How did MLP Friendship is Magic fare compared to other long runners in quality?

[SunsetShimmerStan 35]

Seeing how ever long runner is bound to have a at least one weak season,  how did MLP FiM fare next to other long runners such as Simpsons, Family Guy, SpongeBob, Fairly OddParents, Adventure Time, and Regular Show in writing quality over the years? I'm especially curious how it fares against Adventure Time and Regular Show given they were also long running  story driven 2010s cartoons airing around the same time as MLP (bonus for Adventure Time also having an alternate universe with alternate counterparts spin off with Fionna and Cake like MLP had with Equestria Girls)?

[Iforgotmybrain 5,521]

It’s hard to compare it to the Simpsons and Family Guy, imo, just because of the sheer size and cultural impact of those shows. SpongeBob for similar reasons, it’s a cultural powerhouse. Although it’s worth noting that the “golden age” of SpongeBob that many people mention in discussions only spanned the first 4 seasons. I think most people would agree that FiM still had a lot left in the tank by the end of its 4th season. Take that for what it’s worth.

Fairly OddParents, I really think it’s fair to say that FiM was just a flat out better show. FiM had 9 seasons vs 10 for Fairly OddParents, so both ran for quite a while. But man, the later seasons for Fairly OddParents are roooouggghhh. Like straight up, “how is this the same show I grew up watching” levels of rough. They’re not good, and I think they seriously soured the shows overall reputation. Both shows hit similar highs to me. But FiM was simply “better” for longer. The later FiM seasons, for all their faults, are magnitudes better than the later Fairly OddParents seasons.
 

I can’t really comment on Regular Show or Adventure Time as I haven’t fully watched them.

Edited July 13 by Iforgotmybrain
Reword

[Rafa Stary 2,894]

Can't say anything and that is quite subjective, and I personally don't think MLP can be compared to shows like The Simpsons, Spongebob SquarePants, also TV PG-13 cartoons, they were in different worlds and even considering the many teenagers and adults who watched FiM, their audiences still were different from each other, as well their popularity and influence.

And I can't make a personal comparison between them either, I never watched any of these shows consistently, Adventure Time I missed the later seasons, Family Guy I barely watched more than 3 full episodes 

The only one of them I can truly compare with MLP somehow is Regular Show, it was the closest that I came to watch in full, watched some of the final Season (8), and one thing I can say for sure in my opinion is that Regular Show throughout its ending was truly trying to still tell new stories with new concepts, Season 8 is entirely set in Space, while Season 7 made a build up to that, so the Regular Show team was still risking with new ideas til the series' finale.

Now FiM went for a more secure route, I feel that the G4 team "ran out of ideas" for the most part starting from Season 5 (or specially Season 6), while Season 8 took the risk by introducing the School of Friendship and Student Six, most of the latter half of the show pretty much rely on fanservice and repeating or rehashing ideas from past episodes, bringing back old villains and revisiting old material so much to the point that Season 9 felt more like a celebration of the entire show rather than a Season with original stories, the complete opposite of Regular Show's finale.

"Quality" wise, well, it's kinda funny, but I personally think that both shows started to decline after their 4th Seasons, I remember watching the episodes of Season 5 of Regular Show and onwards and feeling that they weren't as fun, creative or memorable as the ones from the first 4 Seasons, Seasons 1-4 felt a lot more crazy and fantastic to me, making the show awesome to me, while 5-8 were more calm, relaxed and "realistic", making it lose some of its magic in opinion, and I feel the same about Seasons 5-9 of FiM (except for the "realistic" part, at least not very much )  but I still really liked both in their later reasons ☆

[Antiyonder 1,106]

If S8 and S9 are the weakest (More so for mane story), probably still a good run with 7 of them still being enjoyable.

Even then S8-9 still having enjoyable done in ones.

[Jamis 16]

It's all G4, but in many ways it is easier to think about it as different shows merged together because of the same environment and character overlap.

G4 Seasons 1-4 are basically Mane6 story - they are the main characters, developing, learning... with Twilight Kingdom their main story is finished. This was the golden age of brony fandom, because the show stayed pretty consistent with the story lines and characters, even though Twilight became princess at the end of Season 3 - the show continued with the same principles developed during early seasons.

G4 Seasons 5-7 is mostly Starlight Glimmer Story. Mane6 is moved to background/episodic characters playing bigger role only later in joined finales. But otherwise they are moved aside and only interacting with other characters just to show the contract and demonstrate the progress of others - Twilight acting weird next to Spike who is suddenly acting reasonably is the perfect example of "switching the focus" and making Mane6 mostly background characters acting always as audience expects.

Show has moved from "Friendship is Magic" to "Put yourself first and don't care too much" which matches the original target audience moving to puberty age: from cooperating together on the common goal to the personal individuality in the same universe. Which considerably changed the spirit of the show.

G4 Season 8 is mostly Young6 (and a bit of Pillars of Equestria story), with other characters episodes, trying to put it all together, but the focus is on Young6.

G4 Season 9 is "let's wrap up as many story lines as we can", because we know the show is ending. They did amazing job in this. And the plot of the season was also great, finale definitely worth the whole FiM show wrap-up.

G4 comic Season 10 continues where Season 9 finale "The Ending of the End" ended (not The Last Problem) and

Spoiler

extends the original story beyond Equestria, giving the backstories to many known characters and the whole new perspective on the whole MLP Universe history, relationships etc. continuing the spirit of cooperation we know from the first seasons. The story include almost all previous characters and introducing many new - also the teams combinations is amazing.

Also containing super many references.

So... MLP: FiM is definitely just one story in a row, but different parts played different roles.

Edited September 9 by Jamis
Bolding the seasons names