Sorry for inevitable typos.

I plan on giving each episode it's own review (and re-do the ones destroyed in The Great Outage) on a Blogger dedicated to reviewing the series, but in the meantime, have this little ranking of the first half of the season.

BEST

Apple Pinkie Pie: Fun, light-hearted story that's full of great writing that effectively uses the personalities of the characters involved. The morals are handled very well and the centerpiece song is just fantastic. Worth the wait, this one.

Pinkie Pride: Of course Weird Al is great, but thankfully the rest of the episode lives up to his presence. It's nicely paced, knowing how long to spend on certain moods and scenes, the songs are catchy and polished, and it leaves you with a nice, warm feeling inside.

Three's a Crowd: Completely and utterly hilarious.

Rarity Takes Manehatten: The most mature themes since "Wonderbolt Academy". The song is a bit forgettable, if not nice, but the rest of the episode is memorable and engaging enough. Polsky has a good grasp on what makes these characters tick.

Flight to the Finish: Overly-villainous bullies and a lack of willingness to state whether Scoots can fly or not aside, it's an effective episode that comes complete with a mature moral and MLP's answer to "Gonna Fly Now". Not as immediately moving as "Sleepless in Ponyville", but still pretty grand. I do hope we get a Scoot episode that doesn't focus on this subject soon, though.

Power Ponies: Pure, stupid fun. Nuff' said.

Castle Mane-ia: Inconsequential, but funny as heck, does a good job of using the character's personalities and quirks for comedy.

Simple Ways: Funny, but never attempts to explore the concepts in its story. St. Germain is a hoot, of course, even if it feels a bit forcefully-gag-ish. The weakest Rarity episode, by far.

Princess Twilight Sparkle: Does a good job of establishing that the things we may have thought were going to ruin the series will in fact not do that, and the removal of the Elements is an intriguing move. But there's way too many plot holes and haphazard staging of drama to ignore. Plus the vines are just a really weak threat to open a season with.

Bats!: Seriously. Take away the five minutes of FlutterBat, and it's just a weird episode where five out of six of the Elements of Harmony are totally okay with total extermination. Sure, the song sounds like Danny Elfman, but not the awesome Danny Elfman songs.

Daring Don't: Not awful, but not exceptional. Too full of weird inconsistencies and moments of forced mopiness to be completely successful.

Rainbow Falls: A confusing, clumsy retread of a much better episode that retroactively makes Dash's main goal in the series seem pointless. It's boring, predictable, and simplistic, the Wonderbolts are just awful out of nowhere, the characters seem less like characters and more like flanderized versions of themselves, and it uses Derpy to make everyone overlook how shoddy the episode is. Where's Merriwether Williams when you need her?

WORST

Overall Thoughts: Pretty solid, actually, now that I take a step back. None of the episodes have reached "Hurricane Fluttershy" or "Too Many Pinkie Pies" levels of greatness yet, but they still have 13 episodes to do that. While I wish the story arc elements were a bit more integrated seamlessly and not just shoved in there and made obvious, but it's a refreshing experiment on the writers' part. All in all, not too shabby.

Agree? Don't agree? Comment and tell me why. Please. I'm lonely. There's nothing else to do in this dungeon.