>>12786
Seeing Applejack and Apple Bloom's relationship as sisters is fantastic, it's a great demonstration of how the Apple family's oft-stated family-values work in practice. It's also the perfect comparison for this episode, because just like Rarity, Applejack also runs a business, one she arguably has to work even harder for compared to Rarity: we often hear and see in the series about the financial difficulties that the farm is going through, whereas Rarity's boutique incurs significantly less costs than a large farming operation, and would be easier to turn around in a downturn. Applejack manages to balance hard work with making time for her family, in other words, even though between the two of them, Applejack would probably have the better excuse, all things considered, for not having time for such things.

The sheep being herded into the enclosure saying that they could have just asked is something that would take too long for me to overthink and it would go into way too much detail, so I'm just going to gloss over it. For the sake of moving along with things, and for my sanity, I'm just going to assume that just that one sheep could talk, or learned Ponish, or something, for the sake of a silly gag joke.

When Rarity realises her mistake and comes to find Sweetie Belle, and Sweetie Belle disparages the idea of coming back home with Rarity so that they can do the things that Rarity wants to do, it's interesting to me that Sweetie Belle would probably, earlier on, have been quite content to do the things that Rarity wanted to do. It is a good objection on Sweetie Belle's part, and I think original thinking for her, as I doubt Apple Bloom has much of a choice in terms of the work she does on the farm. Although, in fairness, maybe having marshmallows was Apple Bloom's idea. It's honestly a rather expedient way of demonstrating the give-and-take in such things: if you're willing to invest your time in someone else, then they're more willing to invest time into things you want to do, but since Rarity has demonstrated an unwillingness to invest her time into Sweetie Belle, the exchange breaks down.