Well, it’s time for another episode. Assuming you’re not re-reading the three hundredth revision of Past Sins, let’s continue…

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And it’s number 35 on our list, “Family Appreciation Day.”

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TECHNICAL SPECS:
Season: 2
Episode: 11
Written By: Cindy Morrow
First Aired: January 7, 2012

SUMMARY:

A peaceful night at Sweet Apple Acres is interrupted by Granny Smith running around outside, covered in clanging pots and pans and screaming that the Timberwolves are a-howling. This is a good sign for the Apple Family, as it means the Zap Apples, a magical kind of apple that can only be harvested one day out of the year, will soon appear.

The next day, Applejack and Big Mac busy themselves preparing for the harvest, while Apple Bloom is excited about finally learning how to make the farm’s famous Zap Apple Jam. Unfortunately, Granny Smith is quickly shown to not be all there anymore; she keeps forgetting what AB’s talking about, and then has her dress up in a bunny suit and bunny hop over watering cans while singing the alphabet. While they’re doing this, Diamond Tiara shows up with her father, Filthy Rich. Rich and Granny quickly leave to discuss the usual shipment Rich’s business, Barnyard Bargains, receives every harvest, leaving AB and Tiara alone. DT, being the bully that she is, points out how silly Granny Smith seems to everypony else, and while Apple Bloom protests these facts, the words still strike her.

Later in the day, the two go to the market to pick up some pans and honey. Unfortunately, Granny proves herself to be a major embarrassment in public; she sings loudly and endlessly, bites the sides of pans, and wears bees like a beard, all while calling AB embarrassing nicknames right in front of Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. Needless to say, Apple Bloom leaves the market absolutely humiliated.

The next day at school, Filthy Rich comes by to bore the class to death (save for Tiara) by talking endlessly about how he runs the Equestrian equivalent of Wal-Mart. This is all part of Family Appreciation Day, which is a bit of a misnomer since it’s spread over several days and not just one. Unfortunately, Apple Bloom is next on the chopping block, and since AJ and Big Macintosh will be busy with the Zap Apple Harvest, they won’t be able to come. Diamond Tiara then butts in and says that Granny Smith can make it, leaving AB trapped and doomed to be shamed forever.

After revealing her problem to the rest of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, the three fillies spend all weekend trying to get her out of this crisis. They try to fake an illness, but Granny Smith sees through it immediately. They try harvesting the Zap Apples early, but the trees actively fight back, first zapping Sweetie Belle and then flinging the three into a pig pen. Next, they string up a napping Granny Smith like a refugee from Weekend and Bernies and try to convince Cheerilee that she can’t make it, but a mistimed victory pull from Scootaloo causes Granny to slam into the ceiling beam, wake up, tell Cheerilee that she’ll be there, and then get ascended into heaven. And finally, on the morning of the presentation, they use a fake telegram to send Granny away to visit Uncle Apple Strudel. When Cheerilee asks about this, AB tells her that Granny can’t make it…just as she shows up with a recently-arrived Apple Strudel.

Now with no other way to escape, Apple Bloom sits back and watches as Granny Smith tells her life story. Her family began as a bunch of pilgrims, travelling the land to gather seeds they could sell. One day, they managed to reach Canterlot, where their seeds caught the attention of Princess Celestia herself. After hearing of their plight, she grants them some land to build a permanent farm, all while pulling the moves on Granny’s father.

Unfortunately, there was a long wait before the first harvest, so food was low. One night, Granny Smith ventured into the nearby Everfree Forest, and stumbled across the Zap Apple Trees. Too bad the Timberwolves – literally wolves made out of timber – found her at the same time; she only survived after she ran back to the house and started banging some pots together to scare them off. The next day, the family planted the Zap Apple seeds in the ground, which finally gave the settlers a food supply.

And so everything is explained. All the weird things Granny Smith was doing are actually required for a successful harvest, not to mention good jam. Over time, she became proficient at sensing when the next harvest would be, as well as what actions were necessary for things to be a success. This attracted more ponies, including Diamond Tiara’s great-grandfather, Stinking Rich, and the newcomers soon formed an entire town: Ponyville.

