Rarity finds herself looking after her sister for a week. Will this prove to be THE WORST! POSSIBLE! THING?!

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Recap: Rarity wakes to the pleasant aroma of... smoke? Panicked, she bolts downstairs only to find Sweetie Bell trying to make breakfast as a surprise for her (burning the juice probably qualifies as a surprise.) It turns out that her parents are dropping Sweetie off to stay while they go on vacation.

After they see their parents off, Rarity sets about making a "proper" breakfast. Sweetie wants to help, but manages to make a mess applying the garnish. After cleaning up, Sweetie decides to help out by doing the laundry. Unfortunately she manages to shrink Rarity's wool sweater. Increasingly annoyed, Rarity orders her to keep out of trouble while she finishes her work. Sweetie decides to do some crafts herself. Inevitably, she manages to use some gems that Rarity needs for her dresses. Distraught, Rarity orders her to avoid doing anything that results in another mess for her to clean up while she's out finding replacements. Sweetie comes across Rarity's work room, which is a mess itself. Delighted, she enthusiastically cleans it up. Rarity returns and finds her work in progress gone. She barely manages to keep herself from exploding.

Sweetie Bell leaves and comes across Applebloom. When Sweetie wishes that there was something she could do with her sister that didn't involve her messing everything up, Applebloom shows her a flyer for the "Sisterhooves Social," which is a yearly competition between teams of sisters held at Sweet Apple Acres. Sweetie is delighted at the idea, but Rarity dismisses it. Playing games in the dirt is uncouth. They argue, and it escalates to the point that they both declare that they'd be better off without a sister.

Sweetie Bell goes over to Applebloom's place and watches her and her sister, Applejack, doing chores together. The two of them work as a team and manage to make hard work fun.

Meanwhile Rarity is finding that Sweetie's messes weren't as disastrous as she thought. The neatly stacked fabric actually gives her an idea for a fashion line, and it turns out that the shrunken sweater fits her cat perfectly. When she finds the project that Sweetie had used the gems for--a drawing of the two of them surrounded by a gemstone heart--she channels Scarlet O'Hara and declares that she "will never be sisterless again!"

Rarity finds Sweetie camping with AJ and Applebloom. She tries to apologize, but Applebloom has decided that she'd rather adopt Applejack as her sister, to AJ's discomfort and Applebloom's alarm. Or, she suggests, maybe Applejack should be Rarity's sister so she could see what a good sister looks like. Sweetie and Applebloom leave, and Rarity turns to Applejack for advice. AJ points out that sisterhood requires a lot of giving as well as taking, and giving "lessons" or "reasonable demands" doesn't cut it. She manages to work in an apple metaphor, reasoning it takes both great apples and a great crust to make a delicious pie. (It's a stretch, but you get the idea.)

The next day Sweetie Bell is with Applejack and Applebloom at the Social. She wishes that she had someone to run the race with, and the other girls tell her that they've decided that she can be AJ's "sister for a day."

The race is called, and Sweetie Bell and Applejack line up at the start along with four other teams. AJ stumbles into the first mud pit, covering herself completely, but most of the obstacles are farm-themed and they breeze through the rest. They fall just short at the end, but Sweetie has had so much fun that she doesn't care. She embraces AJ and knocks her hat off, revealing... a unicorn horn? It turns out that Rarity had swapped places with AJ in the mudpit (and also that AJ can hold her breath a very long time.) Rarity tells Sweetie that, "We are apple pie!" Sweetie doesn't get it. Rarity promises she'll explain later, but first they need to celebrate. At the spa, of course.

Rarity and Sweetie Bell compose a letter to Celestia with Spike. They've learned that sisterhood is about compromises, even if it involves getting your hooves (an as yet undermined amount of) dirty.

Review: Well, this is a different episode. For the first time Twilight Sparkle doesn't show up at all. Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie are also MIA. Even Scootaloo is missing.

What we do get is a whole lot of Sweetie Bell and Rarity. We've only had glimpses of the familial relationships of the characters, even the Apple family, so far. The strained relationship between Sweetie and Rarity should be familiar to anyone with a sibling.

Rarity gets a lot of flack from fans for not living up to her Element, but as we see here she can be extremely generous. Her problem is that she's also self-absorbed and has problems identifying when she should be generous. Sometimes she just needs a smack in the snout to see it.

Sweetie Bell gets a turn in the spotlight, and to good effect. We've only really seen her as part of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and there she's often been portrayed as the dim one of the group. Here she may have a penchant for disaster, but she's intelligently trying to make sense of Rarity's somewhat contradictory rules. She also shows an independent streak, deciding that she'd be better off with another sister and then acting on it. Interestingly, we did not get a song, which was her only obvious talent previously.

Applejack and Applebloom have an important role here, and they really shine. Despite being a secondary character this is probably the best Applejack episode since Applebuck Season. Her and Applebloom's close relationship serve as contrast to Sweetie's and Rarity's. More importantly AJ breaks down exactly what Rarity is doing wrong for her. It's also interesting that Rarity bemoans AJ being so good and making her look so bad, suggesting a level of respect that she rarely shows.

Brony Notes: Derpy is barely present in this one, appearing a few times in the background of the Social, starting at about the 16:50 mark.

Fanon is going to collide with canon in an ongoing show, and since this one established family ties for background ponies, it was a doozy. Dinky Hooves (Derpy's daughter in fanon) gained a big sister. Carrot Top (their housemate in fanon) gained a younger one. The fandom has been trying to reconcile the two storylines, as in the above example anonymously posted to Ponibooru. A similar reconciliation has been going on now that Hasbro is releasing some of the background characters as toys and giving them official names.

Next episode airs... next week! Go figure.

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Church also reviews fan films for Republibot. You can contact him at church@republibot.com