Law & Order: Criminal Intent sort of qualifies. I mean, it hasn’t really strayed from the basic quirky-detective-who-knows-everything premise. It’s just that, a few seasons back, the people running the show decided that the “law” half didn’t actually need to have a full-time representative anymore.
Just don’t try to pay him with a chicken.
Dexter?
Maybe I missed the point, but I thought he was supposed to be incapable of feeling normal emotions. But apart from killing bad people, he seemed to have pretty normal feelings - a girlfriend, a close relationship with his sister. He was always agonizing over some personal relationship based drama.
I thought it would have been interesting if he really was cold and emotionless.
Rating: 0 if I missed the point and Dexter was always supposed to have normal emotions. 7 if I am completely right.
Family Ties was supposed to be about Steve and Elyse Keaton, and quickly turned into the Alex P. Keaton Show starring Michael J. Fox.
I give it a 9.9.
Has anyone mentioned Family Matters yet?
Not sure what kind of number to assign it, but by the end of the series, Buffy was most assuredly not a high school cheerleader who was dating an itinerant motorcycle repairman.
The Practice Season 8 turned into a pilot season for Boston Legal with the last few episodes ignoring the established characters almost altogether in favor of James Spader, William Shatner and the shiny new crew of Crane, Poole and Schmidt. I understand some of the actors from The Practice were not especially happy about this which is why none of them ever appeared on Boston Legal. I’d have to rate this one a full 10 on the abandonment scale- in one episode James Spader’s character (the incomparable, incorrigible Alan Shore) literally locks the original characters out of their own office and changes the name on the door!
If you look back to Season 1 he is pretty emotionless. Him at a funeral thinking about what a pain in the ass it was to pretend to feel sad was one of the things that sold me on the show.
By the end of Season 2 he’s a pretty normal guy that just happens to kill people. I don’t actually mind that he changed it was just way too quick.
She wasn’t ever in the series, only in the movie.
The premise is partly that she’s the tiny blonde girl who you’d expect to get killed by something spooky every time she walks down a dark alley - except she can always kick the spooky’s ass. By the end of the series, it’s definitely the case that the spookies are afraid of her. 
ETA: Just to be clear, she was a high school cheerleader once in the series, for one episode - and it wasn’t even the pilot. 
But never dating a wandering bike repair guy.
But they had Col Wilma Deering in that spandex outfit. ;)
Who needs writers?
“Melrose Place” started as a regular drama with episodic plots about the problems of young pretty californians. It suddenly became a batshit crazy soap opera parody.
Disagree. He always had the connection to his sister for example ( proved in the final episode of season 1 ). As various people have argued, it’s not that Dexter was ever an emotionless sociopath, it was that his father jumped to conclusions and instead of getting him into therapy, brainwashed him into believing he was an emotionless sociopath. Basically his dad turned him into a monster.
My impression of Dexter basically fits in with that. He doesn’t feel as strongly as everyone else, and is definitely aloof, but he does have feelings. Most of the conflict in that vein is that he doesn’t feel like he feels enough.
Most cartoons do.
King of the started off as 'Lets’s make fun of the uptight white suburban guy" Into "The practical homegrown guru fixes the lives of disfunctional idiots. Simpsons went from the Bart the Brat show into the Homer the Buffoon show
The webcomic Sluggy Freelance started out as a goofy gag-a-day strip geared towards geekier audiences, but it has slowly evolved into story-driven comic with brief silly interludes between the big story arcs.
I stopped reading when he got too far from the characters who made the strip. Once Bun-Bun and Riff seemed to gone for good that was it for me.
-Joe
Thirded.
My take on Dexter is that he’s emotionally broken, crippled, and stunted. But the emotions are still there, in some form. Imagine someone who had polio when young and now can barely use their legs. With leg braces (i.e., “Harry’s Code”) and crutches (observing others very closely and trying his damnedest to look normal), he gets along pretty well. Every now and then he feels a twinge, and is almost able to “walk” on his own, briefly. Other times, the braces and crutches are the only thing keeping him upright.
So I think Harry gave Dexter something very important in helping him survive. However, he was too quick to give him crutches. He should have pushed him to strengthen his moral and emotional legs as much as possible.
Hopefully that analogy isn’t too muddled.
I think that was Gene playing the network, especially because his last show had been a Western. TOS frequently did meet new civilizations and went where no one had gone before. The criticism is much more valid for TNG - that Enterprise rarely went anywhere new.
The beginning of The Real McCoys was about a family on a farm in Central California. In a later season the family disappeared and it was Richard Crenna and Walter Brennan only.
In the first season of The Invaders Roy Thinnes was alone against the alien conspiracy. In the second season he had the support of a rich guy.
3 each - not nearly as much of a change as some of the stuff already mentioned.
I have always thought that the ‘Wagon Train to the Stars’ comment had very little to do with being a Western but was more about format.
The Wagon Train format allowed for a different location, town, situation, each episode. Wagon Train also brought in some fairly big name guest stars each show. Each episode then became a separate mini-movie with recognizable guest stars to work with against the background of regulars. And when the episode was over that story line was done with and who knows where the show would be next week.
This is an approach that Star Trek TOS handled fairly well, TNG not so much.