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| "Now Pinkie Pie, I must insist that you do not yell 'What a twist!'" |
S7E19: "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You"
16 Sep 2017
My original rating: ★★★★
IMDb score: 7.9
Thoughts: I wonder how many people see this episode's name and think, "Punk Rarity!" – but don't remember many more details than that? I suspect quite a few. Even me, despite liking this a lot seven years ago. Perhaps a little more than most, but many did at least enjoy it – this ep did quite well in Text Review Roundup. Now, though? Well, I still enjoy it, even if it is an episode you probably don't want to examine too forensically. Right at the end, I'm not sure it's a great lesson for kids (especially in the social media age) that it's fine to send photos to be published without the subject's knowledge. Zecora's out-of-nowhere stuff about how mane magic is especially hard
doesn't jibe¹ with Trixie doing it in "Boast Busters", either. Josh Haber, innit – but at least this episode still works in the "Is it fun?" stakes. It's nice that secondary characters (Zecora herself, Carrot Top, Mr Breezy, Davenport, Filthy Rich...) get significant speaking roles. Pinkie is fun. The Flower Trio's colourful stall is nice. And yes, Punk Rarity does look pretty cool. Four stars might have been slightly over the top, but it's still getting a pretty solid three. Despite its faults, I still like this one.
¹ Admission time: I had to check it should be "jibe" here, not "jive"...
Choice quote: Rarity: "One shouldn't have to brave the darkest part of the forest for shampoo."
New rating: ★★★
Next up is "A Health of Information", which was my favourite Pillars episode, and which featured Fluttershy in a good central role. Okay, so those two things probably aren't entirely unrelated...
quite the nothingburger, as episodes go, with just that one scene of punk Rarity to prop it up :B
ReplyDeleteA pro tip, MLP writers: if your 22-minute episode fills up three minutes with a cold opening that is mostly just "Rarity has great confidence tips off her beauty for ponies to makes sales around town" and only just hits the plot point of getting gunge in her mane so it needs a wash, and doesn't hit the act break of Rarity losing her mane until almost nine minutes in, your script is probably rather loose and shaggy.
ReplyDeleteBut that's the real trick, isn't it? As lazy a criticism as it is to say this one only really has Punk Rarity to remember it by, it's kind of true, with how this one just limply clomps through its "wacky" plot without much energy. On top of such a long setup, Punk Rarity (which is chiefly a DHX artist invention: the script just specifies that she adopts a multi-coloured spiky mane doo) pops up with only 3:11 left till the credits, and fades to an epilogue with her mane back for the last minute of those three. The structure is all sorts of out of proportion here, like a lot of Season Seven episodes.
Now, that doesn't necessarily have to be a problem if the hijinks within are fun. Bringing back so many background and secondary characters for the first time in ages is weird, but is it a nice flavour, even if it paints most of Ponyville as either dumb or insensitive. And having Zecora with a main role again! And there are certainly amusing gags in isolation. But like many Haber scripts, and many Season Seven scripts, it seems short enough on ideas for what to do with "Rarity loses her mane", protracting many of its jokes out. Even a bit like the chunk of door accidentally becoming a mane of Rarity's lacks the comic timing earlier seasons seemed to churn out like water. So not enough of it crosses from fitfully amusing to being actively engaging. Thus, a typical Season Seven nothingburger episode, even if a decent amount of gags and bits did make me smile in the moment.
Oh yeah, and something something "lazy magic rules that are the worst kind of contrived rubbish, any writer would have just had Twilight and Starlight out of town that day so mane magic is simply hard rather than impossible" something. Which is infamous enough that most folks miss that apparently only a year has passed since Season Seven, given the anniversary for the baby Cakes (yes, sneeze, not birthday, but even if they didn't sneeze onscreen in their debut episode – not bothered checking – babies sneeze when they're barely born, hard fact). A mind-warp that makes "the first three seasons take place in a single year" look shrewd, doesn't it? Not kill it with fire mistakes, but proof that Josh Haber, after being gone nearly a whole seasons for whatever reason, should not have been brought back.
P.S. This episode has a lot of background ponies speaking, but since of course most of them were just written as "Pony #1" and the like in the script (Bon Bon and the Flower Girls excepted), they typically don't match when they spoke before. Or, in the case of Berry Punch's first aired line in the show (she had a bit in "Slice of Life" cut for time) with a really deep voice that doesn't fit at all. Weird one, eh?
Another favorite of mine from this season; it seems as though Rarity always gets the good episodes, and it's easy to see why. She's a great character with a strong personality. It's a simple episode, but it works. Hard to find fault with it structurally, really.
ReplyDeleteHowever, and although this doesn't affect the main storyline, this episode raises questions regarding ponies aging. Are we seriously expected to believe that Pound and Pumpkin Cake have been babies for a year when since their birth, we've had at least two Hearth's Warming episodes? They should be in preschool and able to speak by this point! Why can't the animators at least age up the characters a bit to show time progression? Same thing with the Crusaders, especially since Michelle, Maddy and Claire have since been through puberty; it's really disappointing that they didn't show it.
The above rant doesn't affect my views on It Isn't the Mane Thing About You, but I did want to bring it up. Still, looking forward to the next episode, especially regarding who and what it's about...
Punk Rarity was wonderful, but I also liked the supporting roles for the ponies around town. Just getting to spend more time with everyday Ponyvillians bumps it up a bit for me.
ReplyDelete