An Autopsy of Season 8 · 6:41pm Aug 29th, 2018
I won't mince words - Season 8 has been the worst season of MLP so far. A lot of the reasons why relate directly to the Student Six and the School of Friendship, but really, the causes can be traced back to my old "G4.5" post where I discuss how the writing staff changed massively after Season 5 and the show's quality began to slip. Season 8 is the culmination of all the problems that have been building up over Season 6 and 7, and they came to a head here.
Come with me down the rabbit whole as we examine why. Grab a drink, this is gonna get long.
The Fanfic Community Runs The Show
In my mentioned G4.5 post, I talk about how the show's massive changeover in writers after Season 5 is to look at for the shift in quality. Not that pony got bad (at first), and not that these writers haven't done some great episodes (they absolutely have). But the writers changed and the show changed with them. I once offered the comparison that it's like turning over a fanfic you were writing to a friend. Your friend is a great writer in his own way, he's followed the fic since you began it, helped pre-read it even, and he has story notes on how you planned to continue it. But he will not write the story the same way you did. The style, the tone, the characterization and continuity, will shift a little, even if not deliberate. It's no fault of his and it's not that he's doing a bad job, but he will do a different story than the one you had.
This is a surprisingly apt metaphor for the show these days than I intended or realized. Simply put - the show is being written by fanfic writers. How many episodes seem like "sequel" episodes to episodes from like, Season 3 or Season 2? How many episodes regress characterization several seasons to work? How many episodes seem like comedy one-shots that you read/watch, laugh at a bit, and then never think of it again? Heck, how many episodes have very thin plots and barely sustain their run time, much like a fanfic that has one core idea it was to talk about and stretches itself out?
A lot of these episodes are basically fanfics that have been put to animation like the changeling reformation, referencing episodes from far in the past like Gauntlet of Fire or 28 Pranks Later, bringing back characters we haven't seen in several seasons like Iron Will or Lightning Dust, or giving us stories we've wanted for years like the Apple parents or Spike's wings. Take that episode, for example, Molt Down. A thoroughly boring episodes with not much to offer but a couple jokes and lore on how dragons grow their wings. It's a fanfic premise that the author had the idea and backstory for, but didn't know how to turn it into a proper one-shot, or in this case, an episode. I could make similar comparisons for Discordant Harmony, Applejack's Day Off, and Secrets and Pies.
I was to repeat - the show still has amazing episodes, even Season 8 had great ones. But a lot of these episodes just don't feel like classic pony, they feel inauthentic, they feel like someone else is writing them, because that is exactly what's happened. Especially plot points like the changelings being redeemed, the School of Friendship itself, Spike's wings and meeting his father, or Rainbow Dash finally joining the Wonderbolts, feel like fanfic storylines, because they are fanfic storylines, I pitched "Twilight Academy" as a G4.5 show!
But the sense that the show has become a fanfic about itself is excerbated by a deficiency in the writing staff as a whole.
We Don't Know What To Do With Our Characters
Congratulations, Rainbow Dash, you've become a full-fledged Wonderbolt!... now what? What great episodes has this given us? What ideas has it allowed? Not a one. Aside from paying lipservice to the continuity that Rainbow is a full member now, her being part of the Wonderbolts has gone nowhere. There are ideas here - Rainbow goes on tour with them seeing new places, she has to lead the troupe in show when Spitfire is injured, she's placed in charge of training new recruits, she and Scootaloo have a talk about the "I can't fly" thing, which The Washouts actually did, thankfully. The show has no interest in doing any storylines about Rainbow actually being a Wonderbolt.
Twilight took Starlight Glimmer as a pupil and then she graduated so that gave Twi something to do for Season 6. Season 7, not so lucky, she spent the season sitting on her flank sharing her episodes with Flurry Heart and her parents, or visiting Starlight as a music box, or making the friendship journal into a book. In Seasons 4 and 5, Twilight did have some episodes relating to her duties as a Princess in some manner - Trade Ya, Equestria Games, Princess Spike, and the entirety of the Season 4 premiere and finale, and by extention the entire Castle of Harmony plot for the first few episodes of Season 5. Twilight's role as a Princess was central to multiple episodes and factored into story arcs like the Tree of Harmony and the Cutie Map. Whatever you may say about her characterization, the story at least had something to say about Twilicorn when it became a thing.
