I was just thinking about several long lived series and how the tone of the show changed over time.
For instance the first two seasons of MASH were more zany madcapped adventures of the doctors but gradualy the show became preachy.
Good times shifted from a show about Florida Evans and her family to the JJ show.
Likewise Happy days focus shifted from Richie and the 50s to the Fonzie show.
As such the show became more cartoonish and lost some of the flavour of the 50s nostalga and look the first few seasons had.
Any other shows you can think of where a change was actually for the better?
I think that oversimplifies the show. It was on for 12 years, after all – plenty of time to change more than once.
the first season or two the characters were much more superficial, and hadn’t achieved the form they later would. The show featured some ludicrous things they’d never think of later on (Klinger hang-gliding out). Radar was a larcenous character, stealing a jeep by shipping it home piece by piece.
The show changed for the better. Things got more realistic, and they started paying attention to actual histotry a bit. The characters jelled. There always was an undercurrent of seriousness – the show relied on a tension between the deep drama of life-or-death surgery in a war zone with the manic release the doctors used to keep their sanity, but it got more believable. It was always somewhat preachy – it had to be. But they got a good balance for quite a while.
I wasn’t one of those who thought it got too preachy, but I could understand those who did. After such a long run, it’s easy to keep coming up with ideas. It would’ve been worse if they lost that anchor of angst and just been zany, I think (I think Northern Exposure lost track of its characters and what they should be, and its inner core of whacko mysticism in its last season or two, and got really bad.)
The Simpsons initially felt very realistic for an animated series, very grounded in reality…it became funnier (IMHO) and more whimsical as it progressed, but then got to the point where it was almost too weird and out there.
I’m thinking of season one where Homer wants them to be a normal, happy family after the picnic at Mr. Burns’s mansion (where surprisingly, it’s Marge, not Homer, who gets tanked), versus something like Cape Fear in season…four? five?..and from then on, post ten, it was just plain bizarre.
Rosanne started out as a sitcom about a working-class family. It was incredibly realistic…the sarcasm could have come right out of my family’s conversations. Then in the last couple of seasons, it went off the rails…they won the lottery and started spending time with rich people, started having stunt-cast guest stars, just goofy stuff.
Good call on the Simpsons, Freudian Slit. There were some big changes. For starters, the show was mostly about Bart in the beginning. It became more Homer-centric around season three, although of course they developed the rest of the family over time. It was more realistic back then, and less funny even though I think they did some very clever satire. The producers talk about the changes in Homer a lot and lay it out pretty clearly: Homer was a regular guy in the beginning, basically a slow-witted EveryDad. I’m still a fan, but today he’s an indestructable semiretarded musical savant, among other qualities, and basically every character except maybe Bart and Lisa has gone through similar distortions over time. “Seasonal rot” sounds like an irritatingly cutesy term, but this does happen to TV shows over time, and to comedies in particular because they have to top themselves again and again.
I can’t date the turnover point, but Monk was better when it was about a mentally ill but brilliant detective solving murders. Somehow, someone decided to make it the “let’s all laugh at the funny neatnik dweeb” show.
In its first two seasons, IIRC, Sliders explored a different alternate-history scenario in every episode. Then they jumped the shark and started using the alternate worlds as backdrops for standard hackneyed SF/fantasy plots. Hello? Zombies?
For sure. They also made it seem in early episodes that pre Trudy’s death, Monk was a little on the obsessive side, but a damned fine cop. Afterwards…he could no longer function. Now? Every flashback/reference to him in the old days makes him seem like a barely functioning socially anxious bag of nerves.
It’s already being discussed in the “star departure” thread, but I’ll throw out The Daily Show, which became really different after Jon Stewart replaced Craig Kilborn. Stewart made it a great satire of politics and the news media, and it’s become very influential. Under Kilborn, it was sometimes funny but mostly silly and light, and not really that different from something like Talk Soup.
I was just thinking about this with respect to one of my favorite shows, the American version of The Office. The first (very short) season, while funny, basically just maintains the tone and conceipt of the British version: Michael Scott is a totally self-absorbed unaware douchebag, does awkward things, and Jim moons after Pam.
The first episode of season 2 is The Dundees, and there’s a crucial moment where Michael gives a Dundee to Pam, and we all assume that he’s going to give her “longest engagement” for the nth consecutive year, and instead he gives her “whitest sneakers”. And she is SO happy, and we start to see the decency and vulnerability that Michael has. Then later, things are pretty much falling apart under the weight of Michael being Michael, and he gives an award to Kevin for stinking up the bathroom, and there is dead silence, and then Pam starts loudly cheering and getting enthusiastic, and then everyone else does to, and everyone has a great time, and suddenly the dynamics are more complicated and the characters are deeper, but it’s still hell of funny.
The Practice goes from real drama to sappy melodrama in six episodes. The problem was that their money problems go away and they become famous in episode six.
It was a really good six episodes though. You can watch them on hulu if you want.
Episode 3: “In a world where England won the Revolutionary War, the Sliders are embroiled in an assassination plot involving the heir to the throne and an evil Sheriff of San Francisco.” A pretty common alternate history setting, with a plot out of any Ruritanian romance.
Episode 4: “When Wade is infected with a deadly virus on an Earth wracked by an epidemic, Rembrandt and Arturo race to find a cure and free Quinn from a Gestapo-like health agency.” Other than the health agency, this is the plot for about five Star Trek episodes (e.g., Miri).
Episode 6: “Arturo finds himself in a potentially deadly mayoral race in a world where men are treated as “the weaker sex” and women hold the positions of power and influence.” There was an entire TV show (“All that Glitters” 1977), based on this premise.
Episode 9: “Wade finds that she has money to burn when she wins the lottery in a seemingly utopian world, but she soon discovers that her silver cloud has a very dark lining.” Ever hear of Shirley Jackson?