MLP:FiM Season 2 Review #15 - The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000

So last episode was a total bust as an Applejack episode, instead being a Derpy/Pinkie episode, depending on who you ask. But this week looks to be different, as the serious business that is apple cider goes down!

My gosh what I would do for a glass of apple cider right now. That stuff's delicious.

Spoilers after the break!



After the zap apple shenanigans in Family Appreciation Day, it seems that the producers cant get enough of all of Ponyville lining up for some manner of Apple Family product, so this time we're introduced to their famous apple cider! Which looks unmistakeably like beer, amusingly enough. No wonder Berry Punch wants so much of it...

Anyway, so the contention of this episode is the introduction of the Flim Flam Brothers, alongside an insanely catchy song, who bring with them the "Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000", a faster way to make apple cider with the help of technology! Their plot is simple - offer to work together with the Apple Family to make cider while splitting the profits, or if that fails they will simply use their cunning to get things set up so they can compete with the Apple family and take all the profits! Yep, they're cunning, snake-like traveling salesponies. Surprised? Neither am I.

So anyway, the Flim Flam Brothers end up in a competition with the Apple Faqmily to see who can make the most cider, with the winners getting exclusive rights to sell cider in Ponyville! This is very bad, as the SSCS6K is much faster than the Apple Family and the cider sales apparently hold so much weight that they would no longer be able to hold up without them. Which seems a little odd to me considering the aforementioned zap apple jam sales and the fact that they would still be able to near-exclusively supply fruit to Ponyville, but what do I know?

Push comes to tug comes to outright-cheat, and ultimately the episode becomes a lesson on the importance of quality over quantity. As predictable as that is, though, it manages to not be anywhere near as trite as one might imagine - the SSCS6K actually makes high quality cider under normal circumstances. The undoing of the Flim Flam Brothers isn't that their technologically-motivated methods are any worse than the Apple Family's, it's that they choose to sacrifice quality in order to win the competition. It actually makes the episode pretty cleverly set up instead of it being a anviliscious lesson on technology vs. tradition like you typically see in children's cartoons.

Speaking of doing things differently than usual, the letter to Celestia fits this to a T, subverting the expectations of basically everyone and being one of the funniest MLP moments in recent history. Bravo for that!

Frankly, the entire episode has a very cool vibe to it, with everything tying together very, very nicely. Everything from the incredibly-catchy, very musical-esque song to the handful of new background ponies to the several times with what definitely appeared to be little shout-outs to the Brony fans (such as the now-typical Lyra and Bon-Bon being put together in crowds) just works, and makes the episode another one that takes my expectations and throws them out in favor of going way, way past.

There are a few minor issues I have with the episode, though. The ending felt predictable and somewhat anticlimactic, with the exception of the letter, and the plot overall wasn't anything too out of the ordinary. It's not an episode that I would say rises quite to the lofty peaks set by Lesson Zero or even Hearth's Warming Eve, but it's still a great episode in its own right. So, for the forth time this season, I'll give this episode a

9/10

Pros:
-Very high quality song that brings to mind 80s musicals (or possibly Veggietales)
-Much better than the usual "technology vs. tradition" plot I was expecting
-Gives more personality to background ponies
-The letter to Celestia

Cons
-Still fairly predictable
-Ending was quick to the point of being anticlimactic

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You know what's cool? Flim and Flam have Cutie Marks that, when put together, make a whole apple. I don't see any of the Apple Family's Cutie Marks being as cool as that!

You know what else is cool? Pretty much everything else.

You know what's less cool? I probably will never be able to get the Flim Flam Bros.' song out of my head.

~C.O

PS TwiDash next week!