>>35982780For me, it's just the willingness for the crew to do bombastic and daring ideas and -- in my opinion -- pulling them off more often than not. Yeah, stuff like Ep. 100 and Maud Pie is more wacky than the wackiest stuff in previous seasons, but it presents both interesting scenarios alongside entertaining visuals with a refreshingly energetic pace. It feels like MMMMystery was the framework a lot of these seasons were based on.
There's also some really surprising directions the show takes in exploring the friendship ideal in these season, with the S5 intro and the Moondancer ep. straight up confronting times where the usual end-of-ep lesson by Twilight is enough to solve a problem, in almost direct contrast to episodes like Over a Barrel glossing over shit.
Lastly, I felt the worst episodes in S1/2 were boring or dull ones (Owl's Well is my worst episode, bar none), and when a season 4 or 5 episode is weak, it is at least entertaining (Daring Don't).
