>>346516>It's a cartoon, if you over analyze it you're gonna find flaws.The character development in the first season was damn near flawless, though. Remember, we didn't get a big steaming pile of "Hi! I'm Pinkie Pie, and I have to be friends with EVERYPONY!" until "A Friend in Deed." That was Episode 44 according to Wikipedia, well over two-thirds of the way through the series so far. The characters started getting badly messed up ten episodes before it. I probably don't need to say in which episode that was.
I thought they were all realistically consistent throughout the entirety of Season One, which is to say, not very consistent, but people aren't. They're complex and messy and self-contradictory, and they have demons they try to keep hidden, and they're often hypocritical, but sometimes they're lovable in spite of all that. In the first season, the writers did a terrific job of slowly revealing that the ponies were not stereotypes. They weren't simple or perfect or even always nice, but they were completely adorable.
Later, that kind of fell apart. Larson seemed to lose his ability to write Fluttershy. Merriwether was hired, and she couldn't write any of them. Pinkie devolved into shallow comic relief. A little later, so did Rarity. Dash became absolutely insufferable from Episode 33 until Episode 48 finally broke the curse, and she never did regain her former depth. Applejack, who was never all that interesting to begin with, kept playing the same notes until they become tiresome. Only Twilight and Fluttershy remained fairly complex and consistent, but even so, Larson fucked Fluttershy hard up the ass in "Magic Duel," and many fans fear that Twilight has become a Mary Sue.
TL;DR:> Pinkie was believably torn and conflicted in "Griffon the Brush-Off," but she tried to be positive anyway.> Pinkie's descent into becoming a flat, obnoxious cartoon was complete by Episode 44, "A Friend in Deed."> Merriwether Williams wrote the teleplay for Episode 45, "Putting Your Hoof Down," so it might not even count.> Lauren had the clearest vision of who the characters were, and when she left, most of them went with her.