Welcome to the final three episodes! Let’s look at #39: “The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000.”

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TECHNICAL SPECS:

Season: 2
Episode: 15
Written By: M. A. Larson
First Aired: January 28, 2012

SUMMARY:

It’s Cider Season at Sweet Apple Acres, and everypony in town has shown up for a chance at the stuff. Unfortunately, due to the quality of the apples used in the cider and the number of ponies available to work (i. e. only the Apple Family), there’s only a few barrels every day, leaving many ponies out to dry. After enduring years of never getting any cider, Rainbow Dash finally snaps and leads a mini-revolt against the Apples, demanding that they step up production so they can give the entire town their cider fix.

Just then, a pair of ponies come into town with a massive contraption called “The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000.” Through a song and dance routine that is most definitely not ripped off from a classic stage and movie musical, the newcomers, the Flim-Flam Brothers, show that their machine can not only make cider quickly, but the product is of almost the same quality (if not the same) as that produced by the Apples. The entire town (especially Rainbow Dash) is enthralled at the idea of getting more of the tangy stuff, and even the Apples contemplate making a business arrangement. However, the Flim-Flams make an incredibly lopsided deal, and when it’s rejected, immediately resort to becoming their competitors.

The next day, the cycle repeats itself, with the Apples running out of cider and the Flim-Flams returning to sell the barrels they made during their demonstration run the day prior. Applejack stops the sale, however, claiming that the cider was made from Apple-family apples and thus wasn’t theirs to sell. This leads to an escalation of taunts and boasts, culminating in Granny Smith betting the rights to cider sales in Ponyville on a contest to make the most barrels. On the day of the contest, however, things quickly start to go wrong, with the SSCS6K making three barrels for every SAA one.

Things start to turn, however, when the rest of the Mane 6 join on as honorary Apple Family members. The sudden increase in workers allows them to catch up and overtake the Flim-Flam Brothers. In order to speed up their machine, they turn up the machine’s suction speed, which causes it to rip entire trees out of the ground. And when that throws off their quality control mechanisms, they just turn it off. Finally, the contest ends…and the Flim-Flam Brothers have won.

Almost immediately, the two start rubbing it in, loudly announcing their plans to rename the farm Flim-Flam Fields and tear down their home. Sadly, the Apples have no recourse but to honor their agreement and go to pack up. The entire town is guilt-ridden at what had just happened, but AJ still tells them to go ahead and get some cider. They do…and it’s the foulest thing they’ve ever tasted. With their product tainted and the town ready to run them out on a rail, the Brothers wisely pack up and flee, leaving the Apple Family with their farm, their home, and enough cider for the whole town.

While the entire town enjoys a mug of cider, Applejack narrates what she learned: nothing. Turns out she was right the entire time. Meanwhile, Dash is still the only pony to not get a cup…until Pinkie, in a rare Season Two moment of decency, offers her one. And so the day is saved…until next Cider Season, where they’ll have to go through this again since Applejack didn’t learn that a bigger work force equals more stuff, which equals more money.

REVIEW:

First, I want to just say that I don’t have a degree in business, nor am I fluent in all of the theories and practices involved. Then again, neither are 99% of the people who comment on the “bad business” part of this episode. I just wanted you to know that before we get in here.

Let’s start things off with a gag that I couldn’t work in anywhere else this review:

The opening quickly establishes what Cider Season is, why it’s important that Dash get there early, and how Pinkie has made her miserable every year. Unfortunately, this brings me to my first complaint (wow, new record), and that’s just how freaking addictive the cider is presented as being. I’ve had cider. Cider’s not bad by any means. But I have yet to find a cider that I would camp out all night to taste. This gets worse when we actually see the ponies drink the stuff; they look like they just gotten buzzed off their flanks. Just what is in that stuff, anyway? Or maybe it’s like Cadbury Creme Eggs, where they stock the item one time of the year to add to the product’s reputation. At least cider has an excuse; it’s a seasonal beverage almost entirely produced in the fall.

And that brings us to the next eternal pondering. In the United States and Canada, cider is basically a form of apple juice that hasn’t been filtered to remove pulp and extend shelf life. In the rest of the world, however, what they call cider would also be classified as hard cider; that is, the same thing but with alcohol added into the mix. The faces the ponies give after every drink don’t help. Still, I’m pretty sure it’s not alcoholic, seeing as it’s ready to sell almost immediately, while hard cider requires several months of fermentation before it’s safe for consumption.

