@Background Pony #CBFC  
Both episodes are pretty flawed.

@rdibp  
For good reasons.  
This make “mare do well” look like a masterpiece.

@rdibp  
Agreed. The episode is definitely not without its flaws (and honestly kind of lackluster compared to the rest of the season), but I think some people are making it out be worse than it really is.

This is becoming one of the most overhated episodes in the series.

That’s a running theme for many of the show’s characters, tbqh.

I’m not sure when Pinkie Pie last took up a new interest/hobby in the series. If this is the first time, then it’s less out of character than us seeing a new facet of her character: new stimulus, new chance for reactions. Her invasion of personal space still remains, so I don’t think the charge of OOC really flies.

@TexasUberAlles  
Don’t get me wrong; I completely agree trying to talk down Rainbow in that situation would have failed. But it would have been nice to see her friends try anyway before jumping to more drastic measures.
 
Even they didn’t set out specifically to deal a blow to Dash’s self-confidence, they were well aware of her disdain towards Mare Do Well and the growing anger within her. She made that crystal clear when all of them were hanging out at Sugarcube Corner. And yet they kept the ruse going until RD ultimately reached her breaking point. We saw her become so upset that all she wanted to do was to curl up on a cloud all by herself. And that was quickly followed by her becoming infuriated enough to want to publicly out Mare Do Well. Everything was revealed only after Rainbow Dash physically pinned down Mare Do Well and ripped off her mask. That scene you mentioned of them noticing how upset she was and revealing the whole scheme to her came only after she already blew their plan wide open. The bottom line is that they engaged in a plan that unnecessarily toyed with Dash’s emotions, all for the sake teaching her a lesson. While I can understand them having a strong desire to help their friend, the mane six should be better than that.
 
 

 
 
Exactly.

@TheMultiBrony21  
rerarded  
fukken lolol
 
She had only known her friends for a short time  
From ten episodes earlier:

 
But still, they could’ve chosen a better storyline for the episode  
I seriously do not understand whty it is so hard for so many people to understand that “you did not get exactly the episode you wanted” =/= “EPISODE WAS TOTAL CRAP! YAK SMASH!”. They could have done a lot of things differently.
 
@Minus  
That she wants that more than she wants her friends to be happy?  
Dial this concept into the episode and see if it makes more sense: “Pinkie reallyreallyreally loved playing the yovidaphone because it made her super happy, and she took it for granted that it made everyone else in town just as happy as it made her”. Re-evaluate it based on that and see if it seems less OOC.
 
This is one of those episodes where I really think one extra line of dialogue would have completely reversed a heck of a lot of opinions about it, and here that line is “But… playing the yovidaphone made me so happy, and I just wanted to share that happiness with everypony in town, but now you’re telling me everypony… hates it?”. I think it would have been a far better episode with an addition like that, but auto-hating something because it didn’t do exactly what you wanted and without even trying to think of a way it could have been done offscreen just strikes me as terrible fandoming.
 
@cloudkicker108  
At least the remane 5 in ‘‘Yakity Sax’’ actually talked to Pinkie and didn’t immediately go for some convoluted, illogical course of action to teach her lesson  
It’s been demonstrated many, many times over the course of the series that straight up telling Rainbow Dash to her polychromatic face to cut it the buck out has exactly zero effect on her. She learns by practical example, not by Getting Told, and that’s been part of her character since pretty much always.
 
shattering her spirit  
They 100% never did that, though; Dash was the one who effed herself up over it, and the very instant the rest of them realized that MDW was genuinely upsetting her, they stepped forward and revealed the whole wacky scheme and their reasons for it. And don’t forget, she agreed with them at the end of it.

@cloudkicker108  
Agreed on the last part. If anything, Yakity-Sax is basically going to be Season 8’s MMDW. (I say going to because it is technically the 18th episode, it was just chosen as a sneak peak.)

@TheMultiBrony21  
Showing her she’s not the center of attention wasn’t what they needed to do, though. Rainbow’s problem wasn’t that she refused to share the spotlight; the main issue was that she was saving ponies solely to satisfy her own ego and as a result was actually putting ponies into danger. The remane 5 tell her at the end of the episode it’s okay if she wants to help ponies; she just needs to keep her priorities straight and not do it purely for the glory. There are far more straightforward ways to convey that message than creating a superhero persona and slowly chipping away at her resolve.
 
