hey are we shitting on one bad awful? can i join in? because i have a theory.
so the intended moral is “don’t sink to the same level as bullies. tell an adult instead”, and that’s what applejack sells. but… that’s not what actually happens in the episode. telling an adult never actually solves anything because applejack never actually does anything. babs doesn’t stop bullying them because they told applejack, she stops bullying them because they save her from the death trap they lured her into. basically them retaliating against babs indirectly solved the issue. then the other bullies show up and hassle them, applejack again doesn’t do anything, and babs drives them away by threatening them. again, retaliation solves the bullying.
in other words, the episode consistently showed that retaliating to bullies would effectively solve it, while telling an adult would do
nothing.
and okay, maybe that was all accidental and they truly did intend to sell the moral of just tell an adult. except… the writers are smarter than that. my theory? the writers
had to give the moral of “tell an adult” but didn’t agree with it themselves, so they stealthily depicted defending yourself as the
true solution. alternately, they just didn’t want the liability of telling little tommy to knock out little timmy’s teeth if timmy tried to steal his lunch money again so they had applejack
claim otherwise so they wouldn’t be blamed for teaching kids to stand up to themselves.
again, i don’t know if it’s true or not. i just hope it is because it turns a terrible episode into an actually brilliant one.
@Josh103
cozy glow is basically starlight except people reacted to her more realistically.