My Little Pony - Friendship Is Magic: Season 3 Top And Bottom 3

The preordained half order for season three prevented much hoped-for development, but My Little Pony was definitely in transition nonetheless.  Fortunately, no truly awful episodes were produced like in earlier seasons, but a reduced count still didn’t prevent unnecessary filler.  Even worse was both of M. A. Larson’s episodes getting heavily cut and feeling rushed, which could have been prevented by eliminating any show Merriwether Williams touched.  Each writer found their usual spots on the top and bottom lists, but that doesn’t mean surprises didn’t otherwise abound.  Dave Polsky returned to establish himself as one of My Little Pony’s better scribes, while newcomer Corey Powell fit in more than some writers who had already worked the entire series.  Many characters’ returns were notably well done (unlike any new ones introduced), although the most talked about development had to wait until further seasons for exploration.  That creates an unfinished feel to season three despite tiny steps of progress being made.  Even so, every episode’s relative merits are pretty much known already.  There shouldn’t be as much fluctuation as season two’s list, although the final spots remain open for debate.  This list is of course half-sized, since the usual top and bottom five would encompass almost every episode.

About The Ranking System

Thanks to newspaper editors and an idiot populace, movie reviews are typically accompanied by a rating of so many stars or whatnot.  We’re familiar with how they show relative worth, but what do stars even mean?  People notoriously have trouble comprehending numbers, which also goes for most reviewers.  They find rating systems arbitrary and have therefore adopted a cavalier attitude regarding something they don’t enjoy.  Granted, ranking everything perfectly is impossible, but stars aren’t necessarily pretending to do so.  What they indicate are levels that quickly reference a relative ranking while allowing variation between each.  Hypothetically, any amount of numbers could be used, and some publications even assign ratings out of 100.  Practically speaking, some limit must be made or any system will become useless.

While four stars are usually used for movies, this amount is a bit too restrictive for me.  Allmusic uses five, and I have more or less adopted that system.  From 1-5 and including half stars, this allows nine different ratings, which is typically enough and partially analogous to a 1-10 scale.  Episodes generally fall into one of these levels, but not all fours are exactly the same quality.  Each level has a meaning though, which are helpfully described below.