“Mysterious Mare Do Well” is just as lacking in the reasoning department as “Yakity Sax”, if not more. As I mentioned above, the remane 5 unnecessarily toyed with Rainbow Dash’s emotions in MMDW just to prove a point. In “Yakity Sax”, the remane 5 did mean well when confronted Pinkie Pie, even if they ended up using a poor choice of words. Even if Mare Do Well was the only flaw with MMDW, that still a pretty issue since Mare Do Well is central to the main conflict of the episode. While I don’t think it would be a good idea for Pinkie to have mastered the yovidaphone by the end of the episode (that would probably come off as contrived), I do concur the ending was rather lacking. The writers should have had the remane 5 encourage Pinkie to continue improving her yovidaphone skills. Or perhaps have a yak offer to give her lessons. Or have the remane 5 set up a location for her to perform without disturbing others. Honestly anything to establish things will be different from the beginning of episode would have been a major improvement.

@TheMultiBrony21
 
@cloudkicker108  
I created a topic to better discuss the two episodes without clogging up the comments with a unrelated conversation. Here.

@cloudkicker108  
Well, to each their own I suppose. In my personal opinion. Yakity Sax is worse. As for how proving Rainbow’s not the center of attention helps her understand humility… Realizing you’re not the main attraction usually is the first step to becoming more humble. As for the plan… It was a ingenious and, as you said, convoluted plan.. But I’ve seen worse, look at Ed, Edd N Eddy, or Plankton from SpongeBob. While Mare-Do Well worked, The shows I mentioned plans failed all the time.
 
I honestly can’t see any reason as to how people can say Yakity Sax was better than Mare-Do Well. Both are not without flaws, no good show is, but at least Mare-Do Well actually had a decent reasoning behind the characters’ actions. Yakity Sax had more mistakes than I could count, and that’s saying something, whereas Mare-Do Well’s main issue, as you stated, was that they invented a Super Hero alter ego to teach Rd a lesson… But that was the only flaw, which worked out in the end. Yakity Sax SHOULD have ended with Pinkie Pie actually being good at the, whatchamacallit, instead of ending with no improvement at all other than her friends not hating it as much do to realizing how happy it made her.

@TheMultiBrony21  
I know they did bring up Mare Do Well’s humbleness. But as I mentioned in my comment, it was briefly. Again, how does proving she’s not the main attraction teach her humility? And there’s still the fact they chose to go with this convoluted plan in the first place and continued with it even after seeing how frustrated Dash was becoming. Yakity Sax is certainly not without its problems, but it is nowhere near as bad as Mysterious Mare Do Well was.

@cloudkicker108  
They didn’t make fun of Rd and they did talk about Mare-Do Well’s humbleness. Rewatch the episode if you don’t believe me. Also, shattering her spirit is a strong word. They just wanted to prove that she’s not the main attraction. But it doesn’t matter, Yakity Sax is still worse than Mysterious Mare-Do Well.

@TheMultiBrony21  
Obviously talking to RD wouldn’t have worked. But they didn’t even bother to try. And what exactly was shattering her spirit supposed to accomplish? I fail to see how dressing up as a superhero and showing her up translates into a lesson about humility. And then of course there the scene of them together in Sugarcube Corner. The remane 5 talk up Mare Do Well’s heroism right in front of Dash but only briefly bring up MDW’s humbleness, and when Rainbow starts to grow jealous, they make fun of her. The remane 5 were borderline jerks in that episode.

@cloudkicker108  
Er, The Mysterious Mare-do Well was actually less flawed. Talking to Rd about her ego is a bad idea… She would’ve just ignored them anyways. Plus the whole Batman/Superman theme was a nice touch. (Mare-Do Well as Batman and Rainbow Dash as Super Man.). And the costumes homage to Darkwing Duck was very interesting. I don’t see why so many people hate that episode… I didn’t find near as many flaws in it as a did Yakity Sax.

@TheMultiBrony21  
I will admit, this episode is not without its flaws and is definitely one of the lower points of season 8, but I don’t think it’s fair to say the writers dropped the bomb entirely. If they didn’t put in any effort at all, “Yakity Sax” would have been much, much worse. For one thing, the humor was still on point in this episode. And while mistakes were made by all parties, no single character was acting outright “retarded”. Despite the slightly muddled delivery, the episode does convey an important message about friendship: you shouldn’t make someone stop doing something they love just because they’re bad at it.
 
