As a reminder, after tomorrow's episode,
the show is going on hiatus! No topic title change this time since they were nice enough to actually say so beforehand and didn't claim that the second half of the season was a new season. Like last time, during the break, this thread will be used to discuss the comics, official news, and Equestria Girls. Since the book adaptation of the next EG movie is coming out in September, and those books usually come out after the movies, we might get the movie during the break this time, as opposed to it awkwardly airing on the same day as an episode.
Preview clip for "Spice Up Your Life", which is apparently going to be about South Asian ponies. I haven't listened to the clip myself, so as an Indian, I hope this works out well.
The writer is Mike Vogel, and the episode will include a song, part of which you can hear in the clip apparently.
On another note,
that Spanish (Latin?) Fluttershy VA is doubling down on the future convention episode info, and says that there's a character named Quibble.
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My views on the seasons are:
Season 1
Somewhat hard to judge, since it was the first, the point where the fandom was still growing, and what I started the show with. It gets kudos for introducing the world, but it has some negative qualities. For instance, there were moments where it felt too childish, such as the absurd lack of menace Nightmare Moon presented with her attempts as obstacles and that part of "Winter Wrap Up" where they explain what hibernation is, and how it sometimes felt like they were speaking slowly for the sake of the audience. There were a fair amount of weirdly written moments: "Boast Busters" (note how so many people are confused about what Trixie actually did wrong), "Winter Wrap Up" repeating in dialogue what was explained in the song, "Feeling Pinkie Keen"'s moral, "Over a Barrel", etc. It also took a while for them to get the hang of the characters, particularly Rarity and the CMC. I guess Applejack too, due to all of the "background pony" fan jokes about her during this era.
There is also a fair amount of "early installment weirdness", mostly in the first few episodes, but also generally things like how non-Pinkie songs were few and far between. Also compared to later seasons, the animation could be pretty weak, and there were a lot of scenes of ponies just walking from left to right or right to left. You can especially see this in the song "Winter Wrap Up". Now, you get a lot more "3D" movement.
However, there is also a lot of appeal to seeing this world while there's still room to define major qualities, and when the character interactions were still being established. You actually had episodes solely focused on a subset of the Main Six, whereas now there's always some wacky guest star they interact with, and you can't have an episode solely focused on, say, Applejack and Rainbow Dash competing against each other, since that story was mined in season 1. Plus, it's still the only season to have a slice-of-life finale, which isn't something you could do as easily now, both in terms of audience expectations and how major events like Rarity opening a new store, Rainbow Dash joining the Wonderbolts, and the CMC getting their cutie marks are relegated to mid-season. When they returned to the gala, they needed the additional gimmick of Discord and the Smooze, and that was for a mid-season story.
I haven't actually watched season 1 in a long time, so I'm just going off of general recollections from my most recent rewatch, though.
Season 2
I thought season 2 was overall stronger than season 1, but it also had both the most aggravating episode, "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well", and the most disappointing episode, "Dragon Quest". The characters were generally handled in more interesting ways than in season 1, "Mare-Do-Well" aside, but in retrospect, you could see that they were starting to run out of episode ideas for characters once they got past the surface level "Rarity isn't useless just because she's ladylike" and "Twilight worries about friendship" stories. I admire that they largely tried to avoid repeating those sorts of stories, but they seemed to have a hard time coming up with stories that were
about a particular character learning and growing (or us learning new things about them) as opposed to reacting to an unusual situation.
Season 2 was also the where the overall quality of the songs was at its peak, I think. Nowadays, I feel like if the episode isn't a full music episode, songs that appear will generally be on the weak side and often will sound similar to previous songs, as Paullo hinted at about "I Can Do It On My Own" in his previous post.
Season 3
This season was definitely the weakest, I felt. As some have put it, it feels like they took the thirteen weakest episodes of an original 26-episode season and just aired those. The stories often felt slow and boring, yet would have sudden resolutions. I still thought there were good episodes, but they generally don't stand out among the series as a whole for me. While people joked about Dash being too good for the Wonderbolts ever since "Sonic Rainboom", "Wonderbolts Academy" really put them in a negative light. Discord turning good was a major victim of the rushed resolutions of the season. "Spike at Your Service" probably takes the cake for worst Spike episode. The entire thing with Twilight, while certainly handled better than it could have been, was a mess, even if the songs in the finale were great.
This was also a time of turmoil in the fandom, with not only a generally weak season and Princess Twilight but also Equestria Girls. A lot of people threatened to leave the fandom, and looking at how much less active it is now than then, I guess they were telling the truth.
As I've said before, I'd be very interested in the crew going into more detail about just what was going on during this season after the show has ended.
Season 4
There were a lot of strong individual episodes, so I suppose I'd place this above season 1, but there were general problems that make me place this below season 2. I view the premiere and final much more favorably than DrForester, but Twilight was definitely badly handled for a lot of the season, most notably in that no one acknowledges she's a princess in a one-part story until more than halfway through. At the same time, they didn't do any "Twilight learns about friendship" or "Twilight goes crazy" episodes, or come up with another way to do a Twilight episode, leaving her in the limbo state of just being the boring "leader" character. That said, they got better with her toward the end of the season, and "Testing Testing 1, 2, 3" is still one of my favorite Twilight episodes.
In theory, having a series of episodes where the Main Six are tempted to go against their Element is an interesting idea, but yeah, only two of the one-episode stories worked out. The issue isn't so much that there was an arc, like people often say, but that each of these episodes was so similar in structure.
Season 5
I consider this season to be the strongest. The season premiere and finale were both great, though I can see why some people dislike the finale. The season is littered with great individual episodes, everyone is handled well (except in "Princess Spike"), and continuity is emphasized much more without becoming a burden. Twilight in particular was a breath of fresh air after two seasons of aimlessness in her character. The map episodes were a good way to justify the castle, expand the world, and force character pairings that the series hadn't explored much or in a while, but there were few enough that it didn't become too repetitive.
Season 6
So far, there hasn't been an amazing individual episode, but it's an overall solid set of episodes, and Starlight turning good is being handled better than previous season story arcs.
So I'd say 5 > 2 > 6 > 4 > 1 > 3
With (2 > 6 > 4) being subject to change depending on my mood, I suppose.
