My Thoughts on Merriwether Williams

I find myself in a very, very, very disadvantaged position here.

For those of you who didn’t know about this, I live in Spain and thus my life as a brony is full of shipment costs, delays, low quality streams, constant translation issues (even though people praise my level of English) and worse of all, lack of all the new toys and merchandise Hasbro releases. At the time of writing this the DVD’s of Seasons 1 and 2 of Friendship is Magic are yet to arrive to our coasts, and the new toy sets (including the Alicorn Princess Twilight Sparkle set) is also nowhere to be seen in my stores. This is because we are still airing Season 2 here. Again, this will end up getting resolved in the future, but as of now it’s impossible for me to give a thorough review on anything new that comes out like say, for example, Equestria Girls. I don’t see any Spain release dates for the movie, and I doubt we will because the Spanish audience is not so into My Little Pony as the American audience is. Spain as a country has a bigger interest in things like Littlest Pet Shop, Phinneas and Ferb, Regular Show, and Adventure Time. If you could go to a toy aisle of any shop in my country you will find this to be true. You will also see an obscene amount of BeyBlade merchandise.

What I’m saying with this lengthy intro is that I can’t talk about Equestria Girls because I haven’t even seen it, so in the meantime let’s talk about something that I’ve been wanting to tackle on for the longest time, and that is my thoughts on a certain writer that this fandom seems to have quite a lot of animosity towards, a writer that goes by the name of Merriwether Williams.

There is a sense of hate and dread that surrounds any episode that Merriwether Williams writes. Any time that a new episode comes out people peek their heads out and they check the writer’s name like it’s the results of that exam they didn’t study for. If the name happens to be the one of the writer we are talking about here, you are very likely to hear the collective groan as people prepare to not completely enjoy the episode. It might seem like I am generalizing but this has been more than evident ever since she wrote “The Mysterious Mare-do-Well”, for many fans the absolute worst episode the series has ever gotten.

Not.

In.

My.

Opinion.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I don’t pretend to analyze why the fandom majorly dreads her episodes, I am just here to tell you where I’m coming from, so let’s have a little back story so you can understand my reasons to have these opinions.

During the summer of 2011 there was a leak from DHX (formerly known as Studio B) that explained what writers were left of the original team. This leak said that some writers had stepped down from the production team and the only ones left were Dave Polsky, M.A. Larson, Cindy Morrow and Meghan McCarthy. This was around the time they were working on Season 3, so it makes sense since these four names were present in the credits for several episodes of Season 3, while names like Chris Savino (writer of “Boast Busters” and “The Stare Master”), Charlotte Fullerton (who wrote “Suited for Success”) or Amy Keating Rogers were completely absent. This leak also included a blurb saying that new writers had been added to the staff, but their names were non-present, so when Season 2 started I kept both eyes out and focused on the writer credit more than I have ever done for any show I've ever watched. It wasn't until episode 8, “The Mysterious Mare-do-Well”, that I saw a different name I had never seen before: Merriwether Williams. And, like everybody who was keeping an eye on the writer credit, I said out loud: “Who the hell is Merriwether Williams?”

After a trip to her IMDB page I suddenly realized that she had been the author of some of my favorite shows as a kid. Her credits as a writer include “Angry Beavers”, “Rugrats”, “Aaahh!!! Real Monsters”, “The Wild Thornberrys”, “Spongebob Squarepants”, and most recently, “Camp Lazlo” and “Adventure Time”. She actually was the story editor for the first 25 episodes of “Adventure Time”, which are some of my favorite episodes of that show. When I checked further into her IMDB page I also found out that she has won two Prime Time Emmys for “Camp Lazlo” and has been nominated another two times for “Adventure Time”. So, in conclusion, Merriwether Williams is a seasoned professional, who has worked with Lauren Faust in the past, has won awards for her work, and definitely seems to know the elements that make a cartoon entertaining and fun to watch. She is, by lack of a better word, more than competent when writing a good story on the paper.

