Applejack: Element of Deceit · 3:39pm Nov 19th, 2020
For all the flaws and failings of the mane six, at least it can be said that most of them stay true to their respective element, even while failing morally. Pinkie may annoy others - in some instances even make them miserable - but it's done not out of malice, but because in her infantile mind, as long as she's having fun, so is everyone else. Fluttershy's habit of siding with evil when the threat doesn't directly impact her is a result of her taking her kindness too far, being unwilling to put what's right over what's pleasant. Rainbow Dash (when her loyalty isn't drained out of her by the writers to teach her a lesson that she herself would be teaching in prior seasons) is borderline fanatical, staying true to both an organization that's shown time and again to be corrupt, incompetent, and willing to screw her over, and a circle of "friends" who have no qualm about breaking her, laughing at the misery they cause her, and bragging about it afterwards simply because they don't approve of her behavior. Rarity's generosity is tainted due to how much she owes Spike for all the labor - and the fire ruby - she's manipulated out of him, true, but some of her generosity can't be measured monetarily, such as when she sacrificed her tail.
Applejack, though? Applejack's honesty is basically an informed attribute. In fact, her actions are more often than not dishonest or hypocritical. In Boast Busters, she condemns Trixie for her ego, but leaps at the chance to show off herself, and shows on multiple future occasions to be extremely prideful herself. This hypocrisy surfaces again The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well, where she eagerly participates in the conspiracy against Dash, despite her own ego. In The Last Roundup, she deliberately makes a promise she has no intention of keeping, then brakes said promise, all so that she doesn't have to admit to her failure. And even when called on breaking her promise, she lies about her lie*. In The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000, she claims that she was right all along at the end, even though she was wrong about everything. The SSCS6k was far faster than anything the Apple family could keep up with, even before pulling the plug on quality control, and with qc in place, the bros' cider was at least comparable to the Apples'. The only reason the bros had to pull the qc in the first place was because Applejack called in outside help that she never had in cider-making before and we have no reason to believe that she'll call on again, putting her side's output far beyond what it's capable of when not competing. And even then, she lost. The only reason she came out ahead is because the bros accidentally gave away their rushed cider instead of the quality stuff. And the competition - and the outside help it brought - was the only reason the Apples were able to meet demand that day. They always failed to do so in the past, and they'll continue to do so going forward. And that's ignoring that, were we to hold Applejack to the same standards she held Dash to in The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well, then the rest of the mane six should have assisted Flim and Flam instead, since by their - including her - logic from that conspiracy, the Apples deserved to lose regardless of their ability because of their pride. In Ponyville Confidential, she (like every other adult other than Twilight in this episode) was furious with the CMC once she was in the crosshairs, but she couldn't get enough of Gabby Gums when it was other ponies getting humiliated and/or libeled against. In One Bad Apple, she chastises the CMC for trying to defend themselves against Babs instead of telling her about it, but Apple Bloom told her about Diamond Tiara bullying her all the way back in Call of the Cutie and Applejack did nothing to help - and continued to do nothing ever since, even when Diamond came to Sweet Apple Acres to bully Apple Bloom at her own home**. In Pinkie Apple Pie, she tries to hide her quarrels with her family from Pinkie. The first time Applejack really acted in an honest fashion was in Leap of Faith when she admitted that Flim and Flam's tonic was a placebo, but even that only came when the cost of maintaining the lie outweighed the potential cost of admitting to it.
And no, her "test" in the series opening doesn't help her case. A true test of honesty would involve a benefit to lying, a negative consequence for telling the truth, or both. But in that instance, Applejack had nothing to gain from lying, and nothing to lose from being honest. And while on the topic, would it have killed Applejack to tell Twilight that the group's pegasi were in position to catch her if she fell? As far as Twilight knew, letting go would have killed her, yet Applejack just expected her to, without explanation, take the word of a pony she just met that taking an apparently suicidal course of action would actually work out. Which is a microcosm of Applejack's whole character, really. We're expected to just accept that she's honest, despite a lack of any evidence for that claim and everything we know pointing to the contrary.
*Regardless of whether she was at breakfast or not, she promised that's when and where she'd tell them. She didn't. Where she was during breakfast is irrelevant, what matters is that she didn't do what she said she'd do and not because she was prevented from doing so.
**Which, when you think about it, implies that Applejack cares more about her deals with the Rich family than she does about her own sister
Once again, I want to play Devil's Advocate and argue that the writers simply didn't think things through a lot of the time, or that there was meddling on the executive level, or some combination of the two. I certainly doubt that they intended to present Applejack in such a manner, though they likely succeeded at showing her as flawed (at least in the case of The Last Roundup).
I'm not saying that I agree with those choices, or that I'm defending them. I'm just raising ideas for how they could have come to be.
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A great many problems with FiM probably could be traced back to a lack of thinking (and, later on at least, a lack of caring, given their open disdain for criticism) on the writers' parts, yes. But that doesn't change what we're left with in-universe, which is what I'm mainly focusing on here. And given that many problems (though admittedly probably not this, since this issue seems to have flown under the radar for most, self included until fairly recently) could have probably been avoided, salvaged, or at least had damage control run for were they willing to take criticism, I'm not inclined to give them a pass.