Early Installment Weirdness / TV Shows — P-Z

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P

• Compare the first (six-episode) season of Parks and Recreation to the second and onward, and they almost seem like two different shows:
  • The characterizations start off very different. Leslie Knope is awkward, overbearing, and somewhat incompetent rather than the enthusiastic and competent Pollyanna, Andy is a lazy Jerkass rather than the affable Manchild of the later seasons, Tom was Leslie's straitlaced Number Two rather than the "swag" obsessed Jerk with a Heart of Gold he later becomes, among others. It's obvious that the characters are based on the characters from The Office (US), where Leslie is Michael Scott, Ann is Pam Beasley, Ron is Dwight Schrute, Mark is Jim Halpert, Andy is Roy Anderson (with a little Andy Bernard thrown in), Tom is a mixture of Ryan Howard and Kelly Kapoor, April is Angela Martin, and Jerry is Kevin Malone and Toby Flenderson rolled into one. There was also a heavier focus on the government aspect of the show. Both were the result of the fact that Parks started off as a clone of The Office before it found its own voice and style.
  • The show's tone also started off as fairly bleak and cynical, with the premise essentially being "there's only one person in the government who actually cares, but she's an overly idealistic doofus who will never accomplish anything." When Leslie was made more competent in the second season, it made her idealism seem more justified and propelled the show to the opposite end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism from where it had started.
  • The show was originally going to have recurring Pawnee residents appear during town hall meetings. These characters appear in early episodes but quickly vanished as the idea got dropped.
  • The series was originally more overtly a Mockumentary as a reflection of it being a direct spin-off from The Office. However, while the characters still reacted to and spoke to the camera, this element was gradually downplayed (again as a result of the show finding its own distinct identity separate from the earlier show).
  • The relationships between may have seemed somewhat forced. This can be attributed to nearly all plots being work related until the sixth episode (which seems considerably more relaxed) and because the first season was rushed due to Amy Poehler being pregnant, meaning chemistry between cast members, such as Chris Pratt (Andy) and Aubrey Plaza (April), couldn't be used in the show until season 2.
  • After Ben and Chris were introduced at the end of season 2, they became core cast members and were promoted to the opening credits in season 3. Because of this, their absence earlier in the show may be disorienting whilst rewatching.
    • Similarly, the presence of Mark Brendanawicz during the first two seasons would also be disorienting as Paul Schneider left the show at the end of season 2.
  • There is also a severe difference in the openings of the first two seasons - the amount of credited actors is the same, but season 1 lasts a whole ten seconds longer, enough for the intro music to have an extra stanza.
• Anyone going back to watch series 1 of the Brit Com Peep Show will notice the, frankly, ridiculous music the show opens with.
• The People's Court: The first couple of seasons of the original 1981 series – especially the very earliest episodes – were markedly different than the show as seen today. Many cases were simple arbitrations, with rather bland, dull cases being heard. The litigants simply answered the judge's questions and rarely if ever tried to interrupt the other litigant, call him names or interrupt the judge while he was talking. Judge Joseph Wapner – himself far more patient than current Judge Marilyn Milian – rarely if ever accused litigants of outright lying, although he would call them on testimony he thought didn't seem to fit the evidence or if a litigant lacked crucial evidence (such as a dated receipt) that ultimately cost them the case. When the judge delivered his decision, the litigants – except to answer a direct question he might ask them – simply listened respectfully, and while some of the litigants were understandably disappointed with the outcome – although there were always a few exceptions – they generally accepted Wapner's decision in good stride or chalked it up as a lesson learned. Once the show became a hit and logged time on the air, a few scattered episodes with litigants similar to the current series made it to air, but overall the Wapner-era shows were far more sedate and Wapner rarely needed to raise his voice or put wayward litigants in their place.
• Early episodes of Person of Interest have lower stakes and a dryer tone. Finch doesn't anthropomorphize The Machine, much less think of it as his child, until episode 11 of the first season, although that scene was in 2005 and he had yet to do so in the present.
• Police, Camera, Action!
  • The series had a slightly different feel for the first three episodes; Alastair Stewart's British episode was emphasized a lot but then reverse Flanderization set in; Hampshire Police and Surrey Police footage went Out of Focus after 1995, and he started to wear less charcoal or grey-coloured suits, instead, in later seasons, began to take on a more casual look (except in situations where it was not necessary). Also, his tone changed from formal British accent to a more informal tone. The early episodes Police Stop! (later retitled to the show we know today), Police Camera Action! and Safety Last have a very different feel to later ones; the narration style seems different too. By 1997, the show was semi-Retooled, to mix foreign footage with British footage, leading to the show we have today.
