"A Trivial Pursuit" FiM Episode

[Lady Frostbite]

Wasn't that the Pony of Shadows?

[MJNSEIFER]

Wasn't that the Pony of Shadows?

Could be, I'll have to watch his episodes.

I assumed back at the time it was G4 Tirek for whatever reason, maybe people were saying that as it was the same season?  I'm also sure I remember thinking the shadow looked like his first form, but I could have misremembered by "association".

[TJgamer]

We will never know what the Shadow was supposed to be. 

Probably the people who wrote the episode don't know either.

At the time, I believe the writers just saw that as a classic ending sting that isn't meant to lead anywhere. Kinda like Fluttershy's fang in "Bats".

Why did Sunbrust try to get Twilight disqualified?

Sunburst says he wants to "maintain his correct answer percentage". He cares more about his personal performance than winning the game at all.

[Zapper]

I still hold that seasons 1-3 were the worst of the show

I don't judge entire seasons this way because I have always thought that each and every season had 3 or 4 really bad episodes. But two horrible ones that always spring to my mind are directly from S1, so I was never on that "it all turned bad after S4" hype train

What grinds my gears in particular is when characters become parodies of themselves and display one-note behaviour to fill a role, often to get laughs. This is displayed in this episode to an extreme, but I don't see it for all the later seasons. It started for Twilight and Pinkie early on, about season 3.

[MJNSEIFER]

I definitely noticed it for Pinkie Pie - I've already mentioned this, but my joke theory was that they'd sent the real Pinkie Pie back to the mirror pool by mistake, and we got stuck with a clone.

I will admit that season four is where it starts going downhill for me, but that was ultimately my opinion - I would have felt the same no matter what the majority was saying.  I will admit that I do put season four down as the last salvageable season, when I'm feeling generous, but the golden era will always be season 1 to season 3 for me, though cracks began to show in season 3 in my opinion, so I sometimes feel the golden era ended with season 2 (season 3 is a weird one, because it was shorter.)

For me, Season 1 was actually the only season with no bad episodes (the worst it had was "okay" episodes), while season 2 only had one bad episode in the form of "Putting Your Hoof Down" (I actually love "The Mysterious Mare Do Well", and personally feel that it would only really take a scene that acknowledges that Rainbow Dash won't/wouldn't have listen to them to fix), but after that it became more common for me to see what I at least considered a bad episode.

Despite feeling the show got weaker season 4 onwards, I do still manage to enjoy the later episodes at times, even if I don't feel like it's the same show a lot of the time.  I have found things about the later seasons that I like, even if they came out of, or led to things I didn't like.  For example, I found the idea of the School of Friendship to be silly for the most part (how did the Mane Six have the time to be teachers when five of them have jobs, and the other is a princess?), but it led to the introduction of the Young Six/Student Six, who I found myself liking and caring about far more than I expected to (though part of me feels they could have worked better as spin off characters who occasionally got a part in the "mane" show - hopefully Hasbro will at least give them a spin off, now.)  Another example is, there will always be a part of me that loves Starlight Glimmer, but I really don't like the direction they took with her.

Ultimately, despite my criticisms and opinions of the later season, I have a nostalgic attachment to the whole show, and the whole thing will always mean something to me, not just my idea of "the golden seasons".

[Al-1701]

I feel like the truly terrible episodes of the first couple of seasons, like Over a Barrel and Dragon Quest, were attempts to push the envelope by a show establishing itself.  They were bugs being worked out of the system.  As the series progressed, and the series not only continued to overreach but did so more frequently and more sloppily, it seemed less like a bug and more like feature.  This was on top of the characters becoming stagnant which probably contributed to how bad subjects were handled.

[Dragonflitter]

We will never know what the Shadow was supposed to be. 

Probably the people who wrote the episode don't know either.

At the time, I believe the writers just saw that as a classic ending sting that isn't meant to lead anywhere. Kinda like Fluttershy's fang in "Bats".

Very true. I think you're right about that one.

Why did Sunbrust try to get Twilight disqualified?

Sunburst says he wants to "maintain his correct answer percentage". He cares more about his personal performance than winning the game at all.

Yes Sunburst says several times in the episode that he has the highest correct answer percentage of any player, so if Twilight was not letting him get any answers in, that would ruin his personal goal of keeping that status. Thus why he wanted to get her removed from his team, so he could get some answers in. Dunno who he was thinking to get to replace her, though.

[otocolobus_manul]

Empty shell - hey, that's not an apple pun! 

That's a very good point on Magic Sheep. I don't think the tantabus represented depression - more like trauma, if anything - but yeah, Luna still did need some serious therapy after all that. I still think the moral of accepting help and forgiving one's self is good enough that I can forgive it, though, but that's just personal preference. I'm starting to realize that if I like the moral enough, I tend to forgive any missteps the episode might make.

And by the Shadow I meant the thing that possessed Stygian. I actually have a theory that the Shadow, like the Nightmare represents fear, represents Ignorance - it possesses Stygian after his friends misunderstood him and refused to let him explain himself, and it could only be banished from him after the truth was revealed. Plus, it would be kind of fitting as to why we never learned any more about it, haha. All this comes loosely from Carl Jung's concept of the shadow self (I think that's the name? Sorry, I'm not very well-versed on Jungian - or any - psychology), which essentially, if I remember correctly, represents the unconscious and/or repressed parts of one's personality; the part we don't know or see. This, too, fits with the story of Stygian and the Pillars, and the questions raised about the natures of goodness and heroism.

I guess I'm more curious about the Well of Shade than the Shadow itself. Who built it? Why? Was it to contain the Shadow, or worship it, or something else entirely? When was it built? The Pillars existed before the sisters ruled Equestria, and the Well was there even before them. I had an idea for an episode where Applejack visits her family in the Hollow Shades and discovers them to be a cult-like group who essentially worships the concept of ignorance. Being the element of Honesty, Applejack has to show them how powerful the truth is. Though I guess that's pretty similar to the kirin episode.

And oh, that makes sense about Sunburst.

Sorry if I come off as argumentative at all - it's just fun debating people with different opinions 

[Dragonflitter]

Yes this thread has becoming the debate of season 9! I don't mind, it's enlightening to see other people's opinions!