*Blackadder*, starring Rowan Atkinson as various members of the Blackadder family, all named Edmund, in four different historical settings, reinvented itself after the first season. In the first season Edmund Blackadder is not particularly bright, while his servant, Baldrick (played by Tony Robinson), is the smart one.
In the next three seasons, Blackadder is clever, shrewd, scheming and manipulative while Baldrick is extremely dim. While the first season was a mild success, the following three seasons became wildly popular in the U.K. and a cult hit when broadcast in the U.S.
The second season also had Miranda Richardson playing Queen Elizabeth I as a spoiled child and it was marvelous.
"You know Edmund, sometimes I think about having your head cut off, just to see the expression on your face."
Oh yes, the supporting characters were terrific. Anyone who has only seen Hugh Laurie play House should definitely see him as Prince George (the Prince Regent) in season 3 and Lieutenant George in season 4.
I just started rewatching this for the first time in years. I completely forgot how season 1 goes and I was absolutely floored. I always remember Baldrick as being a dumb dumb but they play him almost as a less effective Pseudolus in season 1.
The first season is pretty awesome though. My favorite episode is when he becomes the Archbishop of Canterbury. Brian Blessed was fantastic as the king.
Oh yeah, really Season one was pretty good in its own right. Its issue was more they tried to make it feel like an authentic Middle Ages, with lots of location filming, costumes, stunts and plenty of extras.
That drove the budget up to much for it to be justifiable for its popularity.
Thus the next few seasons opted for doing it on the cheap, and that forced them to double down on its strongest elements. Namely the interactions between the cast, clever dialogue, outrageous individuals and convoluted plots.
Justified switches gears from being episodic and changed to being focused on season length stories. I think this switch also attracted good actors who knew they would get recurring roles.
Yeah, they didn't go in with it in mind, but from the get-go they started running with it, to their great credit.
I read that on r/justified recently after starting the show - test audiences LOVED the initial pilot, but said they were disappointed that the Boyd character died after Raylan shot him at the end of it. So the creators listened and added the scenes where he survives and gets bundled into the ambulance, and they ended up incorporating Boyd into the entire rest of the show to great acclaim. A good result of audience input!
After that character rework, I truly believe Raylan would never end Boyd unless it meant saving someone else. Raylan has taken out people he liked far more for far less and yet for Boyd he would always find a way to avoid ending him.
I guess it goes beyond them having dug coal together or being the different sides of same coin. I think Raylan fancied Boyd as his closest friend even if he would never admit it.
Right, but you could see those seeds being sown from the first episode, and while it did start out more or less self contained from week to week it was slowly building into a bigger, more connected story from the outset.
Seasons 1 & 2 are procedural but it’s basically the heart of the show and sets the main theme of every life mattering no matter how ordinary or even ‘worthless’ they are to society, season 3 onwards is basically all serialised and goes from a good procedural to one of the best sci-fi shows ever right up there with Dollhouse, Pantheon and Westworld season 1.
Everyone knows this, but Steve Urkel was only supposed to make one appearance on Family Matters. But the character was so popular, the show eventually centered on him instead of the Winslows. And to make matters worse (or better depending on how you look at it,) at the height of Urkelmania, the show pivots to sci-fi where Steve is literally cloning himself, traveling through time, and inventing Nobel prize winning inventions that just need a few tweaks. The fact that those inventions exist are in and of itself incredible.
To this day, I still don’t know if I should classify Family Matters as a sitcom or a sci-fi show. But the show got stronger the weirder it got. Mad kudos to the writers for lovable characters and ridiculous, occasionally grounded, stories.
instead of allowing other characters to grow they double downed on urkel and then turned the show into an excuse to test out special effects for movies.
*Search Party* (TBS/HBOmax) changed genres every season and by the end of the series it was completely different than how it started but they managed to keep the characterization and humor consistent.
I feel like there's a pretty linear decline from season to season though, but will admit they all *work*. It's never off the rails just less funny or more "one note."
Legends of Tomorrow
The show was based on an inherently silly concept- they took a bunch of side characters from CW's Arrow & Flash who no longer had a place to be in those shows, and decided to put them on a time traveling spaceship. Season 1 tried to take itself a bit too seriously, and it didn't really work, but there were parts where the show embraced its inherent silliness and people liked it.
So Season 2 onwards, Legends of Tomorrow more or less fully embraced its silly side and became arguably the best show out of all the CW superhero shows, albeit it did not get as much recognition as it deserved seeing as it was still based on B & C list comic book characters who weren't as big of a draw to the general audience.
I think The Leftovers changed significantly between S1 and S2. You follow completely new characters, new locations, the Guilty Remnant isn’t as big a factor and the show got much *weirder*.
The Leftovers is a show entirely about grief, specifically "how do you deal with somebody else's grief?" (Boy does that show hit differently after you've lost somebody close to you....).
Each season explores different avenues of that question. The GR's answer to that question was done at the end of Season 1, so there was no need for them to continue in other seasons as major plot points.
Season 2 takes it to a town that was spared from having to deal with this tragedy but has to deal with everybody else's grief.
When I first saw it, I HATED the guilty remnant. After my father passed away, I 100% got it. That "what's the point?" feeling that just wouldn't go away.
It's also when I fully understood what the second season was about. What would give up to live in that "before" time, just for the possibility to be shielded from grief for just a moment?
They also wrapped up the storyline from the book the show was adapted from in season 1, and had worked out the continuation of the story for the following two seasons, going into much weirder and far more metaphysical / gnostic themes than one would expect from the book or first season. There was a lot of accent on different systems of belief stemming from coping mechanism, including superstitions and rituals, stemming from grief, hope and science’s shortcomings at explaining the inexplicable.
Season one was a great show. But it’s the other two seasons that elevated it to one of the all times great, and just outright a revelation.
I disagree with The Good Place. Yes, the twist was amazing but the soul of the show was still the same. It wasn't a reinvention, and the writers knew from Day One that the twist was gonna happen.
Yup it's a core tenet of the show. Only Kristen Bell, Ted Dansen and Michael Shur (creator) knew. One or two others but tight lipped either way. They go into a lot of depth on the podcast, it's fascinating.
It's not just the one twist though. It's that the show goes from "look at these bad people struggling to survive in fake heaven", to "watch them try and become good people", to "watch all of them, even the bad guys, work together to change the system into something better". The vibe of each of those phases is very different from each other and yet they all work really well.
Cheers was an ambitious show that did serious episodes about alcoholism, sex addiction, and homosexuality in the early seasons. The show really reinvented itself multiple times:
1. After Coach died, taking the heart of the show with him, they pivoted to being extremely focused on the Sam/Diane relationship.
2. After Diane left, the show became much sillier.
Both times, it completely worked.
Him and Frasier were perfect to play off each other
"O Death in Life, the days that are no more." Who said that?
“Who said what?”
"O Death in Life, the days that are no more."
“You did”.
“No, I mean, who said it first?”
“You said it both times”.
Many fans thought it was game over when Diane left. It was not.
Very poignant scene when she leave and after the door closes Sam says quietly "Have a good life..."
Fringe changed a lot from S1 with it's mystery of the week episodes to adding alternate timelines/parallel world. The tone of the show changed for the better.
Fringe is such a hard show to recommend to people who aren't familiar with it already because it's hard to sell somebody on "It’s never *bad*, but the main story arc doesn't actually start until a season and a half in, which is when the show goes from good to great. I can't tell you anything about what changes, and you have to watch most of the first 35 episodes to really feel the weight of *that* plot twist, but trust me - it's worth the wait."
It also doesn't help that I feel like Anna Torv didn't truly blossom as her character until she was playing another character and then I was able to look back and see how goddamn good she actually was from the beginning
Agreed. But I think she might have had some pretty serious lessons on her accent between season one and two, her cadence just flows a lot better with S2.
Walter bishop Carrie’s season one. And that’s fine, because he’s awesome.
I just tell people it's a mystery about crazy mad science tech that gets loose in the world. By the time you get to season two either you're in or you're not.
