Why so many ratings?

>Molt Down  
>terrible  

@Smitty1991  
Another reason i love those 2 episodes  
1 it confirms a theory i had since season 2 (dragon age & greed growth are 2 different things)  
2 Sludge’s song, it is just fun to listen to

@Ihhh  
Yes, they are. When there are continuity errors and characters acting stupid and out of character for the sake of the plot, that’s what we writers call bad writing; it is NOT objective opinion. Again, this is why so many people hate the new seasons and prefer the old ones.

@Smitty1991  
Could you please stop trying to make your opinions sound objective. Most of your complaints aren’t objective bad writing.

@Ihhh  
If you like these episodes, that’s great. I just hated them due to the bad writing.

@Smitty1991  
You need to learn to accept other people’s opinions.

@Jonny Manz  
So, in other words, you didn’t care that the Mane Six acted stupid, Spike insulted Twilight, Twilight accused three young teenagers of doing wrong without any proof (a lesson that she learned not to do back in season two), or the fact that a couple of the episodes were basically rehashes of other episodes from previous seasons? It’s for these reasons, among many, many others, why so many old fans hate the later seasons of this show, because the writing got really god-awful after season four and never recovered, and it’s why so many old fans prefer the first two seasons of the show over the later seasons, because they view them as the only good seasons of this show and point to Lauren Faust leaving as when the show started to go downhill. I personally don’t agree with these people (I absolutely hated seasons 1, 2, 3, 6, and 8), but I do at least understand where they’re coming from.

@Smitty1991  
Right, huge mistakes with the writing - in your opinion. I, for one, happen to disagree with most of them.

@Ihhh  
No, they’re not. These are huge mistakes in terms of the writing.

@Smitty1991  
Most of those are personal opinions.

@DonMaguz  
No, I’m not the first one to bring up these points. Several people have brought them up. These are gross mistakes made by the writers that anyone with half a brain can see.

@Smitty1991  
Of all your opinions about the episodes, I missed the ones where “a lot of people agree”.
 
It seems that you think of yourself as “a lot of people”.

@Ihhh  
Okay, let’s go over all the reasons why these episodes suck.
 
“Non-compete Clause” — Yona almost drowns due to Rainbow Dash and Applejack being too caught up in their competition to notice, leaving it to the students to save her. Then, at the end, instead of getting punished for getting one of their students killed, Rainbow Dash and Applejack are instead rewarded with praise from their students. It doesn’t help that this feels like a repeat of previous episodes like this, such as “Fall Weather Friends” and “Castle-mania.” I really feel like that at this point in their lives and their friendship, both Rainbow Dash and Applejack should’ve gotten over this petty rivalry. At least in “Castle-mania” it was shown as being more friendly in terms. It also doesn’t help that the premise for this episode was repeated in a short.
 
“Father Knows Beast” — Yet again, the writers are given a golden opportunity to explore Spike’s origins after failing to do so in episodes like “Dragon Quest” and “Molt Down.” What do they do instead? They devote an entire episode to showing a prick Sludge is, only alluding to Spike’s origins once throughout the entire episode, and even then it was all a lie. But what might have been merely a bad episode reached the deepest pits of rage I could feel for the show when Spike pulls the “You’re not my mom” bit on Twilight. This serious did not help the episode in any way. Spike pretty much tells Twilight, “You’re not my mom.” You can literally see her heart breaking at this, as well as see the immense amount of pain this causes her. This is in sharp contrast to last season’s “Once Upon a Zeppelin” where Spike urged Twilight to take some time off because he was worried about her well-being. This line from Spike in this episode, however, transcended the episode and translated into me direct anger and disgust for the writer when they assigned Spike that line. Twilight raised Spike. She hatched him. They grew up together. She bathed him, fed him, taught him, disciplined him. She is the only parental figure he has ever known for his entire life, and they consider each other family, as stated in “Once Upon a Zepplin”.
 
Spike’s rejection of Twilight as a parental figure in favor of his real father is the cherry on top of an idiot plot episode. It’s a slap in the face to everyone who cared about Spike and Twilight’s relationship and it spits on the past seven seasons spent exploring it.
 
“Marks for Effort” — My biggest problem with this episode is Twilight herself. After Cozy Glow flunks her test, Twilight calls the CMC to discuss about her failed test. You would expect Twilight to at least take the time to hear the CMC’s side of the story. They’ve known each other for quite a while, and while the CMC can get into a lot of trouble with their zany plans, they’ve always had the best of intentions in mind, and they do their best to fix their mistakes. Besides, her friends, and especially Twilight herself, have had friendship lessons about not jumping to conclusions. What happens instead? While the CMC attempt to explain that they taught Cozy Glow all the right answers, Twilight refuses to believe them, using the failed test as “evidence.” This scene made me hate Twilight more than I did during “No Second Prances.” I swear, it’s like these writers have been bound and determined to ruin Twilight’s character since season three, and don’t get me started on her behavior in “A Trivial Pursuit.”
 
“Fake It ’Til You Make It” — This episode was basically a rehash of season four’s “Simple Ways”, except now Fluttershy is in Rarity’s place.
 
