Ironically enough, I think that bronies are making it harder for people to like the show as time goes on. Now, I'm not talking about the annoying bronies who just piss off people by trying to force them to watch the show, but just end up making haters, although they don't really help much. (Also, if you "hate" bronies and the show because of a brony like that, please rethink your logic. You don't hate bronies or the show, you hate that person because he's f*ing annoying. please don't lump bronies together under your hatred because a few of them annoy you)
What I'm saying is that because bronies make the show out to be good, it therefore becomes harder to get people to like it. I have a theory that one of the main reasons that people started watching the show is because they expected it to be horrible, and they just wanted to riff on it for fun, but instead it turned out to at least be not bad. And while not bad is also not great, it's a lot better than horrible, therefore it seems that the show is much better than it really is. So now that the show has a sizable following, most of the time when people are getting into it, it's because they've heard about how good bronies make it out to be, and as a result, they go in expecting it to be good, or even better, so as a result, when they watch an episode that is 'just' good, their response is usually "meh, it's alright"
Actually, come to think of it, I think there's evidence of that to within the fandom itself. Ironically enough, the episodes that got most people into the show, the pilot 2-parter, are really not considered the best episodes any more by most bronies, or even really that great. Most people even say to skip them if you're new to the show and come back to them once you know you like the show.
Now, that being said, I do honestly believe that the show is good, or even great at times, however I also believe that a lot of bronies are really bad at picking good episodes to introduce people to the show. Case in point: Sonic Rainboom. The only reason people pick that episode is the last scene where Rainbow is a badass and saves everyone, forgetting that the rest of the episode is, well, forgettable and somewhat mediocre. If I had to pick an episode that's much more generally funny and I think would be more likely to get people into the show, is Lesson Zero or the Discord Episodes. Those episodes are much better at showing off how silly the show can be, and they have some great jokes in them.
I also believe that the show has improved greatly in nearly every respect as time has gone on. Season 1 had some gems, but was made entirely before the show was released, so they didn't have a fandom yet. Season 2 started production just after the fandom was formed, so they at least found out that people actually liked the show, so I think they put more effort into it, and it shows with the quality of the writing and animation. Finally, Season 3 and 4 are made well into the period where the fandom has been established as a pretty big thing that won't go away in a few months and so the showrunners really want to keep the show going and I believe that they are finally starting to take some risks with it.
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Now then, to the bronies in the thread, since I saw this topic being discussed:
Regarding the latest Discord episode, It really wasn't bad in my opinion, it just was limited by the shows run time, which is actually my biggest complaint about the show. The writers seem to really want to occasionally put out really big and epic stories, but they keep wanting to use more time than they have. In this case, the ending felt rushed, and Discord was converted rather quickly. However, keep in mind the implications of this episode. This means that Discord, and by extension John DeLancie (Q from star trek for those that don't know) can be a recurring character in the show that they can call on at any time. Not to mention that his personality is still the same. He's just Chaotic Good now instead of Chaotic neutral. And if you still can't accept the episode, imagine there was an additional scene that took place off camera where Discord and Fluttershy were playing a board game, and even though Discord was cheating to win, Fluttershy put up with it and they still had fun. Or really any other scenario where Discord would be enjoying her company, then the final scenes make more sense and are at least justified to me. Like I said, that, or something similar, was most likely a scene cut from the final episode due to time.