REWATCH TIME REWATCH TIME REWATCH TIME
This hung together better than I remember it doing. There are lots of little twists and turns of motivation in the story, subtleties that it's asking a lot of a young audience to keep up with.
I didn't find it particularly clear what was going on at times. But in retrospect, at the end, even if details had seemed out of place at the time, the overall point made sense. The CMCs' conflicting desires—to do the right thing, to be popular, to get one over on DT and SS, and to learn new skills—all feel like they sprang naturally from their characters, and that's why the tension between all those motivations feels believable.
Also, as a bonus, there's little storytelling flourishes like how Twilight's easygoingness ended up defusing all their worry each time, until finally at the next-to-last one they kinda took it a little too much for granted that things were going to turn out okay after all, and it backfired so spectacularly that you find yourself wondering whether DT/SS had engineered the whole thing up to and including Pip blurting out the game-changer. (Probably not; probably they were genuinely on the short straw this time and only seized on the opportunity to take control back once the situation presented itself.)
Seeing the kids learning skills remains really neat, especially details like SB "throwing her neck out". I wasn't really on board with them apparently not having followed any instructions that Twilight had offered. I can understand them arrogantly thinking they ought to be able to just
do stuff without any dusty old books' help; but if they're as concerned as they seem to be that they're not making any progress, you'd think they would be doing everything they can to maximize the benefit of being with Twilight and hanging on her every word. But then, we know these girls aren't necessarily paragons of clear thinking. (Randomly, I enjoyed how when Twilight told Scootaloo to look on the third shelf from the bottom, she immediately got on the ladder and poked through the top shelf.

: )
I also kinda wish Twilight had demonstrated a bit more of her own prowess as a teacher here. She could have taught Scootaloo some principles of mechanics maybe, instead of just telling her to go get a book. And you'd think she would at least be really into giving Sweetie Belle some on-camera one-on-one coaching in magic, rather than listing off steps and saying to practice. Twilight ought to be a source of first-hand wisdom by this point, not just a librarian.
But still, more cohesion than I expected, and I got genuinely rather choked up during the apology scene with the flower. Polsky can write some good Pony when he keeps his "wide wide world of Equestrias" in check.