“The Mean Six” — Queen Chrysalis creates evil doppelgängers of the Mane 6 in an effort to take advantage of the Elements of harmony. Chrysalis would naturally do some thorough research on the Elements to understand how they work. Considering how close she was to victory in her previous two major roles, it is safe to assume that she did at least a bit of research back then. She instead proceeds to do no such thing, leading to her plan failing. After that, the Mane Six and Starlight Glimmer, separated into pairs, are accosted by the Mean Six intercepting their trip. Considering how close these girls are, you would expect the Mane Six to take notice of the doppelgängers’ behaviour and appearance being a 180 from their friends (especially since they’ve dealt with this in the form of brainwashing before), suspect foul play, and plot an investigation to see where they came from. But the Mane Six (including Twilight Sparkle) don’t notice even the slightest difference and legitimately think their friends have gone bad, resulting in a disagreement.
 
Aside from all of that, this episode was just straight up boring, as boring, if not more so, as “Going to Seed.” Really, what was accomplished here? You could literally skip this episode and not miss anything significant at all! Nothing of substance or value would be lost if you skipped this episode entirely.
 
“A Principal of Matters” — I get that reformed Discord is supposed to be a lovable rogue and a jerk with a heart of gold, but his behavior in this episode was just plain insufferable.
 
The worst moment of the entire episode, though, was the ending: Starlight apologizes to Discord, who has done nothing but be a asshole the entire episode, claiming that she should have approached the situation like a guidance counselor, and promises to make him secondary head mare. So what exactly is the moral here? ‘If your feelings are hurt or you feel bad about something, feel free to make others suffer until they relent and give you what you want?’ If that’s not a bad aesop for this show’s target demographic, then I don’t know what is.
 
Other episodes where Discord’s antics got out of hand at least had Discord realizing the error of his ways, other ponies calling him out for it (Fluttershy during the Smooze incident), or Discord himself getting some kind of retribution for his actions (him getting sick at the end of “Three’s a Crowd”). This one trying to justify such selfish and bratty behavior just left a bad taste in my mouth. I hate Discord to begin with, and episodes like this really don’t help his case.
 
“The Washouts” — Aside from yet another episode where Rainbow Dash acts like an asshole, this episode had a glaring continuity error. When Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash see that Lightning Dust is the leader of The Washouts, Scootaloo has no idea who Lightning is. This is made clear when she says, “You two know each other?”. This creates a huge continuity error, as Scootaloo knew all about her and told Rainbow’s parents about her in “Parental Glideance.” This gets even worse at the end when we see that Rainbow’s parents have joined the Scootaloo fan club, making it clear the writers remember that episode. How the hell did they miss that detail, than?
 
“The Break-up Breakdown” — This episode was so cliche that I literally pointed out everything that was going to happen within the first five minutes of the episode. This episode’s only saving grace is the B plot with the CMC.
 
“Yakkity-Sax” — Few episodes of this series have matched the stupidity of this episode. Basically, what happens is Pinkie Pie has taken up a new hobby of playing an instrument from Yakyakistan called the yovidaphone. Despite her lack of skill due to having just started out, her friends agree to be supportive, hoping that she’ll improve over time. However, it soon becomes apparent that Pinkie is not getting any better, especially when her excessive playing begins causing problems for her friends. Eventually, they come together to discuss what they should do, and Applejack immediately nixes Twilight’s idea to pretend Pinkie is good. So with that out of the question, you’d naturally expect them to gently tell Pinkie that she’s being disruptive and ask her to be more considerate. They could advise her to play in private, or while surrounded by a silencing charm, or at least not practice when they’re trying to do their jobs. Furthermore, you would expect them to tell Pinkie that she hasn’t been improving, and recommend that she ask one of her Yak friends to give her some music lessons. Oh, no, I’m sorry. That’s what someone who wasn’t retarded would’ve done. They instead straight up tell Pinkie to stop playing her yovidaphone just because she’s bad at it. Pinkie is understanding and appears to take it well at first, but then later becomes depressed, culminating in her deciding to leave Ponyville for Yakyakistan. It doesn’t help that this is yet another continuity error as far as “Party of One” goes.

@Smitty1991  
Yes, but that doesn’t disprove what I said.

@Ihhh  
I for one hated all of them, and I know I’m not alone in that regard.

@Smitty1991  

 

@Smitty1991  
I don’t know what to tell you other than I guess we look in different places for that sort of thing.

@Jonny Manz  
I’ve seen a lot of hatred for all of them.

@Smitty1991  
I disagree with at least 7 of those listed there as “sucking”, at least IMO. I don’t give a shit what other people think, I like what episodes I like.
 
Also, to be fair, I’ve only seen a lot of hatred for, like, 3 or 4 of the episodes listed there.

@Ihhh  
Supposedly, yes. A lot of people, however, will agree whether or jot an episode sucks. For example, a lot of people agree that episodes like “Non-compete Clause”, “Father Knows Beast”, “Marks for Effort”, “Fake It ’Til You Make It”, “The Mean Six”, “A Principal of Matters”, “The Washouts”, “The Break-up Breakdown” and “Yakkity-Sax” all sucked. This was due to the horrible writing and the way the characters behaved in each episode.

@Smitty1991  
Writing quality is subjective.

@CrystalScale  
@Jonny Manz
 
Well, that would be like me saying that I like a particular episode solely for the fact that Twilight’s in it. Twilight has started in episodes that I’ve hated, because I care more about the quality of the writing than I do the fact whether or not my favorite character is in an episode.

@Smitty1991  
To bad

@Smitty1991  
I mean, if that’s what they like, that’s what they like. I mean, you’re perfectly in your rights to feel that way, about their judgment of the show - it just seems a little silly to me, which is why I decided to post that image in response.