"The Girl in Question" was reviled by the fans for many reasons but mostly because Buffy was revealed to be dating an unseen figure named "The Immortal" who happened to be an old rival of Buffy's previous lovers Angel and Spike. This was for a long time the last thing known about her in the entire Buffyverse. The comic continuation revealed that this Buffy was actually another slayer impersonating her and that Andrew Wells lied to Angel and Spike as a prank.
The later seasons of Buffy did some Draco in Leather Pants-ing of Spike, as even after his Attempted Rape of Buffy, any criticism of him tends to get met with "he has a soul now". In Angel season 5, he and Angel have multiple conversations on how the evil they did is the only thing that will count and he got his soul for a woman, not because of any goodness.
In the third season finale of Bones, Zack is revealed to have been manipulated into becoming the apprentice to a cannibalistic serial killer and claims to have murdered a man. During an episode of the fourth season, he says that he didn't actually kill anyone himself, he just told the Gormogon where to find a victim and claims he would have killed the victim himself if the Gormogon had told him to. In his mind, this equated to having done the deed himself.
The comic book that the series is based on famously suffered from such a dark, bleak atmosphere and unlikable characters it was hard to care about what was happening. The series changes multiple characters, even the villains, to make them nicer and more palatable to watchers, in particular, the leads Hughie and Starlight make the whole show much more watchable by being genuinely nice people going through terrible situations. While the series is still pretty dark, it also relied more on making itself more darkly comedic in tone.
In season 1, some fans pointed out that Kimiko comes off as particularly underdeveloped and falls into multiple stereotypes and tropes of Asian women in fiction. Season 2 extends her screen time and participation in the plot and gives her a lot of development and a more proactive attitude.
The first season of Better Call Saul ends with the revelation that Jimmy's brother Chuck has been actively fighting his efforts to get a real job as a lawyer. This led to a lot of fans stating that if it hadn't been for Chuck's sabotage, that Jimmy would have never become the amoral Saul Goodman. The writers disagreed and had Jimmy change his mind about taking a job that Kim and Howard had arranged for him with a different firm (in the first season finale he had given up on his legal career and was planning to go back to being a con-man). It quickly becomes obvious that Jimmy never could have made it as a straight-arrow lawyer, and he's back to his old tricks a few episodes later.
In the fourth season, Spike schemes to break up the Scoobies by exploiting the existing tensions between the group, and then planting evidence to lure Buffy into a trap as part of Adam's plan. However, after all is said and done, Adam points out that Spike gave Willow the evidence, and Willow won't be speaking to Buffy now. Spike quickly goes out to fix his scheme. Word of God confirms that the writers themselves didn't think of that either and didn't realize their error until it was time for the next episode to air, so they added in Spike and Adam's exchange rather than rewrite the entire previous episode.
In the sixth season, magic was portrayed as akin to a drug, which was highly dangerous and addictive, and could even lead to users becoming "junkies" willing to do anything for a "fix," as happened to Willow slowly over the course of the season. Joss Whedon himself didn't like this development, and fans agreed; season seven's first episode featured a scene where Giles explicitly states that magic is not addictive, and it's explained that Willow's actions were actually due to her not using magic.
The Community episode "Repilot" dismisses the entirety of the widely-hated Season 4 (the only season not overseen by Dan Harmon) by claiming that the school had suffered a massive gas leak, explaining everyone's inconsistent and decidedly Out of Character behavior.
Quasi-Mammy, anti-science, fire-and-brimstone Christian Shirley was suddenly shown to have excellent grades in a later episode.
At the end of "The Daleks" the Daleks are all killed off, which caused the writers a problem when they became an instant huge success. "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" has the Doctor speculate that he's gone back to a time before they all died. Later stories simply ignore it, with some Expanded Universe stories and much commentary on the show taking advantage of the "Daleks" Daleks' weaker powers and different personality to suggest that they were simply a splinter faction of the main Dalek civilisation or surviving descendants of early experiments by Davros.
When Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes took over the show, they agreed that six-part stories were unnecessary, finding them overlong and padded, so they reduced them to only one big six-parter per season. Later, John Nathan-Turner did away with them entirely when he took over as producer in 1980 (the season before that also lacked a six-parter, but due to circumstances outside the producer's control; the six-part "Shada" had to be cancelled midway through taping due to an ill-timed workers' strike).
