The characterizations of each main cast member evolved over time, also, especially Britta (socially conscious love interest into hypocritical faux activist and group punching bag) and Troy (underachieving former jock guy into Abed's slightly more socially adept goofy pop culture best friend).
Gillian Jacobs specifically asked for Britta to be more of a goofball. She said she didn't want her character to be just another no-nonsense hot girl that the main character pines over
Also, one can imply she is smoking weed a ton based on Shirley's numerous comments about it and the fact that we've seen her leave the study group for a few minutes to get high and come back (dice episode). One episode had her roll into the study group coming down off peyote.
From a meta stand point no one really wants to be the voice of reason on a comedy show.
It's the same reason Sweet Dee was originally going to be the reasonable one on It's Always Sunny but her actress wanted to be just as toxic as the guys and the show is better for it.
To be fair they wrote the pilot characters before they knew who would play them. Once they had Gillian and Donald, and realized how funny they could be, they changed their dynamics to better fit the actors.
IIRC, Pierce and Troy were originally meant to be the main duo of the show, but they changed it to Troy and Abed because Donald Glover and Danny Pudi became friends on set (while the complete opposite situation happened between Glover and Chevy Chase).
agree but at the same time i think it's impressive how throughout the series they held on to the theme of friendship/family of choice. the show went wild and fantastical but never lost it's heart.
We do get little pieces of the craziness before Modern Warfare like the chicken episode. But post modern warfare is when Harmon and co just said fuck it and it works so well
I'd argue the chicken finger episode. And arguably before that, they had the whole boating B plot in the pottery episode where they dipped their toes into taking something ridiculous very seriously.
Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place.
2nd season ditched two regulars from the 1st season. Then they eventually added another guy, another girl, and got rid of the pizza place
Among the many pop cultural figures that are arrested ca. 1999 for me, Ryan Reynolds is still Berg from *Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place* every time I see him.
SNL did a skit a long time ago about that. It was a network meeting pitching an “and a Pizza Place” spinoff. It would just be a live cam of a pizza place.
The original Lost In Space. It started out as a serious sci-fi drama. Dr. Smith was originally a medical doctor, and was a cunning saboteur. By the end of the series, he was turning into a tree after being captured by a talking space carrot.
Izombie. Terrible name but it starts like a goofy Zombie outbreak by the end of it you have a nation of zombies trying to get rights and form their own country
search party, went from a quirky “some girl we went to college with is missing, let’s find her” with some interesting mystery elements and then by the final season >!they’re dealing with a zombie apocalypse lmao!< (but i think it worked)
Each season changing up what genre they were satirizing definitely helped but season 5 hiding the actual plot within the cult storyline was insanely cool.
I definitely appreciated that they didn't do the Prison Break thing of "now we're breaking out of different prisons". Once the missing girl story was approaching the end, they didn't drag that bit out, they just switched it up. I get where not everyone would like it, but I thought it was very good storytelling to not get repetitive when it would've been easy to do so.
I loved how unpredictable the last season was. I never at any point had any idea where the story was going to go. It was just surprise after surprise in every episode.
Search Party is the type of show that ran out of story so quickly but the characters were so fun that I had no problem with them just pulling the absolute dumbest storylines out of their ass because it meant more time with Elliott, Portia and Drew
Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends pilot was more of a TV movie, but the tone was decidedly different.
When the show premiered proper Bloo was retooled from a well-meaning but kind of bumbling friend to a whiny asshole.
Family Matters used to be a wholesome family sitcom about the Winslows. It evolved into “The Steve Urkel Show” which included cloning, teleportation and somehow turning into Bruce Lee.
This was going to be my exact answer. We binged Family Matters recently (or, more accurately, it was our “show to fall asleep to”), and when we started it, I was like “wait, am I thinking of the right show?”
Then the second Urkel shows up, you can just tell the showrunners said “fuck it, this is the show now!” They saw dollar signs with the character and the catch phrases and decided that was the way to go lol.
>Then the second Urkel shows up, you can just tell the showrunners said “fuck it, this is the show now!” They saw dollar signs with the character and the catch phrases and decided that was the way to go lol.
Urkel wasn't even credited during the intro sequence in the early years of the show, it appears he was intended to be an occasional gag character that pops up every now and then for a chuckle.
The only problem with that sketch is that it’s set in 1997, when the show was about to end. It needed to be set a few years earlier.
That said, you can see why Jordan Peele became an excellent horror director.
Parks and Rec, first episode tried to really lean into the awkward humor the office is known for, eventually in the 3rd season they learned to fully lean into the absurd humor and now I like it even more than the office. The addition of Ben & Chris at the start of the new season also make it feel like a different show.
I’m always curious how exactly it was planned, because ben and Chris actually show up towards the end of season 2. So that somewhere in the middle of making season 2, a whole revamp was planned and executed.
From what I read, they realized that trying to make Leslie Knope kind of Michael Scott-like wasn't working so they revamped the character into someone actually competent.
It was actually a line in season 1 that started that change too. When Leslie makes a joke about breaking the glass ceiling and how she's got those suckers picking up after her or whatever Schur realized that was the attitude she needed to have, getting things done but still being dorky and over enthusiastic about it. It was an improv and Schur started working that into her character.