  • In the 2007 reboot (well, as fans consider it, due to Adrian Simpson being the co-presenter), early episodes Speed Dating up to Stop Thief! have a different feel from later episodes, not to mention a 'go-to-middle-of-the-action' sequence, which was abandoned after Technocops.
• Power Rangers:
  • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers had a lot of weirdness early on. The unmorphed fights scenes were slower and had a few goofy moves, Alpha5 had a teddy bear, Zordon had an RP British accent, etc. Once the show got its Sixth Ranger, and grew out its beard, the show had found its identity, and most of the weirdness was ironed out. "It's morphing time" (with a G) was first said by Zordon, and wasn't something the Rangers always shouted - it was just a Title Drop and a mention that morphing was what it was time to do. It took a few episodes for "It's morphin' time!" to become an obligatory pre-morph call stated by the Red Ranger (though sometimes taken over by the spotlight Ranger). The first episode had the unmorphed Rangers wearing their Power Morphers as belt buckles (like their Zyuranger counterparts) unlike the rest of the show, where they were usually just hidden in the teens' pockets. The posing-routine-with-name-shouting wouldn't be established for many years and then was still rarely used until Wild Force, though there were a few instances of Sentai posing footage finding its way into MMPR episodes, with new dialogue and often going unnoticed due to the fact that all ranger movement is exaggerated while suited. Most notably, the zord summoning throughout season two was a standard roll call in Zyuranger (namely, the role call from when Burai/Dragon Ranger joined the team... which was used when Tommy joined the team).
  • In the greater Power Rangers universe it's interesting to see MMPR characters returning for a Reunion Show taking place later and with newer conventions that the series adopted, such as the elaborate movements made with the morpher. In Power Rangers in Space "Always a Chance" had Adam making dramatic arm movements with the old "belt buckle" morpher (though it is appropriately dramatic for the scene, where morphing could kill him), where all they did in the show was put a hand behind their back as they say "It's Morphing Time!" (as though to retrieve their morpher from their back pocket or something). Jason in Power Rangers Wild Force "Forever Red" had a similar morphing pose that he never did before, and fight scenes done with the MMPR Red Ranger costume had never been done with wire work before.
• The very first Puppy Bowl didn't have a Kitty Halftime Show.
• The first episode of Psych features a completely different female detective partnered with Detective Lassiter, who he is having a secret affair with. She's gone by the second episode, Lassiter is separated from his wife, and he has no UST to speak of with his new partner, Juliet, who subsequently appears in the rest of the series.

R

• Radio Enfer: The first season had quite a few things that made it stand out from the following seasons. For starters, the first two episodes took place in an entirely different room before the students moved to the more well-known one for the rest of the series. The music for the opening credits sounded a little bit differently. Also, Vincent's newspaper crew included three rarely seen students, instead of only him and Dominique (the latter being introduced in the second season), and they occupied the radio crew's former room instead of the radio crew's former CD closet.
• Rainbow: George is missing from season 1 of this long-running British children's programme.
• Raven: Series 1 is very different from future series:
  • Nevar, Raven's Staff of Power, the Last Stand, and exchanging 7-9 rings for an extra life were absent.
  • The Way of the Warrior was a challenge that anyone could volunteer to do rather than the last placed warrior having to do it.
  • The winner of the series won a boating holiday with their family as opposed to their own Staff of Power.
• Red Dwarf:
  • The first series took place entirely aboard Red Dwarf itself. The characters started getting off the ship occasionally in the second series, with the introduction of the shuttlecraft Blue Midget; then Series III introduced Starbug and started having the characters leave Red Dwarf more often than not.
  • The interior of Red Dwarf in the first two series was notoriously grey and dull, being influenced by the look of a submarine. All the sets were redesigned for Series III, now modelled after the Nostromo in Alien.
  • Everyone's costumes were updated for Series III as well. Rimmer's uniform went from a beige and grey shirt-and-tie combo to a shiny jacket and trousers. Lister abandoned printed T-shirts and Hawaiian shirts in favour of his iconic customised leather jacket. The Cat's suits got a lot more creative and varied in their designs as well.