So, why do bronies get so collectively mad when she writes a new episode? What do they hate about it? What clashes with their expectations that makes them lose it so badly? I say this because more than once I have seen Williams become the punching bag of the fandom when Rarity or Applejack are not around, so what is it that rustles their jimmies so badly? I can’t answer this without giving my own personal opinion on Williams’ trajectory in the show and telling each and every one of you what I think of the episodes she has written. If you've been following me for a long time you might notice some of my opinions have changed, and that’s because I am the type of guy who likes to go back and forth on the things he likes, and my perception of an episode changes depending on the mood I’m in. Let’s say, for the sake of the article, that my opinion on all of her episodes is settled and it’s not changing. This is definitely what I think of them.

The Mysterious Mare-do-Well

We will start with the very first episode she wrote, “The Mysterious Mare-do-Well”, the episode where Rainbow Dash has a fan club, she is the hero of Ponyville, and lets this fact get to her head, so her friends scheme a deception plan in which they all play a new super hero only to teach Dash a lesson in humility and that everyone has the right to be proud of their accomplishments as long as he or she doesn’t turn into a bragging dick. Like everybody else I have several gripes with this episode. For example, the Mane Six are already superheroes. They have saved Equestria, not once but twice, of certain doom and they are all regarded as competent individuals, so the idea of one getting out of the line to become some sort of vigilante is not too far fetched. Everybody complains about how everyone is out of character, and I don’t really see that. I agree however in that the negative aspects of their personalities are over exaggerated to the point of nuisance, and it gets grating when the comedy stops being funny and becomes annoying. However I still enjoy this episode because of how I perceive it. I see it as a parody of those 1960’s superhero serials, like “Batman”. Seeing it from that point of view the episode works really well, but otherwise it’s quite messy, and it gave the fans enough reasons to dread whatever Williams would produce in the future. It would've been the deception scheme, the exaggerated personalities, the unfunny humor, or maybe a combination of all these aspects, but it is a fact that this episode is loved by very few people.

Hearth's Warming Eve

Then we have “Hearth’s Warming Eve”, the Christmas episode that tells the story of how the three tribes of ponies where wrapped into a conflict that fed the spirits of storms and blizzards known as Windigoes, which took their land to the brink of extinction. This episode seems to be the one people bring up when they say that Williams has potential to write good episodes because, well, it’s a really good episode. The story is told as a theater play performed by the Mane Six, and it has a lot of world building around it. We are given both a history lesson of the land of Equestria, and it presents the character interactions very nicely, especially with which one of the Mane Six plays what character of the original legend. It also has a good moral about how working together and putting differences aside we all can get through the worst of times, which in this current day and age I’d call relevant and important. This episode made people kind of hyped for Williams’ next script, so the dread turned into hype, and the fears of her first script seemed to evaporate. It was from this point forward that the perception of her writing is more based on what the individual thinks, than what the group thinks.

Putting your Hoof Down

Her next episode came at a very delicate time. The fandom was like a boiling cauldron fueled with gasoline and full of sharks, lions and human blood. It had been a week since Derpy Hooves had been edited out of “The Last Round-Up” so people’s feelings were completely upside down, their jimmies were at maximum over-rustle, and everybody was mad. It was during this time when “Putting your Hoof Down” was released, an episode that also presented a first instance in the show where the story was written by one writer and the script was written by another. The story was originally by Charlotte Fullerton, and the writing was by Merriwether Williams’ herself. When I first watched this episode I loved it. I loved Iron Will, I loved the moral, and I loved the visual aspect of the whole thing. Nowadays my opinion can’t be more different. I don’t like it at all. I actually can’t sit through it; to me this episode is un-watchable. This is the kind of episode that can ruin a character for me, and that’s because it presents Fluttershy as a nigh sociopath with psychotic tendencies. She is either delicate and demure, or spiteful and insanely angry. This isn't new in her, she has always been like this, the whole “it’s the quiet ones you have to watch” theme that goes so well with her, but here it’s taken to the extreme, once again proving that Williams loves to exaggerate character traits. I’d have no problem with it if it wasn't because other writers do a much better job at characterizing Fluttershy. I don’t exaggerate when I say that it took me one year to get this episode out of my system so I could go back to appreciate Fluttershy as a character. I find it particularly offensive when a quiet character is revealed to be absolutely nasty on the inside, especially when I do share so many traits with her. I too am shy, and awkward, and I can get angry and pissed off, but I wouldn't insult a friend to the point of making them run away crying. I wouldn't attack someone who just wanted to ask for help. I am not a confrontational guy, I hate conflict, I hate insulting and calling names, so I can’t relate to Fluttershy in this episode, and that’s why I just can’t sit through it.

