Captain Trek

I haven't seen the most recent one yet, but to my way of thinking the primarily gag-driven episodes thus far have been Castle Sweet Castle, Slice of Life, Party Pooped, and Brotherhooves Social (the latter two of which I consider to be quite bad, CSC I consider middling, and SoL I consider fantastic). That's just four out of the 17 I've seen (counting both parts of Cutie Map as one episode). In contrast, I'd unreservedly call Cutie Map, Lost Treasure of Griffonstone, Amending Fences, Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep, Rarity Investigates, Made in Manehattan, and Crusaders of the Lost Mark well-written and thoughtful episodes. All episodes of FiM do some degree of comedy, of course, but these ones are all quite serious and do it well, when you get right down to it. Meanwhile, Bloom and Gloom, Tanks For the Memories, Appleoosa's Most Wanted, Make New Friends But Keep Discord, and Canterlot Boutique have some shaky writing or moments, but all are trying to deliver a serious, heartfelt message at the end of the day. And none of these episodes are strictly bad (the worst of the bunch, BaG and TFtM, get 5/10 from me), at least IMO. That really just leaves Princess Spike, which is a horribly written episode that doesn't even have the common decency to be pure comedy like the also poorly written Party Pooped was trying to be. But horrendous Spike episodes are something we all should have gotten used to by now and really don't reflect the overall quality of the season. So to sum up, we have: 1/17: Good and purely gag-based 1/17: Middling and purely gag-based 2/17: Bad and purely gag-based 7/17: Good, with a serious message 5/17: Middling to decent, with a serious message 1/17: Bad, with a serious message Between that and the envelopes they've been pushing, unafraid to take risks and shake up the status quo, I wouldn't say this season has been pandering to the target audience at all. If anything, they're broadening their horizons even more than they did in season 4.

They do the same thing in Care Bears and Sgt. Frog as well. It's not uncommon.

Did they back this absurd claim up in any way whatsoever? Or was their only evidence, "because I say so"? What an incredibly bizarre thing to say...

I count it, yes. As for why I think Secret of My Excess and Spike at Your Service are terrible, I'll re-watch them and post up a quick review of each for you guys to read. Expect an update soonish. (Also, is anyone else having problems getting paragraphing to work right?)

Well I was deliberately exaggerating for effect. But fair enough.

It's okay to take a break from the main characters once in a great while. I think of Slice of Life as being akin to the Next Generation episode Lower Decks, which gave us some insight into what the Enterprise's existence looks like from the perspective of crewmembers who aren't Picard and the other senior officers. It wasn't as seamless as Lower Decks, but it was plenty enough fun to more than make up for that, or at least I thought so. But like Lower Decks, Slice of Life is the short of thing that, whilst you shouldn't necessarily not do it, if you do do it you should do it extremely sparingly. Fortunately, I don't think there's going to be a problem with that, seeing as Slice of Life was an X00 episode in the same vein as episodes 100 and 200 of Stargate SG1, meaning the next time we're likely to get something like it is episode 200. That would be early in season 9, and season 9 is something I think we can all agree is wishful thinking at best... Umm, what? Dragon Quest wasn't too bad, but Secret of my Excess and Spike at Your Service were AWFUL! XD Totally agree. Well said.

Umm, yeah? That's exactly the point I'm making to say that bad (and indeed very bad) CMC episodes, as with Spike episodes, are nothing new and thus cannot really be cited as a sign the show is getting worse. However, that's only 5 out of 18 CMC episodes, so I'm not going to blanketly claim that the "majority" of CMC episodes are bad.

Not neccessarily, but there's been at least one major stinker from the CMC (at least according to the majority opinion) every season. From the info graphic I linked to, Show Stoppers, Cutie Pox, One Bad Apple, Somepony to Watch Over Me, and Appleoosa's Most Wanted all rate extremely poorly. I personally don't think Cutie Pox was that bad and that Appleoosa's Most Wanted was actually decent, but then on the other hand I didn't think Bloom and Gloom was all that good despite it rating third highest of all the season 5 episodes thus far (except Rarity Investigates, which the graphic hasn't been updated with yet) on the infographic, so it pretty much evens out.

It might be, Unlikeable Pony, that those who hate Rainbow Dash are just particularly loud and thus seem more numerous than they actually are. But that's just a speculation. As for me, there's no member of the Mane Six I dislike, but with a gun to my head I'd have to say it is and always was Pinkie Pie, just because I relate to her the least. My favourite has always been a bit of a toss-up between Rainbow Dash and Applejack, but whilst RD had the edge for a while, AJ clinched it with her "being sisters is like apple pie" speech from Sisterhooves Social. Gotta love that homespun wisdom. Not that RD didn't make a serious attempt at a comeback with her action at the end of Wonderbolts Academy, but by then I was becoming heavily biased by a Skype friend of mine whose performances as Applejack stand out as some of the finest roleplaying I have ever seen.

For me, it doesn't really concern me if a build up doesn't pay off as spectacularly as it could since the first three seasons of the show did just fine without trying to build anything in particular up. However, although I felt Lost Treasure was a great episode regardless of the lack of action, I'd certainly agree that I wouldn't complain at all if the map was used more. I'm not gonna get hung up about it, though. But that's just me. I wouldn't agree with you overall since I feel the quality of individual episodes trumps everything else, including a mediocre meta-narrative, but I can see why you might be unimpressed by the season because of that.

They know. Thankfully they don't actively demean me for it, but they do pretty much try to pretend it doesn't exist because it makes them uncomfortable.

Apologies for the terse tone of the last post (it was late and I was tired). I'm not trying to be unkind, I'm just trying to figure out where you and the others are actually coming from. Just saying, "In my opinion, the quality of the show's writing has declined" is fine and all, but that opinion doesn't do much good unless you can point to specific things the writers did better in previous seasons (which is why I feel pointing to the typically terrible Spike and CMC episodes isn't helpful, since whilst it certainly would be nice if those improved, bad Spike and CMC episodes simply don't represent a quality decrease from the usual average, which is what you claim is happening in season 5) and need to work on improving for season 6. Granted the writers aren't going to be reading these posts, but criticism is always better when its constructive.

I find it kind of amusing how Superdogz has almost exactly the same flawed arguement that Key Sharkz had. Oh, the season is terrible because Spike and CMC! Again, how is this anything new? Season 1: 3 CMC episodes, 1 Spike episode Season 2: 5 CMC, 2 Spike Season 3: 2 CMC, 2 Spike (in a half-length season!) Season 4: 4 CMC, 2 Spike Season 5: 4 CMC, 1 Spike (with the contents of three episodes yet to be revealed) Also, dogz, you, Key, and Limeblossom all claim the quality of the show's writing has declined, but without specifying exactly where this poor quality writing actually is aside from vague allusions to Spike and CMC episodes, which again have always been full of clunkers since the beginning and thus are in no way indicative of an overall decline in the show's writing. Keep in mind, Thye Show Stoppers (a season 1 CMC episode) is widely considered one of the worst episodes in the entire series!