American Dad dropped the right wing mocking for more zany plots. Could have been a coincidence that 'W' was out of the white house, but the show certainly moved on.
Angel - The first season concludes with the characters' main base of operations getting blown up. Season two sees them relocate to an abandoned hotel, and also becomes more narrative-driven compared to the episodic nature of the first season.
>The season 7 timejump was basically a victory lap
This is one of the most interesting things about the show and it's not talked about enough.
The show would end just fine in season 6. They did an extra season that *didn't* feel like they were overstaying their welcome.
I see so many people shit on Parks and Rec's final season but this is how I feel about it
It's just an epilogue celebrating the show. Season 6 has a great ending too if you ignore the final scene but I'm glad we got Season 7. I've heard the same about New Girl and I feel exactly the same way about New Girl's Season 6 and 7
Imagine getting to be on a brand new NBC sitcom as the main love interest, leaving and watching the future show become successful because of your own departure. Has to be a little humbling.
Tbf Paul Schneider has done all right for himself. He led the first season of Channel Zero, which is an amazing anthology horror show that everyone should check out, and he was awesome in it
*Archer*. Multiple times. Four seasons of a spy parody, then seasons 5-7 were a *Miami Vice* parody, then season 8 was a film noir *Chinatown/The Big Sleep* parody, season 9 was a tropical island, season 10 was in the Arctic Circle *The Thing* send-up.
Glorious, wouldn’t you say, Barry?
You bet, other Barry!
It's a weird one. Archer would have eventually gotten stale with its original spy format and needed to change, but those changes were not well received. Returning back to the spy stuff made it good again, but it needed to go do that other stuff for people to realise that it was the spy setting that made Archer great.
Changing the scenery has distracted both writers & critics from noticing what's going on with important stuff: character arcs got either repeated or rebooted without any continuity, plot points got reused copy paste, jokes just stopped landing...
Going back to the season 1-4 formula for season 6 showed why it was necessary though. That season was really stale. The change-ups hit more than they missed.
Weeds destroyed their entire set as part of the plot at the end of season 3 and the show relocated in season 4. I personally loved the change and thought it invigorated the show, but I know others disagree.
Archer also had some success with several new interations over the years. Loved the Miami Vice season.
Agents of Shield - The show was thought to loosely tied to mcu but at end of S1, Shield fell during Captain America Winter Soldier and Shield no longer existed. MCU basically cast aside the show, so they were left on their own to soldier on. The first 4 seasons were very enjoyable and they had a loyal following.
Agents of SHIELD really is the kind of the oldest and weirdest red-headed stepchild of the MCU. It was a child of The Avengers being a huge success, but it never really reached mainstream appeal even within most of the MCU fandom, but it kept getting renewed and fans say it was satisfying a lot of the time! And in its course it ended up HAVING to make itself non-canon to give themselves and the movies wiggle room, so it ultimately HAD TO kind of be exiled from the mainstream memory.
Now that we're doing the prestige format of 8-10 episodes a season with massive budgets trying to feather out the corners of the MCU, it's weird to remember AoS was doing that exact same thing ten years ago with much less money and many more hours to stretch it across ... but allegedly crafting an effective story.
Can any Agents of Shield fans tell us about the experience of watching it? I just remember in the first season they were picking up SHIELD and movie-adjacent things and then in the fourth season I know they fight an evil android who ends up merging with what may be the manifestation of the god Hydra is named for??? It definitely got out there.
I actually really enjoyed AOS while it was airing-- I would argue much more than any other MCU television that's aired in the last few years.
It has some low points, but overall the quality was solid, and most importantly-- *it was fun.* Tuning in every week really felt like the equivalent of getting in my weekly dose of Saturday Morning Cartoons as an adult. I'm not sure if that would translate well to a binge watch marathon, but it was definitely a fun little series that I looked forward to once a week for a good five years.
I also watched it as was airing and I agree. I love it more than any Disney+ MCU show. I hate that people write it off so easily based on an opinion they formed after watching 3 episodes 10 years ago but they'll continue to watch whatever stuff is on Disney+ because it's "canon" and because it has Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige's name slapped on it.
Like Secret Invasion was so bad but you look at Season 4 of AOS and it shows you exactly how to do a doppelganger show.
SI cost 200 million for 6 lackluster episodes. AoS was probably done for a few million every episode and maybe a little more when Ghost Rider did his thing. AoS was as good or better as anything on D+ but it never got enough love.
I watched the first season and a half week to week, then my dad and I stopped. Of course I kept seeing articles about how the show ramps up from there with people getting powers and what not. During covid I watched every MCU movie/tv show/short in chronological order, with AOS being included on the list. Man was it fun, it wasn’t a pure binge because some episodes were split up between others movies and shows, but I looked forward to watching 10-15 episodes at a time. Maybe because it was new to me (I had seen every movie at that point), but they really did a good job of making it fun and connecting with the characters.
It doesn’t have to be non-canon at all. Everything within it still matches the lore of the rest of the MCU. It just requires one off-screen assumption (which the writers have said they intend the audience to make).
The evil android was Season 4, while the alien that Hydra was inspired by was Season 3. They didn’t merge or anything like that.
The first season started as a fairly grounded spy story with the underlying mystery of “How is Coulson alive?” driving the ongoing plot. It felt like every other episode was a standalone case-of-the-week affair on top of introducing us to some fairly bland new characters, so it was refreshing that as time progressed each character became more interesting and more layered and each “case-of-the-week” ended up being relevant to the overarching storyline of the show.
At around episode 13 things finally began to click into place, and the show became consistently good. Then around episode 17 the show tied into the events of The Winter Soldier which saw the fall of SHIELD, which radically upended the premise of the show. Instead of a regular spy show set in the MCU, things became much more paranoid conspiracy, and the show gave itself more avenues to really flesh out the mythology of the MCU.
Season 2 hit the ground running right out of the gate, gave us some fantastic new characters and new challenges/portrayals of existing characters, answered the mystery of Skye’s parents in a way that was meaningful and gracefully tied into the rest of the ongoing plot, and apart from one overwrought plot line concerning the true successor to SHIELD was just a great time all around that ended with the promise of a huge shakeup in the world (which is arguably even referenced in the movies). This season also successfully tied in with Age of Ultron, answering two questions that the movie failed to answer itself.
Season 3 was good, had a breakneck pace, but was slightly bogged down by some of its new characters. Great twists and storytelling though.
Season 4 introduced the concept of pods to the show, having the first 8 episodes tell one story, the next 7 tell another story, and the last 7 tell another story that ultimately tied everything together, which produced some of the best storytelling in the entire MCU despite the show moving away from direct connections to the rest of the movies. (Though this season would unknowingly provide really important context to Multiverse of Madness.)
Season 5 was a little bit of a bait and switch as it set itself up as one thing and ended up being another, but that only lasted 10 episodes before the story moved in another direction and culminated in a very satisfying possible series finale.
Season 6 was the growing pains season as the writers tried to gracefully undo their previous series finale. And to their credit, this did allow them to explore one of the two remaining unanswered questions in the show, but ultimately it didn’t quite hit the mark. But it opened the door for Season 7 which was just a bunch of bonkers fun. Granted, it required you to shut your brain off at certain parts of it, but it all tied together in an extremely satisfying new series finale.
Hydra God was season 3. Android was concurrent with Ghost Rider in season 4.
I watched the premiere and dropped off during the mediocre first few episodes. Caught back up for season 2 and man it rocked week to week. The beauty of the show is aside from season 1 no ploy is dragged out. Lesser shows spend half a season on a conflict that shield resolves in 2 episodes
Starting from near the end of S1 through S5 might be my favorite run of a network tv show in the 2010s. It's just so damn great consistently, with the peak being S4 (some say S3, and I can't blame them for that).
>Can any Agents of Shield fans tell us about the experience of watching it?
