| "Over a Barrel" | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode | |||
 A battle between the Appleloosans and the buffalo herd ensues. | |||
| Episodeno. | Season 1 Episode 21 | ||
| Directed by | |||
| Written by | Dave Polsky | ||
| Original air date | March 25, 2011 (2011-03-25) | ||
| Running time | 22 minutes | ||
| Episode chronology | |||
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| My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magicseason 1 | |||
| List of episodes | |||
"Over a Barrel" is the twenty-first episode of thefirst season of theanimated television seriesMy Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. It originally aired onThe Hub on March 25, 2011. The episode was written byDave Polsky. In this episode,Applejack and her friends travel to the frontier town ofAppleloosa to deliver an apple tree, where they become involved in a conflict between the town's pony settlers and a local buffalo tribe over land use rights.
| External videos | |
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 Over a Barrel (full episode) — Official upload of the episode ontoYouTube |
Spike and theMane Six ride an overnight train to the frontier town of Appleloosa soApplejack can deliver an apple tree named Bloomberg as a gift to her relatives. The next morning, a herd of buffalo stampedes alongside the train and launches an attack. Little Strongheart, a young female buffalo, disconnects thecaboose containing Spike and Bloomberg and pushes it away in the opposite direction. The remaining ponies arrive in Appleloosa, and Applejack's cousin Braeburn gives them a tour of the town. He explains that the buffalo want all the apple trees removed, but the settler ponies depend on theorchard for their survival.
Meanwhile,Rainbow Dash andPinkie Pie venture into the desert to rescue Spike and encounter the buffalo tribe, where they meet Little Strongheart. She apologizes for taking Spike and Bloomberg and explains that the tribe only wanted to prevent the settlers from expanding their orchard, which was planted on the buffalo's traditional stampeding grounds without permission.Chief Thunderhooves affirms that his people have used this path for generations as part of their heritage. The next morning, Little Strongheart accompanies the ponies back to Appleloosa to negotiate, but the discussion quickly devolves into a shouting match between the two sides.
Pinkie Pie attempts to resolve the conflict by performing asong-and-dance number about sharing and recognizing similarities between the groups ("You Got to Share, You Got to Care"), but fails to impress either side. Chief Thunderhooves declares that the townsfolk must uproot all apple trees by high noon the next day or the buffalo will destroy both the orchard and the town, while Appleloosa's sheriff replies that they will be ready to defend themselves. Both sides spend the day preparing for battle.
When high noon arrives, Chief Thunderhooves leads the buffalo charge against the fortified town and a battle ensues with the settler ponies throwingapple pies at the buffalo to stun them. During the chaos, Thunderhooves gets hit in the face by a stray pie and is impressed by its taste, which immediately stops the fighting. The chief proposes a compromise where the settlers keep their land and share their apple pies with the buffalo in exchange for creating a path through the orchard that allows the herd to continue their traditional stampede.
According to show creatorLauren Faust on herDeviantArt profile, the show staff worked with an "official Native Consultant on this episode and did revisions according to all his notes."[1][2]
Sherilyn Connelly, the author ofPonyville Confidential, gave the episode a "C+" rating.[4]
In a critical analysis of the episode, author Jen A. Blue wrote that "Over a Barrel" suffers from attempting to tell a story that cannot be told within the limitations of aMy Little Pony episode. Blue compared the episode to a hypothetical musical set inAuschwitz (fromLindsey Ellis' explanation of whyDisney'sSong of the South is disturbing), writing that it takes "a horrifically violent period of American history, a time ofgenocide,biological warfare, andforced marches, and turns it into a pie fight." She identified an impossible contradiction in the episode's approach: while the show's core values of love, tolerance, and friendship obligate it to depict both sides as fully complex, the need to make the content suitable for children requires defanging the conflict, which Blue described as "incredibly disrespectful to the entire peoples systematically slaughtered." Blue acknowledged some positive elements, including the humor in the opening scenes and the portrayal of young representatives from both sides who are reluctant participants in their elders' conflicts. However, she criticized the buffalo as "pure obnoxiousstereotype" and concluded that while the episode was not poorly executed, it failed because "this is an entirely wrong direction for the show to be taking," though she suggested this misstep may have been necessary for the series to learn from.[5]
Alesha Davis, in a retrospective review forThe Post, gave the episode a similar assessment to Blue's critique and described "Over a Barrel" as "the worst offender out of all of the episodes in all nine seasons" of the series. Davis wrote that the episode depicts ponies ascolonizers who have taken over the buffalo'ssacred lands, noting that the buffalo are "clearly supposed to representnative tribes" through visual elements such as the chief'sfeather headdress and the use oftipis. She criticized the episode's resolution where "both groups have 'good reason to use this land'" despite the buffalo having used the territory first, writing that the buffalo are "forced to share the land" and receive produce in return rather than having their territory restored. Davis expressed disappointment that "even the natives in this made-up world cannot get their land back" and that the ponies do not admit wrongdoing or return the land in full to the buffalo.[6]
Kevin Fletcher, in his essayMy Little Pony, Communalism and Feminist Politics, wrote that while the episode references the arrival ofEuro-Americans in tribal lands, it "equivocates about the possession and 'discovery' ofindigenous lands and therefore lacks ananti-colonialist critique." He observed that the visual environment corresponds to theNavajo Nation in thesouthwestern United States, but the buffalo are distinctive of other nations like theLakota, which he described as a commontrope in "white culture" of mixing cultural elements from differentNative American groups. He also pointed to the episode's use of slapstick comedy and visual incongruity as contextual cues suggesting the content was not meant to be taken seriously and decried that the episode ultimately "glosses up the colonial story ofwestward expansion" and "perpetuatesstereotypes often found in the depiction ofNative Americans."[2]
Christian Valiente and Xeno Rasmusson identified "Over a Barrel" as an example offemales in authority positions in part of their study on challenges to traditionalgender roles inFriendship is Magic.[7]
Brendan Kachel offlayrah wrote that the episode was "pretty bad" and criticized its handling of thedisplacement of native peoples andmanifest destiny as inappropriate for the medium. He argued that some topics "shouldn't be interpreted via the medium of glorified horse figurine commercial" and called the resolution insulting: "I'm just saying it's a problem that you can't solve with apple pie."[8] Similarly, Ryan Lohner ofThe Agony Booth described the episode as one of the show's weaker outings and criticized it as a misguided attempt to teach kids about the horrors of manifest destiny.[9]
Jamie Kingston ofWomenWriteAboutComics criticized the portrayal of buffalo as analogous to Native Americans and wrote that while the episode was mostly handled well, the use of featheredwar bonnets as visual identifiers contributed to the problematic idea that it's acceptable to appropriate Native Americancultural symbols. Kingston pointed out that the conflict centers on settlers building a town on land the buffalo have used for generations, and while the dispute is resolved peacefully with a compromise rather than violence, the episode still contains problematic elements in its cultural representation.[10]
In an essay analyzing the use ofmetatextuality inFriendship Is Magic, Aaron Kashtan examined how "Over a Barrel" features instances offourth-wall breaking that are seemingly impossible within the fictional universe despite it featuring instances of magic. He identified a specific scene where Pinkie Pie climbs through the closingiris shot and holds it open so that she can exclaim "Hey! That's whatI said!" Kashtan wrote that through such uses of metatextuality andreflexivity, the episode reminds viewers of the show's status as a constructed media artifact, thereby helping develop critical awareness of mediacy and materiality.[3]
The episode is part of the Season 1 DVD set, released byShout Factory, on December 4, 2012.[11]