After the violent Sixth Doctor era the series tried this by becoming more light-hearted. Audiences continued to drop, with the Doctor coming across as a goofy clown. So the stories became darker and the Doctor became more mysterious. Though the series was cancelled after another two seasons, those two seasons of the Seventh Doctor's era became a Cult Classic.
The Doctor Who1996 TV movie included a scene in which the Doctor says that he is half-human; this was widely disliked and subject to Fanon Discontinuity. To ameliorate this, without upsetting the fans who enjoy this interpretation (Eighth Doctor Adventures doubled down on making him half-human), Moffat has stated that the Doctor did indeed utter those words, very carefully not specifying whether they were true. After all, the Doctor lies. "Hell Bent", the Moffat-penned Series 9 finale, has Ashildr/Me ask the Doctor if he's half-human (it has to do with the possibility that he is The Hybrid), but he only asks her if it matters what he is by way of reply, and the conversation takes another path from there.
Though it may not have been intended this way, the reveal in "The Christmas Invasion", that in the first day after regeneration, a Time Lord can perform drastic body alterations, has been seized on in Fanon as an explanation for Romana's notorious regeneration scene in "Destiny of the Daleks", where she appeared to waste several of them just to "try out" different looks.
In "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit", the Happiness in Slavery depiction of the Ood as a happy servitor race and the Doctor's acceptance of it as unproblematic were seen by many fans as gross breaches of the series's and the character's usual moral positions. Two years later the "Planet of the Ood" story returned to the same setting and revealed that the slave Ood were only happy because the evil humans had been lobotomising them and that the Doctor only accepted their servitude because he was a bit preoccupied with a planet orbiting a black hole and Satan trying to kill them all... shut it.
The Daleks got a multicolored upgrade in "Victory of the Daleks", and the bright, colorful Daleks were presented as what a Dalek would look like forevermore, the "New Dalek Paradigm," as they put it. It turned out even this Narm Charm-loving fanbase has its limits.note The "New Dalek Paradigm" were instantly compared to Power Rangers due to each having its own color and all having bright obviously-plastic casing. So the next time a Dalek had to be a threat, it was a sorta petrified-looking run-down one with no trace of its original color. Every Dalek appearance since then has had the old bronze Daleks as the vast majority if not the only design. The "New Dalek Paradigm" is apparently still around, but they're taking a backseat to their bronze immediate predecessor models.
A visit to the restored Dalek homeworld of Skaro showed Dalek variants from all across franchise history. The New Paradigm Daleks were not seen in any way, not even as background filler, letting us know they're as good as never having been. This also constitutes a 'throw' to one problem people had with "Asylum of the Daleks" — in that episode, the past Dalek variants people got excited for were only seen briefly, in light so low it's hard to tell the old ones from the new. The Special Weapons Dalek, which really got the fandom excited, was especially blink-and-miss. Not so in the return to Skaro — the old Daleks get as much screentime as the current model, with the Special Weapons Dalek getting to be the one to yell "EXTERMINATE THE DOCTOR!" as they mobilized.
In "The Crimson Horror", Ada Gillyflower's total lack of hesitation or regret in killing her abusive mother, the episode's main villain, may be a response to the hostile reaction of some fans to the ending of "The Idiot's Lantern", also written by Mark Gatiss, which was seen as arguing that people have a moral obligation to forgive their abusive parents.
In Matt Smith's last three episodes, Steven Moffat utilized disparate plot threads dating back to the earliest days of the revived series to negate the whole issue of the Doctor only having thirteen lives, in case the BBC felt like cancelling the series when the thirteenth actor left.
Clara's exit from the show is interpreted as a direct counterpoint to Donna's, which nulled her agency so the Doctor wouldn't have to watch another friend die. Here he tries to do it again but has the technique bounced back at him, so he's the one who forgets Clara as she gets to keep having her own badass adventures. In addition, it's a counterpoint to Rose's departure and Ten wrecking his next relationship with Martha because he couldn't get past it, as Twelve forgetting his key personal/emotional memories of her, but not the adventures they had leaves him far less likely to hold new companions to Clara's standard.
