I think the reason it seems so rushed is that they only had 40 something minutes for that episode. I heard that Skin Deep was 18 minutes over the time limit so they had to cut out some scenes.
Yes I agree, the writers are challenged on every episode to pack a much as they can into 40 minutes of viewing time and that is the reason why I don’t believe they have “filler” episodes or even “filler” scenes. Every scene counts and every character counts for the stories they are telling.