  • Kryten became a main character in Series III, played by Robert Llewellyn. He had previously only appeared in one episode of series 2, played by David Ross, with a different makeup design for his head, a very posh English accent and a tuxedo. His personality is different as well, being less intelligent and with his only personality quirk being his obliviousness to the fact his crew has died. This is Hand Waved with some Unreadably Fast Text at the start of Series III that states that he crashed his "space bike" into an asteroid, and they found his remains and rebuilt him but couldn't restore his original personality. Lampshaded in series VIII where Kryten is briefly restored to his factory settings and behaves just like he did in his first appearance.
  • Other characters had some differences at the beginning as well. The Cat doesn't spend that much time around the other characters, preferring to wander around alone. Lister is less sharp in the first episode ("What's an iguana?"), left over from the original idea that his brain had been fried by drugs like Reverend Jim.
  • The first series included a story arc subplot involving Lister wanting to revive Kochanski's hologram to ask her on a date and Rimmer hiding the rest of the crew's personality discs. Subsequent series never really did this again, and were far more episodic in structure.
  • It was established early on that Lister had never worked up the courage to ask Kochanski out. This was later retconned as he and Kochanski having briefly dated and Kochanski dumping him.
• For the first few seasons of The Red Green Show, many things were different: Red was a lot more subdued, Harold's introductions of him were much longer (and usually accompanied by a pan across the set), and Harold would sometimes interrupt Red's monologues with scene transitions. The first season's episodes also did not end with the Possum Lodge meetings. There was also the second season, which had a "sitcom" feel to it — it introduced a large cast of characters (none of whom made it out of that season) interacting in story arcs with Red and Harold, as opposed to Red and/or Harold simply relating the story of the day back to the audience. (This change in tone was forced on by Executive Meddling.) The sitcom elements were reverted in the third season, at which point the show began to resemble its more familiar format.
• Rescue Me: Tommy was not yet a thrill-seeking dare-devil borderline suicidal maniac. Mike Silletti wasn't a complete moron, nor Sean Garrity. Sheila Keefe wasn't crazy and manipulative. Janet was mostly sane and sober and fairly compassionate.

S

• Sabrina the Teenage Witch:
  • The Pilot Movie had a few notable differences from the series. The setting was Riverdale, unlike the show's Westbridge. Hilda was the smart aunt and Zelda The Ditz (as in the comics) while it's the other way around in the show. Sabrina's rival was a blonde called Katie instead of the iconic Libby. Michelle Beaudoin's character was called Marnie in the movie and Jenny in the series. Salem also has a British accent. Harvey pined for Sabrina rather than the other way around, and Sabrina had a Romantic False Lead called Seth.
  • In both the movie and first episode, Sabrina is embarrassed by the Alpha Bitch and she turns back time to undo it. In the movie the aunts are able to do it themselves, but in the show they have to appeal to the Witches Council.
  • Within the show's first season, several character dynamics are different. Sabrina is a Shrinking Violet who worries about fitting in, with Jenny playing the confident best friend. Later on it's Sabrina as the confident one, with Jenny's replacement Valerie as the needy one. Harvey began as a dumb jock who mistakenly thought Libby was nice, before gaining some more intelligence in Season 2 and knowing exactly what a nasty piece of work she was.
  • The conflict in Season 1 was between Cool Teacher Mr Pool and the aloof Principal La Rue. From Season 2, Mrs Quick took on the Cool Teacher role, Principal La Rue was demoted to The Ghost and Vice Principal Kraft took on the antagonist role. Libby likewise was just mean to her lower classmates in Season 1, before getting bumped up to conspiring with Mr Kraft to antagonise Sabrina.
  • A major subplot in Season 1 is Hilda's on again-off again romantic history with Drell, head of the Witches Council. Season 2 demotes Drell to The Ghost and Hilda becomes a full-fledged Serial Romeo.
  • Zelda acts as the Only Sane Man in Season 1 and is a strict disciplinarian. Producers quickly realised the comedic potential for Zelda to get involved in slapstick too. As such, while she remains the responsible one, she gets numerous Not So Above It All moments and becomes a Bungling Inventor. She likewise gets sucked into the wackiness far more often than she had in Season 1.
