Episodes 10 thru 13 of Season 8 have aired in Finland via Ruutu on Demand. Also, Mid-season hiatus begins in June 9 despite all episode titles for Season 8 were revealed.
Anybody wanna post something here?
Flim and Flam invented the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 and almost drove Applejack and her family and friends out of Ponyville, sold some tonic that turned out to be fake, got their friendship problem solved after Gladmane got foiled by Applejack and Fluttershy, and founded Friendship U and was scamming ponies out of bots and almost got away with it as Princess Twilight Sparkle and Rarity exposed them and the Princess of Friendship keep her reputation and Friendship U is no more. What will Flim and Flam do next?
In the series finale Will all of Twilight's friends become princesses? Will the CMC become fully grown mares? Will Celestia and Luna ascend as goddesses? We'll have to find out by the turn of the decade.
Fluttershy will still be my waifu even into G5.
I'm kind of afraid to ask, but is there anything known on G5 as of right now, or is it all just speculation?
I haven't kept up with the show in quite a while, you see.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1977
Location: Making an escape
scrimpeh wrote:
I'm kind of afraid to ask, but is there anything known on G5 as of right now, or is it all just speculation?
I haven't kept up with the show in quite a while, you see.
I'm kind of afraid to ask, but is there anything known on G5 as of right now, or is it all just speculation?
I haven't kept up with the show in quite a while, you see.
So far, it sounds like the world for generation 5 is going to be one of their most complex yet in the My Little Pony franchise. They have a multi-dimensional hybrid plan set up where each tribe of ponies has their own separate plane, connected in some unexplained way so they can interact with one-another.
On the one hand, with how stale I find FiM has gotten, I think it's a good thing they seem to be planning for it to wrap up reasonably soon-ish. I've decided that with all the time I've invested in it I'm going to see it through to the end, anyway.
On the other hand,
scrimpeh wrote:
Wait what
Also holy lol I went back to read some old posts of mine in the pony thread on another forum and apparently I posted this way back in 2012:
"Season 3 is happening in the foreseeable future. I've been thinking and I kind of want that to be the last season of FiM, at least in the format we've seen it. Because essentially, if it runs any longer, it runs a significant risk of becoming stale. I'd rather see it ending."
Man, I was right on the money.
Det man inte har i begåvning får man ta ut i energi.
"I think I need to get to Snoop Dogg's level of high to be able to research this post." -Samsara
Read my fanfic, One Piece: Pure Corruption
Since I stopped following new episodes, I went to check how far into S8 we were.
And it turned out the finale is already out (through on-demand services at least). So I checked it out.
And I really really liked watching it!
I would have some things to say about this two parter, but it would be too spoilerific; also there are some things that didn't make sense to me since I skipped ahead in episodes. For example, who is Cozy Glow?
I really liked the return of a certain villain....
This really sparks my interest again at working on a timeline; but then again, I'm just not that much into MLP anymore that I feel motivated to catch up on all the episodes I missed since S6..
Overall, I really love what the staff did with S8.
The whole school story is very refreshing!
To recap, Season 5 had not one, but two re-appearances of Nightmare Moon (one in a dream, the other in an alternate timeline). Different alternate timelines had brief appearances of King Sombra, Queen Chrysalis, Lord Tirek, the "Before-he's-reformed" Discord, and the Flim-Flam Brothers. Season 6 also had the return of Queen Chrysalis. Season 7 had the Pony of Shadows and a brief appearance of the Sirens. Season 8 introduced Professor Neighsay. Spoiler alert! He's also in the Season finale.
So that was a season I guess
Fake It 'Til You Make It was easily the best episode of this season.
MUGG wrote:
For example, who is Cozy Glow?
