Make Your Mark: The Jinxie Games Review · 1:28pm Jun 8th, 2023
First and foremost, although it probably goes without saying at this point, you know what's coming.
After "Bridlewoodstock" landed with very little impact, "Top Remodel" showed promising signs that Chapter 4 of Make Your Mark would at least maintain the quality it had shown during the end of Chapter 2. And after a special failed to do anything with Bridlewood, we have this episode focused on Hitch that takes place in Bridlewood. But Hitch hasn't been quite the same since the movie. Was this episode able to do good? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with Sunny making smoothies at her cart for Pipp and Zipp, who are looking forward to their monthly brunch with their mom. But Queen Haven doesn't show up, and she's very bad at texting because she just sends a picture of Cloudpuff. It's only when Cloudpuff himself shows up that Pipp and Zipp realize he has a message from their mom. And Hitch can translate.
As for Hitch, he's busy training for the titular Jinxie Games in Bridlewood. But he needs an actual critter to compete with, Izzy points out that according to the official rulebook Sparky doesn't count since he's a baby dragon. That gives Hitch the idea to try to compete with Cloudpuff. Hey, Cloudpuff followed him all the way to Bridlewood from Zephyr Heights, so why not?
Meanwhile, Pipp becomes suspicious about Queen Haven's absence, but Zipp thinks Pipp is way overblowing and overthinking it. From there, everyone goes to Bridlewood to watch Hitch compete, and the event is actually being broadcast on television. Misty finds out about this when she sneaks into the Brighthouse to try to steal Sparky, only to find everyone is gone. Having nothing better to do, she decides to watch the games on t.v.
Pipp eventually annoys Zipp into opening a case into their mom's "disappearance", and they find her at the Crystal Teahouse having brunch with Alphabittle. She insists it's purely for diplomatic relations, but Zipp and Pipp aren't fooled, they quickly realize Alphabittle and Queen Haven are romantically involved. And they're disgusted at the notion.
What's weird is that we already had a Tell Your Tale episode involving this exact same premise, so does that mean that episode is not canon since Zipp and Pipp are reacting as if this is the first time they've ever known about this? Well, anyway, Hitch leaves Sparky in Zipp and Pipp's care while he tries to compete with Cloudpuff. But in every contest, he keeps getting disqualified while everypony else is awarded a trophy with little to no explanation.
With Zipp and Pipp distracted, however, Sparky sneaks off on his own and starts to climb a tree. When Hitch is alerted to this mindway through a race, he leaves the race to rescue Sparky.
Despite this, and despite crossing the finish line first, Hitch still doesn't win. This time it's because the pony he was competing against was promised a trophy last year regardless of how they finished. So now Bridlewood believes in participation awards, I guess.
Still, Hitch realizes his mistake in getting so caught up in the games that he forgot to pay attention to Sparky. And Queen Haven scolds her daughters for getting on her case about seeing Alphabittle, as she puts it it's because she's feeling lonely now that Zipp and Pipp are all grown up and have left the nest. I mean, she still has Thunder and Zoom for company, but I guess that's not the same.
As for Misty, she starts to feel guilty after hearing a speech from Queen Haven and after having found a picture taken of her with the mane five. Not wanting to go back to Opaline empty hoofed, she decides to take the picture and slips away by jumping out of a window before the mane five return to the Brighthouse. Opaline, upon seeing the picture, notices the glowing cutie marks and decides to steal the magic for herself. I guess that explains how Starlight could steal cutie marks off of ponies.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Well, this episode feels like a bunch of mostly unrelated ideas all jumbled together. There's nothing really tying them together, they all mostly take place independently of each other. We have Hitch competing in the games (and doing poorly), Zipp and Pipp learning about their mom dating Alphabittle, a brief plot about Sparky wandering off, and a plot about Misty just being there. The games themselves, however, are very poorly explained. Like pro-bending from Legend of Korra, it feels like they just pull rules and penalties out of thin air as the plot dictates. Hitch being a critter magnet has very little bearing on the actual plot, and Sparky climbing the tree feels like it was added solely for the sake of having a climax. Even the Zipp and Pipp plot has problems, because we already had this exact same plot with greater focus in Tell Your Tale, which raises questions about whether that episode is canon or not. Ultimately, there's nothing objectionably bad about this episode. But it feels very disorganized. If anything, this should've been the special, that way you could give each of these plots more time to be focused on and developed properly. This episode gets a flat C. Each of these plots feels like it could've been an episode unto itself, or at least something in the realm of "Slice of Life".
Well, things can only get better from here, right? Next up we have "Sunny Side Up", which is both a Sunny focused episode (alongside Hitch) and is also about Sunny and Hitch hosting a cooking show.
Either that, or the writing teams for Make Your Mark and Tell Your Tale aren't communicating with each other.
Jinxie Games (the sport, not the episode) seem like something Discord would come up with. After all, what fun is there in making sense?
5732446 If so, that's yet another reason for Tell Your Tale to stop being made. Why keep it if you're not gonna make sure the writing team doesn't accidentally end up doing something that Make Your Mark already did or wants to do?
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I think we both know the reason why.