# Sudden TV revamps **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** tv-shows-scripted\ **Created:** [April 28, 2026, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626 "2026-04-28T18:33:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/101 "2026-05-03T01:54:54Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > But there were women interested in him. > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > It took him eight years to get from meeting her to marrying her. Yes, as I mentioned. My point is that: > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The showrunners knew that they couldn’t keep the characters of Sheldon and Howard drifting through an endless chain of women over twelve seasons and have a good show. …is an accurate characterization of Howard, pre-Bernadette, but not of Sheldon, pre-Amy. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/102 "2026-05-03T02:09:14Z")
There was a local show in Seattle called **Almost Live**. It originally ran on Sunday evenings as a talk show with some comedic elements, akin to David Letterman’s _Late Show_. The host, Ross Shafer, left and went on to some success in L.A. John Kiester took over as host, and the talk show format continued for another year. At that point, the interview segments were dropped, the show moved to late on Saturday (pushing _Saturday Night Live_ to midnight in the Seattle market) and became just sketch comedy. That new format lasted several years and spawned the careers of Bill Nye and Joel McHale, among others. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/103 "2026-05-03T02:17:41Z")
Speed Walker rules! ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/104 "2026-05-03T03:21:51Z")
The pilot of The Sopranos depicts Tony as the boss of North Jersey, but in the second episode we learn that the ailing Jackie Aprile is the acting boss which sets up the main story arc for the rest of the first season. Granted, that one is more of a pilot-its example where significant changes are made in between when the pilot is filmed and when the series is going into production (as opposed to changing stuff that has already been well-established over several episodes or seasons), but it is still a big turn. ---
**Author:** ![caligulathegod](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/caligulathegod/32/9685_2.png) [@caligulathegod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/caligulathegod)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/105 "2026-05-03T03:47:02Z")
There was a sitcom called _ **The Torkelsons** _, about a single mother and her 5 children in Oklahoma. She was struggling to make ends meet and took in a border. In season two, they changed the name to **Almost Home** and changed the plot to the mother moving to Seattle and taking her 3 children (it was never explained what happened to the other two) to move in with a widowed man and his two children to be their nanny. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/106 "2026-05-03T08:17:17Z")
“Didn’t date” isn’t the equivalent of not having an interest in romantic relationships. In real life, people sometimes take a long time to discover the someone else might be interested in them. In real life, people can be so emotionally stupid as to not realize what they want. ---
**Author:** ![fiddlesticks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddlesticks/32/18129_2.png) [@fiddlesticks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fiddlesticks)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/107 "2026-05-03T23:42:45Z")
> [@WildaBeast](#): > > Scrubs So in the reboot of Scrubs that started up this year, Season 9 was retconned out of existence. One of the storylines of Season 9 was that the hospital was torn down and it took place in a new building. But this year’s Scrubs restarted in the hospital as seen in Seasons 1-8 and apparently other parts of Season 9 were discarded as well (not sure exactly what, I skipped that season). I’ll also nominate _Grounded for Life_ which started life as a single camera sitcom and then switched to a multi-camera style at some point (it also switched from Fox to WB but I think the style switch happened while it was still on Fox). I found the change jarring and stopped watching it. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/108 "2026-05-04T01:53:28Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > “Didn’t date” isn’t the equivalent of not having an interest in romantic relationships. In real life, people sometimes take a long time to discover the someone else might be interested in them. In real life, people can be so emotionally stupid as to not realize what they want. Which may or may not have any direct relevance to Sheldon Cooper, _The Big Bang Theory_, or this thread. If you watched the show (and I assume that you have), Sheldon, particularly in the early seasons, had an avowed lack of interest in any sort of social activity which involved anything romantic or sexual; one could safely classify him as asexual at that time, though as his relationship with Amy finally blossomed, he became more of a demisexual. Again, what I took exception to was your statement about Sheldon: > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The showrunners knew that they couldn’t keep the characters of Sheldon and Howard drifting through an endless chain of women over twelve seasons and have a good show. In no way was Sheldon “drifting through an endless chain of women” in the early seasons of the show. Other than Amy, really the only other two characters who were shown to have any sort of romantic or sexual interest in him were the aforementioned Dr. Ramona Nowitzki, and a CalTech student or scientist named [Martha](https://bigbangtheory.fandom.com/wiki/Martha); both of them appeared only once, in the show’s early seasons, though Nowitzki had a return appearance, eight years later, to serve as a plot catalyst for Sheldon to propose to Amy. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/109 "2026-05-04T01:59:55Z")
And Ramona’s interest in Sheldon in her first appearance was,not particularly sexual - she seemed to enjoy being involved in high-level scientific work, and saw associating with Sheldon as a way to do that. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/110 "2026-05-04T02:55:11Z")
