Because Season 4 didn't already have enough on its plate with two arcs (assuming you count Twilight trying to figure out her role as an alicorn princess as one), a third one was added with this episode. Everyone probably thought the Equestria Games would never be seen, but surprisingly they would come back for Season 4. I'm willing to bet though that the games were originally meant for Season 3 before it was made a half season, so once Season 4 was announced they came back to some of their

Read More

After being denied a focus episode in Season 3 because Meghan McCarthy thought Rarity was "too mean" for feeling guilty about lying to Spike, Rarity got to have her long overdue return to the spotlight for the first time in over a year. In fact, over two years since "Sweet and Elite" had aired in 2011. And Dave Polsky got to do a Rarity episode like he had hoped to do in Season 3 before Meghan gave his script to Merriweather Williams for revising. Yet nowadays people seem to mostly remember

Read More

The new writers kept on coming for Season 4 as the next to debut was Natasha Levinger. And it was both a Pinkie Pie episode and an Applejack episode, both of which came with a lot of baggage and high stakes since both characters were easy to get wrong or easy not to write well. This episode was one of four to have an animatic clip of it shown off at conventions in 2013 to build hype for Season 4, specifically the song that was going to appear in this episode. So, with Season 4 now starting to

Read More

Imagine the surprise of everyone when this episode first came out. The first clear adventure episode since the pilot. Perhaps that's why it was Meghan McCarthy who wrote this episode, the same Meghan McCarthy who would become the show's story editor for Seasons 3-5 before handing over the reigns to Josh Haber so she could work on the 2017 movie. And considering the previous two episodes had introduced what everyone thought were one off antagonists but had met with limited success, was this non

Read More

Sure didn't take long for Canterlot Carousel to become relevant, and with our first proper RariDash episode to boot. However, the writers were a bit of a concern. Joanna Lewis and Kristine Songco were on tap here, and their only prior result had been "Castle, Sweet Castle" which had been a dud. Fortunately, they weren't doing it alone this time. They had help on the story from both Meghan McCarthy and M. A. Larson, kind of odd that both were pitching in but I guess neither had the time to fully

Read More

One last key episode before the finale, and it was for the mane six member who'd already been paired up four times with others (Fluttershy in "Bats!", Pinkie Pie in "Pinkie Apple Pie", Rarity in "Simple Ways" and Apple Bloom in "Somepony to Watch Over Me"). Josh Haber, coming off his performances on both "Castle Mane-Ia" and "Simple Ways" was picked to write this episode. Season 4's second half only had two true successes that could rival those of the first half, so was Haber up to the task of

Read More

By now it was quite clear that Discovery Family's treatment of its Hasbro properties was far from what The Hub had brought to the table. Don't believe me? This episode originally aired on the Fourth of July in 2015, right in the middle of summer when most shows would normally be airing re-runs. That aside, Season 5 seemed to have regained some momentum with "Party Pooped" but it was still a ways away from the kind of quality that had been seen from "Make New Friends, But Keep Discord" through

Read More

So after two pretty weak episodes and no sense of direction for Season 6 aside from the return of the map missions, what was on tap for it next? Apparently, an episode trying to tackle the sensitive topic of racism. And instead of letting veterans handle such a tricky subject, two brand new writers in the form of Kevin Burke and Chris "Doc" Wyatt were tapped for writing duties here, though Michael Vogel was helping them out on the story. This episode would end up being pretty significant for

Read More

First we got a teaser of pony kart racing (though there was a fan project for it that sadly shut down) and now we got a tease of pony sports, and yet neither would be used for an officially licensed game of any sort (G3 of all things got one on the DS). That aside, Season 6 had found a somewhat impressive episode with "Dungeons & Discords", though that stood out mostly for being the first guys only episode and being Discord's first major appearance all season long. And it was really saying

Read More

Season 6 had finally seemed to be getting better. "Flutter Brutter" had been better than "Applejack's 'Day' Off", "Spice Up Your Life" had mostly been better received than "Flutter Brutter" and "Stranger Than Fanfiction" was definitively better than that (arguably rivaling "Gauntlet of Fire" for Season 6's best episode). Though a good deal of that had been because of Josh Haber and Michael Vogel, though Meghan McCarthy still had some indirect contributions even as she was facing down a movie

