Transcript:
Avi — Today at 11:10 AM
Looking back on it, that episode might've been the ideal MLP:FiM story for me. Conflicts that are low-stakes and villainless, problem-solving on levels both physical and social, culminating in actual valuable life advice for the audience, illustrated very directly and matter-of-factly
It also takes two locations, Sweet Apple Acres and the Ponyville day spa, and depicts them as (in addition to locations where characters can talk and interact) places with infrastructure and material concerns that need to be taken care of to run properly. The scene where they follow the spa attendant from the sauna into the laundry room, focusing on a hot water pipe along the way, you can use that info to form a rough layout of the building in your head
Avi — Today at 11:27 AM
It's also nice to have an Applejack story that isn't about her exerting overbearing control over a situation: she notices one problem at the spa, fixes it, then over the course of telling Twilight about it realizes her farmwork could use some refinement -- making for a fun twist where the story's obstacles aren't Friendship Problems, but they're problems friendship can help solve
Good ship material, too. Rarijack's a great pair