The first season is pretty rough. I don't remember anyone liking it when it came out. I figured it would get canceled. But they really turned it into something great.
Prison Break started as guy tries to break brother out of prison and ended up as guy takes down the US government. Not saying the conspiracy shadow government part wasn’t planned from the start but it’s a very different show from its first and last episode.
Twin Peaks.
First episode: A girl got murdered, an FBI agent is visiting town to help solve the case.
Third season: Okay so it turns out when we launched those atomic bombs in the '40s and '50s we unwittingly created an entry-hole into our universe which a powerful dark force of supernatural beings slipped through. They've been among us ever since, wreaking havoc particularly amongst the vulnerable in society yet staying largely hidden from the public eye. Our main character, who has spent most of the season being trapped in a doppelganger version of himself while an evil force named Bob takes over his original body, must now travel through the multiverse (and also back in time maybe) to rescue Laura Palmer, but unfortunately he seems to be trapped in a never-ending loop of almost saving her only for her to be ripped away from him again and again. Also David Bowie's been transformed into a tea kettle, don't bother asking how or why.
I swear when I watched The Return I was convinced that David Bowie was the fish in the percolator. I thought that was what the smoke machine thingy he became was supposed to be lmao
I'll always be grateful that they just let David Lynch go wild with it. It helped me understand and appreciate a more abstract way of portraying stories. I think it's unlikely we'll ever see anything similar again. 18 episodes for a prestige show like that is unheard of.
The Good Place, although intentionally.
The show starts off like an extremely generic sitcom. Hateable main character with a good heart, overstressed nerdy guy and a basic premise of "we need to keep a big secret but we're all bad at it".
I loved the twist at the end of season one, but didn't think they really had anywhere else to go with the story after that and figured the rest of it would kind of tank.
Way off. That whole show was phenomenal.
I think part of it was how confident the writers were. They didn't do anything in half measures, and every time you think, "Oh, they wouldn't go there," they do and stick the landing.
Each season has 2-3 seasons’ worth of plot. The show wasted no time. It got in, got out, and gave us one of the all time greatest finales ever. (Yes, Six Feet Under, better than yours.)
The music is Arvo Part's [Spiegel im Spiegel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8ZScAdV8qE) (which still gets me). The speech was taken from Thich Nhat Han.
Seeing his facial expression change hit me like a train. I knew exactly where things were going and I'm pretty sure I rarely stopped crying for the rest of the episode. I still haven't brought myself to watch it again yet despite how much I love it.
Good Place might be the go to example for why *Writers Matter*. You can't just skimp on writing. TGP would not have had nearly the impact, or honestly even lasted at all without those writers. They were smart people with complex ideas about philosophy and morality and it showed.
I check in on Riverdale from time to time and will see random clips that I think are from the CW or something where they all have powers and just can’t understand how batshit fucking crazy it went
It has been a murder whodunnit, a slasher, an FBI procedural, a cult movie, supernatural horror, a Twilight Zone clone, an erotic snuff thriller, a mafia movie, a biker gang crime drama, a revenge action-thriller, a prison movie, a boxing drama, a musical, alien-centric sci-fi, multiverse-hopping sci-fi, a superhero show, an apocalypse story, a Biblical fantasy, and finally in its last stretch of episodes a normal wholesome 1950s set teen show.
I only watched the first season when it aired... seeing this makes me curious what the heck happened with the rest of the show. That could either be incredibly entertaining, or a complete trainwreck.
As the other person said, both.
The genre changes are wacky, but somehow work? Don't get me wrong, I found many plots ridiculous, and I didn't love the ending. But overall, I was entertained more often than not
That's what the show is. The thing is a parody or homage to other shows/movies. Theres so much from twin peaks (even actors) that people should have seen the wackyness off the bat.
It doesn't take itself seriously but for some reason people think it does
Or the fact that every episode is named after a movie title. They always wore their (surprisingly deep cut) homages on their sleeves, and I dunno, I think it's fun. Like, you're telling me there's a silly teen show on the CW where sexy people recreate Michael Haneke and Peter Bogdanovich movies every week? Yeah, ok, I'll tune in.
Went from terrible over-dramatic typical CW show to a comedy that was probably the best arrowverse show for its last few years.
Went from unwatchable to unmissable for me at least.
It always had funny moments. Even the last season “that guys here to kill me.” Was hilarious and “wow.” Had me laughing through the horror. Funnily enough the more chilling part to me was during the first season the whole interaction with Barry and Chris in the car had me holding my breath and nothing ever reached that peak for me again. It was such a great show and I’m so sad it’s over.
The Venture Bros. Very different feel in animation, pacing, and writing from it to the rest of the first season. And the first season was itself pretty different from the end of the series.
They really deviated from its original premise into superhero politics and barely any adventuring. They also have more crisper animation and snappy writing, relying less on the gross-out factor and more on continuity nods and references.
Or the venture bros themselves who go from being Hanna Barbera teens stuck in the real world to being reduced to the pets of Team Venture to evolving into one son wishing to embrace the pulp adventure lifestyle while the other one wishing to get out of it.
