Season 7 had been up, down, and all around in quality up to this point, the longest such period of inconsistent writing quality stretching all the way back to Season 1 when the show was still trying to find its footing. It almost feels like Season 7 was originally going to be a half season, which would explain why it was the only one not to get a two parter season premiere. It being ordered while Season 6 was still in production likely had something to do with the theatrical movie taking longer

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Season 8 seemed to hit an abrupt dry patch after "The Hearth's Warming Club". Not a single episode seemed to debut to positive reception as even "Road to Friendship" seemed to be panned upon release (though not quite as much as what had come before it). But this episode promised the return of a fan favorite villain in Lightning Dust, something fans had been wanting to see for years. Nick Confalone was writing this episode, coming off his less than stellar performance in "The Break Up Break

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Just when Season 8 looked like it was finally finding its footing, along came duds such as "Marks For Effort" that saw Twilight sink to a new low when a climax was hastily shoehorned in and the absolute waste of an episode that was "The Mean Six". In both cases, it was a warning sign in the villain department as we had both a painfully obvious twist villain and an established villain hitting villain decay so badly she was no longer a threat to anyone. But when Season 8 came back for its second

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Season 8 hadn't been focusing on the school or the student/young six all that much up to this point, and when it had it usually wasn't for the best considering the utter disaster that was "Non-Compete Clause". Meanwhile, we had a lot of episodes using cliches or plots that had been done before, and it seemed like they weren't putting enough of a unique take on them. So it was that we had a Spike episode, which was not automatically a guaranteed success considering Season 7 had given him the

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Season 8 seemed to finally get a stand out episode with "Horse Play", a Princess Celestia focused episode. But even then it was far from universally praised. And it still seemed like the school and the student/young six were not being utilized all that much. When this episode premiered, fans initially hoped for some information to finally be shed on Starlight Glimmer's past, especially in light of Josh Haber issuing a statement that Starlight was a latch key kid (her parents were always away,

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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

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With the Cutie Mark Crusaders having started to mature in Season 4 and move away from obsessing over their cutie marks, Season 5 looked as if it were going to revisit that. Josh Haber was picked to write this episode, but his most recent writing endevor at the time had been the utterly bland "Leap of Faith" which had starred Applejack. So, was Haber more comfortable working with Apple Bloom, or did he only end up proving that Apple family characters were not his forte for interesting stories?

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