YMMV / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S2 E3 "Lesson Zero"

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• Accidental Aesop:
  • Some teachers are a Reasonable Authority Figure and won't get mad just because you missed a deadline for an assignment.
  • There is such a thing as being too studious.
  • During the course of your studies, you need to take some time away from the "how" or the "what" of your education, and consider why you're learning it in the first place.
• Crosses the Line Twice: An Obsessively Organized-induced mental breakdown and descent into insanity, with the most over-the-top expressions, all on a magical talking purple unicorn, has never been so scary yet so hilarious.
• Fan Nickname: "Twilight Snapple" has been quite common since this episode.
• Growing the Beard: As great as season one was, some episodes suffered from the need to shoehorn Twilight into a major role so that she could write a letter at the end. After this episode, the writers had far more freedom for characters they could focus on. Also, Twilight's own character based Aesops were less defined than the others previously, being based mostly on her (obviously temporary) Fish out of Water status. This episode would develop her defining vice as The Finicky One, giving her a personality arc like the other ponies that would recur throughout later episodes.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Celestia's response to Twilight's actions becomes this after My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, where we learn the fate of Twilight's predecessor and how much it hurt Celestia, since it looked like Twilight was Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. This also explains why Celestia calmed down once it was clear Twilight regretted her actions.
  • The source of Twilight's anxiety this episode is her realizing that she hasn't sent a weekly friendship letter to Celestia, which to her means she's failed Celestia. The Crystal Empire two-parter in Season 3 shows that Twilight's worst fear is indeed failing Celestia.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Twilight's paranoia about not having a lesson to write about becomes significantly more ridiculous after "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000", where Applejack writes a letter to Celestia about how she DIDN'T learn a lesson.
  • One of the episode's two lessons is about taking the concerns of others seriously regardless of how trivial they seem. This lesson gets ignored in the season finale, resulting in the imperilment of Equestria itself.
• Jerkass Woobie: Twilight Sparkle's Obsessively Organized tendencies are upped to destructive levels in this episode, with her excessively badgering others (and later even trying to brainwash them) over an extremely trivial task. However given how much her neurotics have convinced her she will lose everything with just one screw up (to the point of having a nervous breakdown over it), you can't help but feel sorry for her, especially when it looks like it might actually come true.
• Les Yay: Twilight's interaction with Rainbow Dash◊ held the series' page image for Ho Yay for quite a while. Twilight looks into Dash's eyes while holding her face and saying this:
  "Oh, Rainbow Dash. You don't have to hide your feelings from me."
• Memetic Mutation: Twilight's breakdown; "HIIIIIIIII, GIIIIIIIIRLS!"
• Narm Charm: Twilight Sparkle's Sanity Slippage provides a lot of humor without clashing with how scary and dramatically it's played.
• Nightmare Fuel: While it's hilarious seeing Twilight descend into insanity, it is also very disturbing. She not only makes some very unsettling facial expressions, but you worry for the safety of her friends when she decides to resolve the problem using magic. Hell, this episode used to be the main image source for the main series Nightmare Fuel page and then became the image source for the Nightmare Fuel found in Season 2!
• Wangst: Played for Drama since the story and its consequences are the result of Twilight's overreacting to the unfounded prospect of being sent back to school by Celestia again. Also Played for Laughs since much of the episode's comedy is a result of it.

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