Anyway, the whole point of the first scene is to establish that Sweet Apple Acres has a serious supply-and-demand problem going on. Now, on a production level, the problem is obvious. There are only four ponies in the family, all of whom have different jobs in the production process. Therefore, there are only so many barrels they can make a day, and since cider has a very short shelf life, it’s impossible for them to stockpile the cider for sale later. However, part of the problem could be solved if they just institute a “one cup per customer” policy. Instead, we see Pinkie dump an entire bag of bits on their table and run off with well over a dozen mugs.

Which brings us back (for the last time, thankfully) to Season Two Pinkie Pie. She just saw Rainbow Dash start a near-revolt over the lack of cider, after coming so very close to getting some for the first time ever. So what does she do? She brags to her about how wonderful all those mugs of cider were and how it was the best thing ever and tasted like ambrosia from the gods and so on and so forth. She could have, you know, offered Dash a mug? Or better yet, when she arranged that campout in line, she could have invited Rainbow Dash there. But no, she hogs all the cider, doesn’t tell her friends about her plans, and just acts like a douche afterwards.

And then we get it. A sweet, glorious hymn that shall echo throughout the ages.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first villain song of the series. And it is done very, very well.

The Flim-Flam Brothers themselves are obviously based on Professor Harold Hill from The Music Man, down to being obvious con artists. They quickly jump onto the opportunity to start stirring up the crowd into supporting their machine simply by manipulating their base desires for cider. What I love most here, though, is Dash spinning around in the background, happy that she’ll finally get some of the stuff.

So, the machine will be pure evil and capable of only producing crap cider, right? Actually, no. While this is mostly a “Man vs. Machine” style episode in the vein of John Henry, the machine itself is not presented as being evil or wrong. It really can produce cider very quickly thanks to being able to suck the apples right off of trees, and thanks to quality control censors, it knocks out any poor-quality apples and debris to ensure that only the best ingredients are used. Even Granny Smith is impressed by the cider, although she’s quick to hide it. Once again, the team avoids the cheap and obvious “Technology is evil” message and instead adopt a more realistic message: “Technology isn’t inherently good or bad. It all depends on who uses it.”

And thus we get to the first big blunder the Flim-Flams make. They approach the Apples with a proposed partnership; the Apple Family supplies the crop, the machine performs the labor, and they split the profits. On its own, that’s not a bad deal. However, the Flim-Flams want to split it 75-25, with the two getting the bigger part of the bargain. Naturally, the Apple Family rejects this percentage, placing the ball back into the Brothers’ court. The smart thing to do would be to propose a fairer deal. Right now, they have no supply, which means they can’t make any money off the machine itself. And since it’s powered by their magic, hard labor and fuel are not cost concerns. All they would have to do is make a fairer offer, and both parties would be happy.

However, all that hinges on the Flim-Flams being actual businessponies, and as I’ve said, they’re con men. What they want is to make a ton of money real fast, while also screwing Sweet Apple Acres over and leaving them more vulnerable to a possible buyout or hostile takeover down the road. So instead of reopening negotiations, they leave for the day with the promise of becoming competitors. We see this in action the next day, when they wait until just after SAA runs out of barrels again to swoop in and offer some of the samples they made the day before, leading to Dash almost getting a mug again before having it swiped out of her hooves and into the dirt by Applejack.

And thus they reach the second stage of their plan. Now that the whole town’s starting to back them, they manipulate the Apple Family into betting the farm in a contest, which Granny accepts after being called chicken. (It seems they’ve studied under the Marty McFly School of Cheap Taunts.) Again, it’s pretty obvious they’re the bad guys and we’re supposed to be rooting against them, but then Dash brings up that all their talk about how good their cider is doesn’t mean anything if she (and by extension, most of the town) will never get the chance to drink it. It’s a legitimate issue that the Apples only tap dance around because, in order to meet the demand, they’d have to hire more workers, which would cut into the funds they need to keep the farm alive during the winter. Then again, they could also increase sales this way, since the demand already exists and is self-replenishing. At most, they’d have to raise the price by a bit or so per mug, and considering how outright addicted the ponies seem to be to the stuff, I don’t think that’ll be too much of an issue.

And thus, we shift into the contest itself. The Apples training for the day is funny enough, especially with AB hanging onto the punching bag while AJ’s training her legs. We also have Dr. Whooves turn the hourglass, which according to Word of God was on purpose this time. And as it always is with these stories, the Apples fall way behind at the start, as the machine can do the work of four of them with ease. But then Flim and Flam make another blunder. Twilight and the others (including Dash, who despite her earlier rants is still loyal to her friends) ask if they can be brought on as honorary Apple Family members, and the Brothers arrogantly allow it. Still, it’s nice to see Applejack accept their help with no reservations; it shows that she’s grown a lot from “Applebuck Season.” Oh, and there’s also a hopping Lyra in the background.