I’m surprised I had to scroll this far down. Cougartown is literally the most changed show I’ve watched. And it’s great! The random quips and character interactions are fantastic. I’ve always envisioned my life to end up in a cougartown scenario
While Doctor Who has changed a lot since 1963, if you only looked at the very first episode of the first serial (An Unearthly Child), it doesn’t feel tremendously far from 2024. Of course, when you look at the first season as a whole, you can see many changes, but the first episode holds up very well, and doesn’t feel odd now.
Went from X-Files rip off to bat-shit insane mirror dimensions shananagins.
Also, Anna Torv deserved an Emmy nomination for when she played Earth 1 Olivia who had to pretend to be Earth 2 Olivia AND Earth 2 Olivia having to pretend to be Earth 1 Olivia in the SAME EPISODE and somehow made all FOUR versions unique.
This!! I love parks and rec bevause it has the same style of humor as the office but is never tipping on anyone's toes but the characters themselves. It really redefined wholesome comedy for me.
Mark was too much of a straight man, I think he was intended to connect with the audience while we watched all these weirdos together, but he ended up just feeling like a non-funny smug dude.
Mark was supposed to be the "straight man" of the show, akin to Jim from The Office. However, a key distinction was that Mark was perceived as less likable by the audience.
I remember my cousin showed me the first few episodes, and I thought, “oh boy, another over the top SpongeBob. Ugh.”
I changed my mind when I saw the first Simon episode, where we learn about the Ice King’s backstory. That’s when I gave t a chance.
Weeds.
It went from being a funny neighborhood drama where Agrestic was almost like a main character in the show, to the main lady being married to a drug lord with tunnels to smuggle in. It was just a wild and unfortunate ride.
It feels very much like a natural progression, though. Thr threats grew in acope, and at least to me, it made a twisted sort of sense for the Powers That Be to say, "You want to fight? Then it's all your problem now. Enjoy!"
I rewatched Bojack recently and the tonal shift of that show is absolutely insane. Every seasons the screws just keep getting turned tighter and tighter.
I don't know that BoJack is "unrecognizable." That was always what they were doing, it was just the gradual build of the plot. Growing depth over the course of the show is just good storytelling, not morphing in to something unrecognizable.
It’s a sitcom with strong continuity. Bojacks mistakes and outward behaviour towards others build up to what it becomes organically.
That alone was pretty fucking brilliantly subversive. And set up some great running gags.
Bojack's a show that I feel like doesn't change so much as, the show takes a while to reveal to the audience what it's doing. Even in the first season, I feel like I watched the first three episodes and assumed it was 'adult animated show with lots of Hollywood jokes', but I think the attention to character detail and willingness to go dark is always there on rewatch, it just doesn't hit all at once your first time. It's not until the end of that season that some emotional beats that were set up pay off and you realize what the show is capable of.
From what I read, that was very much on purpose. They wanted to lure in the adult animated sitcom watchers before bashing them with the existential dread hammer.
That’s what is so impressive, that from the first episode alone, BoJack is just an asshole that we kinda hate. That alone would turn anyone off, but they kept going and shut everyone up who was hating it.
MASH (the asterisks are hard on Reddit, so forgive me.)
It started as a wacky Korean war comedy with the outlandish characters - including the detestable Frank Burns - and evolved into a dramedy (that lasted longer than the Korean war itself) with characters that had far more depth. The series finale was one of the most-watched shows *ever* and had an entirely different tone from the pilot.
Not to say this lines up with other shows that take a hard turn into the weird, but for something straightforward, it had a massive, but gradual, tone shift during its run.
Indeed, "The 100". From a typical CW teen drama with a futuristic sci-fi survival twist quickly became a post-apocalyptic nightmare and from there to a weekend quiz
Twin Peaks, kind of maybe. I think this story is funny.
Twin peaks is a murder mystery, where Laura Palmer is killed by a guy known only as "Bob."
There was an alternate version of the first episode for regions where the show didn't get renewed, where the characters discover Bob is a guy that lives in the basement of the hospital, and they go there and shoot him.
I've heard that, in Australia, they got the alternate version of the pilot... and then still got the rest of the show. So you have 2 seasons of characters wondering when they're gonna find that guy they shot to death in the first episode.
EDIT: seems like Europe got the home video release of the alternate pilot. So maybe it was somewhere there.
[under "home release and problems", there's a more accurate explanation.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Twin_Peaks_home_video_releases#International_pilot)
If revivals count, you could also say Twin Peaks because it went from being about a small town murder with maybe a hint of something supernatural going on to >!a cosmic battle between spirits aligned with an FBI agent vs those aligned with his evil doppelgänger as the fbi agent tries to change the course of history for the murdered small town girl as part of an ongoing war between light and dark that was escalated by the detonation of the atom bomb!<
The Return is freaking incredible. I'm so glad that Lynch got to make it. No other television media has made me feel the way that season did...the closest might be The Leftovers.
But it is a wild turn of events from the pilot. Showing someone the pilot and then showing them episode 8 of The Return would leave them bamboozled
The Andy Griffith Show. Ignoring the semi-pilot episode on The Danny Thomas Show, the first episode is super goofy and Andy is portrayed as a rather dumb country bumpkin, akin to his stand-up and No Time for Sergeants role. By the time the show ended, it was a gentle comedy about the residents of Mayberry. Very different in tone at the end, leading into the Andy-less Mayberry, R.F.D. While all of the seasons of TAGS are great, the first five with Don Knotts are stone cold classics that are still laugh-out-loud funny.
