What TV characters have changed personalities or other characteristics drastically from pilot or first episodes as compared to their present state? I am not necessarily refering to characters in which the writers have shown an slow and steady evolutionary change through the plot, but rather characters who seemed to have changed personalities overnight due to the writers deciding that they wanted to go a different direction.
Example: I saw one of the first episodes of “My Name is Earl” and the brother character (Randy) was almost unrecognizable. Presently on the show he is innocent, sweet, and childlike. During this early episode he is much more streetwise, more adult, meaner, tougher, more perverted, drinks more, and generally is just an unlikeable trashy redneck. Unless he got a personality transplant, I don’t see how he could have changed this drastically.
Kelly Kapoor on The Office started out pretty normal, quiet, just sort of in the background and later turned into a chatty, ditzy, half-crazy person.
Andy Sipowicz from NYPD Blue started off really nasty, racist, alcoholic, with issues on top of issues and sort of settled down later and became more sympathetic.
Eric Matthews on Boy Meets World started off as sort of an underachiever and later became a near-retarded savant of some sort
Radar O’Reilly on MAS*H started off pretty normal and became more and more childish (teddy bears, grape drinks, etc) as it went on.
same for JD on Scrubs. He started off normal, if a little spacey and trapped in his own head, and got really obnoxious and childish
Yes, I know he kept his aloof-a-titity (my word, when I can’t think of the correct one) throughout the series, but one saw the true Charles when he gave a young wounded soldier the music to Ravel’s “Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D”.
Coincidentially, I was thinking a while ago that I didn’t remember Sheldon from the first episodes of “The Big Bang Theory” to be so Sheldon-ish. Him and Leonard had interchangeable personalities for a while, if I’m not mistaken.
panache45, am I getting the series of events confused?
I believe that I might be. Because for me to answer the OP correctly, I would have needed to write that Charles changed earlier in the season in which he was introduced to us!
Chuck Bass on “Gossip Girl”. They’ve been skating ever further from his date raping roots since episode 1, season 1. I’m about 7 episodes behind on the current season but he seemed to have been turned into a ‘ambiguous character trying to do the right thng in difficult circumstances’ just like all the rest of them.
Many characters on “Heroes”, but especially Angela (we first met the Petrelli all powerful, monstrous matriarch being arrested for stealing socks from a Department store). Bennet was once a lot colder and more ruthless than his later incarnation. Also Meredith - we left her in s1 having just blackmailed Nathan and then lying to Claire to how much she’d been given before skipping out on her to hide in Mexico. Her reinvention as caring mom & badass Company agent is annoying as hell. There’s Sylar too but I don’t know where to start there.
Must be the late hour–I get to make the first Whedon reference!
In Buffy Vampire Slayer, we meet Wesley Windham Price, sent from the Watchers’ Council to oversee Faith–a new Slayer whose Watcher was killed. He’s a wimp & a coward–hardly up to the job. I believe the word is “prat”–but the role allowed Alexis Denisof to use his comic skills. At the end, he joins in the battle against the Evil Mayor but is quite useless.
Then he showed up on the first season of Angel. (Yes, I’m going to count two TV series! Try & stop me.) Fired from the Watchers, he’s presenting himself as a Rogue Demon Hunter & is still pretty much ineffectual. Still funny, though. However, he does have that Watcher education in matters arcane, so the team lets him stick around.
Over the years, Wesley gradually changes from a buffoon to a tormented hero. Faith shows up & tortures him–yet he saves her from the Watchers sent to round her up, because it’s the right thing to do. He kidnaps Angel’s son because of a faked prophecy & has his throat slit. Then he’s abandoned by his former allies–even though he had reasons for what he did & they were all out to lunch. So he continues the fight alone–helping out when Angel’s group really needs his knowledge. He rescues Angel from the bottom of the ocean. Dark & sardonic, he embarks on a steamy affair with Lilah, the Evil Lawyeress…
In the last show of the series, Wesley breaks our hearts. (Why isn’t Denisof starring on the little or big screen? Is he content merely to be Alison Hannigan’s boy toy?)
I’m going to pick on you there and argue that this was largely a planned and evolutionary change, as opposed to a ‘drastic’ one as mentioned in the OP. For my money, the humanization of ‘The man in the horn-rimmed glasses’ was one of the most powerful season-long character arcs in Heroes S1 - a scripted journey from the pilot, where Mohinder ran away from his cab just because he recognized his fare as HRG, to the wise and capable ally of our heroes standing nearby at the final showdown.
The naming conventions were an important sign of this too, how he started off as HRG, then became known as Bennett while he was ambiguous, and finally revealed his given name right at the end.
Edith Bunker, in the first six episodes of All in the Family, was bitter, querulous, and especially impatient with her husband. After that trial run, she very abruptly changed into the iconic Edith: cheerful, naive, patient, and unfailingly devoted to Archie.
Funny I just posted about Dexter in another thread. Dexter went from nearly a pure sociopath who could barely choose between helping his brother kill his sister or adhering to a moral code instilled in him to a guy that just happens to have the hobby of serial killing.
Seriously take the Dexter from season 1 and compare him to Dexter season 3 and it’s hard to believe they’re the same guy. S1 Dexter lies manipulates and controls everyone around him while desperately trying to figure out how to act normal. S3 seems to have no problem understanding and dealing with peoples emotions and is more controlled by his fiancee then his murderous impulses.
Nate Fisher in Six Feet Under. In Season 1, I thought he was nearly the perfect guy. By the end of the show, I hated him. He made a lot of really stupid choices and I lost all respect for him.
In the other direction, Al Swearengen on* Deadwood*. At the beginning of the show, he was shown beating up a hooker and being a total sociopathic villain. By the end of the series, I was rooting for him and thinking of him as the show’s protagonist.
Pick away
I won’t argue that his charcter definitely evolves over the course of S1 - I agree with you. But I’m not at all sure this was planned out from the pilot and I think the person we see in the first half down eps IS substantially different from the man we get to know from then on in. If nothing else, I have vague memories of past interviews saying they only asked Jack Coleman to stick around once it became apparent just how awesome he was and that he was originally written as a much more minor cast member. No cites to hand though.
Let me point out to everyone, as I have pointed out to you, that both Swearengen and Andy Sipowicz are David Milch creations, and that Milch has discussed extensively how in both series he deliberately created an unlikeable protagonist in order to deepen and broaden that character who eventually becomes the hero. Milch claims (or maybe it’s his critics) that he’s working out some huge conflict with his own daddy, about whom he feels very strongly both ways at once.
You know, I still can’t get over the coincidence that Swearengen is based on a historical figure named Al Swearengen and his name is pronounced “swear engine,” which is exactly what he is. He shoulda named Sipowicz “Andy Ignorantdrunk.”
But the naming convention was more or less carried over from the show’s TV Guide listings. In the early eps, he was referred to by a few characters as “the man in the horn rimmed glasses.” But he was also Clare Bennett’s father, so he was always known as Mr. Bennett.
The only people that seemed to worry about him being referred to as HRG was the NBC marketing department. The rest of us learned his name in the first episode.
Alexis Denisof was struck by Bell’s Palsy just before shooting the first episode of Angel’s last season. In the commentary, Joss Whedon explains how they used camera angles to obscure the paralyzed side of his face. Happily, he recovered rapidly & finished the whole season of the show.
He’s still working & I hope he gets more jobs–he’s that good. A handsome fellow who can do action & drama–& then act the complete fool.
