Episode review: S7E19: "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You"

I said I had something relating to HasCon I wanted to mention, so I'll do that now. I am distinctly iffy about the way VIP passholders got to enter a draw to pick an OC's colour, cutie mark etc for the DHX animators to feature in S8. No, it's not quite "We'll put your existing OC in the show" but it still feels uncomfortably like a rich kids' toy. I'd have been happier had this prize been auctioned off for the HasCon charity. (Was there one?)

So green is your colour now, eh?

Anyway, on to Saturday's episode. "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You" saw the return of Josh Haber to writing duties for the first time since the S6 finale, and not everyone was delighted when they saw his name on the title card. Personally, although he's not my favourite writer, I don't have all that much against him. Come with me past the break if you want a short waffle about this.

This was a slow burner of an episode, and it's one that I definitely enjoyed. Against what many people think about Haber, it largely came across as an old-fashioned domestic slice-of-life story, not a million miles removed from the sort of thing we used to get in the old days. It was a nice change of pace from "Daring Done?" last week, too, and probably what I needed after that.

There was a good deal to do for several side characters in this episode, with everything from Rose's substantial part to Granny Smith and Grand Pear sharing a (pear!) stall in the background. We even got a small speaking role for Carrot Top, for the first time in forever and a day. No lines for Derpy, though she did appear briefly in the queue at the beginning of the episode.

Insert very obvious spaghetti joke here

It was very nice to see Zecora again, since it really had been too long. I'd forgotten how much her rhyming could get on my nerves at times, but I'm willing to forgive that here. What I'm less willing to forgive is her idiotic refusal to label her potions, an omission that was the primary cause of the episode's main plotline – the Case of Rarity's Hair. Bloody well learn to keep records, Zed!

Rarity's mane was the real star of this episode, even when half of it wasn't there. It looked like the result of a particularly haywire CMC experiment at times, but did give us some of the ep's many puns, of which Vanity Mare was probably the best. Still, without that lost hair we wouldn't have had punk!Rarity, which was by a distance the greatest thing in the episode.

We got a whole boatload of callbacks in "Mane Thing", some of them going a long way back. Mr. Breezy, now with Scottish accent (from the Welsh-Canadian Richard Cox, Snails' VA!) appeared for the first time since "The Show Stoppers", but even that was trumped by Applejack's reference, quite late on, to Rarity's generous tail-snipping back in the second half of the S1 pilot.

I feel Zecora would get on well with Wallace

Other than the setup, one of the few problems came right at the end: is it really okay to send a magazine photos you took of your friend without her knowledge, even when she was hoping to do a shoot for it? Still, the moral of being beautiful on the inside was predictable Pony fare, but none the worse for that. Even the Cake Twins didn't annoy me quite as much as usual, and for its refreshing change of pace this one scores well.

Best quote: Rarity: "Does this look messed up to you?"

Yays

• Raripunk!
• Zecora made her first significant appearance in ages
• Lots of lines for the secondary cast
• All those callbacks

Neighs

• Another problem that could have been so easily avoided
• Consent form? What consent form?

★★★★