out, from trying to sleep to making the bed. At this point, Twilight woke up, upset that her friends were fighting too much to have any fun and ruining her slumber party. Just as things couldn't get any worse, a bolt of lightning stuck part of a nearby tree and was about to drop on a neighboring house. Applejack lassoed the falling tree, but it crashed into Twilight's house instead. Rarity focused on cleaning up the mess of books while Twilight read in her slumber party book on dealing with fallen trees in the middle of the bedroom (likely due to state of panic).

When Applejack failed to move the tree out on her own, she eventually convinced the prissy unicorn to instead focus on helping her with the bigger task and not worry about getting her hooves dirty, while apologizing to her about criticizing her sense of attention. Rarity turned the debris into tiny bush sculptures, clearing the way at the price of dirtying herself, while Applejack gently tossed what was left out of the house.

With the storm (and their differences) finally settled, the three ponies were finally having fun and, in the end, Twilight officially declared the slumber party a success.