I'm sure you see what I'm getting at - the writing team doesn't know what to do with the cast anymore. Major story and character arcs for them are being completed and that's that, we wash our hands of it. When was the last time we actually saw Applejack working the farm, or Pinkie working at Sugarcube Corner? Rarity has opened another boutique and we occasionally get something happening there, but the Canterlot Boutique has been drawn into the aether with only Sassy surviving as a mute.
This is why the supporting cast are so much more interesting now - the writers have stories to tell about them and obviously want to do so. We could bust out plenty of episodes on Ember, either her duties as Dragon Lord, her visiting the cast for something, or her helping or needing help for something. Same with Thorax, Sunburst, Trixie, and of course Starlight. The supporting cast of MLP is the real main cast now, because they have actual stories to tell and have told about them. The Mane Six still do, but the writers either can't think of those stories or don't want to explore them. This is another "the show is a fanfic" thing now, that the writers obviously have an easier time thinking up stories for the background characters than the main ones, like a writer who just quietly leaves Fluttershy out of a story because he has nothing for her to do in it.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, a solution to this problem had already been given in Season 5.
Cracks Appear
The Cutie Map was a bad idea. Fact. But it was not offensively or intrusively bad. By its nature, in a metatextual sens the Map is a cop-out, a shortcut when you can't think of a better idea. "I have a great episode idea where Rainbow and Pinkie go to Griffonstone, meet Gilda, and have an adventure!" "Why would they go to Griffonstone?" "Uh... hm. Oh, I know, the map sends them there!"
The Cutie Map is a way for the writers to get plots moving without trying to think of a genuine reason for them to move on their own. Why would these specific characters go to this location and do this thing? The Map told them to. The Map takes the formulaic nature of pony and strips it bare for all to see - "crisis is happening here, these characters can solve it, go solve it, mission accomplished, time to come home".
Increasingly as the show has continued, what constitutes a "friendship problem" has gotten wider and wider. The Map "summoned" Spike, who was in the same damn room as it, because it didn't like how he was treating Thorax and Ember. It summoned Sunburst and Starlight to reconcile with their parents. It summoned the CMC to help that hippogriff figure out which culture he wanted to belong to, which is definitely not a friendship problem no matter how you stretch the definition.
There is no organic storytelling in the map episodes of the characters going somewhere and finding a problem they can help, they are told where to go. They have to do some investigating to figure out the problem, but they do and zero in on it. Including the map robs characters of agency and independence, they are going on adventures because they are told to. We could have the CMC accompany Twilight to Mt. Aris because he needs the permission slip signed and they just wanna come and see the hippogriffs, and get involved of their own accord. But we can't do that. We have to make it a problem to be solved, abstracting episodes down to an obvious three-act structure with clear inciting incident, rising action, and falling action - pony is summoned by map, pony identifies problem, pony solves problem.
And then there's the Season 7 finale, where out of nowhere the map sends the group coordinates to the artifacts they need. We could have the group just research some more, maybe cross-reference old legends with maps to find the Pillar relics, or we can skip all that with a Deus Ex Mapina (I'm copyrighting that term).
Now, I say the Map was a bad idea, but not an offensive or intrusive one, because in spite of the problems with it as a plot device, the Map never dominates a plot. Map episodes are never about the Map itself, but the adventure it sends the group on. The Parent Map was a great episode, as was A Royal Problem, Triple Threat, and Lost Treasure of Griffonstone, and other map episodes have been decent. The Map only gets plots moving but then they fail or succeed on the merits of the story they have to tell. Putting aside episodes the Map did not need to be a part of, like Triple Threat and The Parent Map, those episodes would still be solid.
But this does hint to a darker side of having the Map around - as I said, it's a way to make the ponies go on adventures rather than let them happen organically. "Um, the map summons, er, Applejack and Fluttershy, to, uh, visit the zebra lands, for... agriculture nature stuff!" Wanna write Twilight and Fluttershy having an adventure together but have no good ideas? Bring the Map in and you can tack on any location and culture and race you want, and you don't have to link it to those two ponies in any meaningful way, because the Map makes it happen. In that sense, it gives the cast something to do when they have nothing to do otherwise. It's a way for the writers to come up with episodes for the Mane Six when they have nothing else.
