YMMV / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S7 E13 "The Perfect Pear"

• Angst? What Angst?: While all but mentioned the Apple parents are dead and many characters seem to choke up reminiscing about them, none of the Apple siblings seem quite as distraught by this, focusing more on the feud with the Pears. On the other hand, this could very well indicate that they have made peace with the fact.
• Broken Base:
  • While the episode was met with near-universal positive reception, and it all but outright says that Bright Mac and Pear Butter are dead (confirming years of fan theories and subtle hints), the details of their deaths were intentionally left out. Some fans saw this as a wasted opportunity to build character for multiple Apple family members, while some didn't mind the details being left out and focused on the romance between Bright Mac and Pear Butter. Still, others refuse to believe that Pear Butter and Bright Mac are dead, insisting they're alive since the episode doesn't outright say "they're dead." This led to some debate over whether all the clues about Pear Butter and Bright Mac's fate say that they're dead, or that they're just missing with their fate currently unknown.
  • Some didn't care for the episode for being a typical Star-Crossed Lovers ala Romeo and Juliet, feeling that such a tired and cliched plot is an unfulfilling payoff to finally seeing the Apple parents and learning how they fell in love. Others didn't mind the plotline and felt the episode's other merits outweighed any tiredness of the idea.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Burnt Oak tells a story about his own experience with Bright Mac falling in love with Pear Butter, but implies he has a lot more stories about him and Bright Mac. Mrs. Cake has a similar thing with Pear Butter, but Burnt Oak specifically invites the Apples to come around again to hear more.
  • Inevitably, the lack of illumination on the ultimate fate of Applejack's parents (now with the most concrete confirmation yet that they have passed on) will inspire some writings.
  • Whatever's going on with Mrs. Cake's name. We learn here that her given one is Chiffon Swirl, and it's implied she changed it when she married Carrot Cake, but Chiffon Cake is a perfectly nice, serviceable name. We don't know if Cup Cake is a nickname or if she legally changed it, and either way, we don't know why. And speaking of Carrot Cake, his and Cup Cake's own love story.
  • Grand Pear dealing with the guilt of disowning his daughter and having never gotten the chance to reconcile with her.
  • What were the specifics of the Apple vs Pear feud? Did it originate with one side sabotaging the other like with the Hooffields and the McColts? Was it a misunderstanding? Simply egotism getting out of hoof? Were the Pears the bigger bad guys given Grandpear's initial unwillingness to make peace? How much fault lies with the Apples? All of these questions beg for exploration.
  • The episode essentially confirms that Bright Mac and Pear Butter are dead, which naturally raises the question of how they died.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Applejack's tirade against Strawberry Sunrise in "Honest Apple" is this after revealing the Apples have had a similar, long-standing feud with the Pears.
  • In "Bloom and Gloom", Apple Bloom was afraid if she got a non-Apple cutie-mark, her family would disown her. Turns out, her mother was disowned by Grand Pear, ironically for choosing the Apple family over the Pear family.
  • With Pear Butter and Bright Mac more or less confirmed to be deceased, Applejack's overprotectiveness of Apple Bloom takes on much darker tones.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Given how lovingly Granny Smith has cared for her grandchildren the past 7 seasons, one would never guess they were half-descended from her hated rival. Every moment where she's raised and loved them has been a testament that she buried the hatchet for the sake of not only her then-unborn grandchildren but her son and daughter-in-law.
• He Really Can Act: William Shatner, long considered the poster child of Large Ham, gives a relatively subdued, yet still emotional performance as Grand Pear.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Before this episode aired, it was very popular in the fandom to depict the Apples as having a strong enmity for pears, ranging from culinary disagreements and economic competition to it being treated as an almost religious matter or a downright mafia-like setup (case in point, comics such as this one — which was made six years before the episode aired — this one, this one or this one). This episode's revelation that a) a Pear-Apple feud did indeed exist and b) the Apple siblings themselves are half-Pear made these comics and headcanons quite funny in hindsight.
  • This fanart featuring the Apple siblings' father, which was posted 5 years before the release of this episode.
  • A few months before this episode aired, another series had an equally problematic wedding attempt with the bride-to-be played by Felicia Day. Only difference is the groom-to-be got ate there.
• I Knew It!:
  • A lot of viewers were speculating that this would be the episode that would feature William Shatner and Felicia Day as special guest voices (with Day providing the voice of Applejack's Missing Mom).
  • The fandom had universally assumed the Apple siblings' were Apples from their father's side, which is confirmed here, and that Applejack's hat had been inherited from her father.
• Memetic Mutation: Fans have made one over the scene where Mrs. Cake excitedly shows off her cutie mark.
• Narm: The blatant adult voices on baby Bright Mac and Pear Butter tends to ruin the immersion for many viewers.
• Sacred Cow: Despite some of the flaws the episode has, fans have basically came to a unanimous decision that this is their favorite episode of the show and will defend it from any detractor whatsoever.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: While it might have bogged an already good episode down, we never learn very much about the exact point of origin for the Apple vs Pear feud. The most we get is a throwaway line about the families' rivalry going back decades, which leaves so many things open-ended.

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