Twilight, being the most organized and magical-oriented one, takes up a sort of leadership position, organizing her troops based on ability while also sealing and levitating the barrels away once filled. Fluttershy is assigned the task of shaking down trees, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense until you get to Dash’s job. Pinkie Pie, being energetic and quick on her hooves, helps Apple Bloom catch the apples Fluttershy knocks down. Rarity’s eye for quality and detail has her assigned to help Granny Smith dig through the apples and pick out the good ones. And Rainbow Dash, being the most athletic next to Applejack, is assigned to help Big Mac run the treadmill powering the grinder. And as we see, they all perform their jobs perfectly, speeding up production until they’re production two barrels more than the SSCS6K.

It’s right here that Flim and Flam make the first of their two fatal mistakes. After realizing they could still lose this, they give the machine a double blast of magic. All this does, though, is cause the vacuum to suck up entire trees, smashing the apples to bits in the process. This causes the quality control to reject all of them, so what do they do? They shut the QA program – the one thing that gave them a significant edge over the Apple Family – off. Dash has one last slip into antagonist mode here as she tries to force the Apples to do the same thing, but Granny and Applejack quickly tell her not to. Granted, I wouldn’t have called it cheating so much as not sacrificing the integrity of their product, but whatever.

And so the contest ends, with all the friends congratulating each other on working hard and honest. And after all, that always leads to good things, right? Well, not in a show with intelligence like this one. Thanks to switching off the QA, the Flim-Flam Brothers win, thus dooming the Apple Family.

And THIS is when they make their second fatal mistake. The minute they no longer have any competition, the Brothers drop the act and reveal just how downright cruel and corrupt they really are, gloating over their victory while renaming the farm and planning to knock down Applejack’s home. Dash forgets all about the cider and tries to charge, but AJ holds her down, says that a deal’s a deal, and they all go to pack up and leave.

It’s right then that the entire town realizes what just happened. The Apple Family, the ponies who founded Ponyville and had been a staple of the town ever since, the ones who grew the Zap Apples they all loved and needed for their businesses, are gone. And it’s their fault. They were the ones who bought into Flim and Flam’s promises, who pushes the Apples into the contest, who cheered when the SSCS6K won. And now they see that they’ve left an entire family homeless and replaced them with a pair of jerks…because they couldn’t wait for cider, a product they didn’t need to live.

A lot of fans complain that the Brothers should have used the good-quality cider from the start of the race, but that’s immaterial to the episode. First, that cider was on the bottom of a massive pile; they would never be able to dig that low. And second, they made the incredibly stupid move of alienating their consumer base. The bad cider was just an excuse; even the ponies who didn’t taste the rotten batch were screaming no to them. They were going to be driven out of town regardless of how good the stuff tasted. In their haste for a quick buck, they turned the entire community against them.

Also, Bon Bon has probably her worst voice since “Call of the Cutie:”

Now that they have no market and a rather peeved community ready to tear them apart, the Brothers quickly make a getaway, thus nullifying the contest and returning Sweet Apple Acres to the Apple Family. Even better, since they actually had to compete for once, they’ve managed to make enough cider for the whole town! And so the day is saved.

And now comes probably the most famous letter in the whole series. Since the general lesson of the episode (“If you do things the right way, your work will speak for itself”) is one she already knew, and she knew the actual friendship moral from “Applebuck Season,” she just reports that she was right all along in the most smug way possible. It’s absolutely adorable, as well as being a perfect play on the whole concept of forcing a moral into the end of every episode. The best part, though, was Dash finally getting some cider…from Pinkie. She may be teetering on the dark side, but she hasn’t fallen off yet.

CONCLUSION:

I’m sure there’s a lot of holes in the business side of things that I didn’t catch, but pushing that aside, this is still a fun episode. The Flim-Flam Brothers are an interesting pair of antagonists in that they provide a different threat from those the Mane 6 normally encounter. The comedy is great throughout, as well. They even managed to make jerk!Dash likeable by giving her legitimate points of contention. Overall, it’s just a lot of fun.

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And thus we have two. Which will it be?

Owl’s Well That Ends Well?

-or-

The Best Night Ever?

Tune in tomorrow, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!