Episode Analysis - Season 4, Episode 8 - Rarity Takes Manehattan · 6:01am Jan 5th, 2014
WARNING: The following blog post contains spoilers. If you have not yet watched this episode, you might want to do so before you read this post.
I'm concerned about season 4 at this point, but not for the weak premises; the show has had numerous episodes about fairly weak premises, and this week's premise was actually quite good.
No, the real reason I'm concerned is that it seems that they've forgotten how to be funny while telling a story.
I don't hate this episode. I don't even dislike it. The episode isn't bad. The problem is, I don't like it either - it is just a solid "meh". It left me feeling empty.
But why? The answer is that it fails to deliver. The story is clear and present, but there isn't much humor, nor is there much that really stands out about the episode. There isn't any line that I felt I needed to repeat, nor joke I needed to laugh at.
The episode starts with a fairly standard pre-credits sequence - in this case, Rarity taking advantage of Spike while Twilight glares at her in the background. Poor Spike. Followed by a scene with Pinkie making... well, quite frankly a rather weak joke. What happened to the clever Pinkie bits?
Anyway, after the "Hinny of the Hill" theater ticket reveal, we get to see Manehattan, which is interestingly depicted in a kind of artsy way - when we look at them flat on, they look normal, but from a distance, they take on an almost neo-cubist look. Or maybe it is art deco? Tsk. Anyway, they aren't properly in perspective, but they look nice anyway! I have no complaints about the animation or art here. We then have them gushing over Manehattan, but, having been there, it isn't so nice.
Anyway, we get a joke about Rainbow Dash liking Hinny of the Hill... which honestly, I don't think her gushing here was the best idea. And then there's a weak joke about "who does that" regarding bursting into song, followed by a musical number... which would have worked a lot better if Pinkie Pie wasn't standing right there. Really, it was a potentially good setup, but it just didn't end up working as it was very well - it would have been funnier either if it had been more hypocritical, or if someone else had lampshaded it further - saying something about how the songs aren't really happening, they're just taking place in the character's head, or something else about musical tropes that was immediately subverted by Rarity bursting into song. As it was, though, the setup just wasn't good enough. Maybe even Pinkie Pie lampshading it would have been funnier. Dunno. But it wasn't funny enough to make me laugh, even though it obviously was supposed to.
We go on to the song. I didn't particularly like it, nor did several people I spoke to, but at least a few people did, so obviously it wasn't 100% bad. At least they actually sang in it, but it was still a weak song - though better than Bats was, most assuredly. Rarity was cute enough. Also Spike getting his hot-dog stolen was cute, and Rarity's generosity to ponies in the city is cute. The grumpy cat pony isn't really that funny, though; I mean, it is a silly reference, but honestly I... was not impressed. OH BOY MEME.
I'm also not sure if it is intentional or not, but there is a stealth pun in the song as well.
Pretty sure it is unintentional, but if it is, it was a bit clever. If you don't get it, Applejack.
The song ends and Rarity ends up talking about how she needs to get to the place by two... which is, apparently, ten minutes from now. Rarity, naturally, freaks out and can't find a taxi... but the taxi that was fixed during the song pulls up and takes Rarity across town, proving that her generosity paid off.
This is the problem with sticking all six characters in here, though - Rainbow Dash can fly, and we know that Rainbow Dash is strong enough to carry ponies. Likewise, Twilight can teleport a fair distance. Why didn't they use these abilities here? It pulled me out of the scene at this moment, and neither character really needed to be here.
Also, no one noticed that Twilight was, you know, an alicorn princess. Kind of awkward, as this is actually somewhere where that would actually A) probably be noticed by SOMEONE and B) come in handy.
Anyway, Rarity gets her taxi and gets taken across town... without her dresses. But the bellhop she tipped earlier brings them over, and so ALL IS WELL.
The fashionista in charge is cranky and dried up and older, and isn't very nice to Rarity. The other fashion designers get no personality, but Suri, Rarity's main competitor, cozies up to her. Seems she is also from Ponyville and came to the big city. She seems nice if kind of ditzy, and offers to help Rarity and begs Rarity for some of her very nice fabric. Both of these characters do what they're supposed to do, and Suri's false niceness here contrasts nastily with her true nature shown shortly thereafter.
Naturally, when Rarity shows up the next day - early this time, rather than right on time - the fashion designer she gave the fabric to has copied her line, and then, when Rarity calls her on it, snarkily points out that Rarity gave her the fabric, and that is how it works here in the big city. We see her be a jerk to her not-Fluttershy sidekick Coco, who apparently did most of the work for her, and this bit really makes me wonder why we didn't make this another Fluttershy/Rarity (maybe with Spike coming along) episode, as it would have been a nice bit of parallelism.
Anyway, Rarity goes back to her room because her chances have been RUINED because now SHE looks like the copycat. Her friends cheer her up, and Rarity immediately starts stealing parts of her hotel room to use to make dresses out of (or possibly is merely inspired by them). But she has to make a new line by TONIGHT and can't do it all by herself... so she has her friends help.
Rarity goes into slavedriver mode here and ends up making them miss the musical that she had invited them to go to in the first place in order to make the new line. Rarity freaks out and is ungrateful to them, being harsh (though not as bad as Suri is to Coco); there is a cute bit in there where Pinkie Pie is playing with some yarn, and Fluttershy messes up a bit with her sewing but Rarity doesn't notice. It seems to take them all night, and when they get done, Rarity grabs the dresses and runs off without so much as a thank you.
