Again from **Babylon 5 ** - Lennier, D’lenn’s aide, who went from meek, mild and unassuming to violent and treasonous. Commander Sinclair, who went from human to Minbari to human to Minbari to… and Vir, who went from aide to assassin to Emperor.
On Buffy, the character that changed the most, outside of Wes, was Spike. As much as I like the souled version, I really miss the bad-ass he was at the beginning.
Well if you want to talk about Roseanne…Mark. Who started out and this dangerous bad boy and ended up just a doofus.
And to some extent David, who was an interesting weirdo and ended up as a doormat.
And for that matter Darlene who was a complicated rebellious character who ended up being a mommy and wanting to live with her mommy. I have to believe once her baby got a little stronger she and David went back to Chicago and wrote comic books as they should.
From what I read, Whedon was considering making either Willow or Xander gay. I don’t know what tipped him in favor of Willow.
Farscape’s Aeryn Sun was at first a cold blooded xenophobic stormtrooper. While she never lost her military skills, she did evbentually start to care about her crewmates and develop beyond her peacekeepr upbrininging.
The same can be said for Rigel, too. He was a backstabbing asshole at first, but he eventually turned out to be someone that while entirely honest, cared about more than his own needs.
Guess you can tell I miss Farscape, huh?
Let’s not forget Cordelia Chase, who started out as an irritating, one-note sideline character on the first episode of “Buffy” and grew into a really strong, central character on “Angel.” Early on, when a “Buffy” promo stated “Next week - someone close to Buffy will DIE!” (it was Miss Callendar), I was rooting for Cordelia to buy it. Several years later, when she actually did buy it, I was actually close to tears. “Angel” just wasn’t the same without her.
The entire Ferengi race went from being ominous, villainous, murdering pirates to a bunch of bandy-legged circus clowns. They were supposed to be the real, long-term bad guys for the STNG series, but they ended up being just too darn silly. I blame the penile neuro-whip.
Y’know, I thought I read that as well, but when I posted it in a thread a couple of years ago, someone asked me for a cite, and I couldn’t find a thing from the horse’s mouth, only fans saying that they heard it. Maybe we all made it up! (But the story goes that it was Anya that tipped him in favor of Willow - he liked the Anya/Xander relationship and didn’t want to lose it to make Xander gay. Again, no cite.)
(That was also the first time it ever occured to me that a Doper might be the famous person we’re talking about. I was pretty new to the boards, and all I could think was, “Shit! What if it’s Joss Whedon asking me to cite what he knows he never said!” Made me a little more contientious about the claims I make. But only a little. 
)
I totally agree with you. I totally love lesbian Willow and feel like it was a pretty well done portrayal, but the ‘change’ from her being straight to gay really did come across as forced and fake.
Wile E nailed it, Monica’s devolution was the worst. All the Friends characters grew more into caricatures by the last few seasons, but Monica started out as this nurturing Mommy type and being a skeletal neurotic freak.
Steve Brady, on Sex in the City, the curly dark-haired guy with glasses who was on again off again with Miranda. The original hook was that he was smart and quiet, not at all like the high-powered aggressive lawyer types always on the make. They had the nerd qualities in common, but where she was neurotic and A Big Player for a living, he was this centered and serene chess-playing Nice Guy.
He ended up a sports-playing doofus and total doormat, ick.
How about Roslyn in Battlestar Galactica? Suddenly thrust into the role of President, she grows into the role, becomes a prophetess and politician, and goes back to being a schoolteacher?
Bobby Ewing’s got them all beat- dead one season, alive the next.
The TV cop was called Homer Simpson.
I remember Homer said “Max Power - I got it from a vacuum.”
Pretty much every character on the Simpsons has devolved in some terrible way.
I just thought of someone else - Elaine Benes of “Seinfeld”. She starts out on the first season (officially second season, but since the first “season” was the pilot episode and nothing else) as the nice, down-to-earth, pleasant, affable, ‘girl’ character. A few years later, she’d developed into a bitter, man-hungry, caustic bitch and (IMO) a much funnier character.
How about one of the most famous character changes of all time?
Ellen DeGeneres?
Perhaps the OP is about subtler changes.
Archie Bunker over the years mellowed quite a bit don’t you think?
Oh yeah. :smack:
Hair dryer?
Chloe O’Brian of 24 fame went from bitchy, sarcastic tech nerd to bitchy, sarcastic badass tech nerd over the course of her character arc, and lo, there was much rejoicing from the fans. 
As long as we’re on Buffy then we must include Spike and, more drastically, Anya. Spike was introduced as a major badass bad guy who, along the way, turned into a human being. Which based on his flashback episodes was really two transformations (milksop William to Spike to, er, Spike). And Anya was introduced as this cynical demon who had a strong enough grasp of human social mores that she could blend in at Sunnydale High, only to become this creature with no understanding of humanity whatsoever.
From Seinfeld, I would say George is the one who has the more substantial change. Though all four of the lead characters are quite different from how they started out.
In the early episodes, Jason Alexander himself admitted he was channeling Woody Allen and mimicked that vocal pattern. Then between George and Jerry, George seems to be the character who is more with it. Obviously times changed and George devolved into the perennial loser and doofus that he would remain throughout the series run.
I’ll add in Chrissy Snow from Three’s Company as another character who devolves. She starts out as a relatively normal, albeit occasionally ditzy twenty-something who later becomes an incoherent girl-child who doesn’t even qualify to the status of “dumb-blonde”.
Dana Scully on The X-Files. Despite constant, tantalizing, almost-evidence of the supernatural she remained a rugged skeptic for six seasons. Then she morphed into an irrational new-ager who was totally “open to the possibilities”.