>>42683866
>"Made in Manehattan
Twilight is very bored with books, having read her whole personal library. The magic table assigns a friendship problem to AJ and Rarity, so twilight is left to just suffer boredom.

> Rarity: [gasps] I just remembered something! The Sisterhooves Social!
> Applejack: We'll have to miss it. No tellin' how long we'll be in Manehattan.
This comes from nowhere. Its only purpose is to create direct continuity between episodes, which is a new trend and part of the Denny Lu era. This isn't horrid as far as info-dumps go, and it is in direct conflict with the eventual project to make sure all episodes make sense given no further context, so that tendency hasn't started in earnest yet, after all.

Rarity is very excited, treating manehattan's fashion district with the same enthusiasm she used for canterlot recently.

AJ fails to respond quickly to the crosswalk signals, representing some kind of tendency towards doing what one feels like when they are good and ready, or at least not fitting herself within the narrow bounds of an efficient system. Rarity sells a hat in order to stop a pony for wearing green, and assume that was the friendship problem. AJ gives her an unimpressed on-model look, while rarity makes a silly off-model face. I can take this as self-aware commentary if I want.

AJ attempts to talk directly to passerby and is ignored. Rarity sets up a "friendship advice" stand that feels like a "Peanuts" reference to me, or at least rarity feels like "Lucy" when she's yelling there, to me. I can argue that we're doubling down in AJ's failed attempts at freeform and willing exchanges and Rarity's attempts at using structure to her advantage. Neither work, but rarity gets hit in the face with a flyer asking for help with a theater thing with coco's name on it.

> Coco Pommel: I can't believe you found my flyer. Quite a coincidence, don't you think?
> Rarity: Applejack and I were specifically summoned here -- It's no coincidence, darling. It's fate! -
So, explicitly, getting hit with that flier and bothering to read it is the exact reason these two were chosen, meaning that the improbability of this events is "lampshaded".

Charity Kindheart was a pony who previously organized a "Midsummer Revival" every year. That's a theater event where locals contribute costumes and food, a community event. Charity retired, is absent, and so the MR is failing. Coco is too busy attempting to do her actual job in order to properly replace Charity, and isn't already a famous and well established designer. For some reason, she has not received any volunteers before AJ and Rarity found her flyer.