Well...

   Well, frig. I thought I was over Friendship is Magic, but... The third season is really really good. Quite possibly the best so far. While the bronymoon continues being long over, there's something new and interesting here: they seem to be making more references to, not the older fans of the show, but... the toy line of all things. Drawing those twin properties closer together, I guess, as perhaps they've drifted too far apart. Well, it's not like they're doing that so much as the exact same thing they did to the bronies: winks and nods and references. Or, at least, that's what I see in it. Sweetie Belle covering herself in luster dust in One Bad Apple clearly(?) represents glitter pony toys. What else could it be? It only makes sense. So the third season is good. Great. But...

   I am not a fan of My Little Pony. Let me make that clear. My Little Pony is a fan of me, is what's going on there. And now they're airing it alongside Littlest Pet Shop, which is more embarrassing to admit you watch, but I like it. I don't know what the verdict is on that, and I don't care. It's... sexy. (In the way that poodles are sexy, don't arrest me.) It's exciting. Though it lacks the audioporn of the voice casting (Eric McCormack!) in Pound Puppies, which I guess I'm also (admitting?) I watch, it's still really... I mean... but I... sigh. The entire thing is an exercise in not being ashamed of being a fan of good television. You don't see this kind of thing for Adventure Time.

   I've got a theory, though. The very popularity if it is tied to the fact that it is what it is. Not popular because people start watching it "ironically" at first but then discovering its quality. (That seems bitter, putting that in scare quotes, but it's not bitter and that's the only way I see fit to describe it. Not irony. A sense of... curiosity? No, that's another reason entirely.) It doesn't draw viewers because it's My Little Pony- now pay attention, this is a fine distinction- it draws viewers because it's good, because it's My Little Pony.

   Back to the SWAT Kats thing (full circle?)- a fine distinction in how the show wasn't cancelled by the network for being violent, it was cancelled because it wasn't selling toys by the network because it was violent so they didn't want to push the action figures (remember, this was back in the '90s, when everyone had to find something new to be paranoid about after the fall of Communism so they focused on entertainment for a little while.) So here we've got the opposite situation, since obviously not only is it selling toys but it's based on toys, so the show sells the toys instead of vice versa and it's not being cancelled by the network.