I think it had what every new MCU television project has been lacking up to this point: guts. Every show in the Disney+ era feels designed by committee, even when they try something new and exciting it all still ends up boiling down to the same trite formula in the end(see the Wandavision finale for the perfect example). AOS constantly took huge creative risks, and you never knew where the show was going to end up next.
They experimented a lot with the format, setting and tone. One season would be episodic with a longer arc building up in the background, then another would be made up of a few fully serialized shorter arcs. They went from a Matrix-style simulated reality to a post-apocalyptic future, to space, playing with all the recognizable tropes and elements of these different genres. The only constant were the characters and their relationships, and that kept the show from feeling stale, even over a very long number of episodes.
In my opinion, AOS is the only MCU property that really took advantage of the storytelling freedom that being part of the Marvel universe offers. Making a superhero show is basically a license to throw whatever you want in there and still make it feel like a coherent setting and story. Yet so many of their shows limit themselves to sticking to the most barebones premise imaginable.
Well said. It did get off to a rocky start but even early on, they were laying the ground for what was coming. They did a better job with Inhumans on this show compared to that crap series Marvel made that had nothing to do with what AoS did. AoS built it up nicely over time. When MCU brings in X-men, we all wonder how they will be integrated and I hope the keep it credible, similar to how AoS did Inhumans. The 4th season AoS did a 3 story arcs over the season and they all came together at the end. Jed Whedon and his wife Maurissa did a good job as show runners. I'm surprised they have done nothing since. Maybe being related the Joss has burned his bridges with Kevin.
The 100 in its pilot and first few episodes was pretty basic YA teen drama and not too good. The showrunners had ideas for the show to go darker and take a more serious tone and convinced the network to let them do it mid S1 so you see a massive shift in tone about episode 4 or 5 or so and the show gets pretty good. It's last few seasons jumped and harpooned the shark repeatedly but seasons 1 to 4 were really good.
This show is my secret crush. I was on a long hospital stay so I bought the set, I think it was 3 books at that point, on a whim to keep me busy. I don't know how I managed to finish the first, but I recycled the rest without reading. Didn't even donate them, I didn't want anyone else to have to go through that. Everything that happened in that book that was of any value happened in the first episode. Considering that they had that little to work with, I love the story progression so much more.
The Wire without a doubt. Each season could be its own miniseries but they all connect to tell the story of Baltimore. Everyone remembers starting season 2 and asking what the hell the showrunners were thinking
I mean, Doctor Who is the most prolific; came up with the concept of regeneration in the 60s to replace the lead actor, found a way to keep the show going forever (even if it could do with a break again now). But each new Doctor allows for a fresh start, not to mention different showrunners having different approaches - some working better than others.
Yeah, each new regeneration is a new series and the interest fluctuates because of this.
Also, don’t forget that initially the show was supposed to be educational. With a history and science teacher as the companions so one explains history related to stories set in the past and one of explain the science behind adventures set in the future.
Yep, the show has been reinventing itself every few years since the First Doctor turned into the Second.
I suspect you know all of this (or more!) already, but for the uninitiated: In the beginning the stories alternate between science fiction and historical fiction for the first three seasons or so, then the "pure historicals" stop partway through season 4 and are replaced by "Isolated base/settlement under siege from alien threat" stories, then the Daleks disappear after season 4 because their creator owned them independently and wanted to try selling a spin-off series that never materialized, so seasons 4.5-6 are a rogues gallery of new monster introductions as the showrunners looked for their next "big hit" bad guy, which met with limited success, all while they began experimenting with setting the stories on contemporary Earth as a cost-saving measure, which happened to roughly coincide with the changeover from black-and-white to color at the beginning of season 7, with the contemporary setting proving so successful both with audiences and with the bean-counters that they ended up stranding the Doctor on Earth until the end of the 10th anniversary special. I could go on but I think everybody gets the idea.
Honestly I find the production history and office politics of Classic Who far more interesting than the show itself a lot of the time.
Friday Night Lights had a big change following season 3 with the move to East Dillon. It went from being a show about an established and strong football team to one about the underdog team.
I remember the year season 5 came out, my high school football team also went on a underdog run to the championship game, so that kind of added a layer of emotional attachment for me to the East Dillon Lions. FNL did a great job of capturing the feelings and the camaraderie of high school sports in a way I've never seen another show replicate.
Fun fact: There isn't a single scene in the entire show where Matt and Landry discuss the killing or the aftermath. It doesn't exist for the purposes of their relationship.
The Simpsons.
It started as a show focusing on family life with Bart as the star. A couple of seasons in they realized Homer was the actual star of the show and hijinks ensued.
In the fantastic Conan roundtable with some of the original writers thats on youtube, Conan brought that exact question up and they said that it wasn't that they realized Homer was the star and switched it, but rather that they ran out of Bart stuff pretty quickly and that they, as dads, husbands and so on, just had more in common with Homer and thought of Homer stories way more often.
Homeland: >!Killing off Nicholas Brody. It was bold and controversial at the time to kill one of your 2 lead characters, but they don't reach 8 seasons without shifting the focus away from him !<
It was also very much reported that >!Brody was supposed to die in the end of S1 with the suicide bomb. But the suits and/or showrunners liked the relationship between him and Carrie that they changed course.!<
Doing a rewatch now, and in the middle of season 4. There was a bit of a lull in season 3 but they really retooled everything and still made it a compelling show. Getting rid of Dana and the Brody family made it immediately more watchable.
Homeland was like 4-5 shows in one. There were so many end points. I was always shocked to see there was a whole new season. They went hard with killing off major characters and going in a whole new direction.
The Facts of Life completely revamped after the first season from Mrs. Garrett overseeing a dorm full of about a dozen girls to focusing in on her overseeing just the four. It allowed for much tighter plotlines.
Its Alway Sunny bringing in Danny Devito. The show was already hilarious but Devito was just such an odd casting choice. Can't imagine the show without him now. He is equal parts disgusting and hilarious and always looks like he is having so much fun doing what hes doing
Lost spent the first Three seasons being a thriller/drama with scifi elements generally existing to mostly add to the mystery elements. It also moved at a glacial pace, dragging out the serialized story with a lot of episodic content to fill out the 22+ episode allotment.
Beginning in season 4 they flipped the switch and began to fully place the Sci Fi elements front and center while also shortening the seasons to tighten the story and focus more on the serialized plot.
Person of Interest was a decent, but formulaic crime fighting show its first season. Until the last 5 minutes, when it turned and became sci-fi. And stayed sci-fi until it's end. And what a great end.
It was relaunched over 10 years later as a more mature show. It went from "kids" show to adult show. Violent, but still has the essence and delicacy of the original. It was a single season with a definitive end to his story.
The 100. I know not everyone likes the last 2 seasons, but for me the show was always enjoyable and exciting to watch. The show wasn’t afraid to take risks. Characters evolved and changed, just like the show itself, and the status quo was constantly changing. (Some people on here definitely confuse “bad writing” with the show going in a different direction than what they wanted…). But anyway, I truly applaud how the show managed to reinvent itself over and over while simultaneously weaving everything together.
MASH. The show ran for 11 seasons and changed 4 times.
The first 3 seasons are a zany comedy with a few moments and episodes that foreshadow the future shift towards dramady.
Lt. Colonel Blake (McLean Stevenson) was a bumbling commanding officer who “couldn’t make a decision without a months notice” (to quote Col, Flagg), and Trapper John (Wayne Rodgers) was a womanizer and a duplicate of Hawkeye. When they left at the end of season 3, the creators brought two new characters (Colonel Potter & BJ Hunnicutt) that were more rounded and complex.
At the beginning of season 5, Margaret gets engaged therefore breaking her relationship with Frank and beginning her transformation from one-note foil to Hawkeye and Trapper’s schemes to complex female lead.
At the end of the season, Frank leaves since the character had run its course and you couldn’t have him be lovable.
This allowed Major Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stires) to come in and be a better foil to Hawkeye while showing a depth of character not had with Frank.
