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S6E12: "Spice Up Your Life"
My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 7.7
Thoughts: Mike Vogel returns with an interestingly different Pony episode. Sadly they didn't quite go the whole hog and make the episode's very decent song into a Bollywood spectacular (although I'm sure I once read that it was considered early on) but the travails of an Indian restaurant in Canterlot wasn't something we'd seen before. Also, yay for this not being in Manehattan. The Tasty Treat's Saffron and Coriander are good guest characters, and I'm a little sad we didn't see them after this episode. (Fun fact: Saffron is voiced by Diana Kaarina, who also voiced Aria Blaze in Rainbow Rocks.) Pinkie and Rarity make a yes-and-no team-up as the Cutie Map makes its first S6 appearance: Pinkie is generally great, encouraging and inspiring in the way she does best. Rarity is perhaps a little more snooty and a little less three-dimensional than she should be by this point, though the flattest character is Zesty Gourmand. It's a shame to see the easy route to depicting a critic (he says during a review!) and a comparison with Hoity Toity from S1 is quite instructive. Also, minor annoyance in the animation: I find it hard to believe Minuette would turn up her nose at the food. She never came across as snobbish in "Amending Fences"! This is still quite an enjoyable episode, in spite of the "don't change who you are" moral hardly being original. The atmosphere, visuals and music help. So, another three-star episode. It's lifted above the average by the animation touches, but not that far above the average.
Choice quote: Pinkie: "That's true times three!"
New rating: ★★★
Next
time, I'll be rewatching "Stranger than Fan Fiction", which I had a whale of a time with in 2016. Hopefully the same will be true in 2022!
I'm still kind of disappointed in the song, though honestly I don't know what I would have wanted it to be.
ReplyDeleteSeason six was definitely the season of meh episodes!
ReplyDeleteYeah, this is an episode I feel I should really like, but it's slightly undermined by Rarity's snootiness and turning her back on individuality for conformity for the bulk of the episode. Now, not saying that couldn't have been written to fit Rarity's character to work. Just that the way Michael Vogel wrote it ensures it feels off. His writing largely tends to be mechanical and cramped, so this is certainly one of his better efforts, but I can still think of plenty of other writers that would have produced a script with more nuance and spice, as it were.
ReplyDeleteStill, it's not boring or plodding, so it's a way ahead of Applejack's "Day" Off. And most of everything else, sans perhaps the one-note snooty critic, is good without being extraordinary; Pinkie is nicely encouraging as only she can be and continues to have affable chemistry with, the Indian ponies are funky enough for guest characters, the song is a decently catchy bopper (though like many of Vogel's songs, it would have been better had Daniel Ingram overhauled the scripted lyrics, though the Movie's production may have been taking his focus at this point). And the visuals really went to town here; this is one of the first notable late-season episodes where the design versatility of background characters really starts to expand. Just look at the screen cap above! Whether that's a good thing or not is up for debate (personally, I sometimes find the show's visual expansion towards the end feels off or too detail-heavy), but this is certainly one of the less egregious offenders, and certainly benefits an episode all about portraying different atmospheres. When we can neither taste nor smell the food, that matters!
So, a reasonable episode held back by some undercooked writing, though it probably helps I am fully on board for taking shots at high culture, and that includes fine dining. It's one I'm mildly fond of, and in the context of Season 6, that's not to be taken for granted at all.
they didn't quite go the whole hog and make the episode's very decent song into a Bollywood spectacular (although I'm sure I once read that it was considered early on)
If such a thing was the case, it was only at the post-script songwriting stage; the script has near-identical song lyrics, and doesn't state that it's meant to be a Bollywood number, nor that the restaurant, Saffron and Coriander are Indian analogues, despite their names leaving no room for doubt. Simply "exotic". Could mean that was DHX's direction to lean more heavily into it, or Vogel was being overtly-PC.
