My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Season 6 Episode 20 "Viva Las Pegasus" (SPOILERS) · 4:03pm Sep 17th, 2016
Wow, we're already up to episode 20?! 
Five more weeks of season six and then the nervous waiting begins! 
Remember how this season was supposed to be "Explore Equestria"? Looks like we're ACTUALLY FINALLY DOING THAT! Road trip! Las Pegasus, here we come!
So in this episode, the Cutie Map sends AJ and Fluttershy off on a mission to Las Pegasus, where they run into a couple of familiar old jerks and one brand new jerk.
Applejack doesn't really like the idea of Las Pegasus because it's a party town, and Fluttershy is scared of going to a place that's so loud and flashy. And boy is it ever loud and flashy. Upon arriving, they meet Gladmane, the purveyor of pony amusements, who knows exactly who they are and knows all about them and is so skeezy I want to punch him.
Now, this being a Y-rated show, Las Pegasus has arcades and amusements rather than casinos and gambling. It does, however, have Vegas-style stage shows, such as parodies of Cirque du Soleil and Siegfried & Roy.
After having a look around Gladmane's hotel, AJ and Fluttershy can't figure out how there could possibly be a problem to solve in Las Pegasus...
...and then they run right into Flim and Flam, who are trying to steal customers from each other and fighting rather loudly. Fluttershy realizes they've been summoned to Las Pegasus to repair the brothers' friendship.
Applejack wants no part of this friendship assignment.
(Hey...didn't the comics already do this specific plot?)
Fluttershy tries to calm Applejack down and convince her to help, but AJ wants nothing to do with any of this, and her only concern is warning Gladmane he needs to get rid of Flim and Flam before they screw him out of his hotel. Since AJ is unwilling to work with the situation, Fluttershy is left to try to reconcile the brothers all by herself while AJ stubbornly tries to find a different friendship problem to solve. You know, kinda like how RD and Pinkie had a different idea of how to help Griffonstone. Except this time, she actually DOES find a second friendship problem to solve: performers having creative differences!
Of course, that's just showponies for you. But pretty soon, it becomes obvious that working at Gladmane's hotel isn't very good for entertainers' careers...or their friendships.
When AJ and Fluttershy get together for lunch and compare notes, they both realize that the ponies working for Gladmane are all fighting with each other, and their little personal disputes all seem to benefit Gladmane.
Hmm. No wonder I disliked him on sight.
AJ and Fluttershy go around talking to all the performers, and learn that everypony has nothing but glowing praise for Gladmane. But Fluttershy discovers that Gladmane is tricking all the performers into fighting with each other. They realize that the only way to mend all the broken friendships is to out Gladmane for the sack of shit he is...but how to out-con a con artist?
Why, with a pair of premium con artists! Applejack reluctantly admits that if they're going to fix all the broken friendships and give Gladmane what's coming to him, they need to reconcile the Flim Flam Brothers and ask them to help.
Reconciling Flim and Flam just takes Applejack talking to them, and they realize they've been bamboozled. They decide to get even Flim-Flam style.
Their plan involves dressing Fluttershy up as a disgustingly rich pony who's planning to set up a rival hotel and run Gladmane out of business.
Fluttershy's Eccentric Rich Mare act is hilarious.
Anyway, Flim and Flam fail in their attempt to con Gladmane because he was two steps ahead of them the whole way. Except that his seeing through the rich pony act was part of the plan, and his gloating to Applejack and Fluttershy after the fact was the real scheme to engineer a public confession.
Gladmane is ruined, all the feuding performers mend their friendships, and AJ and Fluttershy go home successful...
...except that now Flim and Flam own the hotel and are up to their old tricks before our heroes even leave. Sigh. Some ponies never change...
Mmmmnnnnnmmnnnnn...I give this one an 8/10 just for the creative flip of the script.
The prairie dog trainers are a reference to Siegfried and Roy not Penn and Teller.
