This episode was a mess.
Sweet Apple Acres, the farm around which Ponyville was built, is in trouble and Applejack sounds an alarm, but the only ponies who show up are her five best friends
? I guess everyone else in Ponyville is sick of apples.
So the farm is under attack from vampire fruit bats. AJ and Fluttershy both present their arguments on what should be done about them: AJ wants the bats gone because they're destroying her apples but Fluttershy posits that this is actually good for the apple trees in the long run. That's a nice conflict, short-term benefits vs. long-term gains.
But apparently Fluttershy is really bad at arguing her position since everyone sides with AJ. Rainbow Dash siding with AJ makes sense since she's rash
. Rarity, the shrewd businesswoman who probably understands a thing or two about long-term gains over short-term profit, sides with AJ because bats are "icky". Yeah, that kinda makes sense for her. Pinkie Pie's opinion doesn't really matter because she's insane. But Twilight? The highly educated, newly crowned princess and leader of the group, siding with AJ? That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's completely out of character for her.
No worries, Twilight comes up with the perfect solution: she's gonna cast a spell on the bats that will make them not want to eat apples anymore. Because that worked out so well with the parasprites in Swarm of the Century. Except it's apparently not the same spell since she needs to have the bats' undivided attention to cast it? It's magic, ain't gotta explain shit!
Throwing caution and experience to the wind, Twilight casts the spell and the bats stop eating apples. But what do they eat instead? Are they just gonna starve to death? Did Twilight just condemn the bats to a slow and agonising death? Apparently this is a minor detail that doesn't warrant further deliberation. After all, the goal was just to stop the bats from eating the apples. Also, it's magic, so ain't gotta explain shit!
Moving on, the spell actually backfired and turned Fluttershy into a feral batpony, one hell-bent on sucking every apple in Sweet Apple Acres dry. I could complain about how Twilight's spell backfiring like this makes no sense whatsoever, but hey, it's magic, ain't gotta explain shit!
Obviously something must be done about Flutterbat, but contrary to what one might think, the problem is not how to turn her back, but rather how to catch her so Twilight can turn her back. Um, AJ could use her lasso? Rainbow Dash could outfly her or make a tornado or something? Twilight could stop her in midair with that nifty spell she used in Castle Mane-ia? Since these solutions all make sense, Twilight instead comes up with the idea of tricking Flutterbat into looking in a mirror, which apparently somehow causes Fluttershy to use the Stare on herself. Even though she doesn't look like she's using the Stare when she looks in the mirror. Even though it's been made perfectly clear in previous episodes that doing the Stare requires a conscious effort on Fluttershy's part. Despite the fact that (or because) this plan makes no sense whatsoever, it works, after which Twilight does her thing and Fluttershy returns back to normal. Yay.
And then the gang go and build a sanctuary for the vampire fruit bats. Why? Did the bats return to normal when Twilight cured Fluttershy? Since it's implied that they did, how do they suddenly no longer pose a threat to the entire farm? Nothing has changed compared to the start of the episode, but just because Twilight's spell backfired, the entire gang now sides with Fluttershy and even AJ changes her opinion? Putting up a fence and a sign isn't going keep the bats in their sanctuary! This doesn't make any sense!
So yeah, in my opinion this episode was a mess. Feel free to accuse me of nitpicking, but I feel that this episode had way too many inconsistencies and things that just don't make sense, which I find frustrating since older episodes actually do stand up to this kind of scrutiny.
The song was nice though.
