Spike’s suggestion that the town might be empty because of zombies seemingly came back in later seasons, as I’m sure it’s been pointed out elsewhere. So, with some episodes, the lesson sneaks up on you, but before the theme song even plays here I’m sure every viewer has pretty much guessed what the lesson will be, that fearing people who are different is bad – the interesting thing to me is the mixture of what exactly this difference is. On the one hand, Zecora is a witchlike figure, as well as the kind of creepy odd recluse that children tell rumours and tall stories about – and on the other, she’s a Zebra, with rather obvious connotations given the accent and the witchdoctor stuff. But I feel like the message is a little mixed up with this in mind. See, if you’re going to do a… Well I hate to even say it, but a “racism bad” episode, then you need the ponies to actually be scared of the Zebra specifically for being a Zebra. But they’re not, not really – if a pony was acting like Zecora, they’d be scared of that pony too. After all, when Gilda came to town a few episodes ago, the ponies didn’t all run away and hide. It’s essentially that this is a provincial, superstitious rural area and the population therefore has a somewhat innate fear of “witches”, which I mean in the sense that even people even today will regard certain creepy old people as being “witches”, not that Ponyville has a distinct idea of what a witch is per se. Honestly, I would prefer if Zecora had been a Pony and not a Zebra, as not only would it make the message clearer, at least in my view, but it would also, at least I hope, keep the show somewhat more pony-centric. I dislike open and transparent analogy to the real world in general, really, particularly in my comfy Pony fantasy world where it’s chief atrractive element is it’s separation from the real world.

When Pinkie Pie sings her song, and Twilight says “Wow, catchy” – I genuinely wasn’t able to discern if Twilight was being sarcastic, or genuine. It’s clearly not especially catchy… At least to me. I don’t know, but it puzzled me a little.

The blue plants, I wonder if Zecora is immune to their effect, or if the cloak protects her, or if she’s simply very careful not to let them touch her. I also assume that they must have misheard Zecora as her warning is really quite clear, though perhaps one might think she summoned the blue plants or something.

Twilight comments that there’s “no such thing as curses”, another interesting little tidbit about the magic. I think I discussed with the gala tickets in a previous episode whether magic is something that can produce permanent effects, or if it’s always temporary, and notably here curses are typically expected to be quite long in duration, if not infinite in duration. However, since I concluded from said tickets that these lasting enchantments are possible, I think it most likely has to be some other aspect of curses that makes them impossible. A lot of the offensive magic we see in the show seems like alternative uses of otherwise peaceful magic, so perhaps the form of a spell can’t be intentionally harmful, with energy beams perhaps being something separate. Plus it could be another case of this season’s canon. In addition, we get a little clue about spells when Twilight describes curses as requiring incantations, suggesting the wording of a spell does not mean it needs to be chanted or spoken aloud.

When Spike comes up with nicknames for each of the afflictions, I wondered whether they came up with the afflictions first and simply were able to think of nicknames that fit, or whether they planned the afflictions around the nicknames. And Rarity’s long hair and fur here lends more credence to the ponies having fur.

I also like more of the innocent Pony culture on display at the end when the group go back to town with Zecora. Everyone runs and hides, but Daisy still answers the door when Twilight knocks on it. She’s too polite to not to answer even when she thinks she’s in danger!