Dragon Quest

So after such a disappointment of an episode came “Dragon Quest”, a Spike focused episode that dealt with his own personal turmoil about how he should be as a dragon, so in order to find out he joins the Big Dragon Migration, where he finds out that he shouldn't try to be something he’s not, and instead of finding his identity by what the majority of the group tells him to be, he decides to just follow his own path. This episode hurts me in that it has all the potential to be brilliant and insightful, and then it turns into an episode of “Doug” but with dragons instead of teenagers. I have bad memories of high school (like everybody else I bet), and I hate the stereotype of jocks and greaser guys being bullies at the small kids. I hate characters that speak dragging the words and trying to sound tough, and I just despise the whole “asshole teenager jerk” type that’s so common in American television. Yes, I get it, stereotypes exist because they actually happen in real life. Those bullies exist, they are real, but they are also real people. Really well written bullies are interesting. They have a back story, a reason to be like that, a personality. They can be funny or dramatic. So when I looked at the dragon designs they all look so cool, and fun, and interesting, and I was hoping for their personalities to be too. But no, they all have one single note they keep hitting throughout the entire episode, and that note is “Teenagers are assholes”. I know, it’s true. Teenagers ARE assholes, but couldn't they be interesting assholes? You know, like Biff from "Back to the Future" or Nelson from "The Simpsons"? I don’t remember any particular characteristic of these dragons except that one was red, one was fat, the other was pink and white, and another one had hair over his eyes. They all sounded the same, they all acted the same, and they all were boring. For the longest time this was my least favorite episode of the show because of how much it offended me.

Wonderbolts Academy

But then came “Wonderbolts Academy” and oh boy, I don’t even want to start with this one. If there is one thing I hate more than teenager stereotypes is military stereotypes. I don’t mean the whole “drill sergeant is an asshole” trope, but more like “squad member is a douche bag and doesn’t get punished” trope. I have a very deeply rooted respect for authority, you know this, and I am the kind of guy who expects the military to have some level headed, somewhat competent, not douche-y people in their ranks. So my first gripe with this episode comes with how the character of Lightning Dust is presented and dealt with. Lightning Dust is a boastful, brass and careless jock who puts herself and her squad mates in peril more than once, so what do the higher ranks do? They give her the position of Leader Pony of course, while they keep the surprisingly more level headed Rainbow Dash as a Wing Pony.

I. Hate. That.

I hate that trope. I hate that thing. I hate what they did there. I know where they were going with this. I know this happens in real life too, but I have no obligation to enjoy it. However, and even after I made such a big deal out of this, this was not the deal breaker for me. I was having no problem with the episode at all up until the point where Lightning Dust makes a tornado, almost kills the Mane Six, Rainbow Dash quits, and then they kick Dust out of the academy and give Dash her position as Leader Pony. All of a sudden this potential friendship that Dash and Dust were having seems inconsequential and unimportant. Lightning Dust is not given closure or ending, her character is written off like a grammar mistake. The care package had a much better development than her! At least we know what happened to it in the end! It had a story arc! Lightning Dust is forced to leave the scene without giving her any chance of redemption or conclusion. A few days after the episode was released we were given some information regarding the ending. Originally, Lightning Dust was going to become Dash’s Wing Pony, and she wasn't going to leave the academy, but due to length issues they cut that part off and decided to end on the care package joke. So I guess I can’t blame Merriwether Williams for this one, as this seems to be more a fault of Meghan McCarthy’s story editing. Even knowing that, I still hated the cliches and the stereotypes, so this episode fell on the “mediocre with potential” sack.