Read More

I guess the map missions were good enough to warrant coming back for a second season, the first major development for Season 6 since Rainbow Dash's debut as a Wonderbolt in "Newbie Dash" (which was a disaster in every sense of the word). Michael Vogel was back to write it, this time having no template at all to go and thus meaning he had to start completely from scratch (it's even possible that some of what was seen in "A Hearth's Warming Tail" was meant for "The Cutie Re-Mark" initially). Was

Read More

So, for the last episode before the big finale, what was in store for us? A Pinkie Pie episode written by Meghan McCarthy, the same Meghan McCarthy who had proven not to have the best understanding of the character given "Green Isn't Your Color". This episode is regarded as a sleeper hit, an episode that no one was expecting to be as good as it was. But has it deserved that reputation? Well, let's find out.

Read More

So we come to the end of the first big arc the comics did, and it hasn't really held up the greatest with the third installment being the one that has held up the best simply for being as filler loaded as it was when first seen. The first installment was rough around the edges and the second installment just reeked of forced conflict that has only gotten worse when the show somehow thought it could revisit that years down the road. So now we come to the fourth and final comic in the "The Return

Read More

So now that the key episodes were all done, what was left for Season 4 before the finale? The short answer, not much. The Equestria Games would ultimately get their own conclusion in the penultimate episode, but this and the next episode would be left to their own devices. We'd already had a supposedly "Very Special Episode" about Scootaloo's potential disability in "Flight to the Finish", but now this one was going to focus on Rainbow Dash and on studying for a test. Amy Keating Rogers was

Read More

With the show having outlasted even the original G1 Transformers as the longest lasting Hasbro animated property and crossing the 100th episode threshold, something truly special was called for. Especially since in the 2010's making it to even half as many episodes was never a guarantee no matter how good your work was. But Hasbro was going all in on, promoting the heck out of this episode and tapping M. A. Larson to write it as his first solo episode since "Magical Mystery Cure" (which by now

Read More

And so we had another key episode, this time four episodes after the last one instead of two. "Rarity Takes Manehattan" and "Pinkie Pride" showed that a key episode could be done well, but "Rainbow Falls" showed what could happen if a key episode was misdirected or badly written. And the character whose key was up next was Fluttershy, whose first outing in the spotlight this season had seen her backpedal in "Filli Vanilli" (though all the focus was on Pinkie Pie's horribly OOC portrayal and no

Read More

Not exactly an original title considering Season 1 had "Stare Master" and this was a Fluttershy episode. It was one taking place on Nightmare Night, which got bumped around so that it could actually air on Halloween. Given that our last direct visit to Nightmare Night was in "Luna Eclipsed" that wasn't exactly boding well. But the synopsis made it sound like Fluttershy was ready to come out of her shell and face her fears. Natasha Levinger, who'd prevously penned "It Ain't Easy Being Breezies"

Read More

The show decided to take another crack at the "Very Special Episode" plot after "Flight to the Finish" only kind of vaguely hinted at Scootaloo's disability (potentially) and tiptoed its way around the subject. And just like with "One Bad Apple", the writer was Cindy Morrow and this time the subject was supposedly death. More specifically the death of a pet, a very tricky subject. Cindy Morrow had been absent from Season 4 (alongside M. A. Larson) and her last writing endevor before this had

Read More

Unlike some of the other earlier writers, Amy Keating Rogers was going to see to it that everyone would know about her swan song before she left for Disney. She'd already given herself a big hit in the form of "Crusaders of the Lost Mark", which overshadowed "The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone" and "Canterlot Boutique" without much effort (not that they were necessarily bad). Of course, more attention was being focused on what was to come after this episode. But was Amy up to the task of sending

Read More

So after a not entirely stellar premiere, Season 6 really needed something to keep the faith alive. To fill the gap left by old writers departing, new ones were brought in again starting with Michael P. and Will Fox who were brothers. However, Josh Haber was helping them out on the story. And we were going to Manehattan and would be seeing Maud Pie, both of which had been overplayed. But maybe we'd get a chance to see something new from both? Well, let's find out.

Read More