Fake It 'Til You Make It Review · 4:28pm Apr 7th, 2018
Season 8's been getting off to a strong start so far, but now we've got an episode penned by Josh Hamilton! You may remember last season that Hamilton's name was attached to duds like "Parental Glideance" (which gave us filler scenes we didn't need, instead of important scenes we did need), "Triple Threat" (which thought it could mask a "Spike Screws Up" episode with Spike being called by the map), and the episode that surpassed "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" as my least favorite episode, "Secrets and Pies". With Hamilton's name attached to this episode and the ending already spoiled thanks to a magazine, I was going into this episode expecting it to suck. Did it manage to surpass my absolute bottom of the barrel expectations, or did it somehow manage to be even worse than "Secrets and Pies"? Well, let's find out.
The opening scene sees Fluttershy at her sanctuary, having a picnic with her animal friends, when Rarity comes running up to her. Turns out she's having trouble completing the centerpiece for her new fashion line, which she'll be debuting at a Canterlot fashion show, and she's tapping Sassy Saddles and three (remember that) sales associates from her Manehattan boutique, meaning she needs someone to run the shop in her absence. And she's already asked so many others, including her friends (but not Spike), Big Macintosh, Cheerilee, Granny Smith, Vinyl Scratch, and even Maud Pie. I could buy her asking Big Macintosh and maybe Maud Pie before Fluttershy, but Cheerilee has classes to teach, Granny Smith wouldn't be able to keep up with the Manehattan pace, and Vinyl Scratch can't possibly break away from her DJing. Hamilton also opts for a joke about Fluttershy being bad at knitting. I would say he's forgetting that Fluttershy has a freaky knowledge of sewing, but considering only "Suited for Success" brought it up and no other episode has made it a plot point, I can kind of give him a pass. All the same, there's one glaring flaw in all of this, Hamilton is forgetting all about Coco Pommel, who was established in "The Saddle Row Review" as being a sales associate too.
Rarity takes Fluttershy to the shop and shows her how organized everything is, then tells Fluttershy the most important part is dealing with customers. She demonstrates how to do this, expecting Fluttershy to be able to do the same despite not having practice (the golden rule of business is: "The customer is always right", and it can be hard to remember that when you feel the customer doesn't know what they want, or you know better). She leaves for Canterlot and Fluttershy soon runs into trouble with a customer asking her a question she doesn't know the answer to. Luckily, her raccoon friends encourage her to try on a dress Rarity made for her, and this allows Fluttershy to slip into a persona that easily deals with the customer. Honestly, if you cut the opening scene and trimmed a bit of the dialogue here, you could easily end the episode here and call this a short. Especially since the next part opens with Rarity hastily changing her mind twice, first thinking she shouldn't have left Fluttershy to run the shop alone, and then after hearing one customer express his satisfaction, decides everything is well in tow. Meanwhile, Fluttershy switches to a more valley girl persona, and even a goth persona, in order to deal with the customers. And with little build up or foreshadowing, she starts acting pretentious, kicking out her raccoon friends and acting snooty to all the customers, even Moonlight Raven.
The raccoons go to Ponyville and talk to Spike to get help, and everyone (except Starlight Glimmer) packs up and goes to Manehattan to talk some sense into Fluttershy. All of them can be forgiven for doing so, except Rainbow Dash, who the episode earlier established had to train for a show. I assume she can't just drop all that and take off because one of her friends is acting up. The mane six and Spike arrive, but they completely fail to talk any sense into Fluttershy (or even just straight up tell her to knock it off because she's offending the customers) and allow themselves to get kicked out.
So they go to see Rarity instead, who is still having trouble completing her centerpiece, and supposedly Fluttershy is modelling the dress (it looks like her). Rarity is shocked to hear about all of this and goes back to Manehattan after dropping out of the Canterlot fashion contest early, and she fires all three of Fluttershy's personas, allowing the regular Fluttershy to apologize, leading into the moral that you don't need to act like someone else to handle customers. Rarity even explains that she wanted a friend to run her boutique, not some Saddle Row pony. Again though, she could've gotten Coco to do it, or even asked Spike. The episode ends with Rarity getting an idea for her centerpiece, allowing Fluttershy to model it, and Fluttershy putting a pony in her place for commenting on how Rarity is displaying the dress here rather than at the Canterlot fashion show she dropped out of.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Honestly, up through the first act it was passable, and into the second act it was still decent despite no explanation as to the absence of Coco from this story. But after that, it more or less went straight into the pretentious route of being a poor man's mix of "Putting Your Hoof Down" and "Suited for Success", complete with a pointless addition of the mane six. You could cut them out and have Rarity come back to Manehattan after the fashion show, and nothing would be lost. I can buy Fluttershy's lack of confidence, eight seasons in, since she's out of her league here. And the moral, admittedly, is a good one to learn. But we've already had the "Be Yourself" aesop in "Discordant Harmony" and that episode not only did it first but it did a lot better, on a story, character, and humor level. It feels like this episode was solely written to give Andrea Libman a chance to show off her voice acting range, but unlike Tabitha St. Germain who only gets one main character, Andrea Libman has two, so her range gets shown off more often. If you replaced Fluttershy with Coco, this episode would work a little bit better, but you'd still have to come up with a reasonable excuse as to why Coco would become consumed by her persona (and you'd need to modify the ending to not feel pretentious). In the end, I give this episode a D. It was better than I expected it to be, but considering it's still a dud that isn't saying much. Hamilton still remains a bad writer for this show in my eyes.
Well, at least we got the dud out of the way. The next couple of episodes look really promising and will hopefully be written better. So come back next week for "Granny's Gone Wild", where Rainbow Dash has to supervise Granny Smith and her pals on a trip to Las Pegasus. I just hope they can come up with a good reason for Rainbow Dash to go with them instead of Applejack or another Apple family member.
I actually thought the episode was pretty good.
The weakest of the season so far,but that's not saying much
I vehemently disagree with your take on Hamilton. In my opinion, he's one of the better writers on the show.
I think I can probably explain away Coco's lack of presence, given the legal issues with her name. Hasbro probably didn't want to push their luck, really.
Honestly, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, but still. With each episode he's written ending up as a dud, Josh Hamilton really should consider leaving the show and not come back.
4836264 I don't know why he came back after he struck out in Season 7, but maybe he's hoping to pull a Dave Polsky and undergo a writing transformation?
Even if this episode isn't perfect, it's still better than the last time Rarity got one of her friends involved in her profession.
4840538 All the same, between this, "Honest Apple", and to an extent "Canterlot Boutique", Rarity does an absolutely terrible job at communicating what she wants. She seems to think others share her vision, even though she never lets on to them what that vision is. You think she would learn by now to leave nothing to chance and spell out what she wants.
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In the case of Honest Apple and Fake It "Til You Make It, I suppose one could make the argument that Rarity might've assumed Applejack and Fluttershy would know exactly how she operates after being friends with her for so long. As for Canterlot Boutique, maybe Rarity saw a little bit of herself in Sassy Saddles when she hired her and figured they had the same viewpoint? Still, you do have a good point about how Rarity needs to stop acting like everyone can read her mind and just tell them what she wants.