And Potsie started off the series as a Bilko-esque wisenheimer but within a few years became a dim bulb.
And weren’t Peg and Al sort of “us against the world” in the early days? I seem to remember episodes where Al wanted to have sex with Peg. They were a team. Perverse, maybe, but a team.
And I thought I was the only one who ever say the first season; when I talk about it, people look at me as if I’m crazy. And you should see how they act when I mention how Fred MacMurray was actually a serial killer in My Three Sons. (The signs are all there, I tell you. It’s all in there.)
Stranger
I about pooped my pants… great!
I don’t think this sort of thing counts as fighting ignorance.
Are you secretly Adam-Troy Castro?
I’d have to say Data from ST:TNG. He started out as a stiff, almost comic relief-type character and evolved into a deeper, rounded, more human character. (which is what he was trying for anyways)
I’d also pick Rimmer from Red Dwarf. He started out as a selfish, career-minded git. By the time he left the series, his character had changed into a slightly less selfish, career-minded git.
I dunno. I always thought the series maintained a pretty consistent level of the Bundys all fighting each other but banding together against any outside attacks. And while Kelly may have gotten dumber as the series progressed, I don’t ever recall her as being particularly smart.
But I do remember an incongruous line in the premiere episode. Kelly was going out on a date with some boy named Snake and Al expressed some misgivings. Then Peg said that it was okay because she had met Snake already and he was a nice boy despite his name. The idea that underneath the surface, Peg was actually a responsible mother didn’t last long.
Elaine Benes.
Started out as the cute, quirky good-natured friend and became an outrageously mean-spirited slut by the end. God, what a bitch. What the FUCK happened to her?
Yeah, I was going to mention Homer, too. He started out as a cantankerous, Walter Matthau-esque character but became more simple and child-like. And he has become much stupider than when the series started out. Although I liked him in “Marge Gamer” when he actually displayed intelligence and ethics, instead of being an example to Lisa of how not to act.
Can we mention characters who flip-flop?
I remember the first 5 seasons or so of the simpsons, which Lisa would change depending on how they needed her to act that episode. Some episodes she was extremely smart and good natured and a foil for Bart, while in other episodes she was portrayed as dumb and lazy as her brother.
Quentin Kelly on Grace Under Fire, and not just because he was played by three different actors. The blonde. bespectacled kid in the pilot (Noah Segan) had serious anger management issues and no sense of how to hide his tracks. As played by Jon Paul Steuer, he was more genial and a lot sneakier in his ability to play his parents against each other; his most extreme behavior was to use a racial epithet and shave his head. In his final (and inexplicably much older) incarnation played by Sam Horrigan, he seems completely well-adjusted–until he destroys an expensive set of titanium golf clubs and semi-accidentally shoots Wade Swoboda, the neighbor. Yep, that kid was a helluva roller coaster ride!
Kramer on Seinfeld. In the pilot and first two or three episodes he was just a spaced out weirdo misfit faded hippie type, rather passive and s-l-o-w. He evolved into the guy who, though still an eccentric misfit, was actually hipper and more switched on than those around him, with plenty of manic energy, zest and a seemingly smart take on life.
George Costanza too. Early on, he was fairly normal. As the series went on he evolved into a completely despicable loser and nebbish.
Maybe he changed dealers.
Terence Knox’s character, Peter White, changed dramatically over the course of just a couple of years on St. Elsewhere. He started out at a bit of a jerky young married doctor with kids. He then was revealed through a progression as reasonably incompetent, a slut cheating on his wife and leaving her for a series of young and not so bright nurses, a drug addict, and then a serial rapist terrorizing the hospital.
Yeah, although I do enjoy the newer Seinfelds they really never seem to surpass the glory days of the first 5 to 6 seasons. I think the entire show of Seinfeld did a complete change. It first started out as a “show about nothing.” Part of what made it great was that it was so real. The Chinese Restaurant or the Parking Garage was so realistic, in the sense that we can really relate to it. Later on, the writers had these really well-defined characters that they simply threw into ridiculous situations. George started screaming all the time, and Elaine became completely selfish, and Kramer, well, Kramer didn’t change so much (not counting the first three episodes or so) as much as the crazy nature of the situations he was in. I found George’s antics at the unemployment office or Jerry and Kramer trying to put concrete in a washing machine (I didn’t realize I had a full bag!) as much more hilarious than George at the car dealership yelling “I’ll walk out right now!”
Family guy has changed in that Meg is basically only used for her grotesqueness. In the beginning she was a normal character and pretty useless in most situations, but now she is hated by everyone. It’s not bad though, because she wasn’t very funny anyway.
Simon in 7th Heaven. He began as a mop-headed, wide-eyed, fiscally responsible human moral compass. He ended as a hedonistic, clinically depressed, hairy-chested sex junkie and male prostitute.
This really pissed me off. It wasn’t that he became dumber, it was more that he became a different kind of dumb. Cartoon dumb, I guess. Peter Griffin dumb. The first 8 or so years he was just kind of oblivious, he had characteristics that you might see in people you know (not all of the characteristics, but some you’d recognize). He was likably dumb, charmingly dumb. AND FUNNY.
Skinner turned into more of a total wimp rather than the two-sided wimp with his mother and stern with his students. I hated them turning flat, one-joke ensemble characters into completely unlikable fleshed-out characters - episodes that focused on Apu or Moe, or even Barney. And I wished they’d have killed Ralph Wiggum in season 9.
Very early on he was a Woody Allen impression.
Why are you complaining? What have you against sluts?