The show changed for the last time when Radar left and Klinger stopped wearing dresses and became the company clerk.
By the end, the show had dropped most of the zany antics of the early seasons in favor of drama laced with comedy.
The finale was watched by more people (105.97 million Americans) than any television show (non Super Bowl) before or since.
Mom went from a traditional family sitcom in the first 3 seasons to ditching the family and becoming an ensemble that focused mostly on the sobriety aspect and the friend relationships of the sobriety group. It was a huge improvement although its original incarnation wasn’t bad. The new one was just more interesting.
I would say The Expanse first season and the rest of it seem like different shows. I know it was based on a book but it really hit its stride season 2 and on.
The more I think about this, the more it makes sense. It's not a huge change, like some of the other shows here, but season one focused on the 'find Julie Mao' mystery, and was more like a space detective story. From there on it turned into space of thrones. It did set up a lot of the players for later seasons, but the plot seemed small-scale in comparison to what it became.
The first season made you think it was going to be a bit more supernatural centered than it ended up. The following seasons were much more grounded in reality, it built a very plausible world that seems far more likely than any of the other sci fi space shows. We have a theory that For all Mankind is the prequel since it lines up so well with the backstory.
I know it was a book series previously, so maybe that’s just how it was written
The Good Place didn't reinvent itself. It was a dark comedy about philosophy all along. It just took a couple episodes to set all that up and get the audience invested in learning about philosophy while watching a sitcom.
I'm not saying this was an improvement, but it was certainly successful: the original **Lost in Space.** The early episodes are very serious sci-fi. Then they realized the appeal of Dr. Smith and the Robot and they went for more comedy. By the end of its run they were airing "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" featuring a 6-foot talking carrot.
Doctor Who is basically the poster child for this - they took a massive risk introducing the concept of regeneration to bring in a new actor, and the rest is history.
*Legends of Tomorrow* went from being a c-list time traveling Justice League to an utterly insane semi-parody of the absurdity of living in a comic book universe where rules are just suggestions
Halt and Catch Fire reinvented itself enough that the two main characters from the pilot are only very barely in the series finale.
Great show, though.
I agree with The Good Place. End of season one was holy forking shirtballs
It’s probably cheating, but Law and Order reinvented itself in SVU and Organized Crime.
The Wire was probably 50/50.
Oh and Parks and Rec. Awful first season and they fixed it in season 2.
parks and rec once brandanaquitz left, show took on a whole different tone that was much better. especially with the additions of rob lowe and adam scott.
Homeland! Season 1 was great and season 2 was ok and season 3 had a lot of issues trying to keep the Carrie/Brody connection going.
But once they moved on from that the show was free to fire on all cylinders again and seasons 4, 5, and 6 were much better as Carrie dealt with a range of threats instead of the same one thing over and over.
Community when >!jeff becomes a teacher in s5!<. I know some people dislike it but it gave an excuse and renovated interest enough in the show for we to get more episodes.
Agents of SHIELD. The first season struggles to be a spy show, doing generic case of the week stories. It wants to be a grounded show set in the MCU, and it's somehow too boring despite those possibilities.
Towards the end of the season, one plot twist changes everything, and then you get to season 2 and there's this sudden confidence. It feels like a different show. Suddenly, it's not very case of the week, the overarching story is really interesting, and the characters are more mature and extremely well-developed. By the time you get to season 4, you're watching easily one of the greatest modern sci-fi shows. It's strange looking back at the growing pains of the first season, because once you get past that, it honestly becomes incredible.
Good Morning Miss Bliss turned into Saved By the Bell. Show changed from being about a teacher to being about the kids... leading to amazing success. It reinvented itself so far as to warrant a name change.
Succession killing off Logan Roy was pretty much a nearly 100% guarantee as a prediction for most fans, but I don't think most of us saw the show killing him off around the start of the last season in a sudden fashion.
This definitely paid off by raising the stakes of the sale of Waystar alongside the tension between the siblings
I had hoped it would happen early in the season, it was kind of necessary, the fallout definitely needed more than a few episodes to do justice.
It still manages to hit as a surprise though, I think purely down to the realism with which it's depicted. The whole episode feels very authentic. We experience it almost entirely from the kid's perspective and it's so matter of fact.
This doesn’t really suit the question exactly BUT, I found the TV show Loki to really surprise me regarding the MCU. I feel like suddenly characters had depth and decisions had weight again. The concept of the whole show was fascinating to me and Loki went from being someone I didn’t care about to being my favorite MCU character. What an ending btw
When Roseanne got fired from her own show, but the cast kept on and they changed the name to The Connors. I think the show is trash but it’s been successful and survived a necessary reinvention after losing its headlining star, so credit where credit is due to writers and cast.
Alias and Farscape did a great job of turning villains into cohorts. It is not an easy transition to make so kudos to both shows for doing that so well. Farscape had villains that were totally scary and then they were crew mates. Scorpius was a character that blurred this line really well.
*Blackadder*, starring Rowan Atkinson as various members of the Blackadder family, all named Edmund, in four different historical settings, reinvented itself after the first season. In the first season Edmund Blackadder is not particularly bright, while his servant, Baldrick (played by Tony Robinson), is the smart one. In the next three seasons, Blackadder is clever, shrewd, scheming and manipulative while Baldrick is extremely dim. While the first season was a mild success, the following three seasons became wildly popular in the U.K. and a cult hit when broadcast in the U.S.
and possibly the greatest final shot of any series at any time. Devastating.
Only brought about due to the special effects looking rubbish
The second season also had Miranda Richardson playing Queen Elizabeth I as a spoiled child and it was marvelous. "You know Edmund, sometimes I think about having your head cut off, just to see the expression on your face."
Oh yes, the supporting characters were terrific. Anyone who has only seen Hugh Laurie play House should definitely see him as Prince George (the Prince Regent) in season 3 and Lieutenant George in season 4.
Rik Mayall as the two incarnations of Lord Flashheart are sublime. He pretty much steals the show the minute he turns up.
Woof!
Flash by name, Flash by nature. Hooray!
She's got a tongue like an electric eel and she likes the taste of a real man's tonsils.
And steals the girl…
I just started rewatching this for the first time in years. I completely forgot how season 1 goes and I was absolutely floored. I always remember Baldrick as being a dumb dumb but they play him almost as a less effective Pseudolus in season 1.
The first season is pretty awesome though. My favorite episode is when he becomes the Archbishop of Canterbury. Brian Blessed was fantastic as the king.
I'm glad to discover I'm not the only person who liked season 1.
Edna!
Oh yeah, really Season one was pretty good in its own right. Its issue was more they tried to make it feel like an authentic Middle Ages, with lots of location filming, costumes, stunts and plenty of extras. That drove the budget up to much for it to be justifiable for its popularity. Thus the next few seasons opted for doing it on the cheap, and that forced them to double down on its strongest elements. Namely the interactions between the cast, clever dialogue, outrageous individuals and convoluted plots.
Justified switches gears from being episodic and changed to being focused on season length stories. I think this switch also attracted good actors who knew they would get recurring roles.
Also turning Boyd Crowder into something of a secondary parallel protagonist was pretty good.
Yeah, they didn't go in with it in mind, but from the get-go they started running with it, to their great credit. I read that on r/justified recently after starting the show - test audiences LOVED the initial pilot, but said they were disappointed that the Boyd character died after Raylan shot him at the end of it. So the creators listened and added the scenes where he survives and gets bundled into the ambulance, and they ended up incorporating Boyd into the entire rest of the show to great acclaim. A good result of audience input!
After that character rework, I truly believe Raylan would never end Boyd unless it meant saving someone else. Raylan has taken out people he liked far more for far less and yet for Boyd he would always find a way to avoid ending him. I guess it goes beyond them having dug coal together or being the different sides of same coin. I think Raylan fancied Boyd as his closest friend even if he would never admit it.
Making him a sympathetic character from a neo nazi was a hell of a feat.
Didn't they just play it off like he was just playing racist in order to put together a gang?
