My Thoughts on Season 7 (Part 1)

So, I finished watching Shadow Play a few days ago, and yes, I know I've been horribly behind. Anyway, I though I'd share my thoughts on the season as a whole and each episode, and point out my favorites and least favorites and all that stuff.

The Decline
There are two reasons that it took me so long to finish watching the season. The first is that I'm starting to get bored of the show. At 170 episodes, it's one of the shows I've seen the most unique episodes of. I'd guess number 3, behind the Simpsons and Spongebob, and I don't have exact numbers on either of those shows. It happens to all shows that I watch for this long.
But the show is also getting worse. The cycle of My Little Pony was finding it's roots (Season 1), staying in it's roots and making quality from the roots (Seasons 2, 3), writers not wanting the show to get stale so they do weird stuff (Season 4), and the running out of ideas (Seasons 5+). This isn't a unique cycle. In face, Daria is the show I normally associate this cycle with, except I think that show spend less time finding its roots.
But I want to talk about the "running out of ideas" phase. It isn't that there are no good ideas, or that every episode is bad, just that more episodes are starting to feel like filler, or ambitionless. This wasn't a problem at first. Season 5 is one of my favorite seasons. Because the bad episodes were ambitionless, their worst crime was being somewhat boring, but they normally could squeeze out some life somewhere in the episode, and the good episodes were still amazing. But it's been getting worse.
Most of season 7 feels content to be a normal kids show. Where season 2 had Sweet and Elite, a subversion of the normal 2 dates to the prom storyline that made me earn a lot of respect for the show and is the reason I started watching in the first place, season 7 has Triple Threat, which plays out the same tired old tropes completely straight. The show is now falling into cliche's that it used to avoid, and it's sad to see. The quantity of filler is larger than it was in season 5, and the good episodes of season 7 don't compare to any other season, as most of them have a glaring issue that makes it hard for me to like the episode.
I don't really have a conclusion to this, but this is how I've been feeling about the show, and I have a hard time imagining that season 8 is going to be much better. I'm hoping for a surprise, but my expectations are low.

Starlight Glimmer
So a hot topic this season has been Starlight Glimmer. I was unsure at first, because I thought she was a bad villain and a show adding a new character to the main cast is almost never a good sign, but she's grown on me.
The qualities I like about Glimmer are somewhat odd. I like that she used to humble brag about how good at magic she is. (Hey guys, remember when I was strong enough to brainwash an entire village. Man, that was awesome!) I like that she's sarcastic. I like watching her approach to problem solving. While most people seem to think her way to solve problems is just thinking of terrible ideas, I noticed a pattern to them. She's really good at the "what" but not with the "why." She looks for the most face level solution, and ignores why it's a bad idea because to her it should get the job done. For example, in "Every Little Thing She Does," she was too focused on doing the friendship activities and forgot that the point of doing the activities is to bond with the other ponies. While most people seemed to hate this episode, I though it was hilarious, and I still enjoy any of Starlight's plans that follow this line of reasoning, that being most of them besides "To Change a Changling."
That said, most of her good traits only come out when she's a lead character, and instead when she's a supporting character she's basically Spike. It's a waste really, and it's partially because the cast is super bloated at this point.

Did You Know Friends Can Be Different?
This moral was used at least 3 times this season at it got really old. Also, I'm pretty sure this was the moral of the first episode of the show.
Mostly, this was the most egregious example of how lazy the show currently feels.

Part 2 will talk about individual episodes and will be up soon.