• Saturday Night Live first started out as NBC's Saturday Night^note due to a very similar program called Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell airing around the same time on ABC — coincidentally, this SNL also featured future NBC SNL star Bill Murray, and it's also why every SNL episode opens with "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night!"., and came off as more of a variety show (despite the original idea of making SNL different from the variety shows that were prevalent at the time). In the premiere episode, the Not Ready For Prime Time Players appeared in only four comedy skits. Host George Carlin had three stand-up comedy pieces interspersed with the sketches but didn't appear in any of them, and there were two musical guests with two songs each, two stand-up comedian guests (including Andy Kaufman), and a performance by a bizarre early batch of Muppets in a strange prehistoric land (these Muppets weren't the ones like Kermit and Miss Piggy; these were ones specifically made for SNL that no one – not even the writers – liked). The second episode, hosted by Paul Simon, was nothing but musical acts (except for Weekend Update). However, before the first season was over the sketch comedy element of the show came to dominate.
  • Some of SNL's recurring sketches and characters have this:
    • The first sketch for "Appalachian Emergency Room" (a sketch from seasons 29 to 31 about rednecks explaining to the receptionist their Amusing Injuries) took place in a clean, white, free clinic-type waiting room instead of a cabin version of the aforementioned waiting room.
    • Stefon (Bill Hader's Camp Gay city correspondent with a knowledge of New York City's weirdest clubs) originally appeared in a one-shot sketch on the season 34 episode hosted by Ben Affleck as the estranged brother of a Disney screenwriter named David Zolesky (implying that Stefon's last name is also Zolesky, but a later Weekend Update segment implied that Stefon's father is David Bowie^note whether this means that Stefon was adopted or is David's half-brother is left to fan speculation). It wouldn't be until the Gabourey Sidibe episode in season 35 that Stefon would be a Weekend Update character. Also, in his first sketch, Bill Hader's Stefon looked more like a burned-out Club Kid than his later appearances and, most noticeable of all, Hader actually got through the sketch without cracking up (like an inversion of Rachel Dratch's Debbie Downer sketches, where she cracked up during the first sketch, but not in any others [though there were times where she came close]). Compare this sketch to this one.
    • Gilda Radner's character Roseanne Roseannadanna was another character who started out in a one-off sketch (a fake PSA, "Hire the Incompetent") and became a Weekend Update fixture later on.
    • "Celebrity Jeopardy!" started off with realistic categories and questions. Eventually, the sketch developed the ongoing gag of making the questions so ridiculously easy that it would seem impossible to get them wrong ("The Beatles' White Album is this color.") and yet the celebrities inevitably do so. Concurrently, Alex Trebek (as played by Will Ferrell) became a long-suffering Straight Man. Also, the sketch was originally conceived as a vehicle for Norm Macdonald's Burt Reynolds impression, but when Macdonald left SNL in 1998, Darrell Hammond stepped in and played Sean Connery, who was in the very first iteration as a supporting character, became Trebek's mortal enemy.
    • The original "Coffee Talk" sketches featured Mike Myers as the middle-aged male radio host Paul Baldwin who talked with callers calmly about "dogs, daughters, lofts and coffee ... you know, no big whoop." Since the sketch's basic joke (on the way the initial vowels are pronounced with a New York City accent) wore thin pretty quickly, Paul Baldwin soon became an older guy, and then Myers began putting on a dress and playing his then-mother-in-law, Linda Richman, as an excitable middle-aged Jewish woman with various cohosts of what was now just a standard TV talk show.
  • Despite being considered one of the worst seasons in the show's 30+ years on the air, season 6 (1980–81) had a very interesting real life Early Installment Weirdness in the form of cast member Gilbert Gottfried. Imagine, if you will, a Gilbert Gottfried who doesn't squint, has a full head of curly, Jewish hair, and didn't always talk in the grating, screechy, obnoxious voice that would later be associated with him.
  • The early "Jarret's Room" sketches had Chris Parnell as the college roommate that Jared (Jimmy Fallon) and Gobi (Horatio Sanz) would always prank. When Chris Parnell left the show in season 27 (and was brought back months later), he was replaced by Jeff Richards, and a Dumbass DJ character named DJ Johnathan Feinstein (played by Seth Meyers back when he actually was in sketches) was introduced.
  • Brian Fellow initially appears on Weekend Update, with a completely different personality and style of dress, in a piece mostly devoted to claiming various male celebrities are secretly gay and being offended when anchor Colin Quinn questions him. Several months later "Brian Fellow's Safari Planet" debuts, ultimately becoming a long-running recurring segment.