The Cutie Map is a direct result of difficulty in thinking of things to do with the Mane Six, a plot device that lets them assign them tasks directly. Whether intentional or not, that's how it increasingly has been used. But it did not dominate the episodes or the setting, it was just an occasional thing a writer could use when they needed to.
Unfortunately, the spiritual successor to the Map was not as subtle, much more prominent, and handled much worse.
The School of Pointlessness
I did not want Season 8 to be bad. When I read the teaser blurbs and saw the trailers, I was cautiously optimistic. The writers had demonstrated with Twilicorn, the Castle, and Starlight, that they can shake up the status quo and make it work with new, interesting stories. So I went into Season 8 hopeful they would do it again.
They did not.
Let's run down the episode list for the season:
School Daze Part 1 and 2
Maud Couple
Fake It Til You Make It
Grannies Gone Wild
Surf and/or Turf
Horse Play
The Parent Map
Non-Compete Clause
Break Up Break Down
Molt Down
Marks for Effort
The Mean 6
Matter of Principals
Hearth's Warming Club
Friendship University
End in Friend
Yakity Sax
Road to Friendship
The Washouts
Rockhoof and a Hard Place
What Lies Beneath
Sounds of Silence
Father Knows Beast
School Raze Part 1 and 2
Bolded entries are episodes that prominently feature the School or the Student Six in its plot, italics are episodes that feature them in a minor way, like Horse Play, which didn't need to have the play be for the school but it was, or Molt Down where Ember and Spike's tour were part of the episode. Aside from the season premiere and finale, we got 7 School-centric episodes. And what of them?
Non-Compete Clause was one of the worst episodes of the franchise. Marks for Effort was just kinda meh. Matter of Principals sucked. Friendship University sucked. Rockhoof and a Hard Place was lame. Hearth's Warming Club and What Lies Beneath were great episodes, and I'll talk more about them in the next section.
What I'm getting at here is that the writers introduced the School of Friendship, a massive change to the status quo, arguably bigger than any before - it's a new setting, new supporting cast, and the Mane Six have new jobs. It was a big shake-up... and they had no good ideas for what to do with it afterward. Of the 7 School episodes, only two really actually had a look at how the Mane Six run things here, and they were Non-Compete Clause and Matter of Principals. We don't much discuss what the School actually teaches, far as we are shown it's a combination of practical subjects and friendship-building exercises, which just makes me ask what the School of Friendship does that's different from other schools.
I am honestly surprised by how little was actually done with the School. There are plenty of plotlines you could do here. One of the Mane Six is having problems thinking of lesson plans. One of the students is failing and they try to help them. One of them is sick and has to cover classes they know nothing about. Conflicts between their own jobs and the school, like the Wonderbolts going on tour the same week Rainbow's classes are supposed to review for a big test. Remember how in A Matter of Principals we saw Starlight hire substitute teachers, that could be an episode all by itself, the Mane Six look at expanding the staff and call in other ponies we could see try their hoof at teaching.
So this massive change to the show yielded little of substance. But it did yield a whole lot of plot holes and logical hiccups the show kindly asked us not to think about.
Do the Mane Six still do their day jobs while running the school? It seems so, so this means we have the cast juggling two full-time careers at once, and somehow still having to find time to go on adventures. The School features more an obstacle to episodes than it does as story opportunities for episodes; "I want to be in this episode, but I need someone to cover my classes!" or "I can't be in this episode, I have classes to teach!" And then there are episodes where those issues aren't brought up at all, like how Rarity and Twilight can just up and go to Las Pegasus no problem in "Friendship University", but Twilight was too busy to watch the Manehattan boutique in "Fake It Til You Make It".
