MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #9 - Sweet and Elite

Rarity is just so awesome that she needs another episode to contain her awesomeness. Despite the title, she's starring in this one without her wacky little sister. Which... may or may not be a good thing, depending on which ponies you love most and least. Because you have to love all of them, you know. It's impossible.

Well, except Trixie. Nopony liked Trixie, no matter what certain people with their popular sites may have you believe.

Spoilers and warnings, spoilers and warnings.



In Sweet and Elite, Rarity is visiting Canterlot for... reasons? For fun? It's not really made clear, but isn't really important anyway. What's important is that Rarity is in Canterlot, and that means this episode has a ridiculous number of unicorns and incredibly... "posh" ponies, as Twilight calls them.

However, the catch is that Twilight's birthday is in a few days, so Rarity wants to get back to Ponyville in time for that as well as make Twilight a wonderful dress! This becomes more and more difficult for Rarity to do when she meets up with Fancy Pants, a highly-influential gentlepony with a terrible name. Fancy Pants takes a liking to Rarity, and invites her to a Wonderbolts derby, which causes Rarity to meet up with many other *ahem* "posh" ponies that, due to her having an association with Fancy Pants, want her at all of their various hosted events.

Thus Rarity is caught in a moral dilemma: should she indulge herself and go to the various fancy festivities, making sure that her status in Canterlot is kept intact, or should she work on Twilight's dress for her birthday?

If you guessed that Rarity would stay true to her Element of Generosity and make Twilight her dress, you would be guessing incorrectly! Frankly, out of all the things in this episode, this bugs me. It's understandable that Rarity would put things off a few times, as she clearly has trouble denying other ponies' offers for parties and such, but when it all comes to a head and Rarity finally decides to lie to Twilight so she can get out of going to her party and instead go to a party with the "posh" ponies... it strikes me as practically out of character for her. I know that that's the point of the episode, to make her grow as a character and learn a lesson and stuff but... what happened to the generosity that Rarity exhibited in the second episode, where she sacrificed her personal beauty to help out a serpent that she didn't even know? It just seems odd to me.

It's actually really kind of interesting... if anything, Twilight is the insanely generous one in this episode. She goes out of her way to make sure Rarity gets to be part of her party, she helps Rarity rent a room in Canterlot castle, and she encourages Rarity to mingle with the "posh" ponies during her party so that Rarity could potentially sell dresses. It all serves to just emphasize how little generosity Rarity shows, and thus really bothers me.

It also hurts that the finale of the episode seems somewhat redundant, as it's something we've already seen, more or less. The rest of the Mane 6 get in on the fancy party and disgust everypony with their... less-than-fancy mannerisms and such. Just like in The Best Night Ever, minus the hilarious ending with Celestia. Frankly, I wasn't a big fan of that part of The Best Night Ever, and I'm not a big fan of the same theme going on here, either.

Besides that, though, the episode is pretty solid. It has a nice song in the middle of it (songs make everything better!) and due to it taking place in Canterlot we get to meet a whole batch of new background ponies, including a good quantity with entirely new body shapes. In addition, we get several cameos by previous background ponies of the "fancier" persuasion, like Octavia and FOTO FEENEESH herself! It's all great stuff, and it's very clear that the animators aren't cutting corners when it comes to giving the local life and variety.

As a bit of a side note, Fancy Pants is kind of awesome. He's pretty much the only Canterlot pony that isn't a complete jerk, and instead seems relatively down to earth and gentlemanly. Which is totally awesome. More awesome male ponies is always a good thing!

So yeah, definitely a split episode with distinct ups and downs. I'll give it a

6.5/10

Pros:
-Development of Canterlot, complete with plenty of new minor ponies
-Awesome song!
-Cameos from a handful of previous minor ponies

Cons:
-Rarity seems practically OOC
-Final scenes feel too much like The Best Night Ever

---

This episode is one of the few that actually lost some points in my book after rewatching. It just seemed like the things that bugges me the first time bugges me even more the second time around, and that was... not really very good. Oh, well.

Oh, and I've decided how to answer last week's question, by the way. The numbers are for comparison purposes, and only good for comparison between episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Which should be relatively obvious, but it's good to say nonetheless.

Also worth pointing out is that a 5/10 is going to be average, like the point system should be. That is to say, all of the MLP episodes I've reviewed so far have been above-average, which fits with my feelings that MLP:FiM as a whole is an above-average show.

But I'm getting off topic. I will now take this moment to say that I personally really didn't like that one mare that was hanging around with Fancy Pants when we first meet him. I mean, who does she think she is stealing the goddesses' body shape like that? What a jerk!

~C.O