In Which I Breathe Life Into This Account Once More

I saw Equestria Girls today.

It was pretty stinkin' good, so if they perform this well on season 4, I might just be able to forget about the teeny little bite-sizedIMMENSELY HUGE DISTASTE FOR THE SEASON THREE FINALE fiasco, and enjoy ponies despite (or in spite towards) this whole thing.

But why the crap did I even hate the season finale?

Here's my immense documentation on this reasoning (Of which I wrote soon after season three ended. It has been rewritten slightly.)...

To say that the season three finale of MLP:FIM, Magical Mystery Cure is a strong point of controversy amongst the brony community would be an understatement.
More accurately, it is an episode that has literally rent the fandom in twain, specifically between those who think this show is a Godsend to all bronies (a term I use knowing it carries weight, as a person who is pro-God, thank you very much), and those who think it destroyed the entire makeup as a show, and thus the whole thing is a pile of feces.
Excrement.
Poop.
Utter crap.
A huge load of s(self censor! :D). Call it what you will, I know I don't find that I fall on either end of those extremes, although I lean more to the side of "it ruined the show" than of "it revitalized the show".
Here's hoping I can put some sense into the griping and groaning that has been going on alongside the praise and glorification that is equal in it's number.

Folks, the fact of the matter is that this was not a perfect episode. Granted, you have to give the writers behind the show credit for cramming a somewhat tolerable season finale into a little under 30 minutes, but the show had already set some pretty high standards with it's previous episodes that this one simply did not make.
Twilicorn is the elephant in the room. However, this elephant seems content with waiting to be addressed last, so I shall leave it for now to evaluate the episode as a whole.
It is doubtless that the animation team with MLP:FIM has come a massively long way from it's first slightly awkward animation that comes with the territory of not knowing exactly what looks best for the art style. The lighting was dynamic and fit the mood flawlessly, and each camera angle seemed placed to maximum effect, absorbing the audience into the emotion it portrays instead of, say, how awkward the viewing angle looks for a particular scene, and why the heck it's so dark or so bright. I really have no comment here.
Of course, this is par for the course of MLP, as nobody I've had the pleasure of making a brief internet acquaintance of has ever had complaints regarding lighting and camera.
However, while absolutely impressive and definitely professional alongside fantastic effects, this seems to be the only thing that anyone can be, absolutely certain that it's fine.
The first flaw is in the musical style of the episode. Now, musicals are not inherently problematic as a whole, as some fantastic ones such as The Music Man, or according to some, Les Miserables (however you pronounce it). I've seen my fair share of good musicals myself.
But Magical Mystery Cure is missing two crucial elements in order to be a successful musical: The songs are too close together, and no single song was very memorable.
Seriously. Kudos to you if you can sing one of them on the spot when I ask you to do it.
Also, there are 7 of them! Seven songs, that is.
And for 30 minutes, there was barely any time for a character to catch their breath before they had to burst out in song once more.
I think the biggest pause might have been under two minutes. I recall that The Music Man had more dialogue than this. The fact that there was so little pause between songs happened to compromise the sense that could be made of the story.
Admittedly though, I am a bit biased against musicals. They are not a form of top-notch entertainment to me, as I would use a song to slow down and emphasize things that must be emphasized. This episode didn't seem as though it needed so many songs, and a typical 30-minute episode of MLP happens to have only one song in it. The fact that there are seven just seemed to make it so less was actually occurring in the show.
Yes, music is a huge part of the world's culture. Yes, most shows don't even try to make their own songs to complement the story. But there just comes a point when there's too much song and dance.

With that, I now jump on to the story, and subsequently, Twilicorn.
The story starts out with the long-time protagonist of the show as a whole, Twilight Sparkle, singing a song about how nothing will go wrong on that day.
This makes no sense in the context of the show, as anyone can plainly see that a problem of at least minor proportions can and will occur, and Twilight seems naive at this point for thinking nothing bad could happen. Twilight just doesn't strike me as a type of pony who expects a perfect day. Sure, she'd be optimistic, but she would also be expecting the possibility of a problem, remaining level-headed when it does arise so as to take it head on and snuff it out.
True, the levelheadedness thing isn't perfect on her track record, but you have to admit that she's pretty consistent with her capabilities of solving problems... Especially ones that are kinda small and not "destroy the world" types like this.
You see, this problem, with all of her friend's cutie-marks swapped around and changing their destinies for the worse seems to come with a solution just like everything else on the show. If nothing else, she'd at least be hopeful that she could switch her friends' cutie marks back into proper order just as she had accidentally switched them.
But that's not what she does, even after remembering that it's her fault. She instead goes back to mope in her house, requiring the encouragement of Spike to get her back on her hooves again.
Come on, Twilight. This came about from your experimentation with an old spell of Starswirl's that you found. If you could glean something out of it, surely you could figure out how to fix it?
Despite this very short display of utter despair, Twilight manages to fix up the cutie-mark catastrophe with the help of the elements of harmony and the art of friendly suggestion.
The spell itself isn't my big complaint here.
Why did the spell malfunction? I don't know. Magic has always been a vague source of great power in MLP, and we've always rolled with it.
Why was Twilight even experimenting anyway? Well, why would she want to give spike a mustache, or turn an apple into an orange? Again, I don't know, but we've always let that slide too.
These things I don't have a problem with, except for the fact that Twilight's experimentation with the spell is the basis of the episode, but I'll get to that later.
What I have a problem with is the fact that Starswirl's long lost spell, when finished, blows up Twilight and sends her into an ethereal realm, where Princess Celestia is waiting for her.
A bit... Sudden. ...And not explained. And traumatic to her friends.
In the ethereal realm of Not-Sure-Where-We-Are, Celestia sings too... *sigh* (Remember folks. I’m biased), and reveals vaguely that her destiny can now be fulfilled. This sends Twilight back from the sky, I guess, in a big “oo-shiny” of power, bearing a gorgeous set of... Wings.
Most importantly, without any explanation.
It was her destiny to have wings, was it? Cool. I'm fine with getting her wings. She could get along fine without them before, considering her proficiency in magic, so this doesn't change much-
What? Now she's crowned a princess?
Oh. Without very much detail on this either.
Must be her vague destiny too. At least her brother's happy. Not... Confused, or anything...
Hopefully, I've made a big enough point to tell you what I find to be the glaring flaw in this slightly-sub-par episode:

Not enough is EVER EXPLAINED!

...I beg your pardon. Feel free to sue for rudeness, or something. Anyway-
If the spell was important enough to make a whole episode out of it and to have Celestia give her the highest reward she could possibly give, then what was she studying it for? Did Celestia ask her to, as her final exam on friendship? Did Twilight simply announce that she was going to finish the spell, and Celestia decide that filling in a few words was worthy of crowning a new matriarch? If you're going to make a plot-point, make an explanation to go with it!
Furthermore, what does it mean to finish a spell that Starswirl could not? How little did he know about friendship in comparison to Twilight? Did he know nothing, or just less?
If he did know nothing about it, then in theory, Twilight could have finished it at the beginning of episode two of season one! Heck, Pinkie Pie could have certainly finished it herself, having "everypony as her friend" like she does!
Why the princess role, having said all this?! From what I can tell, she was a leader of three things up till now: Winter Wrap Up, the Golden Oaks Library, and the Elements of Harmony. Sure, she has some experience with overseeing a yearly clean-up and organizing the library, as well as leading an emergency disaster fix-up team such as the Elements of Harmony. But this isn't overseeing a multitude of affairs as I am certain Celestia must do as a matriarch... If I am even to understand Celestia's role as a princess at all.
And Twilight still doesn't seem like the best candidate for princesshood.
You've all seen Lesson Zero. You've all seen It's About Time. Considering how badly she snapped because she forgot a friendship letter, she'd crumble under a national crisis!
Lastly, Twilight the unicorn seems more appealing to me than Twilight the alicorn.
Allow me to explain with a rather generic example.
Suppose there is a man named... Gary.
Let's go with Gary.
Gary's a fairly well-to-do person with a loving family and a job with decent pay. Seems like a guy you could know, yes?
The one day, the leader of the corporation he's employed at walks up to Gary and promotes him to co-leader because Gary fixed his phone earlier. Suddenly, Gary is able to bathe in the amount of cash he makes in a day quite easily. His family moves into a huge mansion, and they eat caviar every night with 200x (may or may not be a realistic number) the cash to spare.
Now you cannot relate to this guy at all. You don't know any millionares, do you?
You don't? How about princesses? ...None of those either, huh?
I'd rest my case, but I have more to say still:
I like the idea of an ordinary unicorn who somewhat unofficially leads her group of friends in times of trouble, never once saying out right that they should follow her because she is the leader. I like the idea of an ordinary unicorn with a talent for magic, of whom lives in a library as Ponyville's resident book-worm, and who has a charming sort of naivete towards the workings of friendship...
Something that, if we're all honest, we ourselves never stop learning about.
What I don't like is the idea of another extraordinary alicorn who knows all that she needs to know about being the perfect friend, an unrealistic and unlikely knowledge, and rules alongside her mentor and her mentor's sister as... What seems to be a third wheel on a bicycle.
Yes. What does she do anyway?

In the end of all this, I will now sumarize as so:
Twilight messes with a spell from who knows where for who knows what reason.
This spell has extreme significance to the plot for I-don't-know-why, and it changes around the cutie-marks of her friends for vague reasons.
Twilight fixes this problem. Dandy. Yes.
No. I'm quite serious here. I like seeing problems fixed.
Twilight completes the spell with her new understanding gained from... 10 or so minutes of screentime, and blows up because it fires off suddenly... Why did it do that? Doesn't it just state a truth about friendship? No explosives implied, right?
Celestia transforms Twilight into an alicorn princess for I-have-no-idea, and crowns her for equally obscure reasons with no reason offered.
And nopony is confused by any of this.

This whole episode is a big mess of "WHY?", and not nearly enough "because" is added in to fight it off.

Finally, before any one of you get mad at me yet, let me tell you that I have no problem with the concept of alicorn Twilight.
There are plenty of good fanfics out there which explore what would happen if Twilight got wings. They ask, how did she get them? Why? What does Equestria think of this? What about the princesses? Her friends? They ask this and more, and explore these things above and beyond what the surface of these questions expect of them.
The show's use of alicorn Twilight, as it stands, only answers a couple of these, and never completely.
I don't know about you, but I like complete answers to questions, or at the very least, the promise that they are going to come. The episode doesn't make such promises, thus why I don't like it.

Of course, since writing this deduction of the episode in question, Equestria girls somehow managed to juice back the intrinsic charm the show had from it's beginning for me.

...And it seems to imply that Twilight's position is more as an assistant/partner to the other two princesses than as a ruler.
I can dig that.

We'll see though.

I think I might write some more in my fanfics, now... But I'm not making any promises until season four, episode 1 has aired!