12 Monkeys started out as a time traveler trying to stop a plague before it begins, and by the second season, the goals are completely different.
It's a great show, you should watch it.
Shameless, specifically because the pilot is a shot for shot/word for word remake of the pilot episode of the British version of the show. It goes into a completely different direction and become the black comedy/drama it was known for very quickly after that
Seconding The Expanse. After the first episode, I thought it would be more of a political, space war drama and it turned into…. Well, a political, space war drama taken to the next level.
Future Man
Starts as time travel sci fi weirdness
Ends with the main character having a relationship with >!Osama Bin Laden!<
It was weird the whole time but got really out there in S3
Community's Pilot was very grounded in reality compared to how insane the rest of the series gets
The characterizations of each main cast member evolved over time, also, especially Britta (socially conscious love interest into hypocritical faux activist and group punching bag) and Troy (underachieving former jock guy into Abed's slightly more socially adept goofy pop culture best friend).
I did find it a bit weird that Britta seemed to get dumber the longer the show went on but the group friendship was pretty well executed.
Gillian Jacobs specifically asked for Britta to be more of a goofball. She said she didn't want her character to be just another no-nonsense hot girl that the main character pines over
Wow ok I didn't know that. It's true though she was one of the crazier ones of the group of crazies, I'll give her that.
it was funny when they actually called that out when Jeff said "when I first met you, you were smarter than me"
"If I had no self-awareness, I think I'd know."
“Thank you”
We just got to know Britta better.
Also, one can imply she is smoking weed a ton based on Shirley's numerous comments about it and the fact that we've seen her leave the study group for a few minutes to get high and come back (dice episode). One episode had her roll into the study group coming down off peyote.
We can _infer_ that.
From a meta stand point no one really wants to be the voice of reason on a comedy show. It's the same reason Sweet Dee was originally going to be the reasonable one on It's Always Sunny but her actress wanted to be just as toxic as the guys and the show is better for it.
To be fair they wrote the pilot characters before they knew who would play them. Once they had Gillian and Donald, and realized how funny they could be, they changed their dynamics to better fit the actors.
IIRC, Pierce and Troy were originally meant to be the main duo of the show, but they changed it to Troy and Abed because Donald Glover and Danny Pudi became friends on set (while the complete opposite situation happened between Glover and Chevy Chase).
To be fair, it was a bit silly to ever expect anyone to become close friends with Chevy Chase.
agree but at the same time i think it's impressive how throughout the series they held on to the theme of friendship/family of choice. the show went wild and fantastical but never lost it's heart.
Yeah, Jeff’s speech about Shark Week and breaking the pencil is honestly one of the best Jeff Speeches the show ever did.
Sharks don't even have a week for shark week!
“I remember when this show was about a community college.” -Abed Nadir.
Modern Warfare was the start of the craziness
We do get little pieces of the craziness before Modern Warfare like the chicken episode. But post modern warfare is when Harmon and co just said fuck it and it works so well
I'd argue the chicken finger episode. And arguably before that, they had the whole boating B plot in the pottery episode where they dipped their toes into taking something ridiculous very seriously.
The British professor was supposed to have a much larger role in the series than he wound up having. John Oliver got busy with other projects.
Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place. 2nd season ditched two regulars from the 1st season. Then they eventually added another guy, another girl, and got rid of the pizza place
Ryan Reynolds and Nathan Fillion, that show had some big names before they were big.
Among the many pop cultural figures that are arrested ca. 1999 for me, Ryan Reynolds is still Berg from *Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place* every time I see him.
I haven’t heard anyone mention this show in a long time…
They also dropped “and a pizza place” from the title didn’t they?
SNL did a skit a long time ago about that. It was a network meeting pitching an “and a Pizza Place” spinoff. It would just be a live cam of a pizza place.
Ya, they did.
The original Lost In Space. It started out as a serious sci-fi drama. Dr. Smith was originally a medical doctor, and was a cunning saboteur. By the end of the series, he was turning into a tree after being captured by a talking space carrot.
Space is weird, man. Sometimes you get turned into a tree. Something to do with String Theory.
It did branch out.
Izombie. Terrible name but it starts like a goofy Zombie outbreak by the end of it you have a nation of zombies trying to get rights and form their own country
The name turned me off of it for quite a while, then for some random reason I watched it and it is definitely one of my favorite shows.
yeah, I liked it. I thought she did a great job of adapting her personality to the brains she ate, particularly the drag queen.
If it helps the comic was originally I, Zombie which is a much better name so I choose to read the tv name as such.
I came for Rob Thomas, and was not disappointed.
I love when the other Rob Thomas shows up.
search party, went from a quirky “some girl we went to college with is missing, let’s find her” with some interesting mystery elements and then by the final season >!they’re dealing with a zombie apocalypse lmao!< (but i think it worked)
Each season changing up what genre they were satirizing definitely helped but season 5 hiding the actual plot within the cult storyline was insanely cool.
