>>12803
The episode so far has been a mixture of neutral and good. This is the point when Zecora gets out some special seeds, which when planted in the ground will then bloom into a flower that cures Cutie Pox when someone speaks the truth near them. In other words, Zecora produces the seeds of the Deus Ex Machina flower, and the only way to have their fabulous secret powers revealed to you is to speak the words of the moral of the story!! Yes, I'm really not very keen on this conclusion, although the Pinkie Pie joke (trying to tell the truth about how many corn cakes she ate when Mrs Cake wasn't looking) was fantastic. I see a pattern here with this episode, very funny but otherwise mixed. Something I'm not sure of is whether the flower doesn't bloom because Pinkie still wasn't telling the truth (meaning she ate more than six cakes...? did she eat ALL the cakes? would Mrs Cake not have noticed that? I'd make a "Lex Luthor took 40 cakes" joke if I weren't already certain it's been done to death with this scene). But yes, of course the flower of truthiness only blooms in conveniently short order after Apple Bloom tells the truth about stealing from Zecora and making a potion to fake having gotten a cutie mark.

Overall, I think the lesson here suffers overall from being beaten over the head with it a bit, usually I'd say the show's messages really resonate precisely because these things are much more complicated than mere platitudes, and the show demonstrates entire situations with more than one side to them rather than just plainly stating a moral. This unfortunately is an episode that is an exception to the rule, where the situation doesn't really align to anything other than allegory. Also, it feels strangely short. Apple Bloom showing off her talents goes on for quite a while, and not a lot really happens with it, so a lot of the episode just flies by without much notice. Having said that, there's a lot of really stand-out moments, particularly with the humour, but also with characterisation. I like the Apple family in this episode, I like the CMC, and as I mentioned I really like Twi and Spike. It's a hard rating for an episode that's so up-and-down for me, but I think I'd say it's a 6.3, between Ticket Master and Fall Weather Friends. Ticket Master I still recall as having rated perhaps a little lower than I might now, but I think it's definitely in a similar ballpark to Fall Weather Friends, where I enjoyed it, but partially.