And since I glanced at the documents, this is a pretty uneventful episode as changes go; Zesty was originally a trio of ponies before the script itself. Saffron/Coriander had different names in the outline (and were Saddle Arabian in the premise; they probably decided to let DHX pick the ethnicity), being called Sari Masala and Babu Sahib. Yeah… The script is just dialogue refining of little note, and there is little in the way of notable cuts, it's largely just incidental lines and phrases here and there. Though many visuals were of course added by DHX. Humoursly, the final scene says the crowd is "huge, yet production friendly". Least Vogel kept an eye out for them! With how little this episode changed across its writing, me thinks Vogel's former executive position gave him some clout here. Not like Josh "Wacky, Continuity-Rejecting Writing" Haber was going to advocate for writing nuance, anyway…
The most notable cut was Pinkie being literally lead to the Tasty Treat by her nose making her zigzag through the streets, and there was an extra scene at the end of the pair admiring the culture change in Restaurant Row, Pinkie saying she's hungry again, and Rarity leading the way much as Pinkie did before. Yeah, that might have been a little weird in animation, though Rarity's horn did drag her to her cutie mark five season back. So… maybe not. Probably just a time cut.
Despite being bothered by a number of the small touches, particularly that Pinkie and Rarity should have known better then to try making the restaurant into something it wasn't, I've always enjoyed this one just for the sheer amount of unusualness in it. The setting, the characters, it all clicked for me.
ReplyDelete"Sadly they didn't quite go the whole hog and make the episode's very decent song into a Bollywood spectacular (although I'm sure I once read that it was considered early on)"
ReplyDeleteThat does make sense. The song as it stands seems "good, not great", especially with recycled sequences and not nearly that much visual flair beyond that. Comes close, though: as far as audio is concerned, it's up there.
"Saffron is voiced by Diana Kaarina, who also voiced Aria Blaze"
Wow, I never would have guessed! In before fanon predicts Aria likes Indian takeaway?
"as the Cutie Map makes its first S6 appearance"
As much as it's disposable and easy to skip, I'm (for a couple of reasons) not fond of the map mission cold open, nor the map's general use as a plot device. It just feels so cheap, and - in cases like this one - unnecessary. I'm not convinced the staff even had a plan for it after Season Five.
"Also, minor annoyance in the animation: I find it hard to believe Minuette would turn up her nose at the food."
Honestly, given they clearly could and did use original background characters here and in "Canterlot Boutique", the recycling of multiple background unicorns from Ponyville bothered me. Minuette stands out as wildly out of keeping with her prior appearance, yes, but the whole thing felt off and arbitrary in any case.
It's purely an academic exercise, but I wonder if the episode's pro-immigrant subtext might have been strengthened with a little meta reinforcement. For instance, Chris in his old Episode Talk* didn't like the song because it amounted to a "'Bollywood' song which had almost no connection to Indian music", so if some more effort had been put into that, it might have given it an extra layer of appreciation.
Delete* See http://onemansponyramblings.blogspot.com/2016/06/episode-talk-s6e12-spice-up-your-life.html
In similar vein, and while I'm not keen to dredge up the argument over voice actor ethnicity, I wonder if it at least might have been an extra bonus to appreciate (in the context of the pro-immigrant message) if the voice actors had been actual Indians? Personally, I'm fine with them; I just think this alternative would have been a really neat touch.
Damn it, that was me, sorry. Hit the send button before I realized I hadn't modified the "Comment as:" section.
DeleteAs for the episode taken in toto?
ReplyDeleteI really like this one. The Pinkie-Rarity team-up has been done so rarely, but it makes a ton of sense to pair up two socially oriented ponies (both of whom are melodramatic, funny, and generous, just in different styles) and watch their contrasting class approaches bounce off and snag on each other. "Putting Your Hoof Down" was a teaser, "The Gift of the Maud Pie" was a dry run, but this feels like the real performance.
What I like about it is the unspoken status and class contrast. The arc's mainly on Rarity: Pinkie's right from the beginning and remains a firm champion for common, straightforward taste, whereas Rarity's the one trying (and obviously failing) to maintain a pretense to high culture.
I love at the beginning the way Pinkie becomes increasingly (and honestly) unimpressed by the bland food and copy-paste restaurants, while Rarity's fighting her own taste buds in her trust of the high-star rating system telling her it's supposed to be good. Her taste buds win the struggle when she lets Pinkie's instinct do the talking, but she's still mentally wedded to the idea that Zesty's rating has to count for SOMETHING. Hence it takes further experience before she follows the Pinkie route and explicitly scraps Zesty's diktats.
