The Evening News
What? How so? It doesn’t seem like it’s changed at all to me…
Absolutely not. I was a regular “Who’s Line?” watcher, and the “Drew Carey” episode(s) I’m thinking of were nothing like that. They had some fairly well-known band performing in the bar where the characters would go on the show, and I think Mimi (the woman with drag queen makeup) was the MC.
For webcomics, Exploitation Now! certainly applies. Started off as a gag-a-day comic about a pervy guy (based loosely off of either Calvin or a Moogle, depending on what you prefer to think) and his slutty room mate. It ended as a serious, quite awesome comic about two teenage girls (one of them a mad genius with a prosthetic robotic arm and teleporter technology) trying to stay ahead of the secret government agency (and the unbalanced mad genius guy they are working with who wants the mad genius girl for his own squicky purposes)
At some point along the way, the original two characters pop up to ask if anybody remembers who they are
Since they still did a couple gag story lines even after it went serious, I’d say it’s a solid 7-8.
Babylon 5 started off as a TV show about a space station that was a sort of city of spies/center of intrigue. The plot pretty much continued solidly, with mostly the same set of characters (a couple got switched out for various reasons), but much of the 4th season didn’t take place on the titular space station (It mostly took place on various starships or other planets, mostly Mars). They got back to the space station for the last season. So for season 4, it gets a score of like, 4 or so, then back to 0-1 for the 5th season.
Reportedly, the B5 spinoff, Crusade, would have had a rating of about 5 or 6, had it continued through the second season (the plague that had stricken Earth would have been cured in the second season, and then the real plot would kick off).
A sad example of this phenomenon is NBC’s Boomtown. A great crime series that revealed the story through multiple character perspectives (similar to the movie Go). After poor ratings in its first season, NBC brought it back for a second season–minus the very storytelling technique that made the series interesting. There was no third season.
::Whew:: thanks.
I seem incapable of not clicking on tvtropes links.
Hmmm… I should write an app where you can set a maximum amount of time that you can spend at a particular website. It would shut down my tvtropes page after 20 minutes, and my SDMB window after an hour. And would yell at me to go DO something.
There’s a Firefox add-on called Leechblock that does this, although it only works with the Firefox browser. Well, it doesn’t YELL at you, but you can set various kinds of time restrictions and it will block you when your time is up. I use it to limit my SDMB and game-playing time and have found it very helpful. I may need to add TVTropes too.
Named, I assume, after the “Cousin Oliver” that was brought into The Brady Bunch when Cindy and Bobby weren’t so small and cute any more. Which tees me up to mention that the show had abandoned its premise well before Cousin Oliver came along. The idea, as we were reminded in the theme song before every episode, was a blended family: a widower marries a single mom (we never find out where her husband went); together with his three sons and her three daughters they attempt to create a new family. A few episodes in the beginning dealt with the problems this brought. But after a while it became a standard big-family sitcom and the backstory got completely ignored.
We find out in the movies. Her husband faked his own disappearance after stealing a priceless artifact from a professor he was working with, and sabotaging a tour boat the professor was going for a three hour tour on. 
The Mike Connors detective series Mannix
Originally, Mannix was an operative in a computer-aided detective company called “Intertect”, with Joseph Campanella playing his boss. After a season or so they dropped the whole computer angle, along with Campanella, and Mannix became a private eye on his own (with Peggy as his secretary), and continued to run for many years that way.
“Intertek” is the name of a company sharing factory space with Eastman Gelatine that I pass when driving in to Salem. I like to think Joseph Campanella is still working there with his punch-card computers.
Sorry if someone has said this, but I did a search for “Mannix” and it came up blank.
A transparent but successful effort to forestall stories about Greg and Marsha getting it on.
Newhart turned out to only be the crazy dream of a mild-mannered Chicago psychologist after he ate some bad Japanese food. What a disappointment. 
You’re on the list, sir.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch (the live-action TV show) began with Sabrina in high school, dealing with her friends & enemies, all while being taught the ways of witchcraft by her two aunts. By the end she was obviously no longer a teenager but the witching seemed to have dropped off quite a bit as well. Her aunts had disappeared and it was mainly a show about Sabrina and her two roommates making their way through their early twenties.
I don’t know if that reflects storylines from the comic book, but I’d guess not since they can always draw her as a teenager there.
Good Morning Miss Bliss was only repackaged as Saved By the Bell in reruns, so I’m not sure how much it counts as premise abandonment. The first show focused as much on the teacher as the students, while the latter had the students almost entirely the focus.
The original pilot for the “Girl from U.N.C.L.E” on the “Man from U.N.C.L.E” episode “The Moonglow Affair” was a 24 year old woman (Mary Ann Mobley) who was partnered with an over 40 (supposed to be retired from field work but Alexander Waverly ignored it) man played by none other but Mr Roper himself-Norman Fell. When it became a series they dropped Mobley (feeling she was too soft spoken, Southern girl) for Stefanie Powers and dropped the older man/“brother and sister” relationship for the young, modish Noel (son of Rex) Harrison. Except for an epsode with Boris Karloff in drag as murderous old woman crime boss, it wasn’t very good.
“Man from U.N.C.L.E” also veered off to parody./comedy in its second and third seasons and lost a lot of viewers, not to mention spy shows became the tv rage.
Curse you! I waded through two pages making sure no one else mentioned Saved By The Bell, only to have it snatched from my grasp at the last second. SBTB warped even more if you add the next generation or the college years.
I will add The Facts of Life, which should score at least an 8. First year centered around Edna Garrett, the housemother to a dorm of 7 young girls with the help of other teachers and the principal. Later Edna became the school dietician and the remaining girls didn’t live in the dorms. In subsequent seasons Edna and the girls ran a bake shop “Edna’s Edibles” and then a gift store “Over Our Heads”. By the end of the series, Edna was with her husband in Africa, the girls were 20-something business partners with Enda’s sister.
Uh, yeah, that’s called a spin-off.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Family Matters yet.
You left out the lesbian subtext of the Blaire/Jo relationship.
A Different World was written as a vehicle for Cosby kid Lisa Bonet. When they realized how much better the rest of the cast was, they coldn’t get Denise out od there fast enough.
No, the show was designed for kids and in doing so, thought they could add some education to it. Therefore, for much of the first doctors run, and part of the second, the idea was to have an adventure in space and then an adventure in history. But, it was always educational, as was said.
Yes and no. The show is actually about Rumbaldi and his devices and the mad scramble that several people did to get them. The creator thought that a season got off track and worked to bring it back. In that season, it was more about spies but still limited, imo.
The Single Guy was about a single guy but he was very successful in dating. I think the premise was a good looking guy who couldn’t get dates but they never did it. At the end of season one, they realized that he was in a great rlxp, which completely was against the title, and so they broke up for no reason to get back on track. Then it got canceled not long after that as people liked the rlxp.
*Dexter *- I’m not sure if the TV is off of the idea. His voice overs have him still saying he is faking it and doesn’t understand it. About the only thing he seems to have grasped is caring for someone but given his compulsive nature, it could be more that he is used to having them around. It reminded me of what Data said (okay, not sure if it was Data or another android) about getting used to someone and realizing they would miss them if the person was gone.
vislor