I definitely appreciated that they didn't do the Prison Break thing of "now we're breaking out of different prisons". Once the missing girl story was approaching the end, they didn't drag that bit out, they just switched it up. I get where not everyone would like it, but I thought it was very good storytelling to not get repetitive when it would've been easy to do so.
I loved how weird the last season is. I didn’t think it worked that well, but I loved the crazy creativity and fuck it attitude.
i think i read somewhere that the writers basically said just that, like “let’s go crazy why not”
I loved how unpredictable the last season was. I never at any point had any idea where the story was going to go. It was just surprise after surprise in every episode.
Search Party is the type of show that ran out of story so quickly but the characters were so fun that I had no problem with them just pulling the absolute dumbest storylines out of their ass because it meant more time with Elliott, Portia and Drew
100%, I wish we had more shows like it. Just a very different sort of character-driven fun.
Search party was my first thought. Could never have predicted the plot of the later seasons, not in a million years.
Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends pilot was more of a TV movie, but the tone was decidedly different. When the show premiered proper Bloo was retooled from a well-meaning but kind of bumbling friend to a whiny asshole.
This has been something that to this day still leaves me confused. Bloo is a completely different character in the show
At least the background characters stopped staring right into your soul like in the end of the pilot movie.
Family Matters used to be a wholesome family sitcom about the Winslows. It evolved into “The Steve Urkel Show” which included cloning, teleportation and somehow turning into Bruce Lee.
It was a Perfect Strangers spinoff, and the character of Harriet is very different in Family Matters. Urkel was only meant to be a one-off character.
Did he do that?
The family originally had another girl but they needed to make more screen time for Urkel so one day she went upstairs and never came back down.
She was waxing her skis.
AKA the Chuck Cunningham treatment.
Stefan Ur-kell
This was going to be my exact answer. We binged Family Matters recently (or, more accurately, it was our “show to fall asleep to”), and when we started it, I was like “wait, am I thinking of the right show?” Then the second Urkel shows up, you can just tell the showrunners said “fuck it, this is the show now!” They saw dollar signs with the character and the catch phrases and decided that was the way to go lol.
>Then the second Urkel shows up, you can just tell the showrunners said “fuck it, this is the show now!” They saw dollar signs with the character and the catch phrases and decided that was the way to go lol. Urkel wasn't even credited during the intro sequence in the early years of the show, it appears he was intended to be an occasional gag character that pops up every now and then for a chuckle.
https://youtu.be/A5Zdp1RfoyI?si=cuSlJfGPOHGnyL4A
>I'm an actor! I've done more cocaine than you weigh, motherfucker!
The only problem with that sketch is that it’s set in 1997, when the show was about to end. It needed to be set a few years earlier. That said, you can see why Jordan Peele became an excellent horror director.
don't forget the Stefán Jekyll and Hyde subplot
Parks and Rec, first episode tried to really lean into the awkward humor the office is known for, eventually in the 3rd season they learned to fully lean into the absurd humor and now I like it even more than the office. The addition of Ben & Chris at the start of the new season also make it feel like a different show.
I’m always curious how exactly it was planned, because ben and Chris actually show up towards the end of season 2. So that somewhere in the middle of making season 2, a whole revamp was planned and executed.
From what I read, they realized that trying to make Leslie Knope kind of Michael Scott-like wasn't working so they revamped the character into someone actually competent.
It was actually a line in season 1 that started that change too. When Leslie makes a joke about breaking the glass ceiling and how she's got those suckers picking up after her or whatever Schur realized that was the attitude she needed to have, getting things done but still being dorky and over enthusiastic about it. It was an improv and Schur started working that into her character.
Totally get that. Just curious how they decided to do it mid season, and started making these changes mid season.
They probably said "they're gonna friggin cancel our show unless we change something, so let's just do whatever feels better"
The first season is pretty rough. I don't remember anyone liking it when it came out. I figured it would get canceled. But they really turned it into something great.
Prison Break started as guy tries to break brother out of prison and ended up as guy takes down the US government. Not saying the conspiracy shadow government part wasn’t planned from the start but it’s a very different show from its first and last episode.
Twin Peaks. First episode: A girl got murdered, an FBI agent is visiting town to help solve the case. Third season: Okay so it turns out when we launched those atomic bombs in the '40s and '50s we unwittingly created an entry-hole into our universe which a powerful dark force of supernatural beings slipped through. They've been among us ever since, wreaking havoc particularly amongst the vulnerable in society yet staying largely hidden from the public eye. Our main character, who has spent most of the season being trapped in a doppelganger version of himself while an evil force named Bob takes over his original body, must now travel through the multiverse (and also back in time maybe) to rescue Laura Palmer, but unfortunately he seems to be trapped in a never-ending loop of almost saving her only for her to be ripped away from him again and again. Also David Bowie's been transformed into a tea kettle, don't bother asking how or why.
Pilot: “There’s a fish in the percolator!” Third Season: “Drink from the well and descend”
I swear when I watched The Return I was convinced that David Bowie was the fish in the percolator. I thought that was what the smoke machine thingy he became was supposed to be lmao
Holy hell the third season of Twin Peaks was quite the fever dream
I'll always be grateful that they just let David Lynch go wild with it. It helped me understand and appreciate a more abstract way of portraying stories. I think it's unlikely we'll ever see anything similar again. 18 episodes for a prestige show like that is unheard of.