The Mane Six have no idea how to teach and admit so themselves, and we indeed see, exactly as Neighsay worried, they have to leave for adventures all the time and let's just not think about what happened with the classes they would have taught that day. Remember episodes like "Testing Testing 1 2 3" and "Top Bolt" where Rainbow is a terrible student? Yeah she's a teacher now. I like to think Rarity's efforts to focus her classes on sewing is her making her students into a sweatshop to help her manage her workload while she otherwise has her hooves full teaching a class and helping run three clothing stores in three different cities. Do you even wanna think about what kind of classes Pinkie would teach? I'd like to say baking but more likely it just involves a lot of sugar and confetti.
And yet, there is an easy solution to all these problems - the Mane Six never had to be teachers, and there never had to be a School. Ignoring Twilight's thought processes in the decision to open the School, Twilight becoming a teacher is a great and logical progression of her character arc, she's very studious, and has been a teacher on past occasions. We could have had the "School of Friendship" just be a single room in Twilight's castle where she teaches classes to students, and occasionally she asks the Mane Six to pitch in for a lesson plan or to cover her while she's busy elsewhere. This would solve so many problems and work much better for it. But unfortunately that's not what we got. We got the School, and nothing of substance came of it.
The only good episodes focusing on the School didn't really focus on the School, but on the Student Six. But they had a whole host of other problems with them.
Manifest Destiny Equestria
The show's depictions of other races has always been very simple, which isn't too much of a problem. We've only seen the dragons for two episodes and the second greatly expanded on their culture and traditions, which was good. We saw the griffons for one episode, not counting Gabby, and it was great. We've seen the yaks for a few episodes and, annoying characterization aside, the depictions of their culture is fine. The changelings have no culture and are growing on from scratch, that's understandable. The hippogriffs got an episode that showed some of their culture, and it was good. The point is that other races don't tend to be examined in-depth in My Little Pony, usually just an episode or two. And this is not a problem. The problem is that these oversimplified glimpses into those races are the backbone of the School of Friendship's entire reason for existing.
Let's be honest - the School of Friendship is a racist concept. No nice way to say it. "Other races in Equestria don't hold the same values as we ponies do. We need to open a school and invite members of those races to live among us so we can teach them our ways!" The School of Friendship has many uncomfortable parallels to the indoctrination of foreign races into Western culture via forcibly enrolling them in the education system. Obviously the School of Friendship is nowhere near as bad since other races are not forced to take part and we see they're treated well, but the undertones of racism are still there. The School of Friendship's entire reason for existing is because other races don't have the same values as the ponies and Twilight wants to teach them better.
And that leads us into the Student Six, who had a simple problem going into things. The dragons, the yaks, and the griffons, are dicks as a rule. This has been established, and it's why the School exists. So for the Student Six to make sense, they have to be the representation of their race. Smolder has to be a jerk like a typical dragon, or else she would have no reason to be here, same with Gallus and Yona. Ocellus and Silverstream make no sense being at this school, they're repeatedly shown to be perfectly friendly and nice. But that goes into a second problem, because the Student Six can't be anything other than the representation of their race, and that's all they're meant to be.
Who is Smolder? Seriously, who is she? Is she Ember's sister, cousin, niece, daughter? Or is she just some random dragon that Ember decided "hey, go to this school." Why was Smolder chosen to attend the School? Same with Gallus, Yona, and Ocellus. At least they tell us Silverstream is Novo's niece, but I laugh at the idea of Silverstream because it is so obvious she's just supposed to be Skystar but the staff either didn't want to recast her VA or wouldn't pay the celebrity VA from the movie. Smolder has no purpose in the Student Six except to be "the Dragon", as Gallus is "the Griffon", Yona is "the Yak", and Sandbar is "the Pony". Oh geez was Sandbar a waste of animation, I'm pretty sure a lot of the writers plain forgot he exists and never wrote anything for him to do, and then the animators remembered the were a pony among the Student Six and added him during animation.
This is why I referred to them as "The Tokens" for most of the season, because their entire identity was their race and the fact they represented the six major races together, and had no character otherwise. We have no reason to care about these characters because they are just names and faces shoved at us in the season premiere. But that's fine, the premiere had a lot of story to juggle, I'm sure the season will take the time to explore and develop the Six, both as a group and as individuals, so they can win us over and get us interested in them.
