Why I Hate MLP Season 8

[Them's Seeing Ponies 282]

I can understand some of your points, but season 8 is genuinely not terrible. It's certainly not one of the better seasons (although there are some who may disagree, obviously) but it's better than S6 and 7 to me in that I find it has more of a unified sense of direction and humour than those two seasons, which felt more slapdashed to me (S6 had very little personal style and suffered from poor designation of episodes (too little Starlight and too many awkward filler episodes) and S7 was a weird mixture of the Lady Writer's more Nickelodeon-esque style and Haber's more sedate tone). Considering that the strong Cartoon Cartoon-esque undertones were a major factor in drawing me into this show in the first place, it's nice to see the show feel more confident now, even if the episode quality isn't always that consistent. 

I also wouldn't immediately accuse S8 of casually rehashing older plotlines to as great an extent as you seem to be implying. Yes, "Father Knows Beast" is similar thematically to "Dragon Quest", but the former, while faaarrrr from perfect (it's still kind of sloppy otherwise and the episode feels like a minor cop-out due to its refusal to delve into the ambiguity of Spike's parentage), handles "Dragon Quest"'s themes in a more balanced manner without being overly blatant or discriminating as DQ ("Dragon Quest", not a certain muskox) generally was. FKB has issues, but being a ripoff isn't one I would majorly hold against it. 

[Singe 2,109]

It seems like a slip up for the season to be having two similar episodes where both Princess Celestia and Pinkie Pie are just bad at something and have to be told they're bad at it. Just with different outcome. Celestia could handle it after resolving trust issues while Pinkie just quits on her life.