What's so great about this is twofold: Rarity's experience in business, and Zesty's covert classism masquerading as a more refined palate.
Rarity's already had to defend her own fashion business in Canterlot by insisting on the unique approach, but it can't have escaped her notice that Sassy's model actually was drumming up business: the issue was with the massive, repetitive workload and increasing automation required from Rarity herself. She also enjoyed the one-to-one pleasure of providing a dress tailored to a customer. At every stage, she never gave up on the idea of "quality" service.
Compare that to her approach here, and it's clear she's still wedded to the idea of "quality" in some form. The standardization is between businesses, not within one business, so there's no threat of individual overwork and overstress. That aspect at least is removed.
Moreover, the effort is to impress one critic and gain the rating needed to keep the business afloat, since its current practices are explicitly not working. So it gives a little wriggle room against the idea that she learned nothing from her own business experience (I say a little because it's still somewhat regressive: also, Rarity learned long ago in "Sweet and Elite" not to kowtow to the standards of the upper classes).
On balance, I think the different context (food, not fashion) does work: as Zesty points out, she's explicitly straying outside her normal territory to comment, which is a risky move (that, in the end, happens to pay off once Rarity stops leaving the conservative Canterlot crowd to someone as demotic as Pinkie Pie and leverages her own reputation instead); and it seems significant that she agrees ahead of time the food is good, so the modifications are for the explicit (if short-term) purpose of gaining a rating to draw customers to save the business.
Or, to put it in a corny way, when it comes to reputation and drawing a crowd, "the power was inside you all along!" :P
That leads to the other side of the coin: Zesty's classism masquerading as a refined palate. I actually quite like that rationale of reducing flavour to discriminate between a crude "common" tongue and an elite "select" one, as it often reflects real-world pretensions of decorum and natural gifts to disguise what's basically a socioeconomic power difference.
DeleteZesty's admittedly a flat character, basically Anton Ego with neither the nuance nor the menace. As a one-off jerk, she doesn't have much entertainment value in and of herself: Suri and Gladmane at least had that scumbag chumminess that grins at your face and stabs you in the back; Svengallop had his camp mannerisms, wild sense of stage style, and meritocratic whininess; even Wind Rider had a (limited) sense of scheming menace, given the noir influence.
By contrast, Zesty is such a bleh that even being hit in the face by a bowl of soup doesn't elicit a reaction. But I think she's definitely a functional antagonist whose judgement shadows the whole episode as a foil to Rarity's attitude towards expertise.
Combine that with Saffron and Coriander's subtext as two immigrants having to bury their cultural identities to fit in, having already struggled and been neglected by being themselves (I think it's significant that Coriander's pessimism seems pretty justified in the early going), and you've got a surprisingly subtle overlap with the class and ethnic status snobbery.
So it makes it all the nicer that they're appreciated on their own merits: the boost Rarity finally gives by embracing and appreciating their gifts is a very nice clincher to the ep's themes.
It's a nice ep with surprisingly strong bones, even if certain details don't add up. Like I said, Rarity's arc seems a little regressive given what she's already learned in prior eps, and there are minor problems as I mentioned in my previous comment.
Rating-wise? High three, even a four if I'm feeling well-disposed. It's a good'un!
"Compare that to her approach here, and it's clear she's still wedded to the idea of 'quality' in some form."
DeleteI should clarify that I meant quality from the top down. Zesty as a sort of challenge to the idea that expert ponies like Rarity can hand quality down from on high, rather than let non-experts dictate terms. It's kind of the anti-"Suited for Success", from that POV.
Also, sorry if the comments are excessive. I just really feel chatty today. :D But let me know if it's too much: I'll pack it in for future reference.
Chatty comments are fine! I don't tend to say much in response to them as a string of "Yes I see" replies isn't interesting for anybody. But let's be honest, with you and Mike both commenting here, I'm not likely to be getting only two-sentence comments anyway! :D
DeleteOne ethnic note, since that's been brought up: the unusual shape of the restaurateurs' ear tips is accurate for a type of horse found in India.
ReplyDeleteA detail I wasn't previously aware of. Fascinating, thanks!
DeleteAgreed! That's a pretty cool detail.
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