I loved this episode. Since it's still early after the episode aired, here are some thoughts in spoiler tags.
Spoiler:
It has everything I could wish for. Nice animation, fun character interaction, some juicy plot bits and some fanservice for good measure. One of the things that stuck out in this episode is the good soundtrack this series has and how well it enhances each scene. Incidently, it also shows Kyoto Animation knows their anime classics. One of my favourite scenes was when Kyon started to pitch in the latter half of the episode. The background music that played during that part should be easily recognized by anyone who has seen the anime adaption of Adachi Mitsuru's baseball/romance classic "Touch" (If you don't know what I'm talking about, go watch it, it's very good and completely fansubbed). Another great piece of BGM was the track used during Kyon's and Itsuki's dialogue when they discussed the emergency situation, which resembled a gregorian chant and nicely created an ominous atmosphere. On the moe side of things, gotta love Mikuru's ear nibbling scene. Operation cheerleading and Haruhi's smile at the end weren't bad either.
I wasn't sure how well this episode's jump ahead in events would work when I first heard about it last week, but it worked well for me, even without having read the novels beforehand. The episode is fun and even though not all characters and mysteries have been established yet, it more than well enough made me want to keep following the series to see how everything will fit in. 10/10 from me.