Talk:The Beginning of the End - Part 1/@comment-27578467-20190412063756/@comment-27578467-20190502053845

I fully own that not watching an episode/season limits the claims I can make about it, but I'm confident enough in my method of evaluation (scanning transcripts and galleries) to trust when I will or won't enjoy an episode. In fact I just wrote a blog post detailing a major part of that evaluation process, which is to look for how the text and visuals interact. What I found—and I actually used The Point of No Return as a reference point for the most recent style—is that the humor seems to be mostly written into the dialogue and the visuals are used simply to reiterate the jokes.

For example, the bit about the "Office for Ponies Who Should Know Better" could be a decent joke, but then I see that the character saying it shifts expressions very conspicuously while saying the line, effectively doubling up on the punchline. For me the joke would work if the line was delivered in, say, the same cheery voice used up to that point, same for the "because of the shame" line as well. I would find the exaggerated contrast between what is being said and how it's being said to be funnier because I could relate to the two very different conditions involved—blithe cheer and public shame. You could emphasize the contrast by depicting the other pony as completely generic to give her oblivious disconnect with Twilight’s ever-entangling situation a more overt visual presentation—that was a common technique back in the day. As it is, all the intentional detail on the library pony and the very deliberate shifts of emotion in her lines make it feel both contrived (not relatable to actual real-life behavior) and lacking in humorous contrast, and this same style appears to be absolutely ubiquitous in newer seasons.

All this is to illustrate how scanning the gallery to see what visuals go with the text seems to be a reliable way I can tell that the producers have changed the style of humor to something I don't find interesting. What I liked about the earlier seasons was how the visuals helped complete the jokes by exaggerating the childish simplicity of the world as it contrasted with the adult reasoning of the characters and situations. The transcripts and gallery images all seem to indicate that that has stopped almost entirely and as such I just don’t find it entertaining.