1. The Ford analogy makes since.
2. And no...they've not been nearly as great as the episodes from the first two seasons. They've been a lot more random, yes. But better? Good enough to only do a half season? No. Not anywhere close.
1. Maybe to you it does, but it sounds silly to me. I would have said that you preferred quantity over quality, but somehow you think season 3 was crap for the most part.
2. I can safely say that 1 episode was below average, 2 suffered due to a questionable villain and were otherwise decent, another was fun yet ultimately flawed at the very end and the Wonderbolts episode had room for improvement. The other 8 were good or great though, and it's easy to pick out the less decent episodes in a shorter season even when every season has had ups and downs.
Most of the episode this season have felt disjointed and...let's just compare it to Season 5 of the Simpsons and Season 22. After about Season 5 or 6 the series kinda dropped off. Now, they're not that great. Some are just plan flat confusing. There were a couple of decent episodes like the Pinky Pie one (which gets really annoying after a couple times of seeing it) but are they the quality of say the Gilda episode? Nope.
I liked both the Gilda and TMPP episodes (mostly the latter), although I get tired of people questioning some of the events in TMPP. The only one that felt really disjointed was the finale, and the reasons for it are clear.
It's like Hasboro is becoming Fox. FiM is at it's peak (I think it could get MORE popular, but I'm not Hasboro) and now that it's lived out it's usefullness, Hasboro couldn't care less...unless you try to steal their stuff, then they have something to say about it.
I still don't quite understand the pessimism some people are displaying after season 3. I've seen enough good moments in it to say that I look forward to season 4 even after the disappointing finale. I am wary of how they'll continue after the coronation too, but I'd be happy if they made episodes that were as good as the majority of those in season 3.
I also LOVE how they made a two-part episode out of the stupid pets and the stupid equestrian games BS but didn't bother to make one out of destinies being swapped and Twi becoming an alicorn princess. Yeah awesome priorities Hasbro. So, you just told kids that getting what you want is more important than friends and maturity. Awesome! Especially in a show called "Friendship is Magic" the pet/games episode had NOTHING to do with friendship. (And weren't the two episodes basically the same story?)
Yeah, I'm still not seeing why anyone would have legitimate a problem with those 2 episodes being connected that way.
And Twilight didn't exactly ask for it. She didn't even know she was going to become a princess until she fixed the problem she caused. The fact that she changed physically is both a reason to sell new merch and to represent the changes that those of the target demographic go through at that time of their lives.
Also, the show is listed on a Ingram's website as working on 91 episodes. You know what that means? It means Season 4 is going to have 26. Which means there's no real reason why Season 3 was 13 unless Hasbro randomly decided to suddenly make a hard left turn in a different direction...or they were just too lazy to do 26. I don't know. It makes no sense why there's only 13 episodes this season. Unless...Hasbro didn't want to "waste" the money on two full seasons and, instead, bought 1 and half. Which is more likely.
Looks like someone didn't care to read the end of my previous post, so let me try this one more time:
I've said this a couple of times already, but the likely reason for the shorter season is down to them splitting production between 2 or 3 different shows lately, including the apparent Equestria Girls series out in a few months.
That's the most likely reason, and it most certainly was not down to laziness if they're working on multiple series'. Sure, they probably sacrificed 13 FiM episodes for 13 Equestria Girls episodes (not yet confirmed), and apparently Littlest Pet Shop took up some of the production time as well from what I've heard.
Either way, this decision was made over a year ago. They probably had a different idea initially for season 3 before any final deal was made for a 4th season, since it felt like this was going to be the very end when the Coronation aired.
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