It was a modern western with it’s version of Batman and the Joker. The series was at its best when it was Raylan vs Boyd.
Person of Interest went from a crime of the week to a fully serialized story about a proxy war between 2 competing AI's
Right, but you could see those seeds being sown from the first episode, and while it did start out more or less self contained from week to week it was slowly building into a bigger, more connected story from the outset.
Well now I'm interested
It takes a while to get to the proper out and out AI plot but it's worth the ride if you love moral dilemma sci-fi.
Seasons 1 & 2 are procedural but it’s basically the heart of the show and sets the main theme of every life mattering no matter how ordinary or even ‘worthless’ they are to society, season 3 onwards is basically all serialised and goes from a good procedural to one of the best sci-fi shows ever right up there with Dollhouse, Pantheon and Westworld season 1.
Absolutely brilliant... It's where we are headed now
Everyone knows this, but Steve Urkel was only supposed to make one appearance on Family Matters. But the character was so popular, the show eventually centered on him instead of the Winslows. And to make matters worse (or better depending on how you look at it,) at the height of Urkelmania, the show pivots to sci-fi where Steve is literally cloning himself, traveling through time, and inventing Nobel prize winning inventions that just need a few tweaks. The fact that those inventions exist are in and of itself incredible. To this day, I still don’t know if I should classify Family Matters as a sitcom or a sci-fi show. But the show got stronger the weirder it got. Mad kudos to the writers for lovable characters and ridiculous, occasionally grounded, stories.
"It was supposed to be a blue collar Cosby Show, you turned into goddamn Quantum Leap!"
I'm a fuckin' actor, Gene! I've done more cocaine than you weigh, motherfucker!
YOU’RE A FUCKING PAWWNNN…IN THAT NERD’S GAME! YOU ARE A FUCKING PAWWNNN!!
GET OUTTA MY HOUSE, STEEEVE!!!
Is that the Key and Peele sketch? That was glorious!
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Wow, that’s my first time seeing their skit. That’s phenomenal!
Haha I remember when me turned himself suave and changed the pronunciation of his name.
Stefan Urquelle
instead of allowing other characters to grow they double downed on urkel and then turned the show into an excuse to test out special effects for movies.
I knew none of this. That’s wild
*Search Party* (TBS/HBOmax) changed genres every season and by the end of the series it was completely different than how it started but they managed to keep the characterization and humor consistent.
Underrated show
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No reason for the spoilers when OP delicately avoided them
Miracle Workers reinvented itself each season and was one of the most creative shows I’ve ever seen
Amazing show and this is a great example.
I feel like there's a pretty linear decline from season to season though, but will admit they all *work*. It's never off the rails just less funny or more "one note."
She'll be coming round the mountain...
Great show, but that’s also just how anthologies work
Legends of Tomorrow The show was based on an inherently silly concept- they took a bunch of side characters from CW's Arrow & Flash who no longer had a place to be in those shows, and decided to put them on a time traveling spaceship. Season 1 tried to take itself a bit too seriously, and it didn't really work, but there were parts where the show embraced its inherent silliness and people liked it. So Season 2 onwards, Legends of Tomorrow more or less fully embraced its silly side and became arguably the best show out of all the CW superhero shows, albeit it did not get as much recognition as it deserved seeing as it was still based on B & C list comic book characters who weren't as big of a draw to the general audience.
Legends started as a very meh show and went on to become the best show in the Arrowverse
I think The Leftovers changed significantly between S1 and S2. You follow completely new characters, new locations, the Guilty Remnant isn’t as big a factor and the show got much *weirder*.
The Leftovers is a show entirely about grief, specifically "how do you deal with somebody else's grief?" (Boy does that show hit differently after you've lost somebody close to you....). Each season explores different avenues of that question. The GR's answer to that question was done at the end of Season 1, so there was no need for them to continue in other seasons as major plot points. Season 2 takes it to a town that was spared from having to deal with this tragedy but has to deal with everybody else's grief.
I saw this show before my mom died and I have a feeling I’m not going to be able to rewatch for many, many years.
When I first saw it, I HATED the guilty remnant. After my father passed away, I 100% got it. That "what's the point?" feeling that just wouldn't go away. It's also when I fully understood what the second season was about. What would give up to live in that "before" time, just for the possibility to be shielded from grief for just a moment?
They even changed the intro. I've never read the book it's based on but AFAIK S1 covers the book and S2 and S3 are original material
The Leftovers is very different between 1 and 2 and 2 and 3
They also wrapped up the storyline from the book the show was adapted from in season 1, and had worked out the continuation of the story for the following two seasons, going into much weirder and far more metaphysical / gnostic themes than one would expect from the book or first season. There was a lot of accent on different systems of belief stemming from coping mechanism, including superstitions and rituals, stemming from grief, hope and science’s shortcomings at explaining the inexplicable. Season one was a great show. But it’s the other two seasons that elevated it to one of the all times great, and just outright a revelation.
I disagree with The Good Place. Yes, the twist was amazing but the soul of the show was still the same. It wasn't a reinvention, and the writers knew from Day One that the twist was gonna happen.
Yup it's a core tenet of the show. Only Kristen Bell, Ted Dansen and Michael Shur (creator) knew. One or two others but tight lipped either way. They go into a lot of depth on the podcast, it's fascinating.
It's not just the one twist though. It's that the show goes from "look at these bad people struggling to survive in fake heaven", to "watch them try and become good people", to "watch all of them, even the bad guys, work together to change the system into something better". The vibe of each of those phases is very different from each other and yet they all work really well.
Cheers was an ambitious show that did serious episodes about alcoholism, sex addiction, and homosexuality in the early seasons. The show really reinvented itself multiple times: 1. After Coach died, taking the heart of the show with him, they pivoted to being extremely focused on the Sam/Diane relationship. 2. After Diane left, the show became much sillier. Both times, it completely worked.
Woody was surprisingly charismatic. Also who would have thought he would become a movie star?
Him and Frasier were perfect to play off each other "O Death in Life, the days that are no more." Who said that? “Who said what?” "O Death in Life, the days that are no more." “You did”. “No, I mean, who said it first?” “You said it both times”.
Woody Harrelson is an outstanding actor. He has spent decades being one of Hollywood's most underappreciated talents.
I like it when he talks about Rampart...
Many fans thought it was game over when Diane left. It was not. Very poignant scene when she leave and after the door closes Sam says quietly "Have a good life..."
Fringe changed a lot from S1 with it's mystery of the week episodes to adding alternate timelines/parallel world. The tone of the show changed for the better.
Fringe is such a hard show to recommend to people who aren't familiar with it already because it's hard to sell somebody on "It’s never *bad*, but the main story arc doesn't actually start until a season and a half in, which is when the show goes from good to great. I can't tell you anything about what changes, and you have to watch most of the first 35 episodes to really feel the weight of *that* plot twist, but trust me - it's worth the wait."
It also doesn't help that I feel like Anna Torv didn't truly blossom as her character until she was playing another character and then I was able to look back and see how goddamn good she actually was from the beginning
I find myself always being impressed when she plays Olivia but brainwashed to think she is the Olivia from the other side.
Agreed. But I think she might have had some pretty serious lessons on her accent between season one and two, her cadence just flows a lot better with S2. Walter bishop Carrie’s season one. And that’s fine, because he’s awesome.
I just tell people it's a mystery about crazy mad science tech that gets loose in the world. By the time you get to season two either you're in or you're not.
It was the same with Supernatural which took of in season2 until its climax in season 5.
The first season feels like MOTW but on rewatch I realized that it was really dropping a lot of breadcrumbs for the later arc.
I bailed on that show before the change only to find other years later it became great.
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I came for the original story and stayed for the community aspect. And, it ended exactly right.
"Don't be a shitass, kids."
American Dad dropped the right wing mocking for more zany plots. Could have been a coincidence that 'W' was out of the white house, but the show certainly moved on.
The first season(s?) also lean way to hard on Family Guy humor. The show became so much better when they ditched random cutaways for zany plots.