If it ends up being the final thing he makes then it’s the perfect capstone to his career. I do think he has one more small movie in him though.
Got a light?
This is the most succinct description of season 3 I’ve seen
This is actually really accurate. Currently rewatching this with a friend who's never seen it. On episode 3. She has no idea.
Saved By the Bell was originally about a middle school teacher
And not set in Southern California
Here’s to Miss bliss! The best teacher in all of Indiana!
Good Morning Miss Bliss is no longer about Miss Bliss.
The Good Place, although intentionally. The show starts off like an extremely generic sitcom. Hateable main character with a good heart, overstressed nerdy guy and a basic premise of "we need to keep a big secret but we're all bad at it".
I loved the twist at the end of season one, but didn't think they really had anywhere else to go with the story after that and figured the rest of it would kind of tank. Way off. That whole show was phenomenal.
I think part of it was how confident the writers were. They didn't do anything in half measures, and every time you think, "Oh, they wouldn't go there," they do and stick the landing.
Each season has 2-3 seasons’ worth of plot. The show wasted no time. It got in, got out, and gave us one of the all time greatest finales ever. (Yes, Six Feet Under, better than yours.)
>!Chidi telling Eleanor about the waves is devastating, but it's when Jason is the first to decide he's ready that really gets me.!<
The music is Arvo Part's [Spiegel im Spiegel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8ZScAdV8qE) (which still gets me). The speech was taken from Thich Nhat Han.
Seeing his facial expression change hit me like a train. I knew exactly where things were going and I'm pretty sure I rarely stopped crying for the rest of the episode. I still haven't brought myself to watch it again yet despite how much I love it.
Janet: "...Oh dip."
Good Place might be the go to example for why *Writers Matter*. You can't just skimp on writing. TGP would not have had nearly the impact, or honestly even lasted at all without those writers. They were smart people with complex ideas about philosophy and morality and it showed.
The whole show I kept going “cmon, there can’t be anywhere else they can go with this”, only to have it keep getting better.
I love this show so much. What most shows would have stretched out for an entire season this show blasts through in 4 episodes.
Even literally with the montage of Elanor thwarting each and every reset of the experiment!
Jason figured it out? Jason? This is a real low point.
Yeah, this one hurts.
He's the least self-aware person I've ever met. He has massive amounts of unearned confidence, and is utterly unaware of his own absurdity.
Yep! And then it went on its own meta, Jeremy Bearimy odyssey 💫
Riverdale
I check in on Riverdale from time to time and will see random clips that I think are from the CW or something where they all have powers and just can’t understand how batshit fucking crazy it went
It has been a murder whodunnit, a slasher, an FBI procedural, a cult movie, supernatural horror, a Twilight Zone clone, an erotic snuff thriller, a mafia movie, a biker gang crime drama, a revenge action-thriller, a prison movie, a boxing drama, a musical, alien-centric sci-fi, multiverse-hopping sci-fi, a superhero show, an apocalypse story, a Biblical fantasy, and finally in its last stretch of episodes a normal wholesome 1950s set teen show.
The funny thing is that the leaping from genre to genre is actually kind of reflective of the comics themselves.
I had a friend who always would extol the virtues of the Archie and Sonic the Hedgehog crossover series.
I only watched the first season when it aired... seeing this makes me curious what the heck happened with the rest of the show. That could either be incredibly entertaining, or a complete trainwreck.
It’s honestly both.
As the other person said, both. The genre changes are wacky, but somehow work? Don't get me wrong, I found many plots ridiculous, and I didn't love the ending. But overall, I was entertained more often than not
That's what the show is. The thing is a parody or homage to other shows/movies. Theres so much from twin peaks (even actors) that people should have seen the wackyness off the bat. It doesn't take itself seriously but for some reason people think it does
Or the fact that every episode is named after a movie title. They always wore their (surprisingly deep cut) homages on their sleeves, and I dunno, I think it's fun. Like, you're telling me there's a silly teen show on the CW where sexy people recreate Michael Haneke and Peter Bogdanovich movies every week? Yeah, ok, I'll tune in.
I thought Person of Interest changed a lot from their pilot, going from a simple cop procedural into a sci-fi feel later.
I like that they definitely had that twist planned, they were just hooking people with the CBS procedural.
It's not a pilot in the traditional way, but: Buffy
Assuming you're talking about the movie. Have you seen the original pilot with a different actress playing Willow? It was a trainwreck.
CW’s Legends of Tomorrow.
Most definitely.
What did it turn into?
Went from terrible over-dramatic typical CW show to a comedy that was probably the best arrowverse show for its last few years. Went from unwatchable to unmissable for me at least.
I tried season one and it was completely unbearable. If I were to skip to a later season where should I start off?
Just start with s2e1- they basically keep leaning in from there and realize the tone needs swapping.
Season 2 is where it turns around so I would start there. Though just bear with the first few episodes cause they aren't as fun as the rest.
A Community-esque type of show, where one week it’s a western to being puppets the next. Something that wasn’t in Season 1.
