Well… it was difficult for me to find a good quote to incorporate into the title. It’s somewhat hard to review an episode where nothing, whether good or bad, really stands out or leaves an impression in my mind in more than an intellectual way. Perhaps I expected the whimsy of “The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000” to return for the Flim-Flam Brothers's second appearance, but even the optimism I tried to keep up while watching seemed to leave me. Not that I didn't find anything worthy of laudation, but if I said I genuinely liked the episode, I would be lying as much as Silver Shill would be about Flim-Flam’s tonic.

This time, I’ll try to incorporate both styles of review that I have implemented in the past, first starting with the semi-organized stream of consciousness style of my earlier work and then summarize my feelings through a brief strength-weakness listing at the end.

On the Characters

Increasingly, we get the feeling that for many episodes in this season, the plot largely dictates the character’s actions. Not so for “Leap of Faith”—nopony can be said to be out of character, nopony has their traits Flanderized for the sake of the plot, and even when neither of these happen, we never get the feeling that a character’s action is convenient for the story at hand. Applejack, for example, is as initially suspicious of the tonic as we would expect her to be, as in “Three’s a Crowd” vis-à-vis Discord’s “blue flu”, like with the Keepers of the Groves of Truth in “The Return of Harmony, Pt. 1”, and yes, of the Flim-Flam Brothers’s motivations in “The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000”. Better yet, she doesn’t lie to herself so easily, only doing so when Granny Smith’s happiness and confidence is known to be improved. (Lying to save relationships is not new here for Applejack; one can argue the information omissions in “Party of One” and “The Last Roundup” are precedent to this as both also were pressured by a fear of a crack in relationships.) Many can say this is less obnoxious than other examples where she casts out her irrational self for the sake of family as we see her crumble for her high point, just like Rarity’s excellent example in her own key episode. Better yet, we root for her integrity to ultimately carry the day—maybe the memories of her learning to come to terms with the truth in “The Last Roundup” played a role here as she realized that what she stands for has been grievously violated. So here we have her character development consistent, but the growth that she has shown has been reconfirmed.

Granny Smith, for her part, is as easily manipulated as ever, recalling how her pride was manipulated in “The Super Cider Squeezy 6000”, although this time, it is more personal as it relates to a desire to relive her younger days as an Aquapony. Apple Bloom, too, also is as delightfully naïve here as the last time the Flim-Flam Brothers came to town. It’s also good to note that the closeness that she has with Granny Smith has only gotten stronger since “Family Appreciation Day” as she looks up to the amazing things that her grandmother (was) able to do and we have no doubt that she enjoys her time with her throughout.

And now for our antagonists: It seems that Flim and Flam’s cider business had gone the same way as Trixie’s magic acts after their Ponyville mishap and like her, they are resorting to more desperate measures to support their shady business dealings. Of course, here the Flim Flam Brothers are considerably less sympathetic than in their first appearance, perhaps due to the implied (and our speculated) fall from grace (more explicitly stated in “Magic Duel”), but they don’t need to be. (And come to think of it, maybe they were never meant to be so.) They still are the ethically questionable salesponies they have ever been but worse, becoming true con men in the process. Perhaps even more remarkably and paradoxically, they maintain at least some of the honesty that they originally had in “The Super Cider Squeezy 6000” by being completely candid to AJ about the contents of the tonic and their justification for why they are doing it. This helps set up AJ’s dilemma well, perhaps in the most ironic way. And of course, they are quite cunning in using AJ to help promote their product even more. They know that AJ is a pony in Ponyville with a reputation of trustworthiness, and we feel positively outraged when Flim and Flam speak of Applejack’s approval of the tonic—manipulative and helps us feel even more inclined that the truth must be told someday.

This time around, they have a shill, quite appropriately named “Silver Shill”. This is perhaps the most interesting part of the episode to me, but also the character where I am most conflicted about. We can’t help throughout but speculate on why he joined the Flim Flam Brothers’s act in the first place, although given the tendency for ponies’s cutie marks to drive their life, he’s probably as sympathetic as the Flim Flam Brothers here in that regard. And yet we still get the same impression of him that we get of characters like Gil from “The Simpsons”—spineless but lovable because they seem to be in conflict with their own weaknesses of will, letting his observations of other characters affect the presumably better part of his psyche. Maybe he never wanted to be a shill, but it’s what his cutie mark is telling him, and he wants to find ways to justify it, at least until Applejack finally convinces him to see the truth. (Speaking of which, it is often implied that a pony’s cutie mark is largely dependent on a pony’s identification with a talent. This seems to means that if a pony somehow has this changed, the cutie mark would change as well. I get a feeling that this should have happened to Silver Shill when he sees the light, but since it never appears to, it might ultimately be a more permanent thing.)

