S5E16: Made in Manehattan · 7:30pm Sep 26th, 2015
Well, that was... an episode. Not a disaster, but nowhere near as good as last week's instalment. One or two nice references, but it was a story that the creators could do in their sleep these days. Actually, maybe they did, as it was rather lacking in energy. Hey ho. ★★
Spoilers beyond the break!
I only watched this a few minutes ago, and I can already feel large chunks of it disappearing from my memory. It was a real filler episode -- probably a good one to have on the day of the Friendship Games premiere, but disappointing in its own right. It was rather disappointing in its use of the Applejack/Rarity combo: they sparked off each other much more enjoyably in "Trade Ya!", "Simple Ways" and even "Look Before You Sleep". This episode was just... there. Any "Applejack's hat is a valued heirloom" fic plots, already holed below the waterline, have been well and truly sunk, though -- not a flicker as it was replaced.
Poor Twilight! Not only has she apparently read every book in existence (I actually have a fic in the early stages of development based on that premise!), it's looking increasingly as though she'll get a Map episode in the finale. Will she go with Fluttershy, though, or will 'Shy get her own friendship problem to sort out? Other things... the little montage was also fairly meh, nothing like as enjoyable as the "Hurricane Fluttershy" one, for example. The actor pony playing Charlty had a really weird accent. I was rather hoping the old pony near the end would turn out to be the real Charity, back for a visit -- sadly not; maybe they missed a trick there.
And yes, it was nice to see Coco Pommel again. It's just a shame that she didn't really get to do very much beyond react to what Applejack and Rarity were doing. This was Noelle Benvenuti's second MLP episode; the first was "Maud Pie", which walks all over her new effort. The repeated comment about the Sisterhooves Social surely has to be setting up a future storyline, though; having seen the episode title list, I think I could make a pretty good guess at which one it will be!
Also, Peanuts reference! Already been done in the IDW comics (Big Mac arc), but still fun.
Yeah, the informal Rarity trilogy ended on kind of a low note.
What bothered me more about the 'actor ponies' was not the accents but how stilted their performances were. It just seemed like bad acting and I couldn't work out if it was intentional or if the show cast just couldn't work out how to act thier characters acting in a convincing way.
I actually didn't mind the montage though, it had some of the more fun moments in the episode.
I think that this episode suffered more than most from a lack of time, as there was too much to do in a single episode: send Applejack and Rarity on their way, establish that Manehattan is an unfriendly place lacking community spirit (completely at odds with its presentation in Rarity takes Manehattan, but never mind), bring in Coco, introduce the problem (which doesn't happen until seven minutes in), then have Rarity and AJ fail to solve it, then have the actual solution. It's just too many plot points for a single part; worse than Magical Mystery Cure.
I agree to an extent, that this is rather an episode that is just there, rather than providing something substantial. Still, I enjoyed it for what it was, and it was great seeing Coco again.
And I need that fic.
Whoa, she wrote "Maud Pie"? How did this episode manage to go so wrong?!