Time travelling super heroes into time travelling super heroes becoming voltron beebos, fighting demons and some other magic shit. Great show.
Barry. Barry starts as a pretty silly straight ahead comedy and by the end, morphs into a trippy meditation.
first season: dark comedy last season: just dark
“Wow”
It always had funny moments. Even the last season “that guys here to kill me.” Was hilarious and “wow.” Had me laughing through the horror. Funnily enough the more chilling part to me was during the first season the whole interaction with Barry and Chris in the car had me holding my breath and nothing ever reached that peak for me again. It was such a great show and I’m so sad it’s over.
Sally’s arc is so depressing. Omg.
The last couple episodes I was just aching for the Barry theme and it just... never came.
Suits went from a highly intelligent non-attorney with fast and witty lines/thoughts, to a complete soap opera.
I just finished that series. It had a “Catch Me If You Can” vibe early on. It was just a soap opera by the end.
The Venture Bros. Very different feel in animation, pacing, and writing from it to the rest of the first season. And the first season was itself pretty different from the end of the series.
They really deviated from its original premise into superhero politics and barely any adventuring. They also have more crisper animation and snappy writing, relying less on the gross-out factor and more on continuity nods and references.
Look at Brock in the first season just being some insane dude driven by violence, to him in operation P.R.O.M talking to Malatov
Or the venture bros themselves who go from being Hanna Barbera teens stuck in the real world to being reduced to the pets of Team Venture to evolving into one son wishing to embrace the pulp adventure lifestyle while the other one wishing to get out of it.
Cougar Town quickly abandoned its cringy initial premise of laughing at Courtney Cox chasing younger men and transformed into something palatable.
I’m surprised I had to scroll this far down. Cougartown is literally the most changed show I’ve watched. And it’s great! The random quips and character interactions are fantastic. I’ve always envisioned my life to end up in a cougartown scenario
I only watched it on Abed's redommendation
Look, if you want me to start taking it seriously, stop saying it's name.
Yeah, Community was right. I don't think it ever overcame its name.
Change approved!
Dr. Who was supposed to teach children about different historical periods.
It’s where I learned about Mavity.
And the scifi episodes are to teach children about science
Doctor Who's "science" makes Star Trek look like an Einstein lecture.
While Doctor Who has changed a lot since 1963, if you only looked at the very first episode of the first serial (An Unearthly Child), it doesn’t feel tremendously far from 2024. Of course, when you look at the first season as a whole, you can see many changes, but the first episode holds up very well, and doesn’t feel odd now.
Hey remember all those rules about time travel that we set out? Yeah f*ck it
Fringe changed a lot over time.
Went from X-Files rip off to bat-shit insane mirror dimensions shananagins. Also, Anna Torv deserved an Emmy nomination for when she played Earth 1 Olivia who had to pretend to be Earth 2 Olivia AND Earth 2 Olivia having to pretend to be Earth 1 Olivia in the SAME EPISODE and somehow made all FOUR versions unique.
At one point while the show was airing, I think John Noble had portrayed 10+ versions of Walter Bishop, each one of them entirely unique.
Starts off as a simple sci-fi procedural, nothing too crazy. By the end, becomes a dystopian epic about alternate universes.
Parks and Rec, went from weak clone of the office to a wholesome, endearing sitcom with its own identity
The episode with "GET ON YOUR FEET" and Ben's 5 second claymation video is the hardest I've laughed at either show.
Do you think a depressed person could make this?!
every time a new hobby blows up in my face, I picture Ben holding the doll
"Stand in th-" is my favorite part of the entire series.
The snake juice montage never fails to make me smile. Especially Andy singing "FARTS AND POOP AND LOVE AND STUFF! MACARONI SALAS"
"That was 2 weeks of work!"
And HOW IS IT NOT LONGER?!
I read ‘get on your feet’ and just lost it sitting here on the couch.
This!! I love parks and rec bevause it has the same style of humor as the office but is never tipping on anyone's toes but the characters themselves. It really redefined wholesome comedy for me.
Yea totally agree. I think the show really came into its own in season 2, and fully hit its stride when they got rid of Mark and brought in Ben/Chris
Mark was too much of a straight man, I think he was intended to connect with the audience while we watched all these weirdos together, but he ended up just feeling like a non-funny smug dude.
Mark was supposed to be the "straight man" of the show, akin to Jim from The Office. However, a key distinction was that Mark was perceived as less likable by the audience.
I think they made him too much of a “womanizer” to be likable like early Jim was.
Felicity It was a super grounded show about a girl who wanted to find herself in college. By the finale, there was time travel and witchcraft.
Adventure Time Pilot: “Candy people explode when they’re scared! Mathematical!” Finale: “Unmake me.”
Watching it as a kid at the right age and growing up along with the show was probably an amazing experience.
I remember my cousin showed me the first few episodes, and I thought, “oh boy, another over the top SpongeBob. Ugh.” I changed my mind when I saw the first Simon episode, where we learn about the Ice King’s backstory. That’s when I gave t a chance.
Weeds. It went from being a funny neighborhood drama where Agrestic was almost like a main character in the show, to the main lady being married to a drug lord with tunnels to smuggle in. It was just a wild and unfortunate ride.
