Season 8 reflections.

This year, I had an exit strategy. If My Little Pony wasn't entertaining me by the third episode of the season, I'd bail. As it turned out, I watched every episode, so clearly this season was an improvement over last year's wretched showing, and there's actually a lot of trends this season which were pleasant surprises for me. At long last, this show is making some serious changes to its approach which have been long overdue, and as it turns out, this season wasn't half-bad. I mean, it's two-fifths bad, and it retains some of the same issues the show has had for years, but it's a small improvement. What season 8 showed me is this: My Little Pony can improve, I can still have fun with it, and the people currently writing the show have no intention of getting their priorities straight. It's still a show which regularly overextends its reach, and it's still a show which has no idea what to do with its own main cast. But it's a more watchable version of that show this year, and even its failed experiments are a bit less dull and rigid than they were last year. It's still a show mostly made by people who care about telling good stories, and that's ultimately what keeps me watching. I just wish they cared a bit more about which series they were writing those stories for.

As it turns out, weekly shorts are perfect for "Equestria Girls"

I thought this series was done for.

By August of 2017 Equestria Girls had fallen so low that new content was being cheaply outsourced. A new series was reportedly on the horizon, but one look at the so-called "Summertime Shorts," which were so awkward and poorly-made that they almost resembled a bootleg version of the series, gave little reason to hope. Surely this was a series with nothing new to say, and which the company making it had no faith in. Some moderately satisfying music videos were being released at the same time, and yet, the simple fact that these were sharing space with such cheap junk was truly dispiriting.

The new series, which premiered on November 2nd on the "Discovery Family GO!" mobile app, didn't necessarily bring big changes to the series' aesthetic or narrative styles. In a lot of ways, it was doing the same things that My Little Pony had been doing for years. But none of it was cheaply outsourced, and moreover, one big thing was different. It would take a while to really become clear, but what the new Equestria Girls series finally brought to the table was a renewed sense of focus. All of the various identities which the series had grasped at over the years were finally synthesized into a coherent whole, there was a consistent focus on expanding the characters and the world, and best of all, this series was more consistently entertaining than either branch of My Little Pony has been in years. If it's not quite as substantial as the best My Little Pony stories, it does an incredibly satisfying job of setting the groundwork.

My top 26 favourite episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

This list has been sitting on my drive, first draft done and awaiting revisions, for well over a year now. Since then, I promised not only to publish the list, but to expand it all the way up to 26 to fill a whole season's worth of episodes, which only led to further delays. Part of the reason was that I hadn't seen several of my favourite episodes in years, and wished to binge the whole show in order to confirm my opinions and see if anything else threatened the top spots. What I want from My Little Pony has changed significantly over time, and I believe my favourite episodes are reflective of that. As such, I believe that assembling this list can help explain why I love the show so much. Now, if the show really does end after season 9, I'll be writing a new list before too long, and maybe it'll be completely different, but nonetheless, here are my top 26 favourite episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, in chronological order.

Current numerical scores for My Little Pony media

In mid-2016, I introduced a new scoring system based on four criteria: entertainment/humour, characterization, themes/morals, and story. Each of these is graded out of ten, and are then added together to find a mean grade out of 100. Here, I will list every MLP episode I have graded on this scale, alongside their rating out of 100. For accuracy's sake, I will not attempt to grade episodes entirely on distant memory. Ratings might be subject to change with future rewatches, and this list will expand as I rewatch more episodes (especially since this provides incentive to go through the whole series again). For now, I've rated the following media as follows, out of 100:

Quick update

At the end of my "Shadow Play" review, I promised:
1. a season 7 wrap-up review,
2. a top 10 Worst Episodes list,
3. a top 26 Best Episodes list.

I've not gotten around to the latter two yet, and for that I'm sorry; unless there's particular demand, I've decided not to go forward with the "Worst Episodes" list, as I'm tired of my own negativity towards this show. Such a list would probably look something like this:

• "Look Before You Sleep"
• "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well"
• "Games Ponies Play"
  "Magical Mystery Cure"
• "Twilight Time"
• "Somepony to Watch Over Me"
• "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?"
• "The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows"
• "What About Discord?"
• "Hard to Say Anything"

Although, were I willing to stretch beyond the show, Equestria Girls's "Mirror Magic" would absolutely make the cut. In any case. I still want to publish the favourite episodes list, but I haven't seen much of the show in a couple years, and my tastes have surely changed since then. No date promised, but it's still coming; in the meantime, I'll post here my up-to-date list of episode scores, which I'll update as I work through the rest of the show, concluding once I've rated every episode. 

Thank you for your patience. 

Season 7 reflections.

This show needs direction.

I've been saying that for a while. The show has become increasingly scattershot and inconsistent since as far back as season 5, and nobody involved seems to actually understand what to do with the main cast. These past three seasons have all been heavily reliant on new characters, heavy-handed moralizing, and various other crutches - anything to give them an excuse to not actually consider what direction the main characters should go in.

This show has never been serialized, but there used to be certain recurrent themes and clear character arcs. I don't think that's been the case for a while now, and the show has been flailing since season 5. In season 5, the writers tried to compensate by straining for pathos every other episode. Season 6 softened the blow with an endless supply of freewheeling experimentation. But there's a sense of obligation to season 7, like the writers are simply going down a checklist, and even the best episodes ride on the back of easy premises and filled-in blanks. Far too often, characters act as vessels for the moral rather than the other way around, and the show's desperate efforts to do anything other than develop the main characters are more feeble here than ever before.

What the My Little Pony crew forgets is that growing up doesn't mean throwing away the past entirely. The newer seasons are much more intricate than the earlier seasons, but this hasn't always been a change for the better, and few of these new writers seem to understand how to make these characters sing.

Episode review: "Shadow Play"

Last year, I was worried that "To Where and Back Again" would be a by-the-numbers, over-serious finale which just rehashes the same plot points the show had been trucking out for years now. To my delight, it turned out to be something else entirely, and it quickly became one of my favourite two-parters in the entire show. "To Where and Back Again" excelled because it was a character-driven story which focused on the human side of the story rather than the rote details, and as such it was refreshingly light on exposition and action.

Turns out all I had to do was wait a year, however, because "Shadow Play" is exactly what I was worried about back in season 6. It's the worst example yet of the show's increasingly dull mythology, and it's filled with backstory exposition which takes itself way too seriously. There are certainly moments of humour here which bring the episode to life, but the plot is just so formulaic that it's hard to be invested in any of it, and enough of the episode takes itself so seriously that the fun moments can't break the monotony.