The school immediately applauds the story…except for Diamond Tiara, who has now revealed that her family owes its success to Granny Smith. She tries to point out that she’s a nutty old windbag, and this time, AB rises to her defense and tells her that Smith is one of the coolest ponies around. Soon after, everypony in town is enjoying the Zap Apple Jam, while the fillies all join in singing to the water…including Diamond Tiara, whose father is now more than a little peeved at what she tried to do.

Oh, and there’s a moral. Your elders are important people, and you shouldn’t look down on them. No letter, but still a moral. And so Spike is once again left, forever alone and abandoned.

SUMMARY:

FAD is notable in that, while Apple Bloom is nominally the star, it really doesn’t have a central, consistent protagonist throughout. The first act is about AB and her growing concern with Granny Smith’s behavior, the second act is the Cutie Mark Crusaders as a group trying to solve the issue, and the last act is almost entirely Granny Smith narrating the story of Ponyville. This was also the first episode to focus on a member of the Apple Family besides AJ and AB, a trend that would continue with SSCS6K (where the family was used as a whole) and “Hearts and Hooves Day” (which focused heavily on Big Mac).

One of the big issues when watching this for the first time was getting through Granny Smith’s behavior. While a lot of it is usual “Old people are so crazy!” kind of behavior, such as forgetting something she just said ten seconds ago and taking frequent naps, a lot of it is just there so it can be justified at the end when we go through the actual Zap Apple Jam production progress. This actually hurt my opinion of the episode the first time I saw it, but after subsequent rewatchings I’ve actually come to like the first two acts a lot more. As for the third…well, we’ll get to that in a minute.

The Zap Apples are actually a pretty clever idea. We already know magic is commonplace in the FiM universe, so there’s no reason why plants and fruits can’t be magically-charged either. When the episode isn’t building on Granny Smith’s senility or Apple Bloom’s tension with her, it’s going through the various signs and stages of Zap Apple development. The visual design here is wonderful, and I love the rainbow design of the fruit. Just don’t show one with a bite taken out of it, or Apple will sue Hasbro into oblivion and we won’t have this show anymore.

And then we get to Diamond Tiara and her father, Filthy Rich. At this point, we should just admit that ponies don’t follow our family name conventions and just go after themes. In any case, Filthy Rich is like a less obviously evil version of Diamond Tiara. He still runs a retail store that he built using shady (but still legal) business practices, and is obviously proud that he’s pushed out most of his competition, but he’s still personable, is polite to Granny Smith (since, you know, she’s his provider for a major seasonal item), and doesn’t put up with his daughter calling the old mare a crazy pony. Diamond Tiara, however, is my leat favorite character on the show period. She is such a flat, one-dimensional archetype that I can’t find anything to even cling to in hopes of trying to like her.

Diamond Tiara’s little speech about how kooky Granny Smith is segues right into the market. The whole point here is to intensify the growing disdain AB’s feeling for Granny’s behavior, which is admittedly pretty horrid here. Biting the pans (which leads to a dentures joke) and wearing bees like a beard are justified in the end, but her belting out a massive, attention-drawing tune, mistaking Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon for Apple Bloom’s friends (seriously, why does everpony keep making that mistake?), and making her into a laughingstock is…well, very uncomfortable. Still, it’s there to advance the plot, so let’s advance.

Filthy Rich’s presentation is, bar none, one of the funniest scenes in the entire second season. First, we have the actual content of his speech, which reveals that Barnyard Bargains is basically the Wal-Mart of Equestria, complete with the same practices and evil ideals. Second, we have Diamond Tiara sitting right at attention, beaming with such pride at her father building a monopoly in Ponyville. And third, we have everypony else in the classroom sleeping. All their expressions are hilarious, but my favorite has to be when Sweetie Belle wakes up, with her one eyeball facing the camera and drool on her mouth. It’s just a cute scene.

Once we enter the second act, Apple Bloom is no longer alone in her mission. The Cutie Mark Crusaders have formed once again to battle public embarrassment once again! As I’ve said before, the second season made me like the CMC a lot more than the first, and this episode is one of the reasons why. They aren’t blindly searching for their Cutie Marks, or making menaces of themselves, or being blamed by the fans for unleashing Chaos Gods when the episode clearly established that it was because of something else. No, they’re just being kids here.