As someone who's seen the whole season, that's pretty much my question too. She was introduced in an episode that didn't even remotely hint at any more sinister nature, was in one more episode where she did one suspicious thing, and then out of flippin' nowhere she's the big bad of the finale. There was nothing building her up. There were no hints towards anything. Hell - there wasn't even anything about her gaining Twilight's trust, she got accepted to the school in her first appearance and the next time we see her she's Twilight's right-hand pony. Until her final lines in part one of the finale, I was sure whe was going to turn out to be Chrysalis playing a long con - Chrysalis was in one prior episode of the season where, while her plan failed, her actions ended up corrupting the tree/elements of harmony, and like in her last appearance prior to this season, swore revenge on Starlight. It would have made all of the sense for Cozy to be Chrysalis. They're definitely planning on bringing Cozy back later, and if I know this show correctly, redeem her, but as it was, the entire finale fell pretty flat.
Det man inte har i begåvning får man ta ut i energi.
"I think I need to get to Snoop Dogg's level of high to be able to research this post." -Samsara
Read my fanfic, One Piece: Pure Corruption
I'm currently playing a game named Quantum Conundrum. The narrator voice is played by John de Lancie.
Due to the slightly weird and humorous nature of the game, it's quite easy to imagine him being Discord.
I think that the lack of posts in this thread is a good indication of how interest in the show has waned over the years. I don't find that very surprising because my interest in the show has waned.
Technically speaking the term "jumping the shark" is used for a TV show that's already losing the interest from the public and, in order to try to compensate and renew interest, the show tries to do something extraordinary, stir things up, do some stunt, trying to make the show popular again, but only succeeding in emphasizing its irrelevance. (The term comes from an infamous episode of the TV show Happy Days where one of the protagonists literally jumps over a shark while water skiing, and is the quintessential original example of a show that's plummeting trying to renew interest with silly stunts which only go to emphasize the complete irrelevance of the series.)
In practice, however, in common parlance, the term "jumping the shark" has come to mean a point where a TV show that's at the peak of its popularity, begins a downward trend. A sort of turning point for the show, where success and popularity starts going down. A bit like the TV show having overstayed its welcome, and becoming stale and uninteresting, or too different from what made it so popular. It may start with one particularly bad or controversial episode, or series of episodes, that changes the show radically, for instance (in which case people would say that said episode is the point where the show "jumped the shark".)
At least for me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, the exact point where the show jumped the shark in this second sense was the finale episode of season 3 (ie. the infamous and completely disgraceful episode "Magical Mystery Cure" that changed the tone of the show forever, for no good reason.) While by season 3 the show was already showing slight signs of becoming stale, it was still very interesting. The finale episode, however, was a definitive turning point. This is the point where there started to be a noticeable decrease in the average quality of the scriptwriting and storytelling.
That's not to say that all post-season-3 episodes are bad. Heck, there are some individual episodes that were made much later that would easily make my top-10 list of best episodes of the show. However, regardless of these individual rare gems, it's the overall quality of the scriptwriting that has gone down.
Other setting-changing episodes that came later only helped plummet it further, such as the finale of season 4 (which destroyed Twilight's cozy tree library, and replaced it with a really ugly-ass sterile castle.)
That could actually be considered in some ways "jumping the shark" in the first sense I described above, although there are actually even better examples of such episodes, such as the finale of season 7, which completely unnecessarily brought Starswirl the Bearded to the present, for no good reason whatsoever. This is precisely what I would classify as the sort of desperate stunt that a show is trying to do in order to garner interest and become relevant once more, but just ends up emphasizing how irrelevant it is, and how desperate the writers are.
I'd say other similar "jumping the shark" moments are, for example, making Discord one of the good guys (already in season 3), making Daring Do an actual real character rather than retaining her as an (in-universe) fictional character (season 4), and giving the crusaders their cutie marks (season 5).
By this point, the show is becoming more and more irrelevant. It has overstayed its welcome by a long shot. I think they should have ended it at the very most at about season 5, probably sooner. This is not really a show that works as a long-runner (especially not with the sort of writing and storytelling it has devolved into.)
As far as I know, the show runners once said they are pretty much free to do whatever, but they have to abide by Hasbro's orders. Hasbro decides Twilight needs to grow new wings and the library has to go in favor of a new castle, so they can sell new toy products. I have seen the show runners get a lot of praise for how they deal with those decisions and implement those things in the show. I have just accepted it and appreciated it for the most part.
