The Doris Day Show.
1968: Doris Martin is a widow with two children who escapes the bustle of urban living by moving back to her father’s ranch in Mill Valley.
1973: Doris Martin is a bachelorette with no children who embraces the bustle of urban living working as a magazine reporter in San Francisco.
How about a movie? The Vacation series where in the first two, Rusty was older than Audrey, they were probably 13-15 in age. Then in the sequels, Audrey is older than Rusty and they look younger, nevermind the fact that it was about 12 years apart.
I never saw Vegas vacation.
With Sanford and Son, are you referring to when Lamont left the show and they had that white guy, I think cow was his name. He was “Bull” from MASK.
Facts of Life changed once they got out of school.
Happy Days, when Ted McGinley came on.
Jeff’s Collie to Lassie (not in 1 step)
At first a story about a boy and his dog and then a story about this dog wondering around the wilderness saving baby animals and other stuff.
OK, I may be totally confusing this with some other show, but I seem to recall that the original previews for Fear Factor involved such things as making the kids stay in a really scary haunted house for a night – you know, stuff that’s actually scary. These days it’s all tests of physical ability and gross-outs, like eating scorpions or whatever. I thought the original concept was kind of cool, but the show now is just stupid.
Also, when Andy Griffith left the show, they beefed up the roles of the supporting cast and changed the name to Mayberry RFD.
Re: Vegas Vacation - they used new actors for the kids (I don’t remember which one was older) and they made a joke about it in the movie. Chevy says something like “I barely even recognize you kids anymore.”
Anyway, back to the OP. I’ve had a couple of people tell me that during the first season of Boston Public, it was a comedy.
The War of the Worlds TV show replaced several lead characters, redefined its main villains, and undewent a massive change in style between its first and second seasons… however, since both seasons sucked hard enough to clean carpets, it’s probably not important.
Nope, that was Fear in MTV, I think…
You might be confusing Fear Factor (on NBC) with a different show, Fear (on MTV).
On a sidetrack, I think they need more Playmate Fear Factor or just go all the way and make a porno version :eek:
Although he fell in love with a lesbian, so did it really change?javascript:smilie(’;)’)
wink
The Facts of Life changed between its first season, where there were many girls living in a dorm, and later seasons, where there were just the 4 girls.
Martial Law changed a lot, too, after its first season. It was sort of a campy, silly, fun show. I loved it. I eagerly awaited the new season. But it was a totally different show–much darker and more serious. (And they just dropped the whole Lee Hei plot. 
).
Early MASH (Henry Blake, Trapper John, Frank Burns era):
Fairly bawdy, irreverent, anti-establishment sitcom with strokes of broad slapstick, sexual innuendo and absurdity. Klinger wears womens’ clothes.
Late MASH (Col. Potter, BJ Hunnicutt, C.E. Winchester era):
Weepy, sentimental yuppie wet-dream. More intent on making “big” statements on the nature of war, man’s inhumanity to man, etc.
Melrose Place-
Season one: When it began it was a nice little drama. Billy and Alison tried to be platonic roommates, the doctor and his wife wanted a baby, and there were two other characters with more-or-less wholesome storylines too.
Season two+: They brought on a bitch, everyone screwed each other, they brought on a psycho, and it became a night time soap.
I kinda miss that show…
Or as MAD magazine quipped, “MAS*H has switched from going after the Emmy Awards to going after the Nobel peace prize.”
But seriously, folks, the show that I remember undergoing the most ghastly transformation was The Charmings. Remember that show? The sitcom about Snow White and Prince Charming being a 20th century suburban couple?
The first season was cute and witty. The second season had a totally different actress playing Snow White who just could not pull it off the way the first actress did, and she pulled the whole show down with her.
Power Rangers.
When it began, it was a fun, teenage-superhero fantasy fulfilment (and Kimberley was HOT).
Nowadays, it’s some bizarre galactic space-time tripe… Take me back to the days even when that Z dude had taken over…
I can see it now,the deep throat challenge!
And for the guys,a snowballing challenge…with the other male contestants…uh well you get the idea :eek:
This was lost in the outage, so I hope I can recreate it again…
It really grinds my gears when they a female character has a baby solely because the actress is pregnant. The reasoning is usually that they “don’t want to have to stand behind things on set” during their gestation. Phooey on that. Now, Jackie/Laurie Metcalfe’s pregnancy on Roseanne worked fairly well; getting pregnant out of wedlock was consistent with the character, who never did anything by the book. But if it was just a matter of blocking decisions, it shouldn’t have been! She was only “showing” for the first few episodes of the season, and I think that by the time Jackie knew she was pregnant, Metcalfe had already given birth. So she had to stand behind the couch, or in one case, hide behind the shower curtain, when she was pregnant for real, and then wear a prosthesis for the character. Ai-ya.