  • The first Bill Swerski's Superfans sketch actually featured Bill Swerkski, until a heart attack forced to turn over hosting duties to his brother Bob.
• The first season of Saved by the Bell is totally different from the rest of the series. Instead of being a high school in California, it's a middle school in Indiana. The students are a supporting cast and their teacher, Miss Bliss, is the main protagonist. This is the case because originally, the show was called Good Morning, Miss Bliss, and that was the premise. They changed this after realizing the kids had more potential for comedy plots. (The Miss Bliss episodes were later reedited and repackaged as an "early years" story arc within the main series.)
• Schitt's Creek: Early episodes feature far more cynical and bitter versions of the Rose family, but since the show is about them becoming better people this is justified and they really start to soften about the mid point of the first season. However, viewers who began watching in Seasons 3 and 4, around when the show's romantic comedy moments started going viral and the show was on Netflix, are often jarred to find that in the first season pansexual David has a several episodes long romance with Stevie and that Alexis is written as being in love with Mutt Schitt and her later seasons true love Ted is the hypotenuse of that triangle.
• In Scrubs, most of the main characters' signature quirks and personality traits weren't fully solidified until Season 2, but the first season's depiction of the various character relationships also differs noticeably from the rest of the show. Interestingly, many of those relationships directly involve Carla: several episodes in Season 1 focus on her dislike of Elliot, her tacit resentment of J.D.'s doctor status, and Dr. Cox's secret crush on her (setting up a possible Love Triangle with Turk). By Season 2, most of this was quietly forgotten as Carla settled into her more familiar role as Team Mom.
• Seinfeld:
  • In the pilot episode, Jerry calls Kramer by the name of "Kessler", which was the character's original name. There's a waitress character who was supposed to be the show's female cast member, but she was dropped and replaced with Elaine in the second episode. The diner isn't called Monk's, and the show is called The Seinfeld Chronicles instead of just Seinfeld. The iconic slap-bass theme song has also yet to appear. Instead it's a generic electronic keyboard theme.
  • Kramer is introduced by having him knock on Jerry's door instead of his classic Dynamic Entry.
  • Jason Alexander portrayed George Costanza as a Woody Allen wannabe until he realized that the character closely resembled his creator Larry David, and subsequently made the character angrier and meaner.
  • In the first two seasons, Kramer's schtick was that he was agoraphobic and many of Jerry's jokes revolved around his resistance to leaving the apartment. Because of this, he is completely absent from two early episodes: "The Chinese Restaurant" in Season 2, and "The Pen" in Season 3. In the Season 3 finale, this aspect of Kramer's character was completely done away with.
  • Similar to Kramer above, George is entirely absent from the Season 3 episode "The Pen", but Jason Alexander was so offended by being left out that he threatened to quit if it ever happened again. From that point on, every episode featured all four cast members.
  • In earlier seasons, episodes would always start and end with Jerry's stand-up routines, and they would even take place at various points in the middle of the episodes as well (the original premise of the show was that Jerry's interactions with his friends and routines of his life gave inspiration to his stand-up). These stand-up scenes were gradually phased out in later seasons, eventually disappearing altogether until the series finale.
  • In general the first few seasons are slower paced. There is generally a single A story, many of the scenes were word-for-word from Seinfeld's stand-up, there were much fewer scene changes with cheaper sets, and the characters were slightly more sympathetic. Also, there was less transitional music, and the one that was there tended to be more keyboard driven. On the DVD commentary of the second episode of the series, Seinfeld and co-creator Larry David remark that the episode is reminiscent of a high-school play in terms of pacing and set design, and marvel at the fact that they managed to convince NBC to keep the series going at that point.
  • The second episode "Male Unbonding" is the only episode in the entire series that doesn't follow the "The [X]" titling scheme. The reason the writers soon settled on the scheme was so they wouldn't spend a whole lot of time thinking of an episode name that people would never see anyway. Some episode guides have the title as "The Male Unbonding" to bring it in line with the others.
• Sesame Street
  • Early seasons were much slower-paced, and frequently relied on lectures (such as this really long, calming one about how milk is made), making it more in line with competitors such as Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and Captain Kangaroo. Also, some segments tended to repeat at least twice, since they acted like TV commercials. They abandoned this around the mid 1970s.
