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This episode I know is/was slightly controversial but I have never understood why... well, actually I do. I think there can be cases made from it in different perspectives but I never had a strong problem with it myself.
What I liked about this episode. Apple Bloom's inquisitive nature and independence almost feel like a different character from later, though, I don't think they necessarily contradict. She was a little girl obsessed with a goal with cutie marks and thus she got a fixation over the more natural logic here. I also liked Pinkie Pie and the evil enchantress song, and how it kept showing up, it was catchy! Twilight Sparkle was mostly a good foil/voice of reason and I liked how she did get (relatively) rationally persuaded to the position that Zecora had placed the curse on them.
What I am mixed on: The moral in my mind I think gets a little too much hate when filtered through the lens of our contemporary culture. I athink I am overall okay with Zecora being strange and mysterious while that not equaling evil even if I do think a case can be made that the ponies had rational reason to fear her. They clearly aren't xenophobic, just scared of things unknown, and Zecora is very strange and from a forest that is a hostile place associated with bad things to them. On rewatch I might have a problem with Zecora being an analog from black/African culture of some sort.I do think there is problems though if you map human races onto pony/other races/cultures too directly. I can see where someone would for multiple reasons. Probably why we never got to see much of anything related to Zebras in the show (and the horrible contemporary political portrayal in the comics) I still think what was set up was something that could've been cool in a alternative universes where politics were less... high tension. It might have been better without as direct a racial subtext or slightly tweaked in some ways.
Overall though, I don't have any strong personal issues with this episode and still enjoyed it. 7.5/10
Odds and ends:
It is interesting that Twilight Sparkle is so dismissive of curses. I don't find this irrational unto itself. Magic to her is still a science and such a science that can be tested and examined. I could see how a curse violates a world of where magic proprieties are pretty well known. Maybe magic needs energy to sustain and function and thus, a curse in the traditional can't exist (there I go trying to rationalize the magic here). It only feels a tiny bit weird with Twilight being the crazy pony whole believed in the Mare in the Moon!
Poison Joke... I guess is not a curse? Curses are confirmed later to exist in the show but I still wonder what this distinction is.
Something that MAY just be me, the animation seemed smoother and less choppy. Like they had gotten a bit more of their act together compared to earlier episodes. I wouldn't be able and am too tired to point out exactly why.
I had completely forgotten tiny Applejack using Rainbow Dash as a steed. Got some laughs and also made me wonder if AJ could repeat that feat with a much larger creature.
Fun fact 1: I had a copy of this episode on an old cellphone. It was over 10 years old. I wanted to use it for viewing/screencaps but it was oddly cropped. My best guess is that is from being an early YT rip that was cropped to avoid copyright (at the time that could sort of work).
Fun fact 2: I love Pinkie's song here, really I state again. Have an 8 bit version from the legendary RC88 that I thought was very well done for how short and tiny of a song it was (I guess it kind of sound slike Pokemon).