Sugar Cube

Yeah, and there's a lot of references. Batman, Coco Chanel, Scooby Doo, Grumpy Cat... Writers know that target audience changed and try (sometimes maybe too much?) to make fans happy :3 To be honest, it's really amusing.

I think season 4 has definitely been very good. Meghan McCarthy wasn't kidding when she called this season "ambitious," It seems like every episode ends on some kind of cliffhanger, and I'm certain Rarity's rainbow spool of thread is her "key" to that box.

So far, so good. It has a different "feel" to it than the previous seasons. Their thinking seems to be farther outside the box than before but not so much that the original product is being diminished. But with that said, one of the things that makes Rarity Takes Manehattan the best episode of Season 4 so far is that it's truer to MLP's slice of life roots than the others.