too...oversaturated for me. Think of it like this: to me, MLP is like a cupcake with too much
frosting on it. It's just too sweet, and when I try to eat it, I just feel a bit sick.
Personally I have enough serious in my life. A solid dose of happy cuddly pony goodness with ice cream and chocolate on top and butterflies and bunnies dancing and hugging in the background...yeah, that works just fine for me. And I suspect the cuteness overload is a strong draw for those of us who do like it.
I don't know what the humor is like, but if it's any good, that might be
enough to convince me to watch an episode or two.
It's inconsistent. A lot of the show is this way. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's cute. Sometimes it's clever. Sometimes it's stupid. Sometimes it's painfully cringeworthy. It really depends on which writer you get. Some writers make
Benny Hill jokes. (Yes, seriously. Season 1 has a full minute long shout-out to a 1950s-80s British sketch comedy show.) Some have a message they want to get across. Some writers write episode solely for the purpose of
Defying Tropes. For example, the Gala episode is one great big massive "in your face" to the entire spectrum of "little girl wants to be a princess and marry a prince" tropes, combined with some very blatant parody of 70s/80s Disney movies. Episodes with clever writers tend to be good.
But there are also some writers on the staff who are simply in the business of mass producing generic trash. And unfortunately, just off the top of my head I'd say probably a third of all the episodes are like this: Completely predictable, not clever at all, and and so blandly cliche that they're unpleasant to watch.
If you go back and watch some original Star Trek episodes, some of those were awful too. But the core premise, the characters, the "feel," the potential depth even if not always the realized depth...is there. (And speaking of which, another season 1 MLP episode is pretty much a
Recycled Script of
a Star Trek TOS episode from 1967.)
Like I said a few pages ago, I came for the show and stayed for what the community has done with it. For example, I've seen most official episodes only once, but I've seen every
Friendship is Witchcraft episode at least twice, and some 3-4 times. I've read literally hundreds of works of MLP fanfiction. Some of it is
excellent. And I am, incidentally, a professional editor with my name on a number of published novels. The quality of some fanfiction on
fimfiction is vastly superior to the work of some professional authors I've worked with.
Like Star Trek, My Little Pony has inspired a lot of people, and has meant a lot to a lot of people.
Now presenting the Star Trek Metaphor for MLP Challenge to anyone who "doesn't get" My Little Pony:
Everyone here would agree that Star Trek is a phenomenon, right? You wouldn't think it geeky or lame if somebody likes Star Trek, right? Maybe you like Star Trek, maybe you don't...but if somebody else said they did, you wouldn't immediately think them crazy, correct?
Here's a full episode of the original series from the first page of search results on youtube:
TOS: The Way to Eden (Ep. 3x20)I challenge anyone to watch that, and tell me that show deserves nearly 50 years worth of movies and spinoffs. And yet...it does have that. Clearly there's more to it than you're going to pick up on simply from watching a single episode. MLP is the same way. Don't expect to watch a random episode and be "enthralled" by it. The inspiration and depth of MLP, just like Star Trek...is a little bit deeper than what you're likely to see on the surface.