Man. This episode had a lot of potential, but I think it ended up pulling its punches too much.
The "lesson" it sets up is a potentially pretty powerful one, and I was initially impressed that they were pairing the Rarity/Sweetie Belle dynamic with the Zipporwhill/Ripley one to drive the point home—the show doesn't often do A/B stories like that, and when it does, they rarely tie together so neatly. About the best example of a show that laces main stories and subplots together thematically and stylistically is Home Movies, which God help me seems more and more like an intricate work of art the more time passes. Honestly I was expecting this episode to give us a Home Movies kind of level of point/counterpoint, the kind you don't even realize is going on while it's happening, but afterwards you think "Oh... huh.

"
Plus it was setting up a very poignant delivery of a bittersweet resolution, the kind of thing that Steven Universe did in "The Test":
Where the kid realizes that all these togetherness activities and confidence-building exercises are not actually for the kid's benefit—they're for the parent's. Steven showed wisdom beyond his years when he realized he should not let on to the Gems that he knew all along that the test was rigged. And I thought that's where they were going with this; Sweetie Belle would realize that Rarity's whole fragile worldview depended on her understanding of certain things about her family not changing, and that without those bits of bedrock to cling to she would collapse into a gibbering mess and her whole boutique empire would come crashing down around her. So Sweetie Belle, clearly an adult at this point at an intellectual and emotional level, she's into black box experimental theatre for pete's sake, ought to grok that and play along gamely for Rarity's sake.
And for a while it seemed like that's the direction they were going. But Sweetie Belle couldn't keep it up, or wouldn't. At some point she decided the charade simply wasn't worth it; that deceiving Rarity wouldn't do either of them any good in the long run. And that too would have been a good way to take it, if it had been conveyed up front! If the story had involved Sweetie Belle openly deciding that for Rarity's own good, her emotional band-aid would have to be ripped off. But this progression of events was handled a bit too implicitly, a bit too ambiguously, to communicate that this was what they were going for. Sweetie is still not mature enough to pull it off; she keeps sulking when she "should" be able to put on a happy face through endless dumb kiddy diversions. She "should" be able to express what looks like sincere enjoyment at a comically tiny sundae, especially when at her level of awareness she ought to be as horrified as I am that Rarity went to the extent of cajoling the old owner out of well-earned retirement to come back for the day just to make that damn sundae. Sweetie should be slipping her a fat stack of bits for her trouble, or at least a sidelong earnest apology and thanks.
And then there's the issue of the balance between the A and B stories. If the Zipporwhill/Ripley story had been a bit less in-your-face and the intercutting from the Rarity/Sweetie Belle story had been less frequent, it would have served as a clever underline of the understanding that Sweetie Belle and Rarity eventually come to. But instead it's shoved to center stage and the "puppy -> dog" transition (which is clumsier than it ought to be to boot—DOGS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY, a growing dog isn't going to start sulking and ignoring you if you keep trying to play with him like he's a puppy, he's still gonna be super focused on you as the master figure) is just super on-the-nose. Rarity even comes out of the bushes to comment on the episode's plot resolution
upon witnessing the conclusion of the parallel story herself. This is beyond convenient, it's more like insulting the intelligence of the audience—which the show originally distinguished itself for
not doing.
Also it doesn't help that Ripley looked an awful lot like Seymour, which put me in a frame of mind to think maybe they were really going to tackle some heavy-hitting emotional beats through the use of a dog's aging, which is (of course) the biggest cheap shot in the animation necronomicon, but damn if it doesn't work. Not that I was really expecting Pony to do something like that... but the cues were there, for better or for worse.
Honestly I think the animators were more on point than the writers this time around. Look at the theming of these pair costumes:
Oh, and one more missed opportunity: "Not to put too fine a point on it..." should have been a unicorn horn gag somehow.