Spike at your Service

Finally, the last episode written by Merriwether Williams at the date of this article is “Spike at your Service”, another episode where the story is by one writer (Dave Polsky) and the writing is done by Merriwether Williams. This episode was originally going to be a Rarity episode, with Rarity taking the place of Applejack as the one who saves Spike’s life, but as she turned out to be too mean in the original draft they re-wrote the episode and put Applejack in her place. I can appreciate that as I’d rather have a good Rarity episode instead of an out of character Rarity episode, but this brings up another question. Who wrote Rarity out of character? Was it Polsky or was it Williams? They both have a record of messing up Rarity’s characterization so it could have been either one of them. I still applaud the decision as this episode actually happens to be one of my guilty pleasures. I personally enjoy this episode a lot because of how good Applejack is in it. She’s reliable, she’s honest, she’s funny, she’s supportive, and she’s brave. Season 3 has been a very Applejack heavy season, with the country pony taking the spotlight more than once, and I think this episode showcases how good of a character she can get to be. 

I really like Applejack, in case you couldn't tell.

However, Spike sucks. This is really sad as this episode was supposed to be a Spike episode, and Spike couldn't be more out of character. I hate bringing up this term once and again, but the way they portray Spike in this episode is as the most useless twat that was ever born. This makes zero sense, especially when we have seen him cook, organize, serve and clean at Twilight’s library, and a few episodes later we see him baking a cake and knowing what he’s doing! You can argue that in this is episode he’s doing farm work, and that working at a farm is harder than working at a library, but he is just moping the floor and mixing the barter to make pies. That’s not hard work, that’s something he does on a daily basis for Twilight. So this episode is an absolute and complete mixed bag that has some of the best Applejack moments, and for that I love it, but also has some of the worst Spike moments and for that I hate it. So when people ask me what do I think of this episode I just shrug and change subjects.

"Are you done bitching? Didn't think so."

Now that you know what I think of each episode written by Merriwether Williams we can easily pin point the traits of her writing, those quirks that make the episodes hers. So in her episodes we see that:

- She exaggerates character traits in favor of comedy or drama.

- She has a fixation with characters acting like complete jerks.

- She has an interest in delivering morals with sociological value.

- She accentuates the slapstick.

- She artificially forces comedy instead of letting it organically happen.

With all this I think I know what’s wrong with the episodes she writes, and why people find them so difficult to enjoy, or at least why her episodes create so much controversy around who wrote it and what her intentions were. If you look at her resume you will see that she comes from an era where cartoons were trying to be more postmodern and edgy, a time when snark and cynicism were the rule in cartoons, as they were competing against other media like live action TV and reality shows. I doubt this works for a cartoon like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Amongst the reasons that have made this show so successful there is the complete lack of cynicism and a burst of transparency and honesty. This show doesn’t pretend to outsmart anybody and does the best to treat everyone equally, both kids and adults. Besides it delivers a very clear message at the end of every episode, and in the best cases it never feels like it’s been tacked in at the end. It feels real and organic. When you bring cynicism into a series that was born without it you are clashing with what’s already being established. Defying the norm is a good thing, but you need to know how to do it, and so far it feels like Williams is writing for a cartoon made in 1999 and not one made in 2012. It feels archaic, clunky, old, unnecessary and it sticks out like a sore thumb.

But this is not the only issue I see with her writing. Take notice that the two most successful shows she’s worked on, “SpongeBob Squarepants” and “Adventure Time”, have the same format, that is two ten minutes long episodes in a twenty minutes long program, while Friendship is Magic is a twenty two minute long show with an ongoing storyline. Perhaps changing to a longer format also affected the way she writes, as sometimes it feels like she’s filling the spaces between plot points with pointless action or humorless comedy. That’s probably why her episodes have that feel of artificial conflict so often. You can feel it’s fabricated and you can even see it being built before your eyes. “The Mysterious Mare-do-Well” presented us a Rainbow Dash with a fan club and a task as a superhero, and this is never brought up ever again. This show has proved to love its continuity, as it constantly self-references itself and shows character development. The only time we have seen an episode written by Merriwether Williams being referenced in other episodes was when we learn what happens to Pee-Wee, Spike’s Pet Phoenix that he saves in “Dragon Quest”, in the episode “Just for sidekicks”. And guess what? This was something that wasn’t even in the actual script! It has come to a point where we can eliminate the episodes written by Merriwether Williams and the show doesn’t suffer from its loss!

Wow, this is so cool! I can't to see what they do with Pee-Wee in Season 3!

Never mind.

