Rating:
Well, it was only a matter of time before My Little Pony tackled drug addiction, I
guess. There’s not much other way to see
Inspiration Manifestation, which finds Rarity taking some crystal meth and not sleeping
for days on end while she improves the fashion quality of Ponyville. I mean, it was the book that did it. Corey Powell and Meghan McCarthy combine to
produce an episode that is far below either of their standards, as IM (like Trade
Ya before it) goes nowhere and has little plot.
Knowing who to blame is again difficult, but I can guess where the
that-was-easy plot solutions come from!
Rarity finishes her story early and has two acts to roam around town
creating havoc and looking crazy, but then time runs out so Spike quickly puts
an end to everything. There is no fun
from Rarity’s actions, and drug addiction can apparently be cured by one
intervention and a snap of the fingers.
By the way, Meghan McCarthy is also the story editor tasked with
overseeing every single episode of the series.
M.A. Larson sadly remains Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Season.
Rarity is making a puppet theater for some dumb pederast
asshole, but she only concentrates on appearance rather than practicality. The dude’s pissed, which sends Rarity into an
ice cream-eating pout fest. Spike wants
to help, so he heads toward the nearest drug dealer library in that
creepy old castle to find a book.
Perfectly logical. Extremely
surprisingly, Spike doesn’t discover a thing, but then he uses the old pull-a-book-to-open-a-secret-passage
trick. This leads to a special room
where an evil-looking tome sits lighted upon a crumbling walkway. The door is locked, but Spike just quickly
burns it off with his fire. That was
easy. Owlowiscious, who (get it?) is
omniscient now, doesn’t want Spike to mess with the book, but the dragon gets
it anyway because of the cover full of spikes.
Just like he has!
He returns this book to Rarity, who obtains the magic to
create anything she thinks about. It’s
also crack-level addicting, and Rarity is immediately hooked. However, she is able to quickly produce a
more modest yet perfectly sized puppet theater.
The guy is pleased, and Rarity’s reputation is restored. The end!
Just kidding! We’re
only eight minutes in, so Rarity doesn’t quite want to give the book back
yet. She’ll quit when she’s ready, which
will probably be in around 12-13 minutes.
Until then, she walks around town “improving” things, such as forcing
Rainbow Dash into a dress and drastically increasing the Apples’ fruit cart’s
net worth. Spike watches it all, but
Rarity swears him to secrecy and he doesn’t want to betray her trust. Twilight eventually notices what’s going on
and tries to fix things, but Spike can’t tell her who’s behind the changes.
Rarity makes plans to continue with the three
fashion-forward cities in Equestria, but Spike tells her no since the episode
is about almost over. He admits her
changes are “awful”, which is enough to quickly restore Rarity to normal
(eating the book didn’t have any effect).
She can’t remember any previous events, but everything’s fine now so
happy ending. Except for Twilight, who must
do all the work restoring Ponyville to normal.
Inspiration Manifestation doesn’t even qualify as a good
after-school special about drug use.
Every solution in McCarthy’s world is easy, but one friend telling Rarity
no wouldn’t be nearly enough to end her addiction. She’d happily move on without Spike, and the
situation would probably have to get a lot worse before it improved. Having Spike being an enabler is solid at
least, but he doesn’t have as much control over Rarity as the episode gives
him. Telling Twilight probably wouldn’t have
stopped her either.
Even worse is that Rarity doesn’t remember anything, which
serves to absolve her actions. She takes
no responsibility for what she did after starting in the first place. This is a cop-out ending that ruins its
purported message. Rarity should at
least have to seek forgiveness, but instead she can easily pretend like it
never happened while someone else cleans up the mess. Yet another good message for the kids, who
hopefully aren’t watching when the spell leaves her body (one of the most
disturbing moments ever aired on My Little
Pony).
Powell and McCarthy instead try to spin the message as always
telling the truth to your friends, even if it costs you friendship. Offering constructive criticism about their
work being terrible may not exactly be supportive or what they need, but that
point isn’t even applicable in the episode because Rarity wouldn’t have
listened in her state. A better idea is
Spike starting an intervention with the rest of the mane six, even if Rarity had
to attend rehab before getting better.
Obviously that last part wasn’t going to occur, but Rarity’s other
friends should have at least been called on.
Of course, that would have meant employing more voice actors, so…
Yes, you can look at the clock to determine if certain
series’ developments will be resolutions or not, but My Little Pony shouldn’t be one of them. Having that shaky puppet theater plot resolve
quickly is sloppy, but made worse by nothing of consequence occurring in the
final two acts. Rarity’s obviously going
to go crazy until it’s time for the finale about 20 minutes in, which is
exactly what happens. This is literally
the definition for filler; something an episode with such an important point shouldn’t
have. But Powell and McCarthy clearly
didn’t possess enough substance for a full episode (especially with all of the
easy solutions), and padded the script to meet their quota.
Rarity already freaked out before in Simple Ways, but this
time isn’t technically a reprise since the book was at fault. Her display is a little too much, which
culminates in a high pitched shout that sounds like Pinkie Pie. But Rarity probably would act like this if
she was on some hard drug, so the portrayal is fair enough. Spike is his usual pussy little self, which is
again established and acceptable. Having
to tell Rarity no at the end is probably hard, but it was less for growth and
more for plot convenience.
Owlowiscious is annoyingly overbearing as the apparent moral
center, but he doesn’t do anything except say “who” again. This joke was overused in his initial season
one appearance, but the writers trot it another time to no good effect. Since Owlowiscious knows everything, he
should have really gone to Twilight at some point, but that again might have
ended the episode sooner than its allotted time. Although Twilight is absolutely correct to be
pissed at everything that happened here.
The characterization is the only thing giving Inspiration
Manifestation even this high of a rating.
They just didn’t have an episode to work with. We’re finally given a story focusing on
Rarity and Spike, but this is an insult that doesn’t even count since Rarity’s
high on meth the entire time. Between
the blatant filler, cop-out ending, botched lesson, and lack of any decent
scenes, Inspiration Manifestation is an awful mess. There clearly needs to be a Ponyville
Confidential sequel episode, where the meddling head writer ruins the work of
our beloved Crusaders because she “knows better”. Every episode McCarthy stuck her nose into
during the fourth season was very problematic, but this is the worst. Maybe she’ll wake up someday and blame it on
a book.
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