I didn’t say that Sheldon was drifting through an endless chain of women. I said that the showrunners knew that they couldn’t have him doing that. They had to have a character arc for him that would begin with him acting the way he did in the early years of the program and slowly becoming the person he was at the end when he and Amy got married. Some of the usual theories about what Sheldon was like at the beginning of the show were that he had ASD, OCPD, alexithimia, and hypochondria. This would be boring if it continued for twelve years In the Nobel Prize speech he gives in the final episode, he talks about how important his friends were because they tolerated him as he slowly became a better person. Amy also began as a person who had somewhat similar problems. She said that she only went on the first date with Sheldon because her mother insisted that she have at least one date per year. It’s made clear that she and Sheldon both lost their virginity in the episode about that. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/111 "2026-05-04T02:57:19Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > I didn’t say that Sheldon was drifting through an endless chain of women. I said that the showrunners knew that they couldn’t have him doing that. Naming Sheldon and Howard in the same sentence, with that same reasoning, and the fact that Howard _did_ have an endless chain of women he pursued, made it sound like you were saying that. If you had named Leonard, or Raj, instead of Sheldon, it wouldn’t have stood out, as all, because all three of them were constantly (and often unsuccessfully) seeking out romantic partners in the early seasons. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/112 "2026-05-04T06:37:30Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Other than Amy, really the only other two characters who were shown to have any sort of romantic or sexual interest in him were the aforementioned Dr. Ramona Nowitzki, and a CalTech student or scientist named [Martha](https://bigbangtheory.fandom.com/wiki/Martha);… The episode with Ramona ends with another young woman (a wiki tells me her name was Kathy O’Brien) wanting to collaborate with Sheldon in an exact parallel of the first scene with Ramona, implying that Sheldon has learned nothing from the first experience and is about to repeat it. Although, as @Andy_L points out, Ramona’s (and by implication, Kathy’s) interest in Sheldon is professional and not necessarily romantic/sexual. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/113 "2026-05-04T13:53:53Z")
I remember the short lived tv show **Boomtown**. It was a police procedural where every episode played out Rashomon-style show the crime from the perspective of different characters (cops, lawyers, criminals, victims, etc.) Then the second season they pretty much dropped that concept making it just a generic cop show. It got cancelled just a few episodes later. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/114 "2026-05-04T23:55:57Z")
“Herman’s Head” (in my memory, anyway) gradually decreased the focus on the four personalities inside Herman’s head (a forerunner of “Inside Out” by the way) and did more with his quirky coworkers. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2026, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/115 "2026-05-05T00:28:41Z")
Sometime around 2000 or so, Steven Weber starred in a sitcom called “Cursed.” The premise was that his character had been put under a curse by an ex-girlfriend, and now would have nothing but bad luck. They must have figured it wasn’t working because, after 5 episodes, they renamed it “The Weber Show.” The cursed-with-bad-luck angle was dropped completely, with no explanation or even acknowledgement, and the show became a more standard “guy and his friends” sitcom. It still failed to find an audience, and ended after a total of 17 episodes (the last two of which were not aired). ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2026, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/116 "2026-05-05T02:32:33Z")
**She Spies**. The first season refused to take itself seriously. The second season they turned it into a standard spy show. No charm. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2026, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/117 "2026-05-05T04:29:01Z")
_Charles in Charge_ was on for only one season, cancelled for a year, and brought back with Charles being in charge of a completely different family. Six characters were lost, six new characters replaced them. ---
**Author:** ![Smid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/838e76/32.png) [@Smid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smid)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2026, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/118 "2026-05-05T10:07:49Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > If you had named Leonard, or Raj, instead of Sheldon, it wouldn’t have stood out, as all, because all three of them were constantly (and often unsuccessfully) seeking out romantic partners in the early seasons. > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The showrunners knew that they couldn’t keep the characters of Sheldon and Howard drifting through an endless chain of women over twelve seasons and have a good show. It’s been a while, so I’m not completely sure, but I don’t think any of this describes Howard, ie: associating him with Sheldon or Raj. While Sheldon was asexual and uninterested, and Raj terminally “sad”, they both seemed to attract women in some way, Sheldon being disinterested, and Raj failing on the talking part. But I can’t remember Howard ever going out with a woman at all, he was a horndog, he was after anything with a pulse, but until Bernadette he hadn’t even went on a date with one. Bernadette was also kind of retconned, she was originally a waitress at the Cheesecake factory (one of the most successful international product placements for a local west coast chain of restaurants). She wasn’t this brilliant student working in her spare time as a waitress, she was a peer with Penny and probably impressed so much from a bit-part into the show (you could probably do a thread on bit parts who shone bright and got into the main cast). ---
**Author:** ![JacobSwan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@JacobSwan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JacobSwan)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2026, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/119 "2026-05-05T15:25:19Z")
For almost 30 years the British school drama ‘Grange Hill’ was set in North London. Then, after a catastrophic fire, the entire school and most of the staff were moved to Liverpool. Was it just the power of the explosion? Or were aliens involved somehow? (The creator and long term Producer took over production from the BBC and moved it to Liverpool. Child acting laws mean that it’s hard to get kids from more than a few miles away. So all the kids had Scouse accents, so they went with a Liverpool setting.) ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2026, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626/120 "2026-05-05T15:41:20Z")
> [@Smid](#): > > But I can’t remember Howard ever going out with a woman at all, he was a horndog, he was after anything with a pulse, but until Bernadette he hadn’t even went on a date with one. Let’s see - there was Penny’s friend from Nebraska Season One, the Goth girls, various hookers, the 3-some with Raj and the Wonder Woman cosplayer at Comic-Con, Emily (pre-Raj)…that’s just off the top of my head with no research. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sudden-tv-revamps/1029626.md?page=7)