I thought Mark was always a hard worker. I remember Dan said so after he and Becky broke-up, and Becky wanted her dad to fire him.
Other Friends morphs:
[ul]
[li]Joey goes from being a total Italian womanizer with no morals to, well, just the same but with no brains but a huge heart. Dumb but sweet.[/li][li]Monica goes from being the Mom of the Group to be Neurotic Obsessive-Compulsive Clean Freak.[/li][/ul]
Here’s on I hadn’t thought of for awhile: Peter White on St. Elsewhere. He started out as Jack Morrison’s best friend, but a not-too-competent doctor. The next thing you know, his wife kicks him out of the house and he becomes a rapist.
Nah, Milhouse was always Bart’s weird friend. But he has morphed into an eventually closted homosexual that is, at the same time, destined to have a weird sexual relationship with Lisa sometime in the future.
I think the changes in Dexter and Swearengen were both completely intentional from the outset, kinda the point, although different in this respect: with Dexter, we’re watching him get in touch with the humanity that actually resides inside of him and his experiences are actually shepherding him through that. (One of the core problems I have with Dexter is the supposed explanation for why he is the way he is; it doesn’t jibe with anything I’ve ever read about real murderers of his ilk, those who are compelled. But if you buy that premise to begin with, it’s easier to buy that a normal human is buried in there.)
With Al, I think the point was to show that he was that guy all along, but that, as with many people who are superficially icky, you couldn’t see it at first.
Al isn’t just superficially icky. He actually is a murdering scumbag. He just happens to be a complicated murdering scumbag.
Hey, those were two of my favorite shows when I was a kid!
Geezers of the world, unite!
In the original Firefly premiere “Serenity” (as opposed to the movie, Serenity), Shepherd Book was gasp a paying customer. Not sure if/when that changed.
Part of what drove Sipowicz’s transformation was the changing of the cast. First the redheaded lead, then Jimmy Smits. Couple that with the ongoing events in Sipowicz’s life, and that drove the transformation to him becoming the lead character of the show.
There’s no indication that it ever did. He’s a paying passenger, just like Inara and the Tams - the latter, I could more see Mal putting off the boat despite that fact than Book, because they’re trouble magnets. But that trouble involves messing with the Alliance, and Mal’s got a not very well hidden soft spot, which the crazy girl plays to, so they get to stay, even before the crazy girl turns out to be crazy deadly.
Book, on the other hand, not only pays his way, but holds his own when trouble starts, so there’s no reason not to keep him around.
That, and Simon and River get passage because Simon is a doctor. They need that pretty often in their line of work.
-Joe
This process is known as “flanderization”, after Ned Flanders. One or two aspects of the character are progressively exaggerated, squeezing out any other dimensions that the character used to have.
Steve Urkel.
In Lost, Sawyer seems to flip randomly between goofy lovable rogue and complete sociopath. This is even in the episodes focusing on him… maybe different writers have different ideas? I can’t think of any other good reason.
Over the course of the plotline of GI Joe, Cobra Commander turned into a real snake.
I’m not exactly a HUGE Lost fan, but my guess would be that a lot of females love that he’s a ‘bad boy’, but a “sweatheart if you* rrrreeaallyy get to know him”*. Unlike real life, this seems to be the case with Sawyer. Ok, so I have little bias against the character. Women love him!! I mean, I would think that Jack would so obviously be considered more attractive. Even on looks alone. I don’t get it!!
Plus I’m pissed how much women like guys like Sawyer instead of me. :mad:
Mark on Roseanne started out as an evil biker scumbag teenager and turned into a dim but devoted husband adult - which is actually a pretty realistic transformation. IRL, It happened to pretty much all of the metal-head party-hardy dudes that I went to high school with.
I was gonna say this but when I saw your post, I thought “How so?”
If you’re talking about Stephan, he was meant to be “not Urkel,” via that transformation machine and being treated as a totally different person once converted over.
Urkel was always Urkel, even after he and Laura started dating.*
- Which I only just realized recently, along with the fact that Jo-Marie Payton France left the show) because I stopped watching a few seasons before the series went off the air.
I’ve always suspected that the changes in both characters were at least in part the result of the actors wanting to be able to play characters that they could sympathize with more, or were closer to their own personality.
Everyone on the L Word flips characteristics at the drop of a hat.
Bette is suddenly a control fream because Tina said she was.
Alice suddenly becomes practiaclly a stalker hepped up on pills when she breaks up with Dana.
Helena is a rich bitch out to get the gang until she becomes a sweet gal part of the gang.
Tina went from being a social worker to a studio exec all of a sudden.
And Jenny was supposed to be the gateway character, innocent and sweet from the midwest and introducing us all to the world of the show but she quickly devolved into this horrid crazy thing.
I haven’t seen this last season yet, I’ll see it on DVD just to see the glory of Dead Jenny. Somehow I think Alice is responsible because she’s the only character on there that I really find likeable (when she’s not freaking out). Plus she’s supposed to spin off into the women in prison series.