  • In the earliest seasons the inner-city setting was far more pronounced, since the sounds of busy city streets were always heard in the background.
  • Characters looked very different, too. Oscar, for example, was orange, and only his head was visible. Big Bird was missing most of the feathers on his head, and had the mindset of a dim-witted adult bird rather than a child. During Elmo's first appearance in 1978, he was known as "Baby Monster" and had a deep, gravely voice instead of his recognizable childish one. Plus, Grover was green.
  • Prior to Granny Bird becoming the only family member with an active presence in Big Bird's life, Season 1 featured a family album with parents and a younger sibling, and a story where Big Bird learns his older sister has laid eggs and he's become an uncle, a stark contrast to Big Bird's daydreams of a complete bird family in Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird.
  • Animated segments outnumbered Muppet segments, too. Also, the characters broke the fourth wall more frequently, addressing their audience as well as introducing and commenting on segments, as if they tied into each other more.
  • The first time the 1992 closing sequence was used, there were no sound effects at all, only the music and Big Bird's closing statement that "Sesame Street is a production of the Children's Television Workshop."
  • When Julia was first introduced, she once says a full, grammatically correct sentence ("No, it doesn't!"). Later episodes have her speaking in sentences of one or two words, that are often incorrect (e.g. "No hot.").
  • Alistair Cookie initially smoked a pipe (which he even ate at the end!) instead of the bubble pipe he has now.
  • The earliest years had covers of popular songs and showtunes such as "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Good Morning Starshine", as if coming after gigs on The Ed Sullivan Show but before The Muppet Show would debut. As more original songs would be written and the rights to obtain the pop songs would get expensive, this would become a thing of the past.
  • At first, the show was inconsistent on what Cookie Monster's real name was, with one skit having it as "Tiny" and another having it as "Harry". It would later be established that his real name is Sid.
• The first two seasons of Sex and the City seem a little less "chick show" than the later ones, with stories about male, non-love interest friends of theirs, a somewhat more cynical attitude and a lot less emphasis on fashion. The episodes would generally include at least one scene of people on the street giving their opinion on the main topic of the episode. In the very first episode, Carrie herself breaks the fourth wall a couple of times by directly speaking to the audience.
• The Spanish sitcom Siete Vidas was originally about David, a guy who had just woken up from a coma after several years, and his experiences as he rediscovered his sister, his neighbours and his old love interest. By the second season, the focus had largely moved to the sister and the neighbors, so David and his girlfriend were Put On A Plane and never heard of again except for Christmas specials.
  • The title itself was a reference to David coming back to life ("seven lives" is the Spanish idiom equivalent to "nine lives" - and that's why the logo has a black cat next to the title). Afterwards, the show took "seven lives" to mean that they followed the lives of seven characters - promoting or introducing new (but suspiciously similar) characters as the previous ones left - and became a Friends rip-off.
• In the first episode of HBO's Silicon Valley, the character "Big Head" is snarky and sharp-tongued much like the rest of the characters. As he's characterized as a Master of None in the next episode, he quickly devolves into the clueless idiot he is in the rest of the show.
• In the first few episodes of Soap Benson was very adamant that being the butler was his job. When the Tates were hosting a party and Bert was expecting his long lost son to arrive, he went to answer the door, Benson tripped him up. He very quickly changed to disliking doing particular tasks, which most fans remember him for, and his catch phrase was "You want me to get that?" whenever the doorbell rang.
• The first season of The Sopranos is a mild example, playing somewhat more like a lampoon of the gangster genre. It emphasizes the zaniness of Tony's two lives as a family man and a "Family" man. His wife gets this treatment as well. In one scene she expertly cocks and loads an AK-47 when she thinks there's an intruder. In following seasons she's just a typical housewife. The supporting gangsters are also constantly quoting famous mob movies, showing that modern mob culture is partially based on imitating fiction. This is de-emphasized in the rest of the show, though never completely goes away.