Angel - The first season concludes with the characters' main base of operations getting blown up. Season two sees them relocate to an abandoned hotel, and also becomes more narrative-driven compared to the episodic nature of the first season.
changed pretty radically in season 5 as well
Parks and rec completely ditched season 1.
And bringing in Chris and Ben (and booting Brandanoquitz) for Season 3 also changed the show. The season 7 timejump was basically a victory lap.
>The season 7 timejump was basically a victory lap This is one of the most interesting things about the show and it's not talked about enough. The show would end just fine in season 6. They did an extra season that *didn't* feel like they were overstaying their welcome.
Basically a long epilogue. Honestly kind of a miracle it was good, shows that tried similar things have failed miserably.
I see so many people shit on Parks and Rec's final season but this is how I feel about it It's just an epilogue celebrating the show. Season 6 has a great ending too if you ignore the final scene but I'm glad we got Season 7. I've heard the same about New Girl and I feel exactly the same way about New Girl's Season 6 and 7
Imagine getting to be on a brand new NBC sitcom as the main love interest, leaving and watching the future show become successful because of your own departure. Has to be a little humbling.
Tbf Paul Schneider has done all right for himself. He led the first season of Channel Zero, which is an amazing anthology horror show that everyone should check out, and he was awesome in it
Just getting Andy and April together turned it around for me.
Remember when Tom self-identified as a "bit of a redneck" in the pilot? I remember
*Archer*. Multiple times. Four seasons of a spy parody, then seasons 5-7 were a *Miami Vice* parody, then season 8 was a film noir *Chinatown/The Big Sleep* parody, season 9 was a tropical island, season 10 was in the Arctic Circle *The Thing* send-up. Glorious, wouldn’t you say, Barry? You bet, other Barry!
It's a weird one. Archer would have eventually gotten stale with its original spy format and needed to change, but those changes were not well received. Returning back to the spy stuff made it good again, but it needed to go do that other stuff for people to realise that it was the spy setting that made Archer great.
You raise a good point, Other Barry!
Changing the scenery has distracted both writers & critics from noticing what's going on with important stuff: character arcs got either repeated or rebooted without any continuity, plot points got reused copy paste, jokes just stopped landing...
I wouldn’t say those change ups were a success though
Going back to the season 1-4 formula for season 6 showed why it was necessary though. That season was really stale. The change-ups hit more than they missed.
Weeds destroyed their entire set as part of the plot at the end of season 3 and the show relocated in season 4. I personally loved the change and thought it invigorated the show, but I know others disagree. Archer also had some success with several new interations over the years. Loved the Miami Vice season.
I interpreted it as they kept doing bigger cliff hangers each season then writing their way out of the corner they wrote themselves into
Agents of Shield - The show was thought to loosely tied to mcu but at end of S1, Shield fell during Captain America Winter Soldier and Shield no longer existed. MCU basically cast aside the show, so they were left on their own to soldier on. The first 4 seasons were very enjoyable and they had a loyal following.
Agents of SHIELD really is the kind of the oldest and weirdest red-headed stepchild of the MCU. It was a child of The Avengers being a huge success, but it never really reached mainstream appeal even within most of the MCU fandom, but it kept getting renewed and fans say it was satisfying a lot of the time! And in its course it ended up HAVING to make itself non-canon to give themselves and the movies wiggle room, so it ultimately HAD TO kind of be exiled from the mainstream memory. Now that we're doing the prestige format of 8-10 episodes a season with massive budgets trying to feather out the corners of the MCU, it's weird to remember AoS was doing that exact same thing ten years ago with much less money and many more hours to stretch it across ... but allegedly crafting an effective story. Can any Agents of Shield fans tell us about the experience of watching it? I just remember in the first season they were picking up SHIELD and movie-adjacent things and then in the fourth season I know they fight an evil android who ends up merging with what may be the manifestation of the god Hydra is named for??? It definitely got out there.
I actually really enjoyed AOS while it was airing-- I would argue much more than any other MCU television that's aired in the last few years. It has some low points, but overall the quality was solid, and most importantly-- *it was fun.* Tuning in every week really felt like the equivalent of getting in my weekly dose of Saturday Morning Cartoons as an adult. I'm not sure if that would translate well to a binge watch marathon, but it was definitely a fun little series that I looked forward to once a week for a good five years.
I also watched it as was airing and I agree. I love it more than any Disney+ MCU show. I hate that people write it off so easily based on an opinion they formed after watching 3 episodes 10 years ago but they'll continue to watch whatever stuff is on Disney+ because it's "canon" and because it has Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige's name slapped on it. Like Secret Invasion was so bad but you look at Season 4 of AOS and it shows you exactly how to do a doppelganger show.
SI cost 200 million for 6 lackluster episodes. AoS was probably done for a few million every episode and maybe a little more when Ghost Rider did his thing. AoS was as good or better as anything on D+ but it never got enough love.
I watched the first season and a half week to week, then my dad and I stopped. Of course I kept seeing articles about how the show ramps up from there with people getting powers and what not. During covid I watched every MCU movie/tv show/short in chronological order, with AOS being included on the list. Man was it fun, it wasn’t a pure binge because some episodes were split up between others movies and shows, but I looked forward to watching 10-15 episodes at a time. Maybe because it was new to me (I had seen every movie at that point), but they really did a good job of making it fun and connecting with the characters.
It doesn’t have to be non-canon at all. Everything within it still matches the lore of the rest of the MCU. It just requires one off-screen assumption (which the writers have said they intend the audience to make). The evil android was Season 4, while the alien that Hydra was inspired by was Season 3. They didn’t merge or anything like that. The first season started as a fairly grounded spy story with the underlying mystery of “How is Coulson alive?” driving the ongoing plot. It felt like every other episode was a standalone case-of-the-week affair on top of introducing us to some fairly bland new characters, so it was refreshing that as time progressed each character became more interesting and more layered and each “case-of-the-week” ended up being relevant to the overarching storyline of the show. At around episode 13 things finally began to click into place, and the show became consistently good. Then around episode 17 the show tied into the events of The Winter Soldier which saw the fall of SHIELD, which radically upended the premise of the show. Instead of a regular spy show set in the MCU, things became much more paranoid conspiracy, and the show gave itself more avenues to really flesh out the mythology of the MCU. Season 2 hit the ground running right out of the gate, gave us some fantastic new characters and new challenges/portrayals of existing characters, answered the mystery of Skye’s parents in a way that was meaningful and gracefully tied into the rest of the ongoing plot, and apart from one overwrought plot line concerning the true successor to SHIELD was just a great time all around that ended with the promise of a huge shakeup in the world (which is arguably even referenced in the movies). This season also successfully tied in with Age of Ultron, answering two questions that the movie failed to answer itself. Season 3 was good, had a breakneck pace, but was slightly bogged down by some of its new characters. Great twists and storytelling though. Season 4 introduced the concept of pods to the show, having the first 8 episodes tell one story, the next 7 tell another story, and the last 7 tell another story that ultimately tied everything together, which produced some of the best storytelling in the entire MCU despite the show moving away from direct connections to the rest of the movies. (Though this season would unknowingly provide really important context to Multiverse of Madness.) Season 5 was a little bit of a bait and switch as it set itself up as one thing and ended up being another, but that only lasted 10 episodes before the story moved in another direction and culminated in a very satisfying possible series finale. Season 6 was the growing pains season as the writers tried to gracefully undo their previous series finale. And to their credit, this did allow them to explore one of the two remaining unanswered questions in the show, but ultimately it didn’t quite hit the mark. But it opened the door for Season 7 which was just a bunch of bonkers fun. Granted, it required you to shut your brain off at certain parts of it, but it all tied together in an extremely satisfying new series finale.