On the Episode’s Plot and Aesthetics

So… what went wrong despite these laudable points of characterization? The plot of “Leap of Faith” is nicely structured, keeping a coherency stronger than that of “The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000”, but yet seemed to lack the whimsy of the earlier episode, especially in the song, which was nowhere near as catchy as the original episode’s “con song”. The “Placebo effect” plot seemed to be played too straight in my mind, without the energy and humor of the old episode. Yet something should be said about this: “The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000” is an episode about the sometimes irrational nature of market dynamics but still coming out mostly positive in the end, and the humor and energy of it served to support this theme. “Leap of Faith” is, by contrast, an episode about the virtue of honesty, plain and simple, and how it should never be compromised by the potential that a lie can actually be beneficial in some way (although we are also taught that it can still be harmful, as Granny Smith’s almost-certain death plunge can attest), and ought to be done with a considerably more serious tone as it is here.

So the moral is well done and the feeling of the episode fits the seriousness of the theme. But in the process I was less impressed by it and more driven by a neutral “check”, “check”, “good”, “check”. The aesthetics, characters, and the plot worked to serve the theme, but it just felt dry. I cannot remember a time when I was less amused or even moved, for better or for worse, by the progression of an MLP:FiM episode. AJ’s internal conflict regarding the tonic is understandable, but only on an intellectual level. We do share sympathy for AJ’s desire to keep the truth about the tonic, but it feels somewhat remote. Then again, a flood of feelings is not necessarily in line with the aesthetic of the episode. Maybe I’ve been too used to the flood that I’ve experienced in other episodes. Intellectual appreciation is good but favoritism is a feeling, and if the feeling is not there, I cannot completely favor it as far as aesthetic worth goes. And since I see MLP:FiM as fundamentally a comedy, the lack of even comic relief that ties well with the plot seems to stick out. (The comedy that is there, like Lyra's upside-down "10", felt more like an afterthought than organic to the plot.)

I will say, however, that the ending where AJ reveals the truth about the tonic seems to come off as a bit too heavy-hooved, as it seems to too starkly state what the audience has already figured out. But I suppose it is necessary to be heavy-hooved in such a context, but it still felt a bit awkward in my mind.

AJ’s key being a bit is quite a delightful surprise. Such an item is both ordinary and practical as AJ herself is, and the sentimental value that it has for AJ is quite in line with most of the other keys that we have seen. Still, we can’t help but worry that this will be lost soon because it is really too practical, and AJ is not necessarily the type that would keep such an ordinary thing hidden because of its sentimental value.

Before I wrap up, let me return to Flim and Flam's con song. Though I found it to be as underwhelming as the rest of the episode in general, I think that it is, in many ways, more daring than the one in "The Super Cider Squeezy 6000". There's a nice incorporation of spoken but rhymed lines that flow more like a sales pitch, and it also doesn't seem to be treated so much as a song than rather reflective of the sales pitches's aesthetic-- in fact it is interesting that it abruptly stops with a convinced customer, in this case Granny Smith, which means that it needs not go on any longer because it has accomplished what it intends to do in the first place.

To Sum

Strengths:

1. The characters feel very organically connected to the plot and are its real driving force. No character is forced by the plot to do anything to make it go, it is truly a character-based episode that is ultimately what MLP:FiM is about.

2. AJ’s internal conflict is quite sympathetic to the audience.

3. The episode’s overall aesthetic was appropriate for its theme.

4. The moral is an excellent one in reaffirming the virtue of honesty despite the practical benefits of lying.

Weaknesses:

1. The moral comes off as too heavy-hooved in its wording that doesn't introduce anything new for the audience to realize.

2. The aesthetic is almost too serious for a show such as this and doesn’t exactly invite positive feelings of liking, thus the impact is diminished.

3. Flim and Flam's con song is not as catchy as the original one (though it does have many interesting qualities).

As a good key episode but nothing to gush over, this was ultimately an episode for the mind and not the heart, but even the mind may need a little bit of a placebo to get it to trust the truth, which seemed to miss me. But perhaps this episode will impact me deeper later on in the future as I reconsider what I consider important in judging the quality of an episode. I guess I must face the truth someday that the best sort of episodes may not be the ones I like the best.

(And yes, I'm surprised it took me this quickly to write a review for this episode. I guess there was less for me to sort in my mind than usual.)