Two. Episodes. We had two whole episodes that actually centered on the Student Six. And ya know what, they were some of the best episodes of the season, seriously! I loved "What Lies Beneath" and wish it had come much earlier in the season. We needed like, four or five more episodes like this, give the Student Six screentime to grow on us and make us like them, show some individuality and depth. If we actually had more episodes like What Lies Beneath, I'd probably really like the Student Six, or at least would accept them more than I do now. It's frustrating how underdeveloped and underutilized they were after they were a big focus of the season.
The major problem with Starlight joining the cast was that in Season 6 she vanished from the world when she didn't have a spotlight episode, once Season 7 came she was able to just be a part of the cast but not in season 6 yet. The Student Six have the opposite problem, they are omnipresent in Season 8, in the background of almost every episode even if just to be there and not say or do anything, but they got no spotlight episodes to make us care about seeing them. Lyra and Bon Bon have more canonical personality and development than any of the Student Six, for that matter so do Garble and Iron Will. Pharynx appeared in one episode and he shows a much better character than any of the Student Six except Gallus, who got Hearth's Warming Club to shine, and to a lesser extent Smolder, who got to hang with Spike for his two episodes this season. A pity the others got next to nothing.
The Student Six are on the level of the original characters in Equestria Girls - they are background decoration, they exist to fill in the crowd for the school scenes and maybe get a line or a reaction shot... except they were supposed to be main characters, they're central to the premiere and the finale and have featured prominently in marketing. So what gives? The writers introduced these major characters and did even less with them than they did the School. I don't know if the Student Six will be back next season and have no idea what capacity they'll have in the show if they do, but I do know that I honestly don't care one way or the other. When "Celestial Advise" premiered, I was hoping Starlight Glimmer would stay on the main cast and was happy she did. If the Student Six never appear in Season 9, I won't care. And if they do appear in Season 9, I'll only care insomuch I'll be thinking "hey, maybe this time they'll get to do something once in a while."
And The Rest
With so much of this blog focusing on the failure of the School and the Student Six, it can be easy to forget there were plenty of episodes in Season 8 that had nothing to do with either an yet still sucked. Let's do a total rating, shall we?
School Daze Part 1 and 2 - meh
Maud Couple - awful
Fake It Til You Make It - great
Grannies Gone Wild - meh
Surf and/or Turf - meh
Horse Play - great
The Parent Map - great
Non-Compete Clause - complete shit
Break Up Break Down - fine
Molt Down - meh
Marks for Effort - meh
The Mean 6 - good
Matter of Principals - awful
Hearth's Warming Club - great
Friendship University - awful
End in Friend - meh
Yakity Sax - awful
Road to Friendship - good
The Washouts - so awful I felt the need to do a fixfic for it
Rockhoof and a Hard Place - meh
What Lies Beneath - great
Sounds of Silence - good
Father Knows Beast - complete shit
School Raze Part 1 and 2 - shit
That's not a good score.
The Maud Couple dealt with Informed Wrongness for Pinkie dealing with a pedantic prick characterized by someone who doesn't understand Maud's schtick. Grannies Gone Wild had some fun moments but was pretty boring overall with Applejack consciously sabotaging Rainbow Dash's attempt to have a nice vacation. Surf and/or Turf dealt with manufactured pathos from Tyrromar, the kid torn between two communities that got along fine and never enforced any idea on him that he had to choose between them. Non-Compete Clause was total character assassination for AJ and Rainbow, making them even worse than they were in Fall Weather Friends. Break Up Break Down had some fine moments and a decent use of Discord, but otherwise was forgettable. Molt Down was boring and Spike's transformation was handled with none of the grandieur of grace Twilight and the CMC got. Marks for Effort existed to set up Cozy Glow and somehow have the CMC become teachers at the school when they're still in normal school themselves.
Matter of Principals was another "Discord is a dick" episode with Starlight being totally justified in blasting his ass. Friendship University shoved the Idiot Ball down Twilight's throat as she acted totally unsubtly in her efforts to expose Flim and Flam and had no plan to do so. End in Friend was just boring and relied on a forced conflict that wasn't a thing for the first seven seasons so why is it now. Yakity Sax was crap with Pinkamena being brought back just for shock value because we have no idea why Pinkie loves the yovidaphone and she is obnoxious about her enthusiasm for it. The Washouts was character ruination of Lightning Dust. Rockhoof and a Hard Place relied on the cast being idiots who gave up too easily before the answer was handed to them by happenstance. Father Knows Beast was predictable from the synopsis and had an infuriating Spike moment that makes me rage just thinking about it.
