Has a bad episode ever ruined a character for you?

[EpicEnergy 23,223]

I don't let single episodes ruin my view of a character.

[Megas 27,743]

No, if anything it does the opposite, where it feels like the writers have a bone to pick with the character involved and really just made me dislike the show more. You see me complain about RD all the time with how she was consistently poorly handled in the Haber run of FiM, it just felt like the writers were actually trying to sabotage the character as the way she was handled goes well beyond "just having a bad episode" and just straight into punishing her

Only instance of "episodes ruining the character" was Discord, because it he's always written to be a huge prick who tortures everyone either for his own amusement or whenever he doesn't get his way, but it always felt like the writers actually enjoyed him like this given how almost never got any comeuppance. He almost always gets away with almost everything he,, at best he was given a slap on the wrist, at worst he was outright rewarded for his BS(A Matter of Principals comes to mind). It's even worse whenever they decide to make his BS play a big role in pivotal moments of the show including the show's damned finale. Only, and I repeat only time he ever got any sense of ample comeuppance was Three's A Crowd

[Splashee 28,566]

Well, yes kinda.

Rarity ruined

I think Rarity's fake eyelashes in the train episode ruined her for me (completely). She didn't feel like a real character when you subtract something so important to her design.

 

Sweetie Belle ruined

She was introduced as a singing character (let me rephrase that: THE singing character). She had something going there, and was easily going to be my favorite character of the entire show. She was ruined by singing badly using her voice actor's voice for singing in Sleepless in Ponyville. I get it that the VAs started to get famous around that time, and they were more important to Bronies and fans than the actual ponies and their true personalities, but that kinda broke the CMCs to me. Their destinies changed because of fame of their VAs. I say it is worse than breaking the fourth wall, to actually model the characters after their real life VA.

 

Twilight Sparkle ruined

With less explanation:

With more explanation: Twilight was the lead character, with a powerful and unique personality. She even turned into some special character

But she was just simply written to become a Princess too fast, without ever learning why, or even wanting to be one in the first place. She grew up too fast without understanding herself. That is not something you should teach children to do. What happens when you are dropped into this world without knowing who you are? Well, you don't become a princess, that's for sure!

 

Spike ruined

This one has to do with love interests. I get it that the love for Rarity was a gag thing, but it got too weird. It needed to be stopped, but some writers just kept going back to it (because of lazy writing), and it wasn't a funny gag. I didn't laugh.
He also was supposed to be a butler to Twilight Sparkle, a "help". He was written to be a helpless child, and that ruined him. He never acted as a child in the beginning. He was mature and took care of Twilight. Twilight never needed him if he was useless.
This was not a mother/child thing. He was never a little baby that had to be taken cared of by Twilight. Twilight was the one not mature enough. Twilight was the one who had to learn how to do friendship and stuff.

 

 

There are other characters ruined, but they were introduced later on, and you can't really ruin new characters when they weren't important to the main show in the beginning. Discord. Daring Do. The Student Six. A lot of potential lost. But ruined? Not sure.

[Castle Bleck 19,376]

The Beginning Of The End — Sombra.

Sweet And Smoky — Garble.

Daring Doubt — Ahuizotl.

The Ending Of The End — Grogar and Discord.

Edited May 22, 2022 by Even Evil Has Standards

[AppleButt 8,676]

Does the moment Discord became “good” count?  If so then that.  Never liked him after he was reformed, and don’t know how the ponies ever put up with him. 

[ExplosionMare 18,079]

Yakity Sax- Pinkie Pie. This threw out her whole philosophy on making others feel happy. I get she was trying to find some of her own happiness but it was at the expense of everyone else's. Surely she would have noticed that. I also feel like she would have learned to tone it down after everything she did when she first met Cranky. It also seemed wildly out of character for her to get to depressed about losing the instrument she was playing (I know what it's called, I just can't spell it). I get her being sad or disappointed about it but it doesn't seem like something she'd base her whole sense of living on since that level of upset is usually reserved for when she makes a friend or family member upset.

Sweet and Smokey- Garble. This feels like a really unnecessary episode. Garble was fine as we was as the typical bully character but then he got the "villain reformation" treatment like so many other villains did. His poems weren't even good.

The Ending of the End- Discord and Grogar. Not only did the show ruin their chance to have an amazing Grogar reboot character, they turned him into Discord, which made Discord look like the biggest jerk. I know Discord always needs a bit of chaos in his life but what did he need to test Twilight for? One side of this is that she may indeed not be ready for a throne but the other side of it is that throwing villains at her is too risky to be considered fair testing. It is also just disappointing to know that Grogar wasn't real even though he had so much potential to be one of the best MLP villains.

[Sparklefan1234 172,082]

"Keep Calm and Flutter On" totally ruined Discord for me by taking away a potentially awesome villain/hero dynamic between him and the Mane 6.

"Putting Your Hoof Down" "ruined" Fluttershy for me when she made Pinkie Pie and Rarity cry after personally insulting them.

"Too Many Pinkie Pies" "ruined" Pinkie Pie for me because I stopped thinking she was funny after I watched the episode. 

"The Last Laugh" "ruined" Cheese Sandwich for me by making him dull.

"Dragon Dropped" didn't "ruin" Rarity for me but it did leave a REALLY bad final impression, IMO. 

[Castle Bleck 19,376]

3 hours ago, ExplosionMare said:

Sweet and Smokey- Garble. This feels like a really unnecessary episode. Garble was fine as we was as the typical bully character but then he got the "villain reformation" treatment like so many other villains did. His poems weren't even good.

Plus, they Rey-Palpatine'd him into Smolder's brother.

[They call me Loyalty 1,948]

No, that's silly. You know the show is written by different people. If anything, hate the writer/s, not the character/s.
Or better yet, just ignore that episode. Pretend it never existed. Of course, this is not always so easy, like with twilight and those mutant limbs protruding from her back as a replacement for competent writing and proper character development. But, sadly, under a bad direction, whether it be in the hands of the writers or otherwise, characters start to lose their own agency. And you can see the shambolic hand of the writer forcing the narrative and characters into an unnatural conclusion that has no message or purpose whatsoever, other than the empty vacuum of a meaningless endeavour. An exercice in futility. Sounds familiar? Nothing new under the sun.

Edited May 22, 2022 by They call me Loyalty

[Rosy Moonlight 369]

For me, its Cozy Glow in School Raze.

She wasn't given any backstory, wasting a lot of potential, just because she was created to be a twist villain.

That is very strange for an evil child character, and that is made worse by the fact her main enemies work in the School Of Friendship, and they did not even search for her parents or try to reach out at all.

Edited May 22, 2022 by Rosy Moonlight

[dead account 2,711]

I haven't seen a bad FiM episode yet, so this is not applicable to me. There are just a few things that don't make sense to me, but it didn't ruin the characters for me.