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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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"

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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

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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

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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.

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Well, maybe the Cutie Mark Crusaders could get Season 6 off the ground when the main characters seemed incapable of truly doing so. I mean after all, the CMC had gone from being the undisputed weak links of the show in Season 1 and early Season 2 with their repetitive "Gotta get our cutie marks" plots to some of the most mature stuff we'd seen in children's media in a long time (the dangers of gossip and tabloid journalism, dealing with a potential disability, where jealousy can truly lead and

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So at very long last, Rainbow Dash was going to take the first steps towards becoming a Wonderbolt. But Merriweather Williams, the new black sheep of the writing staff without a single uncontroversial episode to her name, was in charge. And she was responsible for writing arguably Rainbow's worst outing to that point in "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well". So suddenly this episode wasn't looking so great. But was Merriweather able to defy expectations and actually crank out something good? Well,

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When Season 9 came back for its second half, the leaks returned as well. Before long, everything that the show had sought to keep under wraps was spoiled, including a controversial twist in the finale. In the meantime, desires to give characters a proper conclusion were meeting with mixed results. Pinkie Pie got "The Last Laugh" which seemed decent, but Rainbow Dash had the appalling "2, 4, 6, Greaaat" and from there we went to "A Trivial Pursuit" which saw Twilight's freak outs get so bad that

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They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, but Merriweather Williams sure seemed determined to try. After "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" didn't go over well, Merriweather had a chance to indicate whether it was a fluke or not with this episode. In fact, this episode and the two immediately following it were moved around in episode order so that this episode could air in time for the Christmas 2011 break, the first such instance of an episode being one number in production

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Season 7 seemed to have no direction of any sort out of the gate, and after three episodes it was impossible to pick up on any sense of quality. So it was that Nick Confalone was stepping up to write, his tenure in Season 6 having mostly been defined by the controversial "No Second Prances" even though he'd also written "The Saddle Row Review" and "Dungeons & Discords" which had far more positive of a reception. Early synopsis' suggested the focus of this episode would be Pinkie Pie trying to

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Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty late to this party considering so many others started doing it in 2020. But with all that was going in the world and in my personal life I just wanted to wait until things somewhat settled down a little before jumping on this bandwagon. For at least the foreseeable future I'm going to doing these re-reviews once a day, probably at least through Season 4 and maybe into Seasons 5 and 6 (I think most of my reviews from Seasons 7-9 are pretty spot on about what I like and

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Although Lauren Faust was no longer executive producer of the show, she was still involved throughout Season 2 even after it was announced she would be stepping down once that season was over. No one knew the reason why at the time, or that this was one of a handful of episodes that Lauren played a role in shaping (albeit not as greatly as episodes prior). Considering "The Return of Harmony" was still fresh in people's minds at the time, was this episode written by Meghan McCarthy able to keep

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Though not the seventeenth episode to air (that was "To Change A Changeling") this episode was seventeenth in production order. And what may be most noticeable is that Josh Haber was returning to the story editor's position here and would stay in it through the rest of Season 7, at first sharing the role with Lewis and Songco but eventually taking over completely. Considering Season 7 had been stuck in the mud up to this point under Lewis and Songco, unable to shake off the bad writing of "Fame

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So after we finally got a good episode focused on the School of Friendship, we had three episodes in a row that either barely focused on it or not at all, and wasted our time with plots that were either cliche, annoying or just not interesting. And by now leaks were a plenty for what was to come at the end of Season 8, so people were already not looking forward to what was in store later on. And this episode tends to be regarded as another bad episode of Season 8. It certainly doesn't have the

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By the time this issue came out the comics had started to attract drama for the fact that starting in the next arc they were going to include alicorn Twilight just in time for the show's fourth season. And while all of that was going on the micro series was trudging along now that it had focused on each of the mane six. So a two parter focused on Shining Armor and Cadence involving how they met probably wasn't the most exciting thing ever, even considering how slice of life the previous arc had

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