• Soul Train's first couple of seasons used a far different intro animation, featuring a childishly cartoony multi-colored train, rather than the classic big gray one, and the set invoked an old "juke joint" rather than the discotheque/dance club-type sets of the majority of the run. The 1971 pilot in particular seems odd: In addition to the above, there was a completely different announcer (with a higher voice and a more excitable style), the editing seems to borrow more from Laugh In than its counterpart, American Bandstand and instead of showing short clips of the musical guests in the intro, there the guests (Gladys Knight & The Pips, Eddie Kendricks, The Honey Cones and Bobby Hutton) were shown dancing among the rest of the "Soul Train Gang"
• Spitting Image pales in its first season compared to later seasons. The pilot episode had a laugh track (which was abandoned quickly from the next episode on). Certain puppets look and sound different because the voice actors didn't always comically exaggerate the voices of the lampooned celebrities in the first season. Many episodes in the first season follow plot lines that are continued like a chronological series, while later seasons were always stand alone episodes.
  • The Spanish equivalent, Las Noticias del Guiñol, started as a section in a talk show with a live audience and had the puppets appearing through a small window in a wall (i.e., like in a literal puppet show). It later became its own show and got longer sketches, actual sets, special effects, etc.
• Stargate SG-1
  • The original Stargate to the series.
    • Abydos is in the "Kalium galaxy", on "the other side of the known universe", instead of the closest system with a gate, Ra looks more like a Grey-type alien at the end instead of the snakelike creatures the series has, the Goa'uld language also sounds extremely different, Daniel's girlfriend/wife's name is Shau'ri instead of Sha're (that has more to do with Michael Shanks's difficulty in pronouncing the "au" diphthong) and the gate symbols on Abydos being completely different from the gate on Earth.
    • Daniel having to learn the language spoken on Abydos (which had naturally drifted from the original Egyptian) is a major plot point in the movie. With a few exceptions, the show is pure Aliens Speaking English. This was a conscious choice, however, as the producers felt that showing Daniel learning an alien language every episode would bog things down.
  • In the first few episodes of Stargate SG-1, the Daniel Jackson character was shown to sneeze a lot, a trait he carried over from the movie. It was so prevalent that he used up an entire box of tissues in one day, yet after the first episode the character sneezes, perhaps, two or three more times in the entire ten-season run. This was lampshaded in a very early episode by stating that Daniel is on heavy antihistamines (which served to protect him from the danger-of-the-week).
  • In the first few episodes of season one Samantha Carter is shown as Feminist to the degree of Straw.
    • The pilot has a particularly cringe-worthy moment wherein Carter defends her combat ability against Jack O'Neill's. After the scene, Amanda Tapping said she went to the writers to tell them "Women don't talk like that" (the "reproductive organs" speech makes a cameo appearance eight seasons later in "Moebius" only to be mocked by Carter as sounding ridiculous):
      Major Samantha Carter: ...and just because my reproductive organs are on the inside rather than the outside, doesn't mean I can't handle anything you can handle.
    • It was used again by "Puppet Carter" in the episode "200", as part of a gag about her tendency to engage in Techno Babble.
  • The pilot features an example of this crossed with Old Shame — it is the only episode to feature an instance of overt nudity (the sequence where Sha're is stripped and implanted with the Goa'uld symbiote Amonet), at the insistence of Showtime, which originally developed the series. Notably, series creator Brad Wright fought against the decision (made at the insistence of the network), and as a result, the first three episodes of the series resulted in the MPAA giving it a rare "R" rating for a television series. The scene was re-edited for the 2009 recut of the pilot episode, and all but excised completely from most syndicated airings.
  • The bit about Ra being a Grey in the movie is particularly troubling considering that the show did introduce Greys later on, in the form of the Asgard, allies of the Tau'ri. Word of God explained that Ra had possessed an Asgard prior to possessing a human. Why he changed back into one when he died isn't as easily explained, other than the idea that Ra used some form of non-standard Go'auld possession on his human host. It's also unexplained why this apparently didn't give Ra access to Asgard scientific knowledge, which was explicitly more advanced than Goa'uld science in the series, or how he was able to take over an Asgard considering they apparently had such powerful minds that one of them (Thor) was able to partially take over Anubis' ship via the device being used to pick his brain, while keeping it from stealing any Asgard secrets.
  • In early episodes the zat'nik'tel alien weapon disintegrates anything that gets hit with three shots from it. By the fourth season, nothing is shot three times with a zat-gun ever again (with the exception of the Kull Warriors whose armor is completely impenetrable to zat shots). The idea of disintegration is even indirectly mocked on a later episode.
  • Early SG-1 episodes also tended to ape early TNG a bit much, with heavy-handed aesops and the like ("The Nox", for example, had a heavy pacifism message that was both inapplicable to the SGC's situation and pushed Can't Argue with Elves too hard). This settled down roughly about the time Bra'tac first showed up in "Bloodlines" and was largely avoided in favor of straight storytelling afterwards.
