So unsurprisingly, like pretty much every episode she's had this season (not counting "Bats!", but that episode's promblems weren't AJ's fault :okiedokielokie:), Applejack had yet another awesome turn in a starring role. "Leap of Faith" was the fifth key episode we've had this season, and like most of them (with the exception of "It Ain't Easy Being Breezies", bleh ), it was solid in every sense of the word. Not a whole lot to talk about here aside from the episode's superb message and execution of said message, but let's get going and take a look at "Leap of Faith". C'mon everypony, adventure awaits! WHIMSY!!!

(OK, so I may be trying to build up the hype just a bit much here

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OK, so to start I'll talk about Applejack and the lesson she learned here, because her role and the message are too intertwined not to discuss together. To be honest (HA! See what I did there? :comeatus:), this was probably the best test we've ever seen of AJ's honesty when she was in her own mind (because c'mon, she was magically corrupted by Discord in "The Return of Harmony: Parts 1 and 2"). Applejack is the living embodiment of the Element of Honesty, but she's also an all around decent pony who makes the well-being of others, especially her family, almost always her top priority. Here, we saw these two traits of hers actually come into conflict; in not telling the truth about Flim and Flam's sham "miracle tonic", AJ thought that she was actually helping other ponies, most notably her Granny Smith. The writers, however, did a bang up job of disassembling and undermining this misplaced, albeit sincere, belief of AJ's by brilliantly illustrating just why it was so unsound. First, Applejack was confronted by the fact that her "endorsement/approval" of the Flim Flam brothers cure-all was actually suckering throngs of ponies with serious ailments, illnesses, or physical injuries to buy their product, which she knew obviously wouldn't cure them, no matter how much they believed it would, seeing as most of them had far more serious conditions than Granny Smith's own aches and pains. Sure Granny Smith was having a hootenanny of a time, but Applejack eventually realized that a lot of her problems had stemmed from mental blocks to begin with. These other ponies had far more problems beyond mental blocks, and eventually we saw that it was just too much for AJ to take, even before Granny Smith put herself in harm's way. She told the truth, and was on the brink of fessing up entirely before she had to stop Granny Smith from basically snapping her neck (as an aside, AJ once again went out of her way in that climax to further prove that she is the Batman of the group, and it was AWESOME! Such slick moves AJ!!! ). This bit of dangerous absurdity on Granny Smith's part showed AJ the other reason why her earlier reasoning was so unsound; not only was her lie convincing ponies that something would cure their ailments when it really wouldn't, but it also could lead other ponies to attempt foolhardy and dangerous stunts out of misplaced confidence, like her beloved Granny Smith.

In the end, this is what AJ learned; a lie is never, ever right, no matter how good your intentions may be. Even if it seems that your lie makes people happy, that happiness in and of itself is hollow and unreal. The truth is the truth, a precious, infallible reality that cannot change, no matter how happy your lie may make people; in repeating a lie over and over again, all you're doing is building up a house of cards that'll eventually come tumbling down, ever more spectacularly and hurting more and more people the longer you keep it up. The thing that I loved especially about this message was not only how well-executed and delivered it was, but also how relevant it was, especially to those in power in the present day. These days, at least in the good ol' U S of A, it seems that far too many of our politicians are all show and no substance. These men and women (not naming any parties, but let's just say the idealists and optimists of the whole lot are most guilty of this) are happy to time and time again just tell the people what they want to hear, spouting nothing but whatever hollow rhetoric it takes to get passed whatever they want to get passed. Most of the time, this type of talk leads to bad things, and millions of people get hurt as a result (and usually not the ones who sold whatever legislation or rhetoric they were pitching in the first place). Sure there's a lot of stupid naivety behind a lot of these blunders, after all, people are stupid, and that'll never change, but there's also a lot of deception to boot. Heck, our own president has gotten called out for I-don't-know-how-many-lies by now in the past six months alone, and really, the root of this problem lies in the fact that, these days, our leaders just don't understand the power and import of words. They're happy to say whatever they want or need to say to get done what they want to, no matter how removed it may be from reality, and this is a seriously dangerous attitude. So in summary, this episode's message was extraordinarily current and relevant, and its delivery just made it all the better. It rounded out nicely by showing a truly ashamed and sorrowful AJ admitting that she'd compromised her most dearest personal quality, her honesty, and apologizing for it (more sincerely and blatantly than any of our leaders ever do these days, when they get caught that is, I might add ). Wonderful message in its substance and execution, and a wonderful performance from a truly conflicted AJ to boot; not much more you can ask for out of an episode beyond that!