Her reappearance in "Twice Upon a Time" addresses complaints that "Hell Bent" retconned her death and its impact by confirming that she really did go back and die, in the end.
Also, many fans had begun to tire of the way all main companions' departures in the new series (save Martha) were a "tragically ripped away from each other, leaving both devastated" affair. This time it was Clara's choice and done in a way that leaves both characters on a positive And the Adventure Continues note.
There are some fans who have shown distaste for the Cybus Cybermen from "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel". After "The Pandorica Opens" aired, Moffat tweeted that this appearance of the new Cybermen were in fact the Mondas Cybermen; they just didn't have the budget to change the costume.
"The Shakespeare Code" attracted criticism from some fans over Ten's casual response to Martha's worries about encountering racism in early modern England, which was thought to be too flippant and dismissive of her genuine reason to fear. In "Thin Ice", Bill, the show's next black companion, expresses the same worries on arriving in Regency England, and Twelve discusses the issue far more seriously and maturely with her.
The treatment given Peri in "Trial of a Time Lord" can be considered an inverted "Author's Ruining Throw": in "Mindwarp" Peri has a spectacular death, having the brain of one of the villains transplanted into her (shaved) head before being gunned down by a horrified ally who liked her, King Yrcarnos, but several episodes later in the season finale this was cravenly undone as having been false evidence, with Peri having run off to be King Yrcarnos's queen instead. This was apparently intended to placate fans who would be upset at Peri's fate, but instead the retcon was decried by almost everyone, including Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant (who didn't even know this had been done to her character until long after the fact), and has been largely rejected by fans.
The Tenth Doctor's final words (and his attitude to regeneration throughout "The End of Time" in general) are mocked by a good chunk of the fandom for being overdramatic and making him Unintentionally Unsympathetic. Eleven is much more optimistic regarding regeneration and Twelve's apprehension in his final episode is treated with more finesse with his final speech being essentially "Dear Thirteen, it's your turn now."
Moffat's era got many accusations of suffering from Continuity Lockout not just from itself but also the classic series until it felt like the only audience the show was interested in were people who'd grown up with the old episodes. Some of Series 10 could be considered an answer to this, Moffat outright saying the first episode "The Pilot" could serve as a jumping-on point for new fans.
The Whittaker era crew put out a statement acknowledging the complaints about the severe underutilization of Yaz and promising to try harder with her in Series 12.
After Series 11 was criticized for a lack of familiar characters, an overarching storyline, and a Wham Episode, its 2019 New Years special and 12th series were filled to the brim with course correction: from the Dalek appearing in the New Years special, the Master in the first two episodes of the 12th series, the Judoon and even Jack Harkness showed up in quick succession, more focus on the Timeless Child, and the Lone Cyberman was revealed. Whamtastic revelations such as Gallifrey burned again and the "Ruth" Doctor on the run from the Time Lords brought back the heavy serialized feeling of the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctor Era.
Surprisingly enough, the announcement that Ryan and Graham would both be leaving the show after the 2020 holiday special was widely viewed as one. Despite both characters being quite popular, the fans largely agreed that Series 11 and 12 had suffered from having to split their attention between four main characters. Even better, this leaves us with just Yaz, who had easily been the most ill-served by the arrangement with many hoping this would allow her to finally bloom as a character.
The eccentric costumes in The Eternal Love prompted a few raised eyebrows and snarky comments, especially Jing Xuan's shoulder pompoms◊. When The Eternal Love 2 aired, viewers breathed a sigh of relief to see the garish costumes were replaced with more conventional ones.
Glee removed the new members of the Glee Club in Season 5 because of the fans who hated the new characters and direction old club members had taken. Instead, the show began to focus on what the old cast was doing out of the club.
Good Times: The season 5 episode "No More Mr. Nice Guy", in which JJ punishes Michael for joyriding in a stolen car with a friend, was likely a response to the viewers who believed that JJ wasn't a good role model for young African Americans with his buffoonish behavior throughout the series. This ultimately led to Esther Rolle, who played Florida, JJ and Michael's mother, leaving the show prior to the fifth season. JJ even explains to Michael that he didn't set a good example for him when he was his age a few years earlier.
