I'm just gonna post my thoughts on S2E5 in here since I feel like there should be room for more than 5 posts of new episode discussion.
Adorable episode. Way better than I expected from the description. Glad to have an episode just about the characters in a sympathetic situation as a break from the madness.
Shock and awe at parents, and at parents being somewhere between extremely easygoing and rednecks. Even more shock and awe when someone pointed out after the episode that Rarity's father appears to be a football player. Breakfast looked like something out of the Worst Bakers in Equestria fic, complete with burnt juice and of course "toast".
The opening was so-so material made good purely from how sympathetic it made Sweetie Belle. I was expecting her to be totally oblivious and annoying to the point where I could only agree with Rarity, but they did a good job of representing both of them realistically. And of course, when Rarity flipped after Sweetie Belle organized everything for her, all I could think of was the fact that Rarity was exactly like every male member of my family and how spot-on accurate that personality quirk was portrayed. It's certainly an interesting one to give Rarity, for sure.
ONE DAY was a pretty good gag, but the rest of the scenes with AJ and Apple Bloom, while kinda cute, were pretty unmemorable.
Totally called Rarity disguised as AJ mid-race just from being genre-savvy, though I didn't realize when they had switched. In retrospect, should have been easy since she had blue eyes instead of AJ's green.
To resolve some of the comments I've seen, marshmallows were made from plants (the marshmallow plant, no less) before they were made from horses. And the sheep thing is a pretty direct reference to Babe, thrown in as a joke that's not to be taken seriously. Faust or someone will probably throw in an explanation soon like they did with cows and pigs, although really we don't need another as the same thing still works.
I also raised an eyebrow when Rarity swore to Celestia that she'd work things out. So Celestia's name is used as a god figure...
Overall, really solid episode, and I kinda want to facepalm whenever I see people complaining that it was the worst of season 2. This is the first time the writing hasn't had any glaring flaws related to contrived problems or not enough time, in my opinion, and it was just really cute and led me along even if it wasn't laugh-out-loud funny. Everyone was treated as a character instead of just being around to make a joke or make them overly crazy, and the scenario was believable and easy to relate to.
Edit: Also, I dawwwwwed so hard I should probably be keeping insulin nearby when they showed Sweetie Belle's artwork.
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"That is why war is so tragic. To win means to make victims of your opponents and give birth to hatred." - Kratos Aurion, Tales of Symphonia