The Problem · 6:28pm Apr 29th, 2016
So I had this whole big spiel planned out, but on second thought, I think I can condense this all to a much shorter list of bullet points.
-MLP, I have recently realized, is not the show I keep wanting it to be. To be brutally honest, it's pretty shallow.
-The characters do have some depth to them, but it's not as much as people claim, and they don't develop so much as their personality shifts depending on the writer and the season.
-The setting is vast but shallowly explored and inconsistent.
-There's no real direction. Sure, things change between seasons like Twilight becoming a princess and the castle appearing, but it's never actually going somewhere, it's just merchandise support.
-There's an overabundance of redemption plots, and EVERY SINGLE ONE of them has been rushed at best, an absolute disaster more often.
-Most notably Discord, who has become so much of a meme that he actively derails episodes he shows up in nowadays. The God of Chaos has fallen far since his debut appearance.
-There's nothing wrong with being merchandise-driven, btw, (after all, Bionicle is) but they set a high bar for themselves by handling it so subtly back in Season 1 that the new style of making the 'arc' of a season revolve around that feels lazy by comparison.
-I don't want to sound like one of those anti-Twilicorn reactionists, because I'm not, but now that we've had a couple of seasons to see what they would do with her, I really think that move was a major misstep and that she's gotten blander since getting the wings.
-The show is so lazy about continuity that when it does remember something from a previous episode, it merits a full-blown celebration!
-Don't get me wrong. I still enjoy the show, and I feel Season 5 has brought about a marked improvement in many aspects, but it has been severely stagnant for some time now, changing details without making any meaningful change to the status quo, aimless without an overarching plotline to tie things together, and with characters that are passable but not outstanding. The slice-of-life episodes, while much better than the two-parters by a long shot and still expand on the setting, fail to develop the characters much and usually revolve around pretty trivial conflicts.
-And the kicker is, it didn't have to be like this. Season 1 felt like the setup to a pretty great story, Season 2 felt like it could still take things in an interesting direction, but then everything went off the rails with Season 3 and it's not gone anywhere meaningful since.
-But yeah, I still enjoy the show - it's harmless fun, but nothing to read too deeply into anymore. Season 6 looks like it'll be fun.
This is why I get angry about things.
I am sorry you feel that way.
There's not a lot of depth in the base material, but it's not just shallow. It's wide. There are a lot of available avenues for picking up where the writers leave off and creating further depth.
It sounds like you want it to not be a kids' show, or at least to be an older kids' show
You'll find absolutely zero shows with the same target age demographic that hit the points you want or come as close to them as MLP does. I feel you on the show not living up to your hopes, but it will be what it always was: a show made by a toy company aimed at five year olds.
3905755 Eh, I probably made myself sound more disillusioned than I really am. Don't get me wrong, I feel these are some real issues with the show's setup/format and writing, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate it for what it is. Mainly, I just wish there was better attention paid to continuity.
3905801 Quite true, and as a fanfic writer, I really appreciate that. I just wish the show could take those avenues itself once in a while.
3905829 Well, my basis of comparison was Steven Universe, which I've recently gotten into, so maybe it's not a fair juxtaposition, but still.
3913151
SU is pretty phenomenal, and certainly is pushing the boundaries of what children's entertainment can do (in all the best ways), but to be fair that's also targeted towards older kids. It may only be a few years, but it's a huge difference when talking about children. Moving a few years in the opposite direction would leave us talking about Teletubies.
Of course, there's times when the show legitimately just drops the ball – I particularly feel you on the frustration of characters' personality changing based on who's writing them, and how horrible the writers are with redemption stories
3913238
Ah, good point.
Yeah, I wish there was less of that going on. (At least they're doing reasonably okay with Starlight, though)
3913287
Yeah, I think they do post-redemption characters pretty well (look at Sunset in Rainbow Rocks), it's just the actual redemption part that their bad at (again, Sunset, and her suddenly realizing friendship is a thing that exists at the end of EG1...)
3913306 Ooh, true.