In the seventh season finale of House the title character drives his car through Cuddy's dining room window in revenge for breaking up with him and escaping to a tropical beach. This caused a full-blown fan revolt with claims that House became no better than a psychotic murderous Domestic Abuser and that his stunt could have ended with the deaths of several people. The creators responded to this on Twitter claiming that House had made sure that everyone was gone by looking through the window which prompted the fans to point out that Cuddy's daughter was likely in the room and she wasn't tall enough to be seen. Come the season 8 premiere and we get a scene where House turns himself in to the authorities and explains that he had made sure that everyone in the room had left and that he knew that Cuddy's daughter was at a sleepover. Plus for an added bonus, after acting like an idiotic sociopath for most of the seventh season, he gets a Humiliation Conga in jail (being the janitor cleaning up after people intentionally pissing on the floor, for one) and the flanderization getting reversed, becoming more like his season 1 self again; still doing shitty things but a lot of Pet the Dog, especially with Wilson.
In Isabel, the styling of Ferdinand and Isabella resembles their real-life counterparts' historical portraits more in the second season than in the first. Ferdinand grows his hair to mid-length (although actor Rodolfo Sancho never shaves his beard) and Isabella starts using a white cowl after suffering a miscarriage in the season premiere (which fits well with white being the color of mourning for late 15th century queens). The latter was an explicit answer to critics who claimed that the show had modernized Isabella's look too much.
The reason The Jeffersons was created was because of this trope. A group of Black militants had approached Norman Lear and criticized him for portraying Blacks as junkyard owners or living in poverty, struggling to make ends meet. They wanted him to show their people in better living situations. Thus, Lear decided to spin off George and Wezzy from All in the Family and "move them on up" to higher society.
In the first film for Kamen Rider Decade, the very serious and nihilistic Doctor Shinigami suddenly appears, after being Natsumi's rather quirky grandfather for the whole season. Fans didn't understand. So, in the second film, they make him that way again. But this time, they reveal that he's under the effect of a "Doctor Shinigami" type Gaia Memory. Which is an obvious throw, as those are introduced in the next, only-barely-related series, Kamen Rider Double.
The series also tried to address the controversy around Tackle, the Second Rider from Kamen Rider Stronger, who was killed off and never officially declared a Kamen Rider, mostly due to the fact that she's a woman.
Kamen Rider Spirits tried to offer a non-sexist explanation as to why Tackle isn't considered a legitimate Kamen Rider.
Kamen Rider BLACK RX tried to mitigate the fan backlash over the series' Lighter and Softer tone (as well the general Sequelitis complaints from fans of the belovedKamen Rider BLACK) by bringing back the previous Kamen Riders as part of the show's final storyline. Prior to this, both Black and Black RX were supposed to have been part of a new continuity.
Lost: The producers originally intended for Paolo and Nikki to be major characters. After a fan revolt, they changed their plans by not only killing off the characters but doing so in an incredibly sadistic way.
At the end of Season 3 of The Mentalist, Jane kills Red John and sits peacefully waiting to be arrested. In the first episode of Season 4, it turns out that that wasn't Red John and he's found not guilty in a spectacular example of Hollywood Law, so the series can continue as before.
The Mandalorian: The fact that the Mandalorians in the first season never removed their helmetsnote Save for a brief scene in the finale where Din's helmet is taken off so he can receive emergency medical attention was seen by some fans as a massive Continuity Snarl or Retcon to the Star Wars lore, as the Mandalorian characters from both The Clone Wars and Rebels frequently appeared unmasked. The third episode of Season 2 rectified this by revealing that Din Djarin belongs to a very specific and devout Mandalorian sect that broke away from the rest of their people many years ago. When Din meets Bo-Katan, she explains that the majority of Mandalorians don't practice that specific cultural custom.
