The first couple of scenes in this episode are mainly setup, but when they pay off later it’s quite cohesive. First we’ve got the cold open, where Rarity is making her own dress, which will come up later on when the others help finish it, and helps establish how Rarity gets sidetracked by the amount of work she has to do and focuses on her friend’s dresses before her own. Secondly, we have Applejack and Twilight showing up. I’m not quite sure why Applejack was actually there, given that she didn’t want a dress and touching up her ‘work duds’ was Rarity’s suggestion. Maybe she just tagged along with Twilight to visit Rarity. As Twilight and Applejack accidentally irritate Rarity with their chat, we have foreshadowing for Rarity’s irritation at their bizarre design choices later on. And lastly we have Rarity having the idea to make all of the group dresses, where the beginnings of the issues that will come later sort of meets halfway between Rarity’s determination to please, and the others increasingly taking that generosity for granted as a result. It’s quite a clever concept, really – the core conflict is caused precisely by Rarity’s element being in a bit of overabundance, that is, she’s too generous for her own good in this episode. We also have some excellent characterisation of Rarity in full force in these first two scenes, as we begin to see the side of her that allows for her fashionable, sociable outer persona: a lot of hard work. In previous generations and in most girl’s shows, being like Rarity is typically shown as effortless and easy. But not only does Rarity work hard, her comment to Applejack: “you make it sound like it will be hard!” demonstrates an ironclad work ethic and dedication as well. Rarity is a character, like many of the Mane 6, that is easy to overstate, push to an extreme and just get utterly wrong, but here she’s pretty much perfectly characterised. Even the environment is making this clear, with Rarity’s work floor being in her bedroom.

On that note, we get into the first half of the fantastic song of this episode. It’s up there with the Smile song as one of the great character songs in the show, which I think is pretty uncontroversial to say. On the matter of Rarity’s hardworking nature, I was thinking while watching the song that whilst Applejack is just as if not more hardworking than Rarity, in all likelihood, the reason Rarity comes across as even harder working than Applejack to me I think really comes down to this song. We see and have described to us the rather painstaking process of creating a dress, and then have that process repeated five times, whereas with Applejack, we see bits and pieces of what she does on the farm, but we don’t really ever see the complete picture. The dresses make for quite tangible measurements of how much time and effort Rarity’s put into her passion.

As Rarity reveals the dresses to the others, I particularly like Opal’s role in purring and nudging the dresses, nicely contrasted with how she hisses at the next set. She’s a good presence in the episode, making shots more interesting and providing someone for Rarity to interact with when she’s working on her own. Given the song we just had, we then share Rarity’s disappointment at the less than stellar reactions from the rest of the Mane 6. They do try to convince Rarity not to go the extra mile for them, and in fairness if Rarity just listened here the rest of the episode’s conflict would not have to happen, but again I think it’s fantastic that Rarity’s generosity actually leads her into a bit of trouble here. The lesson in a way is not only to be careful not to take advantage of generosity, but also to be careful that your generosity is not taken advantage of, too!

The reprise is even catchier, and we get the 20% cooler line. Oh yes, that old chestnut. The budget comment is interesting though – they’re paying for these dresses? I thought Rarity was doing it as a favour. It makes what they’re doing slightly less egregious if they are paying for them, though.