Do you think Friendship is Magic used the "As you know" trope a bit too much (narrating the obvious)?

[Ring Team 119]

According to the website TV Tropes, "As you know" is a form of exposition where one character explains to another something that they both know, but which the audience doesn't or may have forgotten.

And I have the impression that Friendship is Magic used this trope a bit too much.

-In season 4, there are episodes like Filli Vanilli, Simple Ways and Twilight Time where this happens.

-In Twilight's kingdom, the first minutes were dedicated to Twilight's friends informing her what we've seen in the episodes related to the keys of the Tree of Harmony.

-In Rainbow Rocks, it's often stated by many different characters that Sunset Shimmer was evil in the previous movie.

-In season 6, it's stated many times by Starlight, Spike or other characters that she was evil in the past (which is kinda ironic what she would end up doing).

-In The cart before the ponies, most of the scenes the Cutie Mark Crusaders have are about saying things they already know.

-In Surf and/or Turf, despite that it's my favourite episode in season 8, it has this problem, with Twilight constantly taking about her research with other characters who already know this information.

I personally dislike this trope because the writers were taking up space with redundant exposition that could have been better managed otherwise. This trope works better with "fish out of water" characters in a world where neither that character nor the audience know nothing, like Spirited Away. And before someone says the typical "it's for kids", there were other TV shows for kids that used this trope very few times, like Steven Universe (the list scene, if you know, you know), Gravity Falls and The Owl House. Just because a TV show is for kids doesn't mean it needs many characters explaining something they or the audience already know.

So, do you think this show uses the trope "As you know" too much?

[Pentium100 2,057]

It's an episodic TV show, most of the episodes are pretty much stand-alone stories and you do not need to watch all of them to enjoy the show (in comparison, Babylon 5, The Expanse etc are basically very long movies cut up into episodes). Because of that, you cannot be sure that the audience has seen the previous episode (especially if it was a while ago), so you have to inform it of the relevant facts. There are not many ways to do it.

Yes, we here have watched all episodes, in order, starting from the very first one, but the target audience may not have diligently watched all of the episodes and instead started watching at some random episode and then only seen some of them (ones they were able to catch on TV).