The thing is, a lot of the "meh" episodes on that list are perfectly fine on the watch... but they offer nothing of substance once the credits role. They are totally bland and forgettable, they hold attention for half an hour and not a second longer. This is another "the show is a fanfic of itself" bit, in that these "meh" episodes are underbaked oneshots that offer a couple good ideas and maybe a good joke or two, but you read them, decide if you like them or not, and move on probably not thinking about them again. They make so little impact you can barely recall what happens beyond a general plot outline. Reading my review of Break Up Break Down, I apparently really liked it at the time of viewing, but I can't remember any specifics beyond general scenes like "Discord and Spike spy from the bushes."
Bland, easily digested and tossed aside pony is not the pony of the early seasons. "Meh" episodes are still failure episodes, because if they have no impact and I cannot remember what happened, it means they weren't particularly funny, weren't particularly creative, weren't particularly cool, and weren't particularly well-written. Now it is true that we've had episodes like this all along, even in the gloriousness of Seasons 4 and 5, we had episodes like "Pinkie Apple Pie", "Appleloosa's Most Wanted", "Hearthbreakers", episodes that don't leave much impact on you in the long-term. But those episodes were the minority. I look at a rundown of Season 4 and 5 episodes, I can talk about numerous scenes and funny moments I remember. I cannot do that for Season 8.
Conclusion
Season 8 is the result of all the problems the show has been facing the last few seasons reaching critical mass. Awful characterization, not knowing what to do with their cast, and fanfic-style plotlines that have no real substance. So many episodes were boring or frustrating or angering to sit through, too few episodes were actually worth a rewatch or even remembering, and the School and the Student Six were underused in spite of all that could have been done with them.
This season, to reiterate, has been the worst season of pony so far, and I am actually happy it is over so we can go into hiatus and hopefully get some Equestria Girls stuff in the meantime so I can focus on that good stuff and try to forget filth like Non-Compete Clause and Father Knows Beast.
Yeah, you need to see Sounds of Silence. I really liked that one. Not that it was without its flaws, of course.
Anyway, I do believe the high point of this season was simply the sheer amount of worldbuilding we got. Like, wow... I’m ok with a few terrible episodes, honestly, simply due to how much worldbuilding there was.
Seconded for Sounds of Silence. I have a new favorite character now.
Well I think you're being kind of negative and to be honest I've heard the term "Fanficy" be tossed around as early as Season 3. But I'm not one of those people who gets bothered by fanfic inspiration so long as it's not a point for point knock-off.
Also, apparently, the school was a mandate from Hasbro and the writers say it was forced onto them. So I can only guess they intentionally tried to make it look bad in the hopes Hasbro would change its mind. But a better alternative would've been for them to put their foot down and say "No", Hasbro would be hard pressed to justify firing all the writers and hastily replacing them with new ones when they've already exhausted several different avenues for writers (to the point where they've been bringing in live action writers).
Personally I will always see season 1 as the worst season. Not bad, but I'm glad the show managed to evolve past simple plots and one note main characters.
4928046
If anything the characters are more one-note now.
4928046 So far for me, each season has been better than the one before it. Each season isn't perfect, there are things that plague each season regardless. Season 1 deserves credit for starting the franchise off on a strong note, but looking back on it without the nostalgia googles its "Early Installment Weirdness" is more easily noticed.
Where are you watching season 8 that you are at the end already? We just had the episode with Rockhoof not being able to fit in last Saturday, and you are all done now?
4928709
the episodes have aired early in other countries and been subtitled
I have to agree, despite the slight differences in my own scoring of certain episodes. The show hasn't seemed excited to do anything new in particular with the characters and instead relies on pandering with fan service and Yugioh-style "heartfelt" moments that overly glorify friendship - bigger instead of better, in short. Season 7 tried to introduce a couple new things, but season 8 ended up being a very limp non-attempt to build from there.