Rarity rushes in at the very last minute, after Suri's copycat line was shown (and applauded), and shows her own line, which the judges are even more impressed by (even if it is tacky - though some of it is very nice). However, Rarity realizes her friends aren't there, and thinks it is because she was such a jerk to them. She rushes off in the middle of the fashion show after having a slight rainbow gleam in her eyes, but when she gets back to the hotel, her friends are nowhere to be found, having already left. Rarity thinks they went back to Ponyville and wanders the streets in despair, singing to herself.
When she returns to apologize for running away from the fashion show, Suri tells her that the lady in charge was quite angry with her, and Coco, very reluctantly, agrees. But then all of Rarity's friends burst in and give her a big hug. She apologizes and admits she thought they ran out on her, but they point out that they know her, and that she was just being cranky. She forgives them, and ends up taking them to see the play they missed earlier, volunteering her services to make costumes for the person who runs the play in order to get a private showing. Everyone is sad that she's going to have to stay in Manehattan for a while to do that, when Coco shows up to apologize. It seems Suri lied, in the hopes of getting the prize herself by default when Rarity never showed up, and Rarity is given the trophy and told she won, as well as given a gift by Coco in thanks for showing her that you don't have to be a jerk to get ahead in life.
Rarity is naturally overjoyed, and in thanks helps Coco out by having her work with the play designing their costumes to help give her a leg up. Everyone goes home happy, and Rarity unwraps the gift and sets the spool of rainbow colored thread inside at the end of a shelf containing thread the colors of her friends. Rarity delivers a moral about how some people WILL take advantage of generosity, but it should never make you abandon your own generous spirit, and that you should never take advantage of the generosity of your friends. The shot lingers on the rainbow thread, which scintillates with the same rainbow colors as Rarity saw earlier when she realized she betrayed her friends, and between all that, I'm betting that that thread is actually going to matter later on down the line - it is probably one of the "keys".
As I said at the start, the episode wasn't flubbed. It wasn't terribly mishandled. It was just pure drama. And the problem is... well, frankly, there were a lot of opportunities for humor in the course of said drama, but they were lost. The fact that all seven characters went along for the episode left their interactions unfocused, with lines of dialogue scattered across the whole group, many of which didn't feel particularly in-place. It lead to a bit of weirdness at one point in the episode when they're trying to take a cab when they have lots of other options because of who is there.
But really there just was no good story reason for them all to be there. Had it just been Spike, Fluttershy, and Rarity, not only would there have been stronger juxtaposition between Suri and Coco and Rarity and her friends, but it also would have allowed more concentrated interaction and more dialogue. Spike's little gag of being unappreciated all episode was amusing, but it also meant that he kept popping in and out of existence randomly as they forgot/remembered about him, which was weird and confused me - the first time I watched the episode, I thought he actually disappeared for the entire second half of it, but after rewatching it, I realized he was there... sometimes. And Spike's treatment by Rarity could have certainly been lampshaded.
In the end, the episode wasn't bad, and yet, I felt like it was weak. I enjoyed The Crystal Empire more than I enjoyed it - The Crystal Empire, for all its emptiness, had some really stand-out stuff in it (the tower scene, some of the bits with the fair, some of the Rarity/Applejack stuff). This episode wasn't really bad anywhere, but it wasn't GREAT anywhere either. There weren't any golden moments in the episode - no brilliant bits of dialogue or scripting which really made me want to repeat them with an "XD" or something afterwards while watching. Rainbow Dash felt a bit out of character in some of her dialogue, and really the whole lack of focus meant that none of the characters other than Rarity got much real "character" in the episode. And while Rarity did fine in her bits, I really love seeing Rarity be a ham, and she really didn't get to be very hammy this episode.
It was mostly just straight up serious drama, and while that's okay... it isn't amazing, and the episode didn't sell the drama well enough to me to really rate the episode well, merely being lukewarm the whole way through.
As such, I reluctantly put the episode immediately below The Crystal Empire, down in 1/5 territory. Perhaps I should simply rerate TCE as a 2/5, and put this as the bottom 2/5 episode... but I don't know. TCE is very empty, and yet, while this had better pacing, it felt emptier because it didn't really stand out in any way. No part of it was really great. TCE made me smile in several places, particularly in the second part of the episode, but while this was full of story, it wasn't really full of greatness. But TCE still doesn't feel like it deserves a 2/5, though maybe it does - it isn't bad, just empty, which is a badness of its own, but not in the same sort of way.
But lacking goodness is a problem, because a story which has nothing which really stands out in my mind in any way is weaker than one which does. It means there was nothing done that was really impressive, and while it has been a problem all season, it really felt like a problem here because the episode was overall solid and yet still was lacking in the bits that really sell things to me.
Did you ever do reviews of the first three seasons? These ones are starting to get depressing and I think I need something to cleanse the palate.
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Not at the time. I wrote something up on The Crystal Empire and Magical Mystery Cure at some point. I could work on digging it out tommorrow and posting it, though The Crystal Empire review wouldn't be super upbeat either.
Magical Mystery Cure, conversely, is happier. I suppose I could do some for random other episodes - Party of One is something that has a lot of neat little details in it that I didn't even notice until they were pointed out to me, and a lot of touches that really were nice.
I read your entire review, and I understand every point you made. I even agree with a few of them. But I still loved this episode. I've loved every episode. Even with some episodes numerous and obvious flaws, there has not been a single episode of this series that didn't make me smile from start to finish, and I can say that without any exaggeration. Is it even possible to love something so much? Or is my brain just broken?