Made In Manehattan Review · 4:58pm Sep 26th, 2015
Let me be clear off the bat - I am completely apathetic towards Coco Pommel. I don't dislike her, but in a season that brought us Cheese Sandwich, Maud, Tirek, and the Mane-iac, Coco doesn't stand out to me. Sure she was kinda adorable, but see also; most other cast members. That said, how was this episode?
Lame. Not bad, not suckish. But dull and boring. There's nothing really going on in this episode. Maps calls them to Manehattan, they meet Coco, she needs help, they help her, things work out. After all the Rarijack interplay where they don't get along, it's a relief to see them work together and utilize their respective talents like this, but it doesn't make the episode good. There should be more conflict if we're just going to focus on the two of them and no one else.
Beyond Coco, who does make some funny faces, this episode has nothing to offer. There's no song, the moral is weak and seems forced to justify AJ was bought along ideological reasons, when really her contribution to the plot was being a hard worker who cleaned up the park in time. There were some good jokes, like Rarity conking AJ in the head with her box, or AJ running over her hat, but it wasn't a laugh-out-loud episode. And some of the background characters had unique designs, but I'm not in the part of the fandom that obsesses over such things. I file this along with "Appleoosa's Most Wanted" as "too inoffensive to be bad, too unremarkable to be remembered."
One thing this episode made me wonder is if the map will always call the Mane Six to help out an old friend, or if that's just how the two times so far have gone. I want Trixie to return in pony form so I'm partially hoping for the former. I also enjoy the continuity - while Rarity and Applejack are in Manehattan, we get the Brotherhooves Social episode next week. They haven't done this since Season 3 with Just For Sidekicks, so that's cool. Big Mac and Apple Bloom isn't actually something we've seen a lot of, so next week holds promise.
It was kind of a middle-of-the-road episode, but it wasn't bad. Memorable, not so much. Twilight's boredom was honestly the best part.
3421243 I was kinda hoping the episode would end with a pan back to her reading all of Spike's comics.
3421243 I give it 24 hours before a "waiting for next episode/season" macro comes out of that.
3421243 Same here. Though it makes me wonder why she trusts the map's judgement so much. If she really wants to go, there's nothing stoping her.
I wonder if that's going to come back to bite her in the season finale. Where the map sends her on a solo mission, and she trusts its judgement, and then she meets Starlight Glimmer, and everything goes all screwy.
3421490 Zef and I were talking about the episode when it aired, and that was my #1 complaint when Twilight whined about what all she'd love to do in Manehattan. This is exactly what we said:
I'm wondering if they plan/have a mirror to this episode with the Sisterhood Social at Ponyville while AJ and Rarity are in Manehattan.
Is Coco Pommel voiced by Cathy Wesluck? her voice sounded like Spike to me. Also wish we had seen some Oranges.
That's exactly what I think of this episode.
Same here.
And yes, Twilight's scene at the beginning was the best part of the episode.