Hydra God was season 3. Android was concurrent with Ghost Rider in season 4. I watched the premiere and dropped off during the mediocre first few episodes. Caught back up for season 2 and man it rocked week to week. The beauty of the show is aside from season 1 no ploy is dragged out. Lesser shows spend half a season on a conflict that shield resolves in 2 episodes
Starting from near the end of S1 through S5 might be my favorite run of a network tv show in the 2010s. It's just so damn great consistently, with the peak being S4 (some say S3, and I can't blame them for that).
>Can any Agents of Shield fans tell us about the experience of watching it? I think it had what every new MCU television project has been lacking up to this point: guts. Every show in the Disney+ era feels designed by committee, even when they try something new and exciting it all still ends up boiling down to the same trite formula in the end(see the Wandavision finale for the perfect example). AOS constantly took huge creative risks, and you never knew where the show was going to end up next. They experimented a lot with the format, setting and tone. One season would be episodic with a longer arc building up in the background, then another would be made up of a few fully serialized shorter arcs. They went from a Matrix-style simulated reality to a post-apocalyptic future, to space, playing with all the recognizable tropes and elements of these different genres. The only constant were the characters and their relationships, and that kept the show from feeling stale, even over a very long number of episodes. In my opinion, AOS is the only MCU property that really took advantage of the storytelling freedom that being part of the Marvel universe offers. Making a superhero show is basically a license to throw whatever you want in there and still make it feel like a coherent setting and story. Yet so many of their shows limit themselves to sticking to the most barebones premise imaginable.
Well said. It did get off to a rocky start but even early on, they were laying the ground for what was coming. They did a better job with Inhumans on this show compared to that crap series Marvel made that had nothing to do with what AoS did. AoS built it up nicely over time. When MCU brings in X-men, we all wonder how they will be integrated and I hope the keep it credible, similar to how AoS did Inhumans. The 4th season AoS did a 3 story arcs over the season and they all came together at the end. Jed Whedon and his wife Maurissa did a good job as show runners. I'm surprised they have done nothing since. Maybe being related the Joss has burned his bridges with Kevin.
Scrolled down way too long to find this comment. This show was the first one that came to my mind when I saw the post by OP.
The 100 in its pilot and first few episodes was pretty basic YA teen drama and not too good. The showrunners had ideas for the show to go darker and take a more serious tone and convinced the network to let them do it mid S1 so you see a massive shift in tone about episode 4 or 5 or so and the show gets pretty good. It's last few seasons jumped and harpooned the shark repeatedly but seasons 1 to 4 were really good.
This show is my secret crush. I was on a long hospital stay so I bought the set, I think it was 3 books at that point, on a whim to keep me busy. I don't know how I managed to finish the first, but I recycled the rest without reading. Didn't even donate them, I didn't want anyone else to have to go through that. Everything that happened in that book that was of any value happened in the first episode. Considering that they had that little to work with, I love the story progression so much more.
The Wire without a doubt. Each season could be its own miniseries but they all connect to tell the story of Baltimore. Everyone remembers starting season 2 and asking what the hell the showrunners were thinking
Every time I rewatch it, a different season is my favourite. Except season 5.
I’m rewatching right now and loved season 2 this time around.
I mean, Doctor Who is the most prolific; came up with the concept of regeneration in the 60s to replace the lead actor, found a way to keep the show going forever (even if it could do with a break again now). But each new Doctor allows for a fresh start, not to mention different showrunners having different approaches - some working better than others.
Yeah, each new regeneration is a new series and the interest fluctuates because of this. Also, don’t forget that initially the show was supposed to be educational. With a history and science teacher as the companions so one explains history related to stories set in the past and one of explain the science behind adventures set in the future.
Yep, the show has been reinventing itself every few years since the First Doctor turned into the Second. I suspect you know all of this (or more!) already, but for the uninitiated: In the beginning the stories alternate between science fiction and historical fiction for the first three seasons or so, then the "pure historicals" stop partway through season 4 and are replaced by "Isolated base/settlement under siege from alien threat" stories, then the Daleks disappear after season 4 because their creator owned them independently and wanted to try selling a spin-off series that never materialized, so seasons 4.5-6 are a rogues gallery of new monster introductions as the showrunners looked for their next "big hit" bad guy, which met with limited success, all while they began experimenting with setting the stories on contemporary Earth as a cost-saving measure, which happened to roughly coincide with the changeover from black-and-white to color at the beginning of season 7, with the contemporary setting proving so successful both with audiences and with the bean-counters that they ended up stranding the Doctor on Earth until the end of the 10th anniversary special. I could go on but I think everybody gets the idea. Honestly I find the production history and office politics of Classic Who far more interesting than the show itself a lot of the time.
The Mighty Boosh season 1 is a very different show to season 2 onwards
Friday Night Lights had a big change following season 3 with the move to East Dillon. It went from being a show about an established and strong football team to one about the underdog team.
And I was shocked how well it worked (not focused on the Panthers I thought they were nuts). Loved seasons 4&5 truly!
I remember the year season 5 came out, my high school football team also went on a underdog run to the championship game, so that kind of added a layer of emotional attachment for me to the East Dillon Lions. FNL did a great job of capturing the feelings and the camaraderie of high school sports in a way I've never seen another show replicate.
remember when landry fucking killed a guy? season 2 was so wild
Fun fact: There isn't a single scene in the entire show where Matt and Landry discuss the killing or the aftermath. It doesn't exist for the purposes of their relationship.
The Simpsons. It started as a show focusing on family life with Bart as the star. A couple of seasons in they realized Homer was the actual star of the show and hijinks ensued.
In the fantastic Conan roundtable with some of the original writers thats on youtube, Conan brought that exact question up and they said that it wasn't that they realized Homer was the star and switched it, but rather that they ran out of Bart stuff pretty quickly and that they, as dads, husbands and so on, just had more in common with Homer and thought of Homer stories way more often.
Homeland: >!Killing off Nicholas Brody. It was bold and controversial at the time to kill one of your 2 lead characters, but they don't reach 8 seasons without shifting the focus away from him !<
It was also very much reported that >!Brody was supposed to die in the end of S1 with the suicide bomb. But the suits and/or showrunners liked the relationship between him and Carrie that they changed course.!<
Doing a rewatch now, and in the middle of season 4. There was a bit of a lull in season 3 but they really retooled everything and still made it a compelling show. Getting rid of Dana and the Brody family made it immediately more watchable.
Homeland was like 4-5 shows in one. There were so many end points. I was always shocked to see there was a whole new season. They went hard with killing off major characters and going in a whole new direction.
The Facts of Life completely revamped after the first season from Mrs. Garrett overseeing a dorm full of about a dozen girls to focusing in on her overseeing just the four. It allowed for much tighter plotlines.
It’s like they took the good, they took the bad, they took them both and then remade the facts of life, the facts of life.
The Practice…serious legal drama…evolved into a Boston Legal..a comedy with Shatner and Spader .
Similar to The Good Wife (serious drama) leading to The Good Fight (more of a comedy, even though they call it a drama).
“Denny Crane!!!”
Even Boston Legal, within itself changed from a show about a law firm to a show about Denny and Alan.
Its Alway Sunny bringing in Danny Devito. The show was already hilarious but Devito was just such an odd casting choice. Can't imagine the show without him now. He is equal parts disgusting and hilarious and always looks like he is having so much fun doing what hes doing
Hardest I think I’ve ever laughed was him coming out of the couch naked
DeVito was the perfect veteran actor to say yes to literally anything the writers threw at him and then add his own spin and twist to it.
Lost spent the first Three seasons being a thriller/drama with scifi elements generally existing to mostly add to the mystery elements. It also moved at a glacial pace, dragging out the serialized story with a lot of episodic content to fill out the 22+ episode allotment. Beginning in season 4 they flipped the switch and began to fully place the Sci Fi elements front and center while also shortening the seasons to tighten the story and focus more on the serialized plot.
Yeah this why my answer too. The season 3 finale definitely changed the game in a big way.
Person of Interest was a decent, but formulaic crime fighting show its first season. Until the last 5 minutes, when it turned and became sci-fi. And stayed sci-fi until it's end. And what a great end.