But there was no good reason for Vivian/Janet Hubert-Whiten on Fresh Prince, or Andrea/Gabrielle Carteris on 90210. Especially since Andrea was a pre-med student: what the heck was she supposed to be learning? And to top it off, both those actresses left their shows before the end of the run! All that for nothing! If I produced a TV show, I would tell all female cast members, “If you get pregnant, you either stand where the DP tells you to stand, or your character joins the Peace Corps.” (Not forever; just until after the birth.)
Titus, on the other hand, did an excellent job of hiding Erin/Cynthia Watrous’ pregnancy. (And she conceived within weeks of the real Mrs. Christopher Titus!) She spent one episode prone on a couch with an injury, and in the thwarted-wedding episode, she held a “bouquet” (actually a floral spray from a casket) in front of herself the whole time. Then, the following season, Chris’ sister announced her pregnancy, and Chris conned Erin into claiming to be pregnant so Sis wouldn’t be able to hog the attention…
Some people are also opposed to the device of one character moving in with a family. I’m not. It made sense for Fonzie to move in with the Cunninghams, because he was getting older and more mellow, and wanted stability. It made sense for David, on Roseanne to move in with the Conners, and Hyde, on That '70s Show to move in with the Formans, because that does happen IRL: a teenager in bad circumstances falls back on his friend’s family. In general, it’s just easier to believe that Character A would move in with Family B, than that Family B would just let Character A hang around all the time.
And one last note. I actually liked Cousin Oliver! Yeah, go ahead and throw things. I don’t generally like the device of bringing in a “younger kid”, but I liked him. The Brady kids were all so flawless and wholesome, they probably all had “Mattel” stamped on their butt. As a skinny, buck-toothed four-eyed kid, I could relate to chubby, buck-toothed four-eyed Oliver. Plus which, he was the first and only person to utter the word sex in the entire five-year run!
Bob The first season it was a very good comedy about a comic book creator/artist*; as good as anything else Bob Newhart ever did on TV. Even the ratings weren’t all that bad, considering that it jumped around from one timeslot to another.
CBS dictated a change. So they brought in Betty White and Jere Burns and dropped the comic book setup for one in a greeting card company. The first show under the new format was unwatchable and it quickly sunk.
*With lots of great in-jokes; Mark Evanier, the head writer, had worked in the comic industry, notably as the writer of Groo the Wanderer
Well there is ons show that hasn’t been mentioned yet that I would have thought was a given: Doctor Who!
In the course of nearly thirty years on air (excluding the Fox movie, radio adaptations, stage plays, etc.), there were seven successive actors in the title role; over 50 regular sidekicks (there was at least two or three changes in the regular cast every season!), not to mention an army of guest star villains, Time Lords, and UNIT personnell who came and went and came again frequently.
The series was originally conceived as an educational show for children, and hence the Doctor & original crew (including a history teacher, and a scientist) went on adventures in Earth’s past (pre-1960s) most of the time, until the British public went crazy for the series’ resident alien menace the Daleks. Thereafter, the Dr & co. went adventuring in Earth’s FUTURE, not to mention to other worlds, more often than Earth’s past. After the producers got tired of coming up with a new alien world every four to six weeks, the Doctor was grounded on Earth, became a science advisor to a UN para-military outfit called UNIT and fought off alien invasions and espionage plots in modern day (early 1970s) Britain - a la “The new Avengers”. Eventually, the new producers decided to have the Doctor go back to exploring other planets (after “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” became popular). Toward the end of the series’ long run, the Doctor was framed by corrupt Time-Lords and spent an entire seasons’ worth of episodes in a Time-Lord tribunal court defending his actions in recent adventures (which were depicted in flashbacks.)
I’ve seen other threads here suggesting that the “Star Trek” universe has an inconsistent timeline. Doctor Who changed and altered elements of its’ own chronology that theres is how the events of one season relate to the next! (Earth for instance was destroyed in no less than four different stories, all in different ways.)
For most of the series’ run, it used a serial format: a single storyline played out over six to eight episodes, which would be linked by cliffhanger endings. Gradually, the serials were reduced to a maximum length of four episodes apiece. In the mid-1980s, the series switched to hour long episodes and two parter serials. Then it switched back to half hour long, four part stories. Inexplicably, The serials were often strung together as movie length single stories when they were reran in the U.S.
Granted, this show lasted a loooooooong time, and inconsistencies tend to pile up after only a few years. However, this show in particular seemed to take a perverse delight in making itself over on an annual basis.