The third Midnight Caller episode, "After It Happened," was heavily criticized by LGBT and HIV/AIDS advocacy groups for its portrayal of a bisexual man who knowingly infects people with HIV. While researching the follow-up episode, "Someone to Love," writer Stephen Zito talked to some of the people who protested "After It Happened." He and guest star Kay Lenz also talked to a support group for women with AIDS, and some of their stories were used in the episode. As a result, "Someone to Love" was much better received, and was praised by many of the people who had criticized "After it Happened."
Never Have I Ever: The first season was criticized for casualIslamophobianote The scene during the Ganesh Puja where Kamala commiserates with a woman who was unofficially exiled from the community for marrying and then divorcing a Muslim man. The second season introduced Aneesa, an Indian-American from a Muslim family, who is portrayed positively by the narrative.
Once Upon a Time: Fans were hugely upset over how Robin Hood became Deader than Dead while in the same episode, Hook was revived through a literal Deus ex Machina. In an interview afterward, the Word of God stated that they choose to believe that Hades was lying about what the Olympian Crystal does to your soul and that Robin Hood is in a better place now, hinting he wasn't truly Deader than Dead. The premiere of Series 6 has Henry and Regina decide to believe the same thing, and the mid-season premiere heavily hints at them being correct, with the implication that Wish-Realm!Robin contains some portion of Real!Robin's soul. The series finale would flat-out confirm that Robin's soul survived, as we see it visit Regina in a vision that leaves his trademark red feather behind afterward.
Power Rangers Dino Charge: One of the complaints from Power Rangers Samurai was that the Samurai Rangers had Mega Mode for use in the Megazord but never explained why the Rangers couldn't use it in regular battle. So in "The Royal Rangers", Kendall introduces the Dino Drive mode, specifically stating it was just for when the Rangers use the Megazord.
A major complaint of the original anime was that The Reveal Usagi was the Moon Princess wasn't really a twist (given that Tuxedo Mask had a dream of the princess and she had Usagi's exact hairstyle). This series gets much more mileage out of the storyline that Sailor Venus is pretending to be the princess, including the choice to modify the flashback princess’s voice and face (complete with a different hairstyle that carries over in future appearances).
While Tuxedo Mask still plays a part in the fights over the span of the series, the Senshi are able to destroy a fair amount of monsters on their own even early on in the show.
The fact that the Senshi look no different in uniform than they do in civilian gear is a common source of criticism among fans (to the degree that Fanon says an enchantment prevents anyone from recognizing them). Here the girls all have normal hairstyles in their civvies and then transform into the more colorful and elaborate anime styles. This makes it more plausible that they wouldn't be recognized in public. Even so, Minako recognizes Rei as Sailor Mars instantly upon seeing her out of her senshi mode, and Nephrite recognizes Ami as well, though she doesn't recognize him.
The show provided a more manga-accurate version of Rei Hino after the original anime shifted her character to be more boy crazy.
A month after the Prison Break Season 3 finale, it was announced that, in part due to fan reaction, it wasn't Sara Tancredi's head in the box, and she would be back next season. The other big part of the decision was the fact that Sara had only been killed in the first place because of behind-the-scenes drama between the then-pregnant actress and the executive producers. By the fourth season, everyone was friends again so the character returned. And ironically got pregnant.
For years, the show was criticized by drag queens and fans of the culture for not allowing post-operative transgender women to compete, and the trans women that were accepted were forced to stop taking hormones and present as male when not in drag. Further, cisgender female drag queens ("bioqueens") were not allowed to compete at all. The show has since become more inclusive, welcoming trans contestants at all stages of transition, and the UK series introduced the franchise's first bioqueen, Victoria Scone.
The show has made other gestures as well to be more respectful of non-male contestants, such as removing the "You've Got She-Mail!" soundbite in the beginning of each episode, due to "she-male" being a slur against trans women. RuPaul also changed his catchphrase from "Gentlemen start your engines, and may the best woman win!" to "Racers start your engines, and may the best drag queen win!" (including re-recording the theme song).
In the first five seasons, the judges harshly criticized queens who didn't look properly feminine in drag and/or created male characters in acting challenges. This drew some scorn because not every drag queen goes for a high femme look, and Ru himself famously said "We're born naked and the rest is drag." After Milk from Season 6 became a fan-favorite as a "genderfuck" queen, the judges have since become a lot more accepting of androgyny.
