Dodsley's Thoughts - Applejack's 'Day' Off

The first Applejack episode of the season. This episode starts with Rarity in the spa, when Aloe enters and warns her not to stay too long in the steam room. Rarity says she is waiting for AJ as it has been forever since they had a spa day. However, when AJ finally turns up, Rarity has pruned. Twilight and Spike run into Rarity on the way to the farm, where Rarity explains her problems to them. They make it to the farm and AJ apologizes to Rarity, saying she has lots of chores that take up her time. When Rarity suggests the other apples do them, AJ tells her that they have their own jobs and they are currently out on delivery. Twilight, being the helpful friend she is, volunteers to help her and AJ reluctantly gives in and agrees to take an hour out, giving Twilight the chore of feeding the pigs. She leaves and Twilight gets Spike to check the list but it seems to be longer than expected. At the spa, the two run into Rainbow Dash and they get a few decent jokes out of it, but here is the main issue with the episode, it is bog-standard. It is a cliched episode, where everything just hits the bullet points of the usual episode formula, it makes it fairly dull. For example, the spa has a problem with the steam room so AJ ends up fixing it instead of actually relaxing. It makes the episode predictable. After AJ fixes the leak at the spa, there isn't any more time and Rarity is annoyed, so AJ agrees to go home and check out the situation and maybe get Twi to do another chore. However, the long list means Twi is only just finishing so AJ has to stay and do the rest of her chores. She talks about how the spa was having an issue due to following routine so they didn't notice problems and they needed an outside eye to help. So, guess what happens. It turns out AJ has been putting in too much effort and time and just following routine, and sometimes having someone check your methods can be helpful. It is a good moral but it is such a bog-standard way of getting there. Anyway, we end with another Rainbow Dash joke. Overall, the episode is fine but it is a fairly weak episode. The story is fine, there is enough comedy to not make it totally boring, but the middle is a long period of not much happening, the story is predictable, the jokes aren't that funny, and the whole plot is played-out. Certainly not an horrendous episode, but not one that will feature on a favorite's list.