The Cutie Pox

The Cutie Pox is the sixth episode of the second season of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic and the thirty-second episode overall. The episode centers around the titular illness that afflicts Apple Bloom, which causes many cutie marks to appear all over her body, which makes her constantly utilize the skills they symbolize. The term pox is used to describe a variety diseases characterized by pockmarks, and in the archaic sense it may refer to disease in general.

Production
The library scene was at the animation rough cut stage on August 2, 2011.

The bowling alley
The episode opens with the Cutie Mark Crusaders hoping that they will obtain their cutie marks at a bowling alley. They brainstorm names for their trio after they obtain their cutie marks since "Cutie Mark Crusaders" would be obsolete, and they settle on "The Bowling Dolls" after rejecting "The Three Strikes" (it makes them sound like they struck out) and "The Pin Twins" (since there are three of them).

Sweetie Belle bowls first using her nose, but her ball rolls into the gutter. Then Scootaloo bucks her ball, ricocheting it around the alley and knocking other player's balls around before finally rolling down a gutter. Apple Bloom tentatively grasps her ball with her mouth and spits it out. When the crowd goes wild and shouts, "A bowling cutie mark!", she eagerly examines her flank, but they were talking about a colt who apparently just got his cutie mark. Apple Bloom's ball did not have enough speed to knock over even one pin.

Going to Zecora's
Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle exclaim about the fun they had bowling, whereas Apple Bloom dejectedly walks alongside them. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle try to cheer her up with a cupcake from Sugarcube Corner, a party with Pinkie Pie, and a new hat from Rarity, but none of these work and Apple Bloom remains despondent. She walks away from her friends and into the forest, where she trips on a tree root, falls over a cliff, and chips a tooth. Zecora finds her and brings her to her hut to give her a potion for her tooth. Apple Bloom expresses her frustration about her cutie mark, and Zecora tells her that she simply needs to wait for the right time for it to appear.

"It is one we call 'Heart's Desire'. A dash will ignite the rooster's fire. With Heart's Desire, his talent comes into view, and he'll give a mighty cock-a-doodle-doo!"

- Zecora

Apple Bloom takes Zecora's tooth-fixing potion and her tooth mends itself. She then looks around Zecora's ingredients, looking for a possible brew to bring about a cutie mark. When Zecora begins to make a potion to help a rooster fix his morning call, Apple Bloom notices a flower called 'Heart's Desire' which will supposedly help the rooster crow again. Zecora goes out to find amethysts for her potion, and Apple Bloom sets her sights on the flower in the bowl.

The schoolyard
In the schoolyard, Apple Bloom exuberantly shows off her new cutie mark, a silver hoop. She demonstrates her skill at loopty-hooping and various other tricks, much to the annoyance of Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara. Cheerilee sees Apple Bloom's prowess with the hoop and asks her to give the class a demonstration and help them play with hoops.

While performing an advanced hoop trick, Apple Bloom suddenly sprouts another cutie mark under the first one - an image of plates rotating on top of poles. Diamond Tiara suggests the cutie marks are fake, but Apple Bloom denies it. Snips and Snails throw her two plates and two poles. Apple Bloom balances the poles on her nose and spins the plates on top while twirling a hoop around her tail. The class is astounded and cheers for her as they make their way down the streets of Ponyville. In the streets, she nimbly performs tricks such as using a well-thrown hoop to style Twilight Sparkle's mane in the manner of Rarity's.

The Apple Family's house
That night, Applejack takes a tired Apple Bloom home and Granny Smith and Big McIntosh congratulate her. Applejack tells her how proud they are of her getting not one but two cutie marks, as well as saying Big Mac's nickname for the first time. Apple Bloom heads to bed up after a long day.

Late at night, Applejack is rolling around in bed trying to keep herself from hearing something that sounds like hooves tapping. She gets out of bed to investigate and discovers that the sound is coming from Apple Bloom's room. Upon opening the door, she sees Apple Bloom tapping frantically and she notices yet another cutie mark on her sister, this time of a tapping shoe. Apple Bloom, unable to stop herself from exercising her "talents" all at once, asks her for help while Applejack looks horrified.

At the library
The next morning, Applejack takes Apple Bloom to Twilight Sparkle's house to search for a cure. Luckily, Twilight had recently read a relevant book, which Spike easily retrieves: Perplexing Pony Plagues. After flipping through chapters concerning diseases like hay fever and "the trots", which is slang for diarrhea, she reveals that Apple Bloom has "Cutie Pox", a 'puzzling pony plague' that afflicted a population of ponies back in the Paleopony period. Random cutie marks appeared all over the ponies' bodies, causing them to perform all the talents that came with them. The cause of the breakout was never discovered, and the cutie pox disappeared as 'mysteriously as they arrived'. As in other episodes, Spike lounges on Twilight's back during this monolog providing snark and commentary; this time, however, he gets bucked off. Just after that, Apple Bloom sprouts yet another cutie mark in the form of a fleur-de-lis and can now speak in French, which Applejack calls "speakin' fancy". The three ponies decide it would be best to seek out Zecora for help. Cutie Pox begins to progress more quickly as each new mark requires Apple Bloom to perform strange and arduous talents, mostly at the same time.

"Oh no! Sacrebleu ! Plus de marques de cutie! [gasps] Qu'est-ce c'est?! Je parle français?! (Oh no! Darn it! More cutie marks! [gasps] What's this?! I speak French?!)"

- Apple Bloom

In town
Spike points out the nature of the plague to the townsponies; they panic and lock themselves into their houses. When Zecora comes into town, she almost thinks for a second that the town was still afraid of her. Then Applejack reveals Apple Bloom's curse to her, asking Zecora if her "zebra sense [was] tinglin'". Zecora says that around the time Apple Bloom was alone in her hut, some of her ingredients went missing. Fortunately, Zecora has the cure for the cutie pox - the Seeds of Truth, which bloom when the truth is told. The resulting flower can be eaten to end the disease. The statue Apple Bloom constructs is Venus Anadyomene, a common theme in art in antiquity and the renaissance.

Pinkie Pie attempts to confess to eating corncakes - first three, then six, before desperately begging to "make it stop". Finally, Apple Bloom, speaking English again, admits to her misdeed. She admits her cutie marks are all fake and that she stole the ingredients - most importantly the Heart's Desire - from Zecora. Just as promised, the seeds of truth bloom into a flower which is quickly eaten by Apple Bloom, ending the pox.

Apple Bloom apologizes to everyone for the entire ordeal (including lying) - especially to Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo for getting too carried away with her cutie mark quest, and to Zecora for taking her ingredients without permission. Realizing how sorry Apple Bloom was for everything and how she learned from her mistakes, Zecora and Apple Bloom's friends accept her apology.

Letter to Celestia
Apple Bloom writes a letter to Princess Celestia about learning a new lesson. Honesty is the key: there are no shortcuts to getting something you desire the most, including a cutie mark, and that good things come to those who are patient and wait for it.

However, immediately after Spike sends the letter, the Cutie Mark Crusaders decide they've waited long enough and escape into the distance, eager to again try and get their cutie marks.

Heart's Desire
The Heart's Desire plant is introduced by Zecora as a cure for a rooster who "lost his crow". She says that "with Heart's Desire, his talent comes into view". Apple Bloom takes interest in the plant, and encourages Zecora to leave while she eyes the bowl with the plant's petals.

Cutie pox
When Apple Bloom develops a third cutie mark and discovers that she's unable to stop performing the various talents the marks signify, she's taken to Twilight Sparkle's library. After consulting her books, Twilight diagnoses the ailment as cutie pox. "This puzzling pony plague afflicted a population of ponies back in the Paleopony period. Random cutie marks appeared all over the ponies' bodies, causing them to perform all the talents that came with them. The cause of the breakout was never discovered, and the cutie pox disappeared as mysteriously as they arrived." Twilight suggests that Zecora might have a cure.

Seeds of Truth
The Seeds of Truth are the cure to the cutie pox. Zecora stops by Ponyville and witnesses all the ponies running scared from Apple Bloom's condition. She offers a cure for the cutie pox: "A cutie pox cure I have forsooth, for healing power is in the Seeds of Truth. These seeds must be planted in the ground, with the truth they'll grow and the cure is found." Apple Bloom eventually confesses that her cutie marks are all fake, and that she figured the Heart's Desire would help her get what she wanted most, so she "mixed up a special potion and put the rest of the Heart's Desire in it"; following her confession, the Seeds of Truth grow into a white-and-pink flower which Apple Bloom promptly consumes, and all of her cutie marks disappear.

Cutie pox afflictions
Throughout the episode, various cutie marks and talents afflict Apple Bloom. The following list of cutie marks and talents is sorted by time of appearance.
 * Silver hoop – Hula hooping and hoop related tricks
 * Sticks and plates – Performing plate spinning tricks.
 * Red tap shoe – Tap Dancing
 * Fleur-de-lis – Ability to speak French
 * Mallet and chisel – Sculpting
 * Cap and chimney brush – Chimney sweeping
 * Accordion – Playing the accordion
 * Whip and lion – Lion taming
 * Chess pieces (a rook and two pawns) – Playing chess
 * Crossed swords – Fencing
 * White long pole – Tightrope walking
 * Red glider – Hang-gliding
 * Drafting compass – Math
 * 1000-lb barbell – Weightlifting
 * A pair of sponges – Window-washing
 * Tornado – Whirling around

One of the cutie marks Apple Bloom receives is a red shoe which causes her to dance uncontrollably, like the main character in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Red Shoes.

The equations Apple Bloom draws under the affliction of the Math cutie mark are difficult to identify without context, but the first two sections state the equivalence between integration of continuous functions and the sigma operation upon discrete functions - a concept important in digital signal processing. The meaning of the remaining three equations has yet to be determined, and they may be simply random math-symbols to fill the board.

Quotes

 * Apple Bloom: Why, after today, we won't even be the Cutie Mark Crusaders anymore! We'll be the... the Three Strikes!
 * Scootaloo: That makes us sound like we've struck out.
 * Apple Bloom: Mmm. How 'bout the Pin Twins?
 * Sweetie Belle: But there are three of us.
 * Apple Bloom: Okay then... Um... the Bowling Dolls!
 * Sweetie Belle: The Bowling Dolls! That's it!
 * Scootaloo: Perfect!


 * Sweetie Belle: I know just what you need to put the bloom back on your apple.


 * Applejack: Yee haw, little sis! Congratulations on gettin' not just one, but two cutie marks! We're mighty proud of you, right Big McIntosh?
 * Big McIntosh: Eeyup.
 * Applejack: I've never seen anythin' like it, have you Big Mac?
 * Big McIntosh: Nnnope.


 * Twilight Sparkle: Cutie pox. This puzzling pony plague afflicted a pony population back in the paleopony period!
 * Spike: Say that ten times fast!


 * Apple Bloom: Sacrebleu! Plus de marque de cutie! [gasps] Qu'est-ce que c'est?! Je parle français?! (French for "Darn it! Another cutie mark! [gasps] What is this?! I'm speaking French?!")
 * Applejack: My sister's speaking in fancy!


 * Lily: She's cursed!
 * Rose: Hexed!
 * Daisy: Enchanted!
 * Spike: No, she's not.
 * Daisy, Lily and Rose: [sigh of relief]
 * Spike: She just has some weird mysterious disease with no known cure called cutie pox.
 * Everyone: Cutie pox?! [screaming]


 * Pinkie Pie: Yesterday I told Mrs. Cake that I ate two corncakes, but I really ate three! [pause] Okay six! I ate six corncakes! [pause] Make it stop! Oh, make it stop!


 * Apple Bloom: Yup! All good things come to those who wait. [pause] Well! I've waited long enough.
 * Scootaloo: Actually, that was way too long.

Gallery

 * The Cutie Pox image gallery