Besides Applejack and the episode's message, there was plenty of other things that stood out here. The Apple Family was a delight as it's been all season; the Apple siblings were all adorable in the swimming hole at the beginning, Big Mac got some great one-liners (literally, along with a bit of trollery at the beginning there) in there (though I can't help but want him to get his own episode some time down the road, maybe one focusing on his relationship with AJ or both of his sisters), Apple Bloom was adorable as usual, and Granny Smith was just awesome! Her backstory as an earth pony high diver was amazing (albeit unsurprising given who she is), and her newfound confidence, although foolhardy for most of the episode, was very cool, and it was very neat seeing all the things Ponyville's most incredible grandparent could accomplish once she'd gotten past some of her mental blocks that had come with age.

The Flim Flam brothers were their usual, con artist selves (complete with yet another catchy tune, though I still like their first song number better, to be honest), and I can't help but love them. Sure they're complete jerks, but they're complete jerks who persistently continue trying to to sell themselves until it's clear beyond a doubt that the jig is up (though to be fair their original cider-making contraption did actually work, quite well in fact, their only downfall there was compromising its quality for the sake of quantity). I can't help but love their shameless enthusiasm, and especially loved their "hypothetically-speaking" conversation with AJ in the middle of the episode when they pretty much fessed up without actually fessing up to their cure-all tonic being a total scam. Flim and Flam remain my favorite foils to AJ's character, and I really hope they'll return yet again some time in the future (as long as an episode or season calls for their return, of course).

Silver Shill, our by now to-be-expected key-episode OC, was pretty cool himself. For starters, he's got the best punny pony name I've heard in sometime, and it's actually quite hilarious when you think about it; by the end of the episode, he was committed to becoming an honest salespony, but the guy is, literally, a Shill! All I gotta say is good luck buddy, cause I'm pretty sure you were born into a family destined to be (or at least having a reputation for being) con artists. But seriously, he turned out to be a decent guy, like most of these OCs have, and I really liked that he had a nice explanation for his giving AJ her key at the end there. His voice was pretty unique as well; kind of had a Barney Fife sound to it, and I don't know, just pleasant to the ears, at least for me. Definitely a great addition to the slowly-but-surely growing list of male characters in the show, and it'd definitely be nice to see him again sometime down the road.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the background ponies here, specifically, all the injured ones! Holy buck, this episode had some dark and downright depressing imagery. I mean, what the heck, since when did Ponyville have so many sick and injured ponies; did one of their weekly disasters happen while the Mane 6 were out of town or something??? Probably the worst imagery for me were the ponies in wheelchairs; I'm sure some of them just had broken legs, but you just have to wonder how many of those ponies were actually cripples, and it was just downright depressing watching some of them hobble around like that. It didn't take away anything from the episode, it was just a distracting and depressing element of it that added a dark element to an otherwise run-of-the-mill slice of life episode (though it definitely did add some gravity to the lesson AJ was learning). Besides the dozens of ailing background ponies, we had some great showings from others as well; Cloud Kicker, Colgate, Doctor Whooves, and Carrot Top got a few appearances, Derpy had a subdued but still pleasant cameo at the diving/synchronized swimming competition, and Lyra had probably her best cameo all season (who knew she was such a hard-to-impress swimming/diving judge ). All in all, this was a very good episode for background ponies in general.

As usual, the animation was top notch, the comedy was spot on (with a whole bevy of laughs coming from the Apples, the Flim Flam brothers, and the background ponies themselves), and the sound and music were a delight. All in all, "Leap of Faith" was another great key episode with probably the best message in terms of both substance and execution of any of them since "Rarity Takes Manehattan" (fitting considering both Rarity and AJ continue to have such a good season, and are also such surprisingly similar characters). My hat's off to the writers on putting together such a well-written episode, and I can't wait to see what else they have in store for us in the final six episodes this season!