Magical Mystery Cure, from what I remember, was intended to be the show's finale. The episode was written before it was decided that the show is renewed for more seasons.
I'm just bringing these two aspects to your attention in case you didn't know or remember.
As for me, I liked everything up until the end of season 4. I was mainly focused on the main story line (elements of harmony -> tree chest castle map). Season 5 started to lose me, although Starlight Glimmer's plot in the opening and closing two-parters was interesting. At this point I was wondering if the elements of harmony storyline was going to be developed any further, what the origin of the elements was or if there was a goal to reach for doing all those friendship missions. I barely remember anything after season 6 because it lost me. Something about Discord, Trixie and Glimmer teaming up and something about the pillars of Equestria being resurrected (which I found stupid).
So you may be right with "it overstayed its welcome". I haven't watched MLP for quite some time and I'm not planning to. I'm keeping the good memories and move on.
I heard that the next season was confirmed to be the last. And I heard they want to make sure to wrap things up. I wonder if it's going to be one final battle (Cozy Glow will do something and there is also Chrysalis(?)). I wonder if there will be some sort of time skip, like a glimpse 10 years into the future or something. There is also this trope that I've seen lots of other shows do: The gang splits up and goes their own ways. But I guess the world of Equestria is too small for that. It's not like the other side of the globe was ever explored. I guess they will not show Scootaloo's parents.
Heck, I'm kind of wanting to rewatch some MrEnter review videos now...
Magical Mystery Cure, from what I remember, was intended to be the show's finale. The episode was written before it was decided that the show is renewed for more seasons.
I suppose that makes some kind of sense. Twilight got the ultimate upgrade, and that's it. A fitting end to the entire series. (I would still not like at all how it happened, nor why, nor the plot of the episode, but at least the final end result would in some way have made sense as a series ender.)
You can really see in season 4 that the writers had absolutely no idea what to do with Twilight after that change. I think it would have been best from all perspectives (the writers, the viewers and the series as a whole) if Twilight had not gone through the transformation at all.
Anyway, on the subject of the series having gotten stale and uninteresting, I find this last 8th season to be particularly boring. This whole "school of friendship" arc is boring, uninteresting, and makes little to no sense. It introduces a whole bunch of recurring characters that are shallow and uninteresting, and the fact that they are dragging the whole scenario into almost every single episode of the season is just detrimental. (And, if you think about it, even from an in-universe perspective a "school of friendship", especially one that seems to be like a large high school, with multiple professors, classes and courses, makes little sense. How much is there to teach there, really? The subject matter sounds like something that one single mentor could tutor students on their free time, not something to build an entire school around, with multiple teachers in essentially a full-time job. The whole idea is just stupid and doesn't work, not even as a plot device. At least the map in the previous season somewhat worked as a plot device. This "school" really doesn't.)
In the end it's a matter of opinion.
I for one appreciated the school plot. But I think if I were to say anything now, it wouldn't do justice to whatever I said in my "first impressions" post.
Besides the new characters, I appreciate that Twilight has basicly done a full circle:
Being a young student and seeking knowledge
Being ignorant to friendship
Being powerless
↓
Has faced adversaries and hardships, has gained knowledge
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1977
Location: Making an escape
I also want to point out that this year will be Bronycon's last. Attendance peaked in 2015 with over ten thousand attendees, but it's been in a decline since. My guess is that they want to end it while they are still somewhat relevant.
I kind of agree that season 3 did a lot of damage. I witnessed the surge of fans that came between 1 and 2, but then the combination of Princess Twilight and Equestria saw a mass exodus*.
Mostly, though, I picked up a sense of ennui around season 5-6. My guess is that the novelty of being an adult that liked a girl's show was starting to wear off, that there was nowhere else to go with it. Let's not forget that the whole brony thing was a practical joke that got out of hand.
As an aside, I want to mention that EQD ran a poll of its users not too long ago, and most of them responded as using "pornygraphic" material. An interesting development, considering most people in the early days I thought found that gross.
*Since the people who stayed behind with these two things liked or tolerated them, you'd get a false impression that both were popular if you asked the existing fans.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