  • The movie and the pilot had gate travelers being freezing cold upon exit, even explained by Carter. This was quickly done away with and supplementary materials retcon it as being caused by the SGC's McGyvered dialing system before bugs were ironed out.
  • Similarly, the gate first caused violent shaking, enough to be detectable as an Earthquake. This was quickly done away with by claiming they installed dampeners to prevent it, but how gates on other planets where the gate is just stuck on a rock or in a museum or some other such basic or unused location are supposed to have these dampers is anyone's guess.
  • The first instance of time travel in season 2 of SG-1 it was a very clear case of Stable Time Loop. However in every other instance in SG-1, as well as later series Atlantis and even Universe, time travel will always create an Alternate Timeline.
  • The pilot and first few episodes of season 1 has SG-2 and SG-3 play an important role as secondary characters with both acting as The Cavalry and SG-3 even explicitly being a team dedicated to that purpose. After the first season both teams are rarely ever seen and characters such as SG-3's leader are never mentioned again.
  • The role of SG teams changed dramatically between season 1 and season 2. In season 1 teams had specific roles, with SG-1 and 2 being recon, 3 being backup marines, and 7 being some form of research amongst others. In season 2 onward all teams' roles are generalized, with each having their role be based purely on the needs and availability of each team, with only SG-3 keeping its role as the all-soldier team sent as backup.
  • SG-1 had an entire Early Installment Weirdness episode with "Hathor". Among the many oddities: Goa'uld queens reproducing in their host bodies (as opposed to being born from the symbiote form), needing a human to mate with to reduce the risk of larva being rejected, Jaffa being created from humans with a device rather than a separate genetically modified subspecies, Goa'uld queens having mind control powers, and Jaffa being "healed" back to human form in a sarcophagus. The episode is heavily criticized by fans, staff and actors, and all but retconned out of of existence. And like anything else on Stargate, this gets Lampshaded when Hathor returns in another episode. She tries to entice Daniel by reminding him about their sexual encounter. Daniel replies that he's tried to forget about that.
• Stranger Things: The rules and lore of the Upside-Down and its inhabitants weren't really solidified in the first season, and as a result some aspects of the Hawkins Demogorgon and Upside-Down in general feel out of line with what's later established:
  • The Hawkins Demogorgon uses teleportation powers that none of its kind ever demonstrate again and its behavior is animalistic and aimless, seemingly only taking people as nests or food, and showing no indication of being controlled or directed by the Mind Flayer and Vecna to achieve their goal of conquering the human world as all the other Demogorgons are. The teleportation powers are especially notable, given that a fairly major plot point later on is the Soviet Union capturing a Demogorgon and keeping it trapped for study… something that wouldn't be possible if they all could teleport wherever they want like the first one does.
  • Speaking of Vecna and the Mind Flayer, neither is so much as hinted at in season one. Again, the Demogorgon featured there acts seemingly alone and by its own free will, albeit while still being a primitive, feral creature no more intelligent than any other predatory animal. From season two onwards, the Demogorgons and other monsters in the Upside-Down are firmly established as being Slave Mooks controlled and directed by the Mind Flayer and — by extension — Vecna, who are both far from mindless and orchestrate increasingly complex schemes to achieve their ends.
  • In season one, the scientists at the Hawkins Lab claim that the Upside-Down's atmosphere is lethal to humans after extended periods and while the land itself is also dangerously radioactive on top of it. This is even a minor plot point, with the characters having to wear a hazmat suit when they first go there to save Will and Will being sickly upon his return. While the idea of the Upside-Down having (thematic at least) connections to radiation and being inhospitable never really goes away, subsequent seasons dial this aspect back significantly, emphasizing the dangers as more just the general Death World nature of the place and the fact that it's controlled by the Big Bad, while also suggesting any physical dangers involving radiation, poison, or mutation require long amounts of exposure that most people are unlikely to experience. Season four in particular has the Party spending quite a bit of time in the Upside-Down during that season's big battle, and there's never any indication that this will have adverse physical effects on them.
• The Suite Life on Deck had a different feel in Season 1. More fantastic elements were snuck into later seasons (including fantasy dream sequences, more cartoonish scenarios and characters and in one