A lot of adult viewers didn't like Elmo's increase in screentime with him having more than the other characters (especially since he's one of the few that speaks broken English...on an educational show), some even joking that the show had become "The Elmo Show". Later episodes would have him still get a lot of screen time but the other characters got plenty too.
Some parents complained about Don Music's Character Tic of banging his head on the piano because their toddlers were copying it, so they removed the character. This, however, caused some backlash with viewers wondering why they didn't just make him stop doing that instead.
Smallville: Season Seven ended with Lana, having just woken up from a Brainiac-induced coma, leaving Clark a Dear John video expressing her belief that she was only holding him back. However, not only were her fans unhappy with this direction, but her actress had been absent for the final five episodes of the season due to filming Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, and the recent writer's strike hadn't helped matters either. The very next season, in the penultimate episode of Lana's farewell arc, Tess Mercer reveals to Clark that it was all a lie: Lex's men kidnapped Lana and forced her to make the video at gunpoint in order to throw Clark off the trail. Tess even lampshades the Plot Hole of Lana somehow getting her hands on a video camera right after waking up.
Dr. Bashir of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was never the most popular character in the series. With a personality that seemed to vary from episode to episode, inconsistencies with his background, and the infamous "Mistook a preganglionic fiber for a postganglionic nerve" error (which is akin to an engineering student mixing up a wrench with a screwdriver). So midway through season 5, the writing team rolled out a full-on Retcon to explain it all: That he was an Augment, an illegal product of genetic engineering. And that he'd been acting the fool to fly under the radar. Unlike most retcons, it worked, with the Bashir for the remainder of the show being much better received by fans.
For the first three seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise, the show was criticised for wasting the potential of its prequel setting by neglecting the Romulans as recurring villains (rather than properly leading up to the known canonical Romulan War) and instead embarking on a long confused Myth Arc involving a "Temporal Cold War" which soon fell prey to The Chris Carter Effect, as well as for depicting the Vulcans as a race of hypocritical Jerkasses. When Manny Coto took over as showrunner for the fourth season, multiple Saving Throws were given: the Temporal Cold War was resolved in the two-part premiere, a three-part story involved a major spiritual revolution in Vulcan society that brought them closer to the aliens we knew and loved, and a major story arc throughout the season involved a resurgence in Romulan aggression which also served to forge alliances between the future founding members of the Federation. The Enterprise relaunch books manage to take this even further by retconning Trip's death into a faked death, as well as dealing with the Romulan War and founding of the Federation.
Actress Jeri Ryan returns to the franchise as Seven of Nine, this time being able to wear comfortablenote For the actress; the character barely even had a concept of comfort clothing and actually showing more emotionsnote Which was hinted at in the finale of Voyager.
A number towards Star Trek (2009), in particular, the destruction of Romulus.
The supernova that destroyed Romulus wasn't anything special, just a nearby star that was ready to go up and hit the Romulan planets.
Starfleet tried to help Romulus with evacuations, but Utopia Planeta was attacked by renegade synths that destroyed the shipyards and ignited Mars, destroying the evacuation ships. Admiral Picard tried to get some mothballed ships sent out instead, but since the evacuation was politically controversial to begin with, the Federation panicked and decided not to, thus making Nero's rage justified. It's later revealed that the attack on Mars was planned by a super-secret sect of Romulans who wanted to destroy all artificial life and framed the synths for the attack, also meaning that Romulus was destroyed because of a bunch of paranoid nuts and Nero's rage was justified, but at the wrong people.
Star Trek: Voyager: The Season 3 episode "Unity" was the series' first appearance of the Borg…and audiences found it disappointing. Series co-creator Jeri Taylor revealed that they canceled their planned season finale and wrote "Scorpion" to give fans what they were looking for. From the May 10-16, 1997 issue of TV Guide:
Taylor hopes the May 21 cliffhanger (part 2 airs in late August) will "keep the audience from feeling cheated" by the Borg's Voyager appearance in February's much-hyped but ultimately disappointing episode called "Unity", which was really more about a band of ex-Borg drones. Admits Taylor, "we were concerned that maybe that wasn't a big enough dose for the viewers, so we dropped the two-parter we had planned, and decided to write an all-out, slam-bang, Borg-as-villain adventure.