The "every new thing is the best one yet" types might still side with it, but they're constantly going on about how the first season, single-handedly starting the brony trend on sheer innovative character development, seems like "nothing special" to them, in hindsight. (No duh, you're comparing the meal currently in your mouth to the fading memory of eating a different one last year, assuming you always would've liked this one more, again, because it's "bigger.") It's pure complacency. Every time one of them tries to tell me about the "early weird touches" the show had, I always answer "What, you mean the creativity?"
4928713
Cool, well I'm stuck with an American feed (so sad, I'm Canadian, but I can't get a Canadian feed...) so I'll just avoid this thread until I reach the end.
4928909
the subbed episodes can be found on EqD
I could say a lot on this post later, but let me say thanks for clarifying something I had felt but couldn't quite put my finger on.
That being the "meh" feeling of even the enjoyable episodes. I really enjoyed the Breakup Breakdown and Surf and/or Turf upon first viewing, and couldn't quite put my finger on why they weren't tempting me for a rewatch and weren't lingering in my mind the way I felt they should be. Thanks to you, I now have the answer. I enjoyed them, I don't regret watching them. But with the past seasons to pick from? Unlikely to pick for a full rewatch. Maybe certain clips, if I'm bored.
Prior to watching the finale today, my opinion was that this was wrestling with Season 6 for the bottom spot. It took me maybe 20 mins after it was over, after mulling on the season as a whole, to conclude that this was worst, and not by a tiny margin either. Season 6 may have had quite a few stinkers, and suffered a lot of this ones' problems, and not figured out what to do with Starlight quite yet, but it doesn't have the scent of a mismanaged school and 6 new characters following it around like rotten cheese.
I also asked myself, would any episodes from this season make my top 25? The answer was a clear no. A few in the top 50, but they'd still have to fight their way in. That should say a lot. Hopefully.
4928819
This. I'm flabbergasted as how much the people still around this fandom look down on Season 1. They really seem to only be able to enjoy what's going on right now. My god, the fandom is turning into an anime fandom, isn't it? I'm reminded of how all my real-life friends that are anime people or otakus, as well as online communities (I gather, I haven't participated in any myself) are all about the now, what's airing now, with shows more then a few years old (that aren't still airing) barely getting mentioned. I can barely even talk about a classic Ghibli film with them, it often gets that bad.
Anyway, that early instalment weirdness this fandom speaks of? I adore it! Apart from the sheer creativity and genuine character development, it helps make that season distinctive in a good way, as well as being a clearer hallmark of classic cartooning of the Cartoon Network generation of artists and writers, helped by the industry veterans Faust brought onto the show. While I don't know that I can call Season 1 the best - there are enough episodes that miss the mark in their objectives and make some notable missteps for that - anyone who ranks it low by default likely has their priorities wrong.
Erg, the school...
I find it comparable to S6 Starlight. We are *informed* she befriended the leads, then she gets a minimum of development, screentime, or interaction with the leads, then comes the season finale and we're supposed to root for her saving the world. The students were introduced as new main characters, barely received attention or development, and then they save the world (I presume). Starlight grew into her own later, admittedly completely divorced from the other leads. To do the same with *6* characters would require pushing the Mane 6 into the background - something they really should have done to keep the show fresh. For all the wonkiness of its concept, the Friendship School had potential that subsequently went nowhere.
Really? I remember loads of people saying that after the Season 4 premier, Twilight's role as a Princess barely seemed to change anything. She didn't get any new accommodations, assistants or guards. Admittedly, she finally acknowledged how little of a role her new title played by the season 4 finale. But a lot of season 4 just felt so surreal because outside of the bookends, no pony even seems to actually react to witnessing the newest member of magical royalty. For Ponyville, it could maybe have been explained by the fact that the town already knew Twilight, and they're all just so tight and down-to-earth (although later episodes have shown they're actually quite willing to embrace her as a sensation). But I recall a ton of shared disbelief at how Twilight couldn't even flag down a cab in Manehattan.
Say whatever you may about the The Hooffields and McColts, but that Season 5 episode really stood out to me because we finally got a NORMAL reaction of surprise and confusion.
