Family Guy went from the random cut-ins on a cartoon family to “The Brain and Stewie” show with a Peter B story.
I dunno. I can’t see either of them willing to help the other TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!
The “The Andy Griffith Show” lost Andy Griffith, lost Don Knotts, lost Ron Howard, eventually lost Frances Bavier (Aunt Bee), and literally became another show, “Mayberry R.F.D.”
House: ~6
The early seasons were all House, all the time. Everybody else was 2 dimensional and basically just straight men for his jokes. Now that they took away his drug addiction, he’s all touchy feely and the plots revolve around other character’s problems. Really, who gives a shit about Taub? Wilson is vaguely interesting, but only when he’s embroiled in a House plot.
That 70’s Show: ~7
The original show was about growing up in the 70’s in Everytown, USA. When the kids graduated high school, the show turned into some sort of teen angsty poop, like Beverly Hills 90-1970’s.
AFAIAC, the movie was canon, and she rode off with Luke Perry on a motorbike that he had rebuilt.
The whole TV show abandoned the premise established by the movie.
I came in here to mention Dexter. While he isn’t emotionless in the beginning of season 1, he’s devoid of interest or empathy for anyone outside of his family. Its stressed a lot over the first half of the first season how even his appearence of caring for his girlfriend and co-workers are an act. By the end of the second season, on the other hand, he’s positivity angsty. He’s constantly worrying about his loved ones, flying into rages, caring about the wellbeing of others (sometimes even strangers!).
And his reasons for killing change to. Originally he killed murderers because he needed to kill, he chose criminals only because Harry taught him to. Not because he personally wanted to protect their future victims. As the series goes on, he becomes more interested in avenging killers victims or protecting others, (though he still obviously likes killing for its own sake).
Its also implied in the first season that he tortures his victims to death. But by the time we actually see him kill someone, he just stabs them in the heart, finishing them off relatviely humanely
I think the original premise was too edgy. A killer who tortures people to death for the joy of killing, even if they’re all bad people, was just to morally ambiguous. So instead they basically just turned him into a violent version of Spiderman, a vigilante with a secret identity who has to balance his home-life with his crime fighting.
In the movie, Buffy was a Senior cheerleader in high school who was introduced to her destiny by her mysterious watcher, and eventually rode off.
The series began with Buffy as a new Sophomore at Sunnydale who had had unspecified supernatural adventures during her Freshman year at an another high school, and already knew she was the Slayer. Giles was introduced as her “new” watcher.
The series thus did abandon much of the premise of the movie, but invited the audience to mis-remember that the movie took place in her Freshman year. After that, the series progressed linearly.
In the movie, Buffy was a Senior cheerleader in high school who was introduced to her destiny by her mysterious watcher, and eventually rode off.
The series began with Buffy as a new Sophomore at Sunnydale who had had unspecified supernatural adventures during her Freshman year at an another high school, and already knew she was the Slayer. Giles was introduced as her “new” watcher.
The series thus did abandon much of the premise of the movie, but invited the audience to mis-remember that the movie took place in her Freshman year. After that, the series progressed linearly.
Yeah, that’s how it is in the TV show, and it makes Dexter a much more likable character. In the books, he really is an emotionless psycho who really only gets excited about killing people (and by the third book, he’s an emotionless psycho who only gets excited about killing people who has a literal demon riding around in his brain … and whose fiance is a greedy freak).
Has anybody mentioned “the New, Original Wonder Woman” yet? The series started out closely modeling the 1940s era version of the comic book - set in Washington D.C. during WWII, with comic book style “frames” for scene changes (“Meanwhile back at Steve Trevor’s office…”), and nazi-world conquerors as villains. Then, the series switched networks and jumped forward to ‘present day’ (70s) California, and (IMO) seemed a lot less interesting.
I might point out that they got rid of the Invisible Plane very shortly in the 70s setting, so that if, say, Wonder Woman had to get from DC to Baltimore to defuse a nuclear warhead or something, she’d have to do a cross-country super-speed run, and thus, at the end of it, her boobs would be heaving.
I approved of this change, though even as a lad I thought it was manipulative.
On television, I think The Drew Carey Show changed a lot. I was never a regular watcher, but I saw some episodes when it originally aired and it seemed like a fairly typical sitcom about a schlubby guy and his life at work and with his friends. There were also some gimmicky episodes like doing the show live, but plenty of other shows have done that sort of thing on occasion. Years later I caught some of the later episodes in re-runs, and at some point it apparently turned into a sort of variety show with some comedy scenes (weirder than the more typical sitcomy stuff from earlier episodes), celebrity guests, and bands performing.
It’s my recollection that the series changed from a mixture of gag-a-day strips and larger story arcs into a bunch of increasingly bizarre story arcs that had little if anything to do with the original premise and characters and often seemed to take place in their own separate timeline. I threw in the towel when the second (or maybe third?) “Torg Potter” arc began. I’d put up with it in the past, but if I wanted to read lame crossover fanfic I’d go to an actual Harry Potter fanfic site. I didn’t want to spend weeks waiting for Torg to get back to the main “reality” of the series so the primary characters and storylines could actually move forward.
I can’t even remember what else was going on at that point, but I know there were a lot of things that hadn’t been resolved and that it was all going to have to wait until the latest “Torg Potter” finished up. Things had been kind of here, there, and everywhere in the strip for quite some time and I was already totally ignoring the Dimension of Pain stuff, but the return of the pointless and painfully unfunny Harry Potter parody was the last straw.
That was actually a one-off episode known as “Drew Carey’s Back-to-School Rock ‘n’ Roll Comedy Hour.” Even though the plot went some crazy places, The Drew Carey Show kept the core concept through its entire run.
A literal demon? Meaning, in effect, he’s possessed? I was curious about the books but now I think I’ll pass.
The first two books are good. He constantly refers to his “dark passenger,” and until the third book, it’s assumed that it’s, you know, metaphorical, the dark part of his personality that likes killing. But in the third book he finds out that it’s an actual entity, one of many that “infects” people who have sufficiently traumatic experiences, and there’s a big one that all the other little demons are afraid of, who inspired ancients to worship it as “Moloch.” And he spends the book looking to reacquire his “infection” because he misses it, while also being browbeaten by his fiance and her super-annoying stereotypical high-priced wedding planner, both of whom constantly insist that Dexter pay thousands of dollars for every little thing in their upcoming wedding, like the flowers and the decorations and whatnot, until it’s going to cost him the equivalent of several years of his salary and drain his savings entirely.
I found it bizarre that it suddenly went from normal sympathetic-serial-killer fiction to supernatural fiction. I haven’t started on the 4th book yet despite having gotten it almost a year ago… I’m afraid, very afraid…
Hmm, I could have sworn I saw more than one episode in the variety show format, but if it was an hour-long episode I probably saw it split into two parts. It was something I occasionally had on in the background while I was on the Web, so I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention.
I dunno if the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman should count here. They barely knew what the heck they were doing. Things were changing from episode to episode.
You are dangerously close to questioning the will of Athena. I’m going to need you to back up, apologize to the Blessed Virgin, and go on a quest to atone for what you nearly did.
Likewise XKCD. Started as a comic written for nerds and geeks and has turned into comics for teens so that Randull Munroe can show off how hip he is and that he has angst too. Oh and that Megan’s a slut.
Sure you’re not thinking of this?