Oh, I know Hasbro has such fears, but I think they're both underestimating themselves and their ability to produce such an episode, and their intended demographic audience's ability to understand and relate, and as a result, they're inadvertently stifling the show's full potential. What especially bugs me about it isn't even so much the emotionally charged episodes, it's that Hasbro has often been stuck with the mentality that it can only appeal to a very narrow age group of little girls even when the show's obviously grown far beyond that. I'm not saying they should pander to the bronies, but they should acknowledge the fact that their demographic audience is more diverse than they pretend.But yes, perhaps they are testing the waters with this...Hasbro and the rest of the show's crew do seem to be gradually broadening the show's scope, perhaps they're starting to realize where else they could take the show, and are getting daring enough to try it, at last. Which was another reason why I liked this episode. I was really starting to believe they were never going to do anything even close, and then they finally did.Now we just need an episode explaining what the heck the deal is with Scootaloo and her parents, if she even has any (they did seem to imply recently that they aren't around in her life...but lot less clearly than what they implied with AJ's parents). If we can get something on that, even if its done through the same "cloak and dagger" effect as this episode, I'd be satisfied enough with that, probably.