I actually got into most of Season 3, but I won't do my thoughts all at once.
The Last Roundup is iffy. I can see Applejack being prideful enough to act the way she does in this episode, but she takes it to a ridiculous extreme that I would expect more out of Rainbow Dash, refusing to tell her friends after they hunt her down until after a comical chase sequence. Honestly, though, given her letter at the start, I would expect at least one of her friends to have clued in on why she was staying away from Ponyville, it was that obvious. Of course, part of it is Mayor Mare's fault, given it seems that she decided that AJ was going to contribute her winnings to fixing Town Hall (at least, the way she words her thanking AJ)? The Pegasus Formerly Known as Derpy also speaks for the first time in this episode, a major step-up from her cute poking-head-out-the-curtain act in Hearth's Warming Eve, and the initial voice-acting and lines caused a controversy. I have to actually agree that the original voicing was over-the-top listening to it (that, and the redone voice-acting is soooooooo cute!) Also, when Pinkie Pie talks about candy, it's barely noticeable but Big Macintosh is licking his lips. Big Mac for best stallion.
The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000. This episode was so, so good, with a terrific musical sequence, and then they blew the ending. There was no real reconciliation of traditional ways and modern techniques, no attempt at an Aesop (I wonder if the writer realised this and lampshaded it with Applejack's letter to Celestia), nothing. The Flim Flam Brothers had a perfectly good machine that was far faster than the Sweet Apple Acres family, they just pushed it too hard at the end to stay ahead and reduced quality, and it could have been a combined lesson learned.
Read It and Weep. Now this is like The Last Roundup as far as pride goes, and it's over a pony who I an actually see as going to extreme actions over her pride. I can see why Rainbow Dash doesn't like reading, though, since she apparently took like two or three days, and stayed up all night at least once to read through a single adventure novel, and didn't finish it! The average person can read something like 250-300 words a minute, and I know I can sustain 500-600 words a minute reading pulp fiction (the upper limit for most prolific readers), so even a big book shouldn't have taken more than a little over a day of solid reading. The Solid Snake-esque sequence, however, is amazing, and the whole grainy filter they put on the Daring Doo scenes is ingenious.
Hearts and Hooves Day. It took a little for me to warm up to the Cutie Mark Crusaders, but their antics are so adorable it's hard not to like 'em. It also features Big Macintosh who even though he's mainly in the background I already have in my head as Best (Male) Pony with all his "Eeyup"s and "Ee-nope"s and the fact that in the fourth episode of Season 1, the first Applejack-centric one, AJ doesn't even get half the orchard done before the ending and she's downright tuckered, meaning that Big Mac must be doing most of that work on an annual basis. What a beast! But anyways, the CMC have another nice song, then they get into silly filly antics all episode long, and Twilight just decides to give them a book right after talking about a love potion. The only thing that keeps Twilight so far from being an outright complete Sue is her neurosis and holding the idiot ball at times like this.
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