Sort of, they did have Flim and Flam breaking up and an Apple Family member had to help them get back together. But in the comic, they were driven apart by romantic affection for the same mare, whereas here they were manipulated by Gladmane into being at each other's throats. Kind of the same, but kind of different.
"Hey, look, it's a friendly rich person. What's the catch?"
We've been doing that all season. Just not in the way most people expected.
I personally wouldn't have minded it if Flim and Flam had ended up getting reformed, but I also didn't mind the ending we got.
For me, this is the best one-shot map episode to date.
It was pretty fun. I do love world building and I wish
Glad Mane wasn't the antagonist in the end.
Honestly, it's nice to see that not every character who's ever been even vaguely antagonistic is going to get a near-instant redemption. Plus, given the Flimflams' track record, they'll be chased off the strip in a matter of weeks if not days.
4214103 Yeah, I derped there. Fixed it.
4214111
Umm...no. "Explore Equestria" was specifically stated to mean we would be seeing places we have not seen before. How many new locations have we actually seen? Don't try that "not in the way you expected" BS. It's BS and you KNOW it's BS.
4214122 Well, think of this:
Have we seen Saddle Row, or Restaurant Row before this season? No, we haven't.
Has an episode ever spent any amount of time inside a volcano before? No.
4214106 I think it was Granny Smith who did it since she had the same experience.
Headcanon: a few months from this episode, pony-AEA is founded.
You know, when I saw the preview, I KNEW there was something I didn't like about Gladmane and I was right! And me being right hardly ever happens!
4214132 But those are locations in Manehattan and Canterlot, not entirely new locations. And the volcano thing doesn't really count as exploring Equestria since it isn't exactly IN Equestria.
4214177 While it's true that Manehatten and Canterlot aren't new locations in and of themselves, they're huge enough so that any time an episode takes place in one of them, we could be seeing a new section of the cities, which happened with Saddle Row and Restaurant Row. So, it's good enough to count as "Exploring Equestria", at least for me.
4214183 Whatever blows your goat, man.
Boy did I had to wait for this episode. Each time a Youtube channel had finish processing the video, it got immediately pull over. Good thing there's Dailymotion.
Well this episode had an interesting start, but when the moment the Flim Flam brothers appears I was "Oh nooo, not them.
"
I was with AJ on this one by not wanting them to be help, or at least be help to prison, I'm sure there's enough evidence to throw them into the slammer.
But the baddy here is apparently Gladmane and the Flim Flam brothers are needed to stop him; guess your really need a crook to stop another crook.
So mission success, but the Flim Flam brothers are taking over things as well as the scam. Well be it our world or those of the ponies, Sin City is still Sin City.
I can only think that ending is Applejack's comeuppance for "Dear Princess Celestia, I didn't learn anything!" way back in Flim & Flam's first appearance.
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THE RIDE NEVER ENDS
Hmmm. A serviceable variation on the "The farmer and the viper" dilemma with the mild twist being that the actual farmer is the one who knew vipers for what they were. Those two idiots were born to cheat people just as she's born to be honest. (And yes, this is sort of a book-end to the first time they pulled that Dick Dastardly In Stereo act the first time we saw them.)
4214288 You too, huh? It would have been so cool if she'd muttered "them two critters don't never seem to learn" at the end.
4214326
...Svengallop?
Oh no! He's going to be the villain of the finale!
"it's called a hustle, sweetheart. Boom."
also, i got Trump vibes every time Gladmane was on screen
Was it just me or did Gladmane look like a male earth pony version of Trixie? Headcanon says that he's her father who ran out on her years ago.
4214326 Your profile pic fits perfectly.
4215474
lol
Did anyone else think of Elvis when they saw Gladmane?
this is something interesting. The New York, New York casino in Vegas actually has a whole floor that's just arcade games that kids are allowed to play in. and it has a roller costar too
4215665 Pretty sure that was the point.
I did kind like the ep, but the pacing just seemed off to me. Also, if I were in AJ's place, I would've knocked Flim and Flam upside the head.