] I'm late for a very important date! The big brunch for Princess Celestia at Sugarcube Corner. Oh, the princess is here in Ponyville for a party, and we all promised we'd be there. But I'm not there! Oh, do I look all right? Do I need to bring anything? Maybe I shouldn't go.

I, for whatever reason, really enjoyed the cold open to this episode. Angel playing charades while Fluttershy honed in slowly on what he was trying to covey: that she was late for the party with Celestia. Nice seeing a bit of Fluttershy doing her own thing alone too.

Theme song that isn't my favorite but has slowly grown on me throughout the years.

At the brunch itself. Twilight Sparkle is quite nervous around Celestia hoping her friends make a good impression. I know this episode is used to give context to potential trollestia/tyrantestia in canon, and while it is certainly meme fuel I partly disagree. While Celestia showed a joking side here."Gotcha!" and her little tea prank while Mr and Mrs Cake were fussing over her. I think the dynamic of this episode is that Princess Celestia is actually pretty laid back and everyone takes her roll as the immortal monarch of the realm a bit too seriously. I do agree it is a bit weird she didn't immediately explain Philomena but I don't think it crosses over into troll territory. She was soon interrupted by Mayor Mare's request with a personal audience after all.

Fluttershy fussing over Philomena was fun, I see an alternative episode where this could've been some sort of lesson on animals departing and accepting loss, but as is, I enjoyed it. This goes into overdrive when Twilight Sparkle arrives. Now, this is where Tyrantestia comes into play as Twilight rattles off potential punishments. The fandom started to play into that, and in some cases, really ask, why would Twilight be so afraid of banishment? I think here it is more of the innocence of this setting here and Twilight's obsessive personality over any basis for anything rational in universe. The slap stick was pretty good here too, though not as good as the previous sequences of Fluttershy and Twilight's hapless attempts to forestall Philomena's deterioration.

The conclusion, I enjoyed it enough, but not spectacular. It got a couple of chuckles but the main thing I noticed here was this one line:
>And I do appreciate that your heart was in the right place, child. But all you had to do was ask me and I could have told you Philomena was a phoenix and saved you all this trouble.
This not only places Celestia as an somewhat of motherly authority figure which is the roll she is sort of playing, but this is the strongest I've seen it. It will be interesting if we will see any other instances of her referring to the mane 6 or any of her subjects this way.

Alrighty, now for my rating: 7.5/10. It is a very good episode for what it is, even if I found the last third slightly less interesting.