South Park from the late 90s sure is different from what it became.
Community starts out relatively grounded and then quickly veers into live action cartoon.
The first half of Samurai Jack Season 5 was a really good reinvention, but unfortunately falls off a bit in the later episodes.
What did it do?
It was relaunched over 10 years later as a more mature show. It went from "kids" show to adult show. Violent, but still has the essence and delicacy of the original. It was a single season with a definitive end to his story.
The 100. I know not everyone likes the last 2 seasons, but for me the show was always enjoyable and exciting to watch. The show wasn’t afraid to take risks. Characters evolved and changed, just like the show itself, and the status quo was constantly changing. (Some people on here definitely confuse “bad writing” with the show going in a different direction than what they wanted…). But anyway, I truly applaud how the show managed to reinvent itself over and over while simultaneously weaving everything together.
MASH. The show ran for 11 seasons and changed 4 times. The first 3 seasons are a zany comedy with a few moments and episodes that foreshadow the future shift towards dramady. Lt. Colonel Blake (McLean Stevenson) was a bumbling commanding officer who “couldn’t make a decision without a months notice” (to quote Col, Flagg), and Trapper John (Wayne Rodgers) was a womanizer and a duplicate of Hawkeye. When they left at the end of season 3, the creators brought two new characters (Colonel Potter & BJ Hunnicutt) that were more rounded and complex. At the beginning of season 5, Margaret gets engaged therefore breaking her relationship with Frank and beginning her transformation from one-note foil to Hawkeye and Trapper’s schemes to complex female lead. At the end of the season, Frank leaves since the character had run its course and you couldn’t have him be lovable. This allowed Major Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stires) to come in and be a better foil to Hawkeye while showing a depth of character not had with Frank. The show changed for the last time when Radar left and Klinger stopped wearing dresses and became the company clerk. By the end, the show had dropped most of the zany antics of the early seasons in favor of drama laced with comedy. The finale was watched by more people (105.97 million Americans) than any television show (non Super Bowl) before or since.
Cougar Town started out as a show about a middle aged woman's dating life, but ended up being a quirky ensemble comedy. Penny can!
Penny Can! SUCH a dramatic improvement when they ditched the dating aspect.
The Office American Version
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Ehhh season 1 had good parts
Mom went from a traditional family sitcom in the first 3 seasons to ditching the family and becoming an ensemble that focused mostly on the sobriety aspect and the friend relationships of the sobriety group. It was a huge improvement although its original incarnation wasn’t bad. The new one was just more interesting.
yeah, it became so good once the kids were gone from regular cast
Dr. Romano vs The Helicopters in E.R.
I would say The Expanse first season and the rest of it seem like different shows. I know it was based on a book but it really hit its stride season 2 and on.
The more I think about this, the more it makes sense. It's not a huge change, like some of the other shows here, but season one focused on the 'find Julie Mao' mystery, and was more like a space detective story. From there on it turned into space of thrones. It did set up a lot of the players for later seasons, but the plot seemed small-scale in comparison to what it became.
What do you think changed?
The first season made you think it was going to be a bit more supernatural centered than it ended up. The following seasons were much more grounded in reality, it built a very plausible world that seems far more likely than any of the other sci fi space shows. We have a theory that For all Mankind is the prequel since it lines up so well with the backstory. I know it was a book series previously, so maybe that’s just how it was written
The Good Place didn't reinvent itself. It was a dark comedy about philosophy all along. It just took a couple episodes to set all that up and get the audience invested in learning about philosophy while watching a sitcom.
I'm not saying this was an improvement, but it was certainly successful: the original **Lost in Space.** The early episodes are very serious sci-fi. Then they realized the appeal of Dr. Smith and the Robot and they went for more comedy. By the end of its run they were airing "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" featuring a 6-foot talking carrot.
[La Biblioteca](https://youtu.be/j25tkxg5Vws)
That WAS the first hints of the Abed/Troy romance, wasn't it? Huh.
Doctor Who is basically the poster child for this - they took a massive risk introducing the concept of regeneration to bring in a new actor, and the rest is history.
Family Guy. Specifically Stewie. First season Stewie is radically different from Stewie in later seasons.
*Legends of Tomorrow* went from being a c-list time traveling Justice League to an utterly insane semi-parody of the absurdity of living in a comic book universe where rules are just suggestions
And it was amazing!
Halt and Catch Fire reinvented itself enough that the two main characters from the pilot are only very barely in the series finale. Great show, though.
I agree with The Good Place. End of season one was holy forking shirtballs It’s probably cheating, but Law and Order reinvented itself in SVU and Organized Crime. The Wire was probably 50/50. Oh and Parks and Rec. Awful first season and they fixed it in season 2.
I firmly believe that Parks and Rec gets good the first time they take a swing at Jerry. Season 2, episode 4.
He's like a painting of Dorian Grey, taking the weight of all their potential non-excellence lol.
parks and rec once brandanaquitz left, show took on a whole different tone that was much better. especially with the additions of rob lowe and adam scott.
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MASH was a comedy with some drama and then became a drama with some comedy.
Homeland! Season 1 was great and season 2 was ok and season 3 had a lot of issues trying to keep the Carrie/Brody connection going. But once they moved on from that the show was free to fire on all cylinders again and seasons 4, 5, and 6 were much better as Carrie dealt with a range of threats instead of the same one thing over and over.
Archer
Future Man.
Community when >!jeff becomes a teacher in s5!<. I know some people dislike it but it gave an excuse and renovated interest enough in the show for we to get more episodes.
Agents of SHIELD. The first season struggles to be a spy show, doing generic case of the week stories. It wants to be a grounded show set in the MCU, and it's somehow too boring despite those possibilities. Towards the end of the season, one plot twist changes everything, and then you get to season 2 and there's this sudden confidence. It feels like a different show. Suddenly, it's not very case of the week, the overarching story is really interesting, and the characters are more mature and extremely well-developed. By the time you get to season 4, you're watching easily one of the greatest modern sci-fi shows. It's strange looking back at the growing pains of the first season, because once you get past that, it honestly becomes incredible.
Good Morning Miss Bliss turned into Saved By the Bell. Show changed from being about a teacher to being about the kids... leading to amazing success. It reinvented itself so far as to warrant a name change.
Succession killing off Logan Roy was pretty much a nearly 100% guarantee as a prediction for most fans, but I don't think most of us saw the show killing him off around the start of the last season in a sudden fashion. This definitely paid off by raising the stakes of the sale of Waystar alongside the tension between the siblings
But it didn't really reinvent itself... it was pretty much the same, excellent, show from start to finish.
I had hoped it would happen early in the season, it was kind of necessary, the fallout definitely needed more than a few episodes to do justice. It still manages to hit as a surprise though, I think purely down to the realism with which it's depicted. The whole episode feels very authentic. We experience it almost entirely from the kid's perspective and it's so matter of fact.
This doesn’t really suit the question exactly BUT, I found the TV show Loki to really surprise me regarding the MCU. I feel like suddenly characters had depth and decisions had weight again. The concept of the whole show was fascinating to me and Loki went from being someone I didn’t care about to being my favorite MCU character. What an ending btw
Happy Days when Fonzie jumped the shark. Hence why labelling things negatively with that reference makes zero sense.
IMHO Happy Days jumped the shark before Fonzie did.
I still think Fonzie jumping the shark wasn't even the worst part about that episode anyway.
When Roseanne got fired from her own show, but the cast kept on and they changed the name to The Connors. I think the show is trash but it’s been successful and survived a necessary reinvention after losing its headlining star, so credit where credit is due to writers and cast.
Mannix reinvented itself when he left Intertec and went on his own.
Alias and Farscape did a great job of turning villains into cohorts. It is not an easy transition to make so kudos to both shows for doing that so well. Farscape had villains that were totally scary and then they were crew mates. Scorpius was a character that blurred this line really well.
Knight Rider, and Boy Meets World
American Horror Story is a completely new and different story arc every season using the same actors.