Finally finished season 4... · 2:31am Dec 21st, 2014
The fourth season of FiM brought a lot of new things to the series, and now that I've finally finished it (I've been holding off from watching the last 2 episodes for quite a while)... and I'm now sorta confused at some of the story choices that were made.
So, if you're like me and have been procrastinating watching the fourth season, you might not want to continue reading... there's likely definitely going to be some spoiler talk.
SPOILERSSSSSS
1) The Castle of the Two Sisters
Hasbro: "We need another castle to sell as a play set."
MLP writing staff: "No prooooooblem! We've got just the place!"
Literrally, this castle is just here because for whatever reason there needed to be another castle. The argument is no, there had to be a spot for Luna and Celestia to have their showdown, but let me point out the flaws in that:
Luna turns into Nightmare Moon (awesome), fights her sister (also awesome) and is taken care of rather quickly (not awesome). She got absolutely no time to harm, scare or even intimidate a single other pony. So where did the Nightmare Night holiday come from? Where did the Mare in the Moon tale come from? NOPONY besides Princess Celestia would've heard of or had any reason to fear Nightmare Moon.
This is why the Castle of the Two Sisters was a bad location for this. For whatever reason, this castle is stuck in the middle of the woods... which, bad location aside, also from what's shown has no township - there's just 2 princesses in the woods ruling over a bunch of trees. The only practical thing this explains is why Luna went crazy.
2) Refurbishment of The Castle of the Two Sisters
So, okay, I thought. They'll just use this place as a way to give Twilight her own place to rule from. Its reason (Hasbro) for being there isn't the best, but neither is the reason (also Hasbro) for Twilight being a princess in the first place. So, /shrug, why not! But what happened to that plan? A few episodes are spent exploring and showing how it's slowly getting cleaned up... only for the remains of her library to get changed into her own castle-thing. It was almost like the tree of harmony said no, this location sucks. You'll just be ruling over trees...
This makes me wonder - at some point, did Celestia get a similar box? If so, was the result of it being opened Canterlot castle?
3) Tree of Harmony
Don't get me wrong, I think the concept of the tree of harmony was actually very cool, especially in a lore sense. But it's increeeedibly weird how it was used. The fount for all of pony harmony resides in a cave, which in season 1 apparently had ruins placed above it... then in season 4 those ruins became a castle. But.... there's a huge thing missing here. Why in the world would Celestia abandon both the castle and pretty much the most important tree in the world to go build Canterlot? Not to mention... she left the elements here. Frozen in stone. Just because.
More beauty than brains? 
3) The randomness of the episode tone
Look, we all know the foundation of MLP is that it's meant for little girls. But, aside from its title, FiM has never really resonated that fact... That is, until I saw the Breezies. Watching that episode was the first time I questioned whether I should be watching this show. I was actually pretty worried it would continue in that fashion, and if the following episode had been similar I honestly would've probably been done with MLP.
But you know, looking back, I suppose all in all that would've been alright. If the show had been refocused towards its original target demographic, that's fine. (I'd finally stop putting it off and go watch Korra.) But what I found shocking is you go from an episode so sickeningly sugar-coated sweet to how this season ended....
Ahh yes, the ending. Come on, there's no denying it - the finale episodes were borderline Ponyball Z. The action was great, the tone was dark, and hell... I couldn't help but wonder if at some point Tirek would stop midfight to say Equestria would only last 5 more minutes. To top it off, the tree of harmony ended up giving the mane 6 the ability to go into a punk rock version of SSj1. It was glorious... for, well, for what it was. But it was a night and day difference from what came earlier.
4) The music
You know, this is something I'm not really all that picky about normally... but the reason I am here is because every season prior to this one has had a couple songs that really stuck with me. Season 4 had a bunch of random music, but aside from the snippet of Dash's birthday song, nothing ever stood out.
This isn't to say the music was bad (though a couple pieces were borderline)... but most of it was pretty flat, which is a bummer considering this is the same show that has songs like This Day Aria.
Overall...
I think it was a pretty good season, the biggest thing being it was a huge step up from season 3. Still though, if I were to score it, I'd likely only give it a 6 or 7/10. The highlights being it brought in Maud Pie (probably one of the most memorable and funny characters they've added in a long time), created some interesting lore and an impressive new villain. Buuuut... there were too many just okay episodes and I honestly feel it dropped the ball pretty badly on Luna's downfall. Oh, and the Breezies. *shiver*