The sick gag is obvious, but what I liked about the scene was Granny Smith acting like a drill sergeant to the jars. It’s a completely random gag, but it’s also pretty funny. And of course, being an experienced caregiver, she sees through the fake illness almost immediately. Kids at home, never bother with this, especially with grandparents. They’re smarter than you.

The next plan is to harvest the apples early. It’s a cute little scene, especially when Sweetie gets zapped, but otherwise it’s just…another cute scene.

And then we get to the worst part of this episode. The fillies operating Granny Smith like a puppet strains my suspension of disbelief too much, even for this show. Why can’t Cheerilee see the ropes or Apple Bloom working the mouth? Why doesn’t she react when it’s made obvious that Granny is still asleep? And stranger yet, how does Granny Smith fly up outside of the house when all the ropes tied to her were inside the building? It’s such a goofy scene that I still laugh at it, but the sequence runs too long and has too many holes to call it “good.”

The act wraps up with the Zap Apples finally appearing, in all their copyright-flaunting glory. Scootaloo as a messenger was adorably funny, although I’m amazed neither AJ or Big Macintosh noticing that this very short delivery pony looks exactly like Apple Bloom’s friend. But yeah, AB kicks Granny Smith out on a false trip, completely ignorant of the world of trouble she’ll be in once her siblings find out what happened. But hey, she avoided that humiliation, right?

Well, no, because in an utterly contrived moment, the relative Granny Smith was leaving to visit was on the train heading to Ponyville. This sings of the staff trapping themselves in a corner and having to quickly pull something out of their flanks to keep the episode going. And before you say, “It’s for kids,” I had the same reaction when this joke was used on cartoons from my youth. It’s just lazy.

And so we enter the legendary third act. Here, the entire episode basically stops so we can have a long world building session about how Granny Smith’s family founded Ponyville. The entire flashback is told in sepia tone, which adds a nice little touch to the proceedings. I liked the design of Young Granny, and it was nice to know how Ponyville was founded (even if the timeline is a bit of a mess thanks to Twilight’s off-hand remark in “Winter-Wrap Up), but this whole segment leaves me with one burning question: why is it here? Sure, it’s a good story and wins the kids over, but it feels very out-of-place to have such a serious story crammed into the final act of a much sillier one. Really, this should have been its own episode with a much smaller framing device. They could have even had Granny come over, not as part of Family Appreciation Day, but in order to give a history lesson since, as far as we know, she’s the last surviving member of Ponyville’s original population.

Still, the segment itself is very well done. There are a lot of nice little additions, like Granny Smith’s mother regarding Celestia as a homewrecker, Young Granny getting swept up by the Zap Apple Trees, and even some of the old-fashioned steps in getting the jam to work. The Timberwolves are an obvious pun, but look suitably frightening and are actually a little clever. In any case, it serves as a justification for the Zap Apple Jam, which I guess is why it was included here – still, they only really needed the end part for this to work. The rest would have made a great episode on its own.

So yeah, because of this one story, Apple Bloom immediately forgives her senile grandmother and gets some sweet vengeance by reminding Diamond Tiara that her entire family owes its fortune to Granny Smith and the Zap Apple Jam. She even rises to defend Granny this time when DT tries to turn the class against her. While touching…yeah, I got nothing. Just ignore my rampant cynicism here. The Zap Apple harvest is a success, AB makes some great jam, and Diamond Tiara is given some karmic punishment by being forced to bunny hop over watering cans.

As for the moral…it’s stock, but it works. That’s all I can really say about it.

CONCLUSION:

This episode leaves me with very mixed feelings. On the one hand, most of it is very good, with some good jokes, a decent story, and the world building was very good. On the other hand, Diamond Tiara is an irritating villain, a lot of the jokes break my suspension of disbelief, and the world building really had no place being here. So in the end, this one is around the middle of the pack as far as Season Two goes. It’s not a bad watch, but I never really got attached to it all that much.

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See you next time.