That one 'hillbilly' seemed to have waaaay more sense than all of Manehattan! So just by having the characters inside the school, or seeing the Student 6 be present as a result of it's opening, feels like this season remembers it's opening way more than 4 and 5 remembered Princess Twilight (although again, this is completely aside from the premier and finales). You mention Trade Ya, Equestria Games, and Princess Spike as examples for when "the story at least had something to say about Twilicorn when it became a thing." But those seem like a much smaller number than what you have in bold and italics here. So even just by doing addition, I'm not seeing the evidence about how this season focused on it's change in the status quo even less.
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I wasn't on the same Starlight hate train as some, but the Student Six and the School of Friendship weren't ever starting with the same hugely negative connotation as she was out the gate.
I disagree with some of the episode rankings, but you're right on the money about the issues with the Friendship School and the Student Six. The former is just a weak concept to begin with. I get that it's trying to show the Mane characters' development by showing how they can now teach others how to be friends, but instead the School often just distracted us from them or worse, actively derailed the characters just so that the Student Six could look good (looking at you, "Non-Compete Clause"). Speaking of which, the Students were, as you mentioned, just so undeveloped that it became frustrating. The fact that most of them had to conform to the stereotypes of their races was similarly annoying, and kind of defeats the purpose of showing "fleshed out characters" when they're all just reskins of other characters that we enjoy.
I really hope Season 9 is better (especially considering it's the last one), and if they're not going to drop the school angle, I just hope that they can retool it in a way that it's more effective.
I'm going to make a limited defense here. Yeah, it kind of seems this way, but that's because 5 out of 7 students who matter are non-ponies. But they amount to a small fraction of the school, and less when you add the Friendship University students, who are all ponies. Somehow, ponies actually need all this too. It comes across to me more like a status thing for foreign leaders to send someone there, rather than cultural imperialism being the major purpose. After all, if that was the main idea, shouldn't there have been more than just them, and probably buffalo, zebras, maybe serpents, breezies, ...
Here I think you're giving too much credit. After all, there was a comparable amount going on in S1E1-2, and that gave a good deal of characterization to 7 leads as well as introducing the world and covering a plot that held togegher better (if admittedly in part by being simpler to allow for the development side of things).
This is a really good write-up, and you managed to encapsulate a lot of my thoughts about the season. This Season has been extremely frustrating overall, full of potentially interesting premises which get horribly mishandled and go absolutely nowhere.
Why am I the only one who loves the finale!?
It has an incredibly hammy, intelligent, cunning, and manipulative villain, it moves along at a fast pace without being too fast, there was a redemption that actually wasn't complete garbage, speaking of, they DIDN'T reform an obviously not sympathetic villain, it's so much fun in general. And the main reason for that is Cozy. She carries the episode as well as Adagio carries Rainbow Rocks. And eve people's complaints about Cozy don't hold that much water. They say her philosophy is stupid. Even if that's so, that's more of a story problem. They have to give some motivation. But it isn't necessarily. Maybe, when she says friendship is power, she means it in a real world sense. She knows magic will be gone, so her "friendship power" is really the control she has over hundreds to thousands of ponies. And considering that all ponies will be of similar strength at that point, having control over a lot of fodder is actually quite a lot of power. Maybe she wouldn't be the most powerful pony in all of Equestria, but she could've come up with a plan to get rid of the other princesses. Or maybe she's just a crazy little filly who understood everything wrong. She'll be a significantly worse villain in my books then. But she'd just go from a 9.5 or 10 to an 8 or 8.5. She's just too much fun to let anything get in the way of how good a villain she is. I mean, if they reform her, THEN I might consider rating her how other people seem to. But otherwise, she's an amazing villain who elevates a good finale to a great one.
I agree on the points here. I hated how Lightning's personality has essentially been trashed, and the season finale was simply crap.
I was so annoyed at how badly Cozy was done that I chose to incorporate her into my EqG timeline.
To say the least, I feel that beyond season 4 or so, the show lost its magic (at least it did for me). To draw an analogy to Thomas and Friends, we are now going into the BWBA era of MLP. This is partly why I mostly gave up on the mane show and started watching EqG instead.