Anyone Else Kind Of Iffy About Continuing To Watch FIM?

[MJNSEIFER]

Trying too hard is probably the best way to sum up Friendship is Magic.  It tries too hard to be funny, too hard to be cool, too hard to be dramatic, too hard to be topical, too hard to be clever, too hard to be deep, etc.   

This is actually one of the main issues I have with the season four-onwards episodes; it tries too hard, but not only that, it tries to hard on things that it was actually already good at when it didn't try too hard.

Take the humor for example, in season one and season two, the humor was definitely there, but it was done in a natural way, like it fitted in with what was going on, and was usually just a simple comedy moment that slotted into the episode and just "flowed".  In the later seasons it seems really forced in, like they really want us to know it's funny, rather than just letting it flow into the storyline naturally, and are basically just throwing in what sounds funny to them at the moment rather than caring if it fits in with the character or the storyline.

Same with most of the other things; it was already cool, it already knew how to be dramatic, and how to be clever (it actually feels like it has less depth now, to me personally).  The thing is, regardless of whether it deserves the title of "Best Show Ever" or not, the fact that people thought it was that, showed that they were doing things right, so why they felt that they needed to try harder to do what they were just naturally doing, is beyond me - it's like being told you're a good singer, and then deciding that you can sound better by shouting.

This is a show that can't even get an anti-bullying message right.

"One Bad Apple" gets the short end of the stick in my opinion; I get that it can be interpreted as "I can get away with bullying, if I say that I was bullied", but I can tell that wasn't the intention (and I think by having Applejack reveal it and not Babs Seed, they should have avoided this take away).  I personally think it was good to show that sometimes bullying does come from something, rather than just wanting to be jerk, so I was actually positive about the episode, really.