All the king’s horses and all the king’s men… are not needed here, Sarasa can get her limiter put together again.
In all honesty, while very little happens this episode (Sarasa, because of her broken limiter artifact, sends her mentor a note. She accidentally sends the limiter and blows out the teleport circle too, but Mentor got everything and comes around to help her) it might be one of the ones that has the most meat, because we dig in to how Sarasa got where she is and spend some time with her mentor introspecting.
A good deal of this is an extended flashback to when Sarasa first tried to get a job at her future mentor’s shop. She proved herself to be highly capable with the theory, but had never done practical before. When she tries, her excessive magic energy (said, out of her earshot, to be truly aberrant) causes a reaction to run wild in a dangerous way. Mentor, expecting that, warns Sarasa that controlling her power will be a trial and gives her the job, an apprenticeship, and the limiter medallion to help her keep things under control.
The metaphor for why unlimited Sarasa is so… explosive is also a good one, mentioning how any child could pour from a bottle without spilling, but even an adult would struggle to do so from a keg, suggesting that the management of Sarasa’s power is something similar.
And, in the present, she hasn’t managed – as much as she may work to do ordinary alchemy without her talisman, it backfires and bursts because her magic runs wild. This really does seem to bring her to a very low state, as she realizes how far she has yet to go.
On the mentor’s side, we actually get a good conversation between her and her clerk where she mentions how she never really cared to find an apprentice, but now is thankful for having been pushed into the opportunity. It’s honestly sweet and does more character building than just cute girls doing cute things.
And I know cute girls doing cute things is still the name of the show. It’s still harmless fun. But I will give credit where it’s do and say that this episode at least tried to be a wee bit more than that, which is much appreciated.