Saddle Rec and Review (Review)

The Big Scoop

These reviews do contain spoilers

Earlier this season, we had a Rarity and Pinkie episode. While the main story was about Pinkie finding a gift for Maud, there was a small side story about Rarity finding a new place to expand her business to Manehatten. While that wasn't really explored, it did set up a sequel story about it. Well, six episodes later, and we're getting that sequel story already. I'm actually surprised they are doing it so soon, but I'm not complaining. The last time we had an episode about Rarity expanding her business, I was really mixed on the episode. On one hand, I do like the character arc and some of the songs in that episode, but on the other, I feel Sassy Sandals' redemption was out of the blue and it felt like a retread of Suited for Success. So can this episode pull it off better?

Rarity prepares to open her shop in Manehatten, with her friends helping her out. However, everything goes wrong and news of the disastrous opening reaches a reporter who publishes it. With her reputation and business on the line, Twilight and the others must find a way to stop Rarity from reading it.

The first major problem this episode suffers from comes right off the bat at the beginning of the episode. It pretty much is nothing more than one big exposition dump that explains pretty much everything. It tells us plot points about certain things so early, including the major conflict. The problem is that it's not a good storytelling technique at all. If anything, it's a bad way to tell the story. Giving away specific plot points so early in an episode takes away the suspense and buildup, and it feels lazy to be honest.

The story itself is actually told through a flashback through a flashback. Yup, it's flashception here, people. Most of the story is told with Rarity and her friends setting up the shop for Rarity, who is opening the shop on the day she sets it up. I have to ask why Rarity would not only want her shop set up, but opened at the same night, but what do I know? I know she said it was the last night of the fall season, but shouldn't she be more concerned with the upcoming winter season?

Every once in a while, we get to see the story told through the perspective of James Jameson, and no I'm not kidding, it literally is him. We see some interview gags with the others, and they are actually really good. I like a lot of the gags and jokes inserted into these interview scenes. They have perfect timing with what jokes they have, and a lot of them are pretty clever. I especially loved that one scene with the Pinkie Pie clone, and makes for a nice reference to a past episode.

For most of the episode, we see Rarity and her friends struggle with getting the shop ready. Not only does it need to be cleaned up and look better, there are a lot of other factors that make everything a chore. One thing that I honestly got confused with was that Vinyl Scratch has a dance club above Rarity's shop. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Rarity buy the building and not just one floor of it? More importantly, for someplace that's a dance club, it's certainly empty and has only three dancers it seems. Methinks Vinyl needs to rethink her location.

The story once again has various plot points for each character like we've seen in Best Night Ever. Now unlike Trade Ya! that handled that method poorly, this one is slightly better. It actually ties in all together and comes together at the end of the episode. The problem though is that as a result, there's little focus on one character at a time. It really feels also kind of rushed with how fast these scenes go, and combine that with the interview scenes, it makes it kind of hard to follow.

We do see that Coco will be the one taking over the shop for Rarity, but sadly she only gets one small scene since she is sick. Who we do get stuck with though is quite possibly the most irritating and annoying pony in the show yet; Plaid Stripes. I'll be blunt here; I hate this character a lot. Imagine taking all the annoying aspects of Pinkie Pie, crank it all the way up to 11, and take away all the fun, wit, and charm of Pinkie, and you have yourself one of the most overbearing and irritating characters the show has to offer. She's not funny in the tiniest bit, and her character just feels so out of place; especially in an episode like this. She doesn't contribute anything at all to the story and was overall pointless. Why was she even in this episode? She wasn't cute, funny, or likeable. She was just annoying in pretty much every way.

Another problem with this episode the most is that there was no real focus on any of these characters. For an episode that is supposed to be about Rarity, this episode didn't focus a whole lot on her. Instead, the focus goes around Twilight and her friends. Rarity seems to become less and less focused on and instead it's her friends. Any potential for character development for Rarity is sadly tossed aside, and even then, nopony really has any change to their characters in this episode.  

Perhaps the biggest problem this episode has is in its storytelling. As mentioned before, this takes place in a flashback within a flashback. However, the story itself is really all over the place. While the interview scenes are funny and have some great comedic timing, the major problem is that it kind of feels jarring as well. It feels a little off to have these constantly get in the way of the story and interrupt the flow of it all. It feels like they were trying to go with a new way to tell a story, but it didn't work out so well. The storytelling is all over the place as a result and makes the episode a mess.

Saddle Row & Rec is an all around jumbled mess. The story is not only a complete mess with no clear focus on any character, but it doesn't have a whole lot going for itself in the end. While it's nice to see Rarity continue expanding her business, she sadly gets little screen time in this episode. There also really was no need to have any of Rarity's friends in this episode to be honest. With the way it all played it, you could've replaced them with some other random ponies and it'd play out the same way.

The characters feel rather one dimensional with no major arc to any of them. The character of Plaid Stripes, as I've said, is out of place and she is just downright annoying and irritating with her overbearing behavior. The various plots with each character, while handled better than in Trade Ya!, still feels off and kind of makes the episode have too much going on. We could've just focused on putting the shop together and deciding how to make it look instead.

There are some nice moments in this episode like the great comedic timing, the interview scenes are enjoyable, that "sweep, sweep, sweep" remix was cute, and there are some nice callbacks and references here and there. However, it can't save the sloppy storytelling and the overall askew story. You know, with other Rarity episodes like Rarity Takes Manehatten and Made in Manehatten, I'm starting to become convinced that she is cursed to have underwhelming episodes whenever she's the focus in Manehatten. Maybe one day that trend will be broken, but this episode is just another underwhelming and disappointing entry for Rarity in Manehatten based episodes.

FINAL SCORE: 6 out of 10 (C)

P.S. And no, I don't count The Gift of Maud Pie. That was more of a Pinkie focused episode instead of Rarity.