In the fourth season, Sam was revealed to be in a sexual relationship with the demon Ruby. Even putting Shipping aside, the fanbase took a major issue with this. As Ruby was a demon with no corporeal body of her own, she had to possess another woman to use for her, uh, interactions with Sam. By having sex with her, Sam was either raping the host (who had not given consent) or engaging in necrophilia (if the host was a corpse). The writers took a third option by revealing that Ruby's host was a comatose girl about to be taken off life support, whose body was still alive but spirit had moved on to the afterlife. Mileage varied as to whether or not this made the situation any less squicky.
In later seasons, the show began to place more and more focus on the Dean and Castiel relationship, including deliberate subtext and occasional jokes that their friendship is not entirely platonic. Some in the fandom took this as a possible legitimate intention on the writers' part to foreshadow an actual romantic relationship between them and were extremely excited at the prospect of the protagonist of a very popular, mainstream, genre show being openly bi. However, during season 9, one of the writers revealed on Twitter that Dean being bi was an interesting idea but that they had absolutely no intention of making it canon. This caused outrage from people who claimed the show had been queerbaiting — deliberately enticing queer audience members to keep watching with the promise of dearly needed representation without any intention of actually following through. During season 10, therefore, the authors tried to smooth things over with the episode Fan Fiction, in which Dean encounters Destiel shippers and states that while it's not the right interpretation, it's totally cool that they have their own interpretation of things. Reactions to this were mixed — some shippers liked it, but those who really wanted Dean to be bi were only the more convinced that the writers never understood why people wanted Dean to be queer so much in the first place.
A bigger attempt to counter the aforementioned "playing up Dean and Castiel's relationship just to bait queer viewers" accusations occurred in the final season when Castiel outright confessed his love for Dean. Fan reactions to this were mixed: while some fans were thrilled to finally get more than just subtext between Dean and Castiel, others viewed it as a cynical attempt by the show's producers to get last-minute diversity brownie points especially since Castiel died immediately after his love confession, effectively trading queerbaiting for another problematic LGBT trope.
In the crossover movie between Tensou Sentai Goseiger and Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, we're given the first cameo appearance of the Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, who transform into all Red Rangers. However, it's revealed in the first episode of Gokaiger that the only reason they could do that was because of the Ranger Keys, which they wouldn't get until the time between Gosei and Gokai. How do they solve that? Reveal that the team had been sent back in time on a mission by Domon of the Mirai Sentai Timeranger and they decided to give the two teams a hand while no one was looking. On the other hand, we're still not sure how it is that the Gokaigers keep their ability to turn into other Rangers after the past Rangers' powers were restored at the end of the regular series. Not that anyone is complaining.
The Umbrella Academy: Arguably the most hated storyline in the first season was the romance between Alison and Luther since it hinged on them being Not Blood Siblings. In the second season, it is finally discussed how messed-up their relationship is. Both Alison and Luther are shown to have moved on but still care deeply for each other. Also, when it's revealed that Lila was born from the same event that spawned the rest of them, Diego wonders if this means he had sex with his sister and is disturbed by the possibility. However, they ultimately continue their relationship in the third season, as they at least did not grow up together.
The episode that reveals how Sheldon adopted "Bazinga" as his catchphrase also makes it clear that his habit of saying it after pulling not-all-that-funny jokes was itself not all that funny.
You can tell just by watching the show that the creators have gone out of their way to not repeat the things that many have criticized The Big Bang Theory for. For instance, the show is presented as a single-camera, laugh track-less dramedy shot on-location as opposed to the outdated, but still widely used three-camera sitcom shot on a sound stage in front of a studio audience. The characters on Young Sheldon are likable and sympathetic despite their flaws, as opposed to the Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonists on Big Bang. (i.e. Sheldon having more redeeming qualities, Mary being less aggressive with her religious beliefs, George Sr. being a normal husband and father instead of the drunken, idiotic, misogynist described posthumously in Big Bang).
◊. When The Eternal Love 2 aired, viewers breathed a sigh of relief to see the garish costumes were replaced with more conventional ones.
