Clueless in Maretime Bay

So now we have it, Make Your Mark "chapter two", eight episodes of what should be the highest quality in G5 lore, character building, narrative flow and animation, second only to the A New Generation movie. The movie set the scene: a post magical pony society divided by tribe and acute xenophobia. The narrative was that of an innocent's journey of discovery and nonjudgmental friendship. The resolution was when the power elite, and thus the representatives of each of the tribes, joined together in a simultaneous act of kindness, regret and reconciliation. That was the act that brought magic back to this remnant of Equestria and made Sunny its avatar.

Next comes the series, where four of the five misfits live under the same roof for no particular reason, all five are incompetent to some degree and nopony has a roadmap or even an objective in this new era of fragile pony unity. It's like, Unity happened, mission accomplished, let's get on with our lives in Maretime Bay: loafing about, selling smoothies or pretending to maintain law and order (just as long as there's no real need for it).

In G4, each of the Mane Six was competent at both their chosen profession and their magical Element. In the absence of a threat or mystery, there was a narrative: to learn about Friendship, which had been demonstrated to be magical, in the literal sense. Every pony was where they belonged and every pony contributed to Twilight's studies. There was a roadmap and an objective. Villains were just bumps in the road.

As for the G5 villain, Queen Opaline, she is the only pony in Make Your Mark with a plan and she is downright disturbing and unpleasant. I don't know what the writers are smoking choosing an abusive parent type as their villain archetype. Perhaps none of them take abusive parents seriously. The only things keeping Misty alive is that she's useful, she can mingle undetected in Maretime Bay and she can bring back items.

In G5, Unity should be the objective. Instead the new Mane Five are just bystanders, watching the Unity meter wobble, looking impressed and doing next to nothing about it. It's like a government that builds a mega project off in the wilderness and then stops, hoping people will just flock there, leave what they know and set up shop there on their own. So, the new Mane Five accidentally caused the Unity "prisbeam" to be created, something that needs pony unity across all three tribes to exist, and like with a government mega project in the wilderness, they're doing nothing to make it viable and flourish.