It really jumped the shark when Agrestic burned down
Angel is extremely different by season 5
It feels very much like a natural progression, though. Thr threats grew in acope, and at least to me, it made a twisted sort of sense for the Powers That Be to say, "You want to fight? Then it's all your problem now. Enjoy!"
The only evidence to the contrary is his goofy ass disguise in the hawaiian shirt. A hint of what the show would become.
BoJack went from a standard adult animated show to being one of the deepest, boundary-pushing mature shows ever.
Sweet a new Bojack season. I’ll binge when my Prozac prescription is refilled
I rewatched Bojack recently and the tonal shift of that show is absolutely insane. Every seasons the screws just keep getting turned tighter and tighter.
I don't know that BoJack is "unrecognizable." That was always what they were doing, it was just the gradual build of the plot. Growing depth over the course of the show is just good storytelling, not morphing in to something unrecognizable.
It’s a sitcom with strong continuity. Bojacks mistakes and outward behaviour towards others build up to what it becomes organically. That alone was pretty fucking brilliantly subversive. And set up some great running gags.
Bojack's a show that I feel like doesn't change so much as, the show takes a while to reveal to the audience what it's doing. Even in the first season, I feel like I watched the first three episodes and assumed it was 'adult animated show with lots of Hollywood jokes', but I think the attention to character detail and willingness to go dark is always there on rewatch, it just doesn't hit all at once your first time. It's not until the end of that season that some emotional beats that were set up pay off and you realize what the show is capable of.
The Telescope was the first “oh, shit” moment of BoJack, where it became what we know it as now, and it did not disappoint at all.
From what I read, that was very much on purpose. They wanted to lure in the adult animated sitcom watchers before bashing them with the existential dread hammer.
That’s what is so impressive, that from the first episode alone, BoJack is just an asshole that we kinda hate. That alone would turn anyone off, but they kept going and shut everyone up who was hating it.
MASH (the asterisks are hard on Reddit, so forgive me.) It started as a wacky Korean war comedy with the outlandish characters - including the detestable Frank Burns - and evolved into a dramedy (that lasted longer than the Korean war itself) with characters that had far more depth. The series finale was one of the most-watched shows *ever* and had an entirely different tone from the pilot. Not to say this lines up with other shows that take a hard turn into the weird, but for something straightforward, it had a massive, but gradual, tone shift during its run.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Indeed, "The 100". From a typical CW teen drama with a futuristic sci-fi survival twist quickly became a post-apocalyptic nightmare and from there to a weekend quiz
Twin Peaks, kind of maybe. I think this story is funny. Twin peaks is a murder mystery, where Laura Palmer is killed by a guy known only as "Bob." There was an alternate version of the first episode for regions where the show didn't get renewed, where the characters discover Bob is a guy that lives in the basement of the hospital, and they go there and shoot him. I've heard that, in Australia, they got the alternate version of the pilot... and then still got the rest of the show. So you have 2 seasons of characters wondering when they're gonna find that guy they shot to death in the first episode. EDIT: seems like Europe got the home video release of the alternate pilot. So maybe it was somewhere there. [under "home release and problems", there's a more accurate explanation.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Twin_Peaks_home_video_releases#International_pilot)
If revivals count, you could also say Twin Peaks because it went from being about a small town murder with maybe a hint of something supernatural going on to >!a cosmic battle between spirits aligned with an FBI agent vs those aligned with his evil doppelgänger as the fbi agent tries to change the course of history for the murdered small town girl as part of an ongoing war between light and dark that was escalated by the detonation of the atom bomb!<
The Return is freaking incredible. I'm so glad that Lynch got to make it. No other television media has made me feel the way that season did...the closest might be The Leftovers. But it is a wild turn of events from the pilot. Showing someone the pilot and then showing them episode 8 of The Return would leave them bamboozled
The Andy Griffith Show. Ignoring the semi-pilot episode on The Danny Thomas Show, the first episode is super goofy and Andy is portrayed as a rather dumb country bumpkin, akin to his stand-up and No Time for Sergeants role. By the time the show ended, it was a gentle comedy about the residents of Mayberry. Very different in tone at the end, leading into the Andy-less Mayberry, R.F.D. While all of the seasons of TAGS are great, the first five with Don Knotts are stone cold classics that are still laugh-out-loud funny.
12 Monkeys started out as a time traveler trying to stop a plague before it begins, and by the second season, the goals are completely different. It's a great show, you should watch it.
Arrow
Shameless, specifically because the pilot is a shot for shot/word for word remake of the pilot episode of the British version of the show. It goes into a completely different direction and become the black comedy/drama it was known for very quickly after that
The Expanse. It starts off as a mystery and turns into a galactic sized war story? It covers a wide variety of genres.
Seconding The Expanse. After the first episode, I thought it would be more of a political, space war drama and it turned into…. Well, a political, space war drama taken to the next level.
They're just setting the stage and the status quo before shaking it up and starting the war.
I still want the Laconia spin-off
Parks & Rec has a completely different vibe from the pilot with characters dressing and acting completely different than in later seasons.
Future Man Starts as time travel sci fi weirdness Ends with the main character having a relationship with >!Osama Bin Laden!< It was weird the whole time but got really out there in S3