I didn’t want to go into this next point, I really didn’t, because I am personally against the use of the phrase “out of character”, especially when people misuse it. Going against character is often mistaken for character development and vice-versa. For example, Spike being a useless twat and messing Applejack’s kitchen because he doesn’t know how to cook, is writing him out of character, because we have established in the past how good of a cook he is. However, Spike ditching his responsibilities as a pet caretaker because he wants to eat a gemstone cake is character development, because it shows Spike trying to deal with something he has never dealt with before at the same time he tries to keep doing his usual dragon boy things. A character is developed when his established character traits clash with something they had never clashed before, like Rainbow Dash getting an interest in reading, or Applejack accepting her friends’ help, or Twilight facing Trixie, or Zecora being accepted into town, or Scootaloo facing her fears, or Rarity appreciating her sister, or Pinkie Pie taking care of the baby Cakes. That is character development. Character development is not putting a character in a situation he or she is familiar with and then making it like he or she doesn’t know what to do or how to do it, or exaggerating the traits that make the character so good at what it does. It’s interesting because the only episode written by Williams where the characters are not out of character is “Hearths Warming Eve”, and that’s because in this episode the characters are not playing themselves! They are playing other characters in that play so, of course, the writing actually works in favor of the episode! Come to think of it, Merriwether Williams’ writing would be improved if at the end of every episode it’s revealed that it was all a theater play, or a movie.

+

Like in "Paper Mario". Don't tell me this wouldn't kick all sorts of ass.

But, like I said, I can deal with these problems enough for me to enjoy some of her episodes, but when I think about it I don’t enjoy them for the reasons I should enjoy them. I like them for certain aspects of them instead of liking them as a whole. I love “The Mysterious Mare-do-Well” because it reminds me of the old timey superhero serials, which I bet was not the original intention whatsoever. I really like “Hearths Warming Eve” as one really good Christmas-y episode that expands on the mythos of Equestria and its history. I think “Wonderbolts Academy” can be fun, if you ignore the last five minutes during which the whole narrative takes a torpedo to the flotation line and sinks with extreme prejudice. And I will defend “Spike at your Service” as a much better Applejack episode than “Apple Family Reunion” or “The Last Round-Up”.

I would've called that episode "Applejack to the Rescue" instead.

It might come across like I am hating on her writing, and maybe I am, but I am not hating it because it’s bad. It’s not bad. Merriwether Williams is not a bad writer. She is as far away as you can imagine from a bad writer. Her impressive resume is not the resume of a bad writer. Bad writers don’t win awards for Best Story and Best Script. What I’m saying here is that her writing doesn’t seem to have a place in this show, at least not now. I know she has potential to write a good episode, I know she does. If she keeps going on the same line as “Spike at your Service” and then starts writing the character the episode focuses on in character, then I see no reason why she wouldn't be writing great episode after great episode.

This hurts me, it really does, and it offends me because I think the morals she talks about in her episodes are some of the best, most insightful and important morals the show has ever had.

- Mysterious Mare-do-Well: Don’t brag too much about what you’re good at

- Hearth’s Warming Eve: Leave your differences behind to achieve a greater goal

- Putting your Hoof Down: Don’t let society dictate how you should act.

- Dragon Quest: Don’t follow the group mentality just because you don’t fit it.

- Wonderbolts Academy: Don’t let your dreams get in the way of your friends and family.

- Spike at your Service: Don’t go too far when thanking somebody for what they did for you.

These morals are fantastic, and both kids and adults can take benefit from them. They are real and you can easily apply them in real life. The problem is that they are presented with poorly written characters, awkward dialogues, odd pacing, and clunky resolutions.

She wears Fin's hat like nobody else though.

I can see potential shining right there in her scripts, and I want to see more episodes written by her. I don’t want to think that the loath and hatred coming from the fandom will discourage her from writing for the show and that she will eventually quit. To this day she is the only writer who hasn’t joined Twitter and who hasn’t showed any interest in coming to Brony Conventions. Can she be as mad at us as we seem to be mad at her? I don’t think she is, but I know one thing for sure: Either we start calming down and stop getting mad when her new scripted episodes come out, or she starts improving her writing and giving that full potential that I know she’s capable of. Until then I am filing all the episodes I like of her on the “Guilty pleasure” category while I kindly ignore the rest.