I’d still say “Mysterious Mare Do Well” is the “worst” episode in FiM. At least the remane 5 in “Yakity Sax” actually talked to Pinkie and didn’t immediately go for some convoluted, illogical course of action to teach her lesson. Heck, even “Non-compete Clause” was more flawed than this episode. Unlike AJ and RD in that episode, Twilight and Co. here actually demonstrated they learned from past lessons.
 
@Minus  

 
Not really. While I agree with you that this episode was kind of a disappointment, no one was acting OOC. Extreme as her actions might be, everything Pinkie did in this episode more or less falls in line with her character.

Pinkie Pie has often been written poorly as a side character, but when she’s the main one you know it’s gonna be a great episode!  
That’s what makes this episode such a disappointment. We got badly written Pinkie in a Pinkie episode. She was treated with an incredible amount of ignorance for what her character is meant to be. She said thing that go against her core elements. Saying that nothing else makes her happy, other than this new hobby she just picked up? That she wants that more than she wants her friends to be happy? That’s the least Pinkie Pie thing there is. She’s oblivious sometimes, but she’s always got her priorities straight.  
I’ve been waiting ages to see the return of sad Pinkie. This was such a let down and stupid way to go about it. OP is telling the truth.

@cloudkicker108  
Er, okay. I guess I missed that part. But still, they could’ve chosen a better storyline for the episode. Like oh say, having some yak teach her how to play and made her antics in the early half of the episode less annoying. Instead they chose to make her completely annoying and had Twilight say Pinkie would never get better. Seriously, they’re supposed to be teaching friendship in this show, not how to be annoying and rude to your friends. Basically, everything about this episode was retarded and felt like they weren’t even trying to make it a decent episode.
 
It gets a -10 out of 10 for having a poor plot, characters acting in ways that they should know not to, and the fact that Pinkie Pie was super annoying throughout the episode.
 
This is, in my opinion, single handedly the worst episode of MLP: FiM ever.

@TheMultiBrony21  
Not really, no. While her friends were indeed honest with her–a commendable act–their choice of words was poor. It would have been one thing if they gave her actual criticism, but they didn’t. Instead, Twilight (speaking on behalf of all of them) proceeded to explain to her that she would never improve no matter what and that playing it–something she immensely loves–would always be a waste of time. They never even considered offering a compromise, like finding someone to give her lessons or establishing a location where she could perform to her heart’s content without bothering others. Knowing Pinkie, it’s not surprising she would get all depressed after hearing something like that from her closest friends. We’ve seen this behavior from her plenty of times over the course of the series, not just back in season one. Let me remind you she was also painfully oblivious towards the feelings of others in Filli Vanilli and Rock Solid Friendship, which took place in seasons 4 and 7, respectively.
 
Even if OP does have a point, he is still acting incredibly duckish here.

@TheMultiBrony21  
Pinkie is like a joker card for the writers of the show.  
They know no matter what bullshit they will put her trough, many viewers will just shrug and say “just Pinkie things”.

@cloudkicker108  
Actually, she was way out of character. She was portrayed in the episode as a super annoying retard who didn’t care about her friends feelings, and when her friends tell her truth she gets all depressed and leaves Ponyville for Yak Yakastan. Not to mention how she behaved in a season one fashion.
 
For me, op is right. Pinkie was being a rerarded, out of character, nuisance. She is supposed to be helpful, friendly, and naive… Not what she was in this episode.
 
 
@Ebalosus  
At least Pinkie had a good reason for that incident: She had only known her friends for a short time and all of a sudden, they start ignoring her and she gets paranoid (I would too.). This episode, as I already stated, took that to a far extreme… She basically gets extremely depressed over something stupid. In fact, now that I think about it, this entire episodes storyline was basically stolen from earlier seasons. The whole moral was “Don’t let others get you down” basically. Something that has already been covered, in a much better fashion, in season one.  
Saying she’s not out of character in this episode is an insult to both Pinkie Pie and her fans… But so was this entire episode.

Way to exaggerate and oversimplify what happened in the episode. Were Pinkie’s actions here extreme? Sure. But she wasn’t out of character.

Given that the show has operated on that paradigm since S1E03…

The picture refer to the entire episode.  
Not the single screencap.