My Little Pony - Friendship Is Magic: Episode 215 - The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000

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While unquestionably responsible for almost all of season two’s best episodes, M.A. Larson’s Super Speedy Cider Squeezy is not among them.  It’s honestly difficult to believe he wrote this script, since Larson falls for many traps that sunk previous outings.  Filler, slapstick humor, questionable characterization, clichés, and lazy references all dot his effort, which also ends with no lesson.  Applejack’s family cider business isn’t able to keep up with demand, so the traveling salesmen Flim Flam Brothers roll into town on a machine that they say can.  After the Apples refuse to compromise their ethics, the brothers start a man vs. machine battle which will determine who will sell cider in Ponyville.  Clearly Larson wanted to tackle a big vs. little business issue, but that had already been handled better elsewhere (South Park’s episode 217 – Gnomes).  Then he has Rainbow Dash jonesing for a beverage she has never drank before, but it’s obvious from the teaser that not one drop of cider will ever purse her lips.  Larson at least tries to find a decent message and get everyone involved, but why he would stoop to the tactics of lesser writers in such an uninspired and unoriginal way remains baffling.  Painful and boring describe Super Speedy, which don’t fit any of Larson’s episodes after his first.  Whatever he was going for didn’t pan out, and we’re left with an uninteresting mess that’s sadly typical of the surrounding season.  Even while thankfully temporary, Super Speedy is an uncharacteristic misstep from a writer who’s frankly better than this.

Larson’s first ten minutes of Super Speedy are among the worst and poorly paced of his entire oeuvre.  Rainbow Dash wakes Fluttershy up early so they can be first in line for the start of cider season.  “Don’t you remember what happened last year?” “Uh…well...”  Fluttershy has no idea what Dash is talking about, and neither do we.  Rainbow Dash never cared about cider before now, and never will again.  Yet as she explains that Pinkie Pie always beats her to the line’s beginning, we know for a fact this will happen again.  Which it lo and behold does seconds later.  But if getting there is so important, why did Dash stop to fetch Fluttershy in the first place?  She couldn’t give two shits about cider, and it wastes time.  Honestly, the teaser is so poor and predictable that it feels like someone else other than Larson had to have been responsible.

Nothing improves with the following mammoth first act.  Despite never existing before, all of Ponyville has lined up for apple cider.  Pinkie is first of course and drinks one cup, but then buys nine others.  This is important to remember for later, especially as we see her happily walk past a disgusted Dash.  Does she offer any of her friends standing way back in line a cup?  Hell, no.  Fluttershy and Dash move closer as the barrels start disappearing rather quickly.  Finally, Fluttershy makes it on the last barrel and buys a cup, but the tap is empty once Dash tries to get hers.  Remember when she needlessly stopped to wake up Fluttershy and bring her along, or when Pinkie bought ten fucking cups?  That’s the contrivance it took to make Dash feel like shit just because.  Her not getting cider has nothing to do with the main lesson, and is therefore just Larson being mean (like many other writers before him toward Dash).

Oh, we got trouble, and it or the act aren’t close to over yet.  Everyone is pissed that the Apples ran out of cider, but they are asked for forgiveness since literally four ponies made the entire batch.  Despite “doing [their] best to improve supply this year”, another full load will be ready for tomorrow.  Not sure why the Apples couldn’t just knock out a barrel or two now to satiate an angry mob who will probably wait a few minutes for such godlike cider (and we will see later they absolutely can).  Or they could just raise prices since demand is sky high while the lost customers wouldn’t have gotten cider anyway.  But Larson didn’t take an economics class to become a writer, and lord knows the Apples aren’t doing that shit either.

Before Rainbow Dash dies from rage, a model T horn quiets the crowd.  They watch a huge cider-making contraption approach which is piloted by two traveling salesmen who apparently overheard those recent complaints.  In a song inspired by (and not actually completely ripped off from) The Music Man’s “Ya Got Trouble”, the Flim Flam Brothers introduce themselves and describe how their machine will solve this tragic cider shortage.  Somehow, such a big production number that accomplishes little lasts almost four minutes, and it’s not close to the original’s quality or funny like Seth MacFarlane’s Writers Guild parody (compare that to the unnecessary nonpareil (“non par-what?”) business).  All this song does is introduce two barely seen characters while delaying plot points for half an act.

At first, they want to “partner” with the Apples (75-25) so that their titular machine can end the cider shortage.  Then Applejack has to spout that cider sales keep Sweet Apple Acres afloat during the winter.  How about raising prices so that you don’t have to worry…oh, we’ve been through that already.  After balking at such a terrible deal, the brothers announce they’ll have to compete instead, which will drive Ponyville’s cider monopoly out of business.  Clocking in at a hair under 10:04, this likely longest first act means the episode is almost half over before any plot gets going.

Cider season is upon us, and all of Ponyville has lined up for the Apples’ latest batch that will…wait what?  Having not wasted enough time in act one, Larson pisses some more away by repeating plot points from earlier.  Guess who’s at the end of the line and spouts a cliché when she again doesn’t get any cider (“oh for Pete’s sake”)?  And then the brothers’ machine rolls in and knocks over that same fence from before.  Having not embarrassed Dash enough, they hand her a cup of cider only for Applejack to lasso it out of her hooves (“is this some kind of cruel joke?”  I feel that way the entire episode, Dash).  The Apples will file a cease and desist if Flim and Flam use their intellectual property apples in making cider, so they settle on a contest as to who can produce more in an hour.  Thanks to Apple Bloom not shutting her big yap, Sweet Apple Acres is also bet while the brothers put up nothing of similar value.

Such a man vs. machine battle is both doomed (quantity and not quality) and unoriginal (clearly based on the John Henry folk legend), but we’ve got almost half an episode left with nothing else to do so might as well.  Granny Smith gifts Flim and Flam with a whole orchard of apples (apparently because she was called “chicken”), so they let their machine do everything while spending the entire competition sitting on their asses.  We also see the Apples’ complicated homemade process involves smashing apples on a wheel while Granny Smith announces “good ‘un, bad ‘un” for every other fruit.  Naturally they’re screwed, so the mane six are permitted to help since Flim and Flam don’t care.  Somehow, this triples production and allows the Apples to pull ahead.  Flim and Flam respond by dropping quality control, so their machine starts accepting whole trees into the process.  They have probably made over a hundred decent barrels of cider at this point.  With wood chippings, bugs, and who knows what else in their cider now, the brothers are easily victorious.

Unfortunately for them, these dumbasses tap one of the literal shit cider kegs and start handing it out to customers.  “Surprisingly”, they spit it out and won’t pay a penny for such dreck.  Instead of using some good barrels or making up more in just a few seconds (Sweet Apple Acres belongs to them now), they decide it’s better to get out of Dodge (oh wait, that was last episode’s cliché).  After abandoning a completely good business, the Apples are free to move back in and pretend like it never happened.  Applejack then writes this week’s letter, which announces she didn’t learn a damn thing from the debacle.  At least she is being honest.

Larson does try to tackle some issues in Super Speedy, although his episode collapses into a hot mess.  Stating time is necessary for quality makes sense, but the Apples produce a new batch of cider every day and make plenty more during the race.  Their process is quick and fairly easy, while hiring a couple of more ponies clearly solves every problem (there are plenty of Apple family members scattered around Equestria).  So everything about the race was completely unnecessary even accepting this plot.

But Larson wrote himself into a corner since the Apples couldn’t logically win nor lose their farm permanently.  Apparently he asked himself “what would Meghan McCarthy do?” and just quickly ended things.  If Flim and Flam tapped one of the many good barrels, they’re staying forever.  But they forget such barrels exist and just leave town immediately.  Wouldn’t such savvy business ponies at least try to sell the farm first?  They’ll make more off it than a cheap cider stand.  But that would take time, and Larson already wasted most of his.  Such a logic gap is unheard of elsewhere in Larson’s work, so its existence remains inexplicable.

After getting caught up with all of the cider hoopla, no time was left for characterization either.  Apple Bloom is a little brash, while Granny Smith won’t accept lip from these young ‘uns, but none of this is exactly revelatory.  Yes, the mane six do all appear, but most of them don’t have time to do anything.  Twilight, Rarity, and Fluttershy can literally only mumble a few inanities, while Pinkie Pie is mean in her obliviousness.  As was usual for season two, Rainbow Dash is a butt monkey who can’t understand that her problems are due to writers creating them.  Why she deserved such treatment still counts a mystery, but Larson doesn’t even throw her a clichéd cider bone at the end.

Cobbling references worked well for Larson in Magic Duel, but here they just seem like he’s searching for ideas.  The Music Man’s song works because it shows how quickly and easily Harold Hill can rile up a small town with nothing wrong, which seems rather prescient every time Rush Limbaugh opens his mouth.  It also succeeds because Robert Preston gives one hell of a performance, managing an incredible amount of words that are intended to seem improvised.  Super Speedy’s number is similarly wordy, but plot points are its only purposes.  Then the battle starts because Granny Smith gets called chicken (a trope lifted straight from Back To The Future), while Twilight marches in front of her mane six “troops” (exactly like she did in Dragonshy, and Dash did in May The Best Pet Win!).  None of these contribute anything to Larson’s purported message or enrich the plot.  In essence, they are the plot.

The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 may not be uniformly terrible, but its failure to coalesce into anything worth watching is shocking.  Larson has horrid pacing, as the overlong first act matches a rushed and empty final two in length, and his uncharacteristic cruelty is not warranted.  The song’s far from special, retconning in cider doesn’t make anyone care about it, and no purpose is served by piling more hate upon Rainbow Dash.  Then the whole competition makes little sense, as it shouldn’t have started and ends absurdly.  With no way out now, Larson just has the brothers leave because they’re too stupid to remember making good cider some minutes earlier.  That was easy.  Whether being tasked with too many episodes or catching whatever afflicted the writers during season two, no excuse can be made for Larson doing that.  The same writer who came up with Magic Duel’s surprising ending should not be resorting to such laziness.  But he did, and better writing credits cannot give this one a pass.  By failing to provide any worthwhile moments and choosing to espouse hate instead, Larson succumbed to My Little Pony’s worst tendencies.  They can’t all be good I guess, and this is his exception (or something).  Super Speedy therefore stands with Swarm Of The Century as the only inessential episodes Larson penned.  Nothing he did worked, and there just isn’t anything good to say about the episode.  “He tried” isn’t enough from a man at the top of his craft, and even Larson will be called out for such a shoddy and sub-par effort every time.