Hey everyone, it's me again, back with another Annoying Orange-related candidate, and the second one from The High Fructose Adventures series. This is one I literally began considering while I was writing my proposal for Teddy Juicer. And this one I'd argue is especially heinous for this series IMO, though this is more of a discussion due to me being unsure if the majority will agree. So without further ado, let's get right into the discussion.
What is the Work?
(Copying this from my prior proposal on Teddy Juicer)
The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange is a live-action/animation hybrid comedy series from 2012 based on the Annoying Orange web series, and aired on Cartoon Network for two seasons before its dramatic two-part finale in 2014. The series revolves around Orange and his friends, who live together on a fruit cart at a grocery store called "Danboe's”, which is run by a human character that talks to fruit (and thus is friends with our sentient food protagonists) named Nerville. Together, our heroes have adventures all across the land to solve conflicts that tend to involve some kind of threat of death.
Who is She? What Has She Done?
The Fresh Check Computer (voiced by Felicia Day) is the main antagonist of the third season 2 episode, "Orange's Run". She is an artificial intelligence that monitors the food residents at Food Dome (created by the heroic Nerville) in the year 3057 and checks whether they're still fresh or not.
The episode begins with the Fresh Check Computer making the daily expiration check to see if any of the foods have "expired" (ie: the gems on their foreheads have turned grey), before noticing Old Banana and Grandpa Lemon have been labeled as expired. Old Banana tries to run away to Food-topia, but the Fresh Check Computer claims Food-topia doesn't exist and orders the compost men to stop him, but Orange-5 and Pear-4 refuse since Old Banana is barely even moving, though Grapefruit-3 vaporizes him anyway, after which the Fresh Check Computer uses a vacuum to absorb the poor old man's remaining ashes.
All of the "expired" foods are then called to the afternoon Recyclo-rama to be "reborn", after which all of them except for Grandpa Lemon are painfully vaporized by the spinning disco ball thingy, to which Passion-3 asks Orange-5 if Recyclo-rama is actually a lie and that the foods don't actually regenerate. Orange-5 then goes to the bathroom, only to find the chopped head of Old Beef Jerky, much to his confusion as he asks if he was reborn, to which Beef Jerky explains that he was actually just painfully blown to bits and attempts to explain that Recyclo-rama is a lie, only to die before he can do so. The still-alive Grandpa Lemon (now known as Rebel Lemon) then explains what Beef Jerky was trying to say, that Recyclo-rama is actually a garbage disposal connected to a furnace to fuel Dome-bo's generators, which he learned from the Exposition Fairy, who almost immediately got vaporized by Recyclo-rama after giving her exposition to him. Rebel Lemon is then chopped by one of the spinning blades in the room before ordering Orange-5 to leave and save the future.
Orange-5 then enters an "unauthorized area", and is met by the Fresh Check Computer, who calls him "expired" before turning his gem grey to unfairly mark him as such before telling him to report to Recyclo-rama, but he obviously objects due to having seen what it did to Beef Jerky, and spits seeds in her face to run away, causing him to be chased by the his best friend Pear-4 as well as the evil Grapefruit-3.
When Orange-5 and Passion-3 escape through the sewers, they discover that everyone that tried to leave to Food-topia to escape Food Dome (10 foods to be exact) were frozen alive by Tub under the Fresh Check Computer's orders, before Tub freezes Orange as well. When Orange-5 and Passion-3 manage to defeat Tub and Grapefruit-3 is attacked by Little Apple and Marshmallow, an alert is heard as all of the foods still in Food Dome are panicking. The Fresh Check Computer, realizing that Food-topia has been discovered, decides to self destruct Food Dome out of sheer pettiness towards the heroes for managing to escape to freedom, not caring of the risks that will put on the rest of the food population. Right before the Food Dome explodes, she is crushed by the falling debris, preventing her from escaping the explosion and killing her.
Mitigating Factors
She's got pretty much nothing in terms of that. While she does talk calmly to the foods and claims the expired will be reborn young again at Recycle-rama, this is pure faux affably evil at its finest, since she deliberately withholds the fact that Recyclo-rama is actually just a front to kill anyone who grows old or questions her policies.
She doesn't have moral agency issues either, as nothing in the episode implies Nerville intentionally programmed her (or any part of Food Dome for that matter) to kill the very foods that he built the Food Dome to protect, and the fact that she literally tries to kill everyone else that was still in the Food Dome confirms that she doesn't care if she gets everyone killed so long as she gets her revenge.
Heinous Standard
Like I've said before in my proposal for Teddy Juicer, The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange has a pretty high heinous standard due to having multiple villains that commit mass murder or attempt genocide, with Broccoli Overlord being the most heinous character by far. So how does the Fresh Check Computer stand out?
Well first things first, her entire deal is that she's made the Food Dome into a horrific dystopia where anyone that grows old or questions the regulations is marked as expired so they'll get either painfully blown to bits or vaporized to death, which is very unique for the show. In addition, she has Tub freeze alive anyone that dares to leave to Foodtopia, and considering that when this happens to Orange, he's still conscious and able to move his face around, that means she's gotten a pretty large number of people (I've counted like 10) doomed to a fate worse than death. She also has by far one of the highest attempted kill counts out of any character in the show, since she literally set the entire Food Dome (a safe haven made to house all of the remaining living foods) to self destruct, essentially giving her the widest scale of attempted genocide, since she's trying to kill ALL FOODS, rather than just one specific species.
While Broccoli Overlord arguably does far worse than her due to his repeated attempts to wipe out all of fruit kind through various cruel methods and also threatened humanity with his zombie vegetables, he has far more resources than her due to being well... an alien overlord with an entire army at his disposal, whereas the Fresh Check Computer is just an AI in control of a single location and only a couple underlings at most, so she still stands out from him regardless.
Is She Silly?
I mean it's an adaptation of the fuckin' Annoying Orange, a series where most of the characters are fruit with synchro-vox faces plastered onto them. The episode the Fresh Check Computer appears in is also a blatant parody of Logan's Run, and the explanation of Recyclo-rama's true nature is literally given by a randomly appearing Exposition Fairy who quickly dies to Recyclo-rama herself almost immediately after she's done, so the episode clearly isn't taking itself that seriously.
That being said, the Fresh Check Computer and her crimes are still taken seriously by the narrative, as the expired foods are screaming in terror when they die, Grandpa Lemon becomes a much more serious character after barely surviving, Passion is genuinely frightened by this whole thing, and even Orange himself is shocked when he's unfairly marked as "expired". The only character that doesn't take the whole situation completely straight is Orange, and that's only because he rarely takes anything seriously.
Verdict
I'm giving her an easy yes, but what do you think?