Written by: Kelly D'Angelo (edited by Nick Confalone)
It's finally time for the play to go on, but just before Fluttershy can ring the bell and deliver the final line, it snaps off its mounting and crashes to the floor. Everyone scrambles for ideas to bail her out as she stands frozen in the spotlight.
If Applejack helps, she dons the only spare costume — a tree — and goes on-stage as an enchanted tree to lift the bell. If Twilight helps, Sunset gets her to use her telekinesis to lift it, and Rainbow Dash (as the "Fairy Bootmother") pretends she's doing it with her magic. If Sunset helps, she improvises a Meta Fiction monologue about how the bell's fall was on purpose and is a metaphor for life, and gets the whole audience to join in "ringing" the bell.
Tropes:
- All Part of the Show: Sunset tries to play her running on stage as this.
- Bad "Bad Acting": Sunset is a girl of many talents, but acting is apparently not one of them. Not that the rest of the group are that much better.
- Cringe Comedy: A large part of the humor when things are going off the rails, especially with Applejack's or Sunset Shimmer's stilted acting and improvisation. Reinforced by the perplexed looks of the students watching the play.
- Cutting Off the Branches: Some of the endings of the previous Multiple Endings shorts are canonized: Fluttershy having a part as one of the coal miners ("Fluttershy's Butterflies") and Twilight's robot being used to do the set change ("All the World's Off Stage").
- Facepalm: This is Applejack's reaction when she realizes the only available costume is one of a tree.
- Frying Pan of Doom: Averted. During the play, Twilight, playing Selfie Soot's mother, almost accidentally hits her husband, played by Flash Sentry, with a frying pan. Flash manages to duck just in time to avoid it, and Twilight, realizing what she almost did, just grins sheepishly.
- Hand Signals: In Twilight's ending, Sunset tries this to get Twilight to use her magic on the bell. But when Twilight doesn't understand her, she gives up and just points to her geode in annoyance.
- Large Ham: This is Rarity's default state, being in a play just gives her an excuse to ramp it up.
- School Play: Duh. Complete with poor acting and worse special effects.
- The Show Must Go Wrong: Fluttershy's bell falls as she goes to ring it, and the play grinds to a halt as the actors wonder what to do.
- Ship Tease: Flash and Twilight are cast as an old married couple in the school play, and are seen with their arms around each other in the scene with the bell.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The play seems to be very loosely based on Cinderella: Rarity plays a young daughter of a coal miner who dreams of being able to go to Shiny City and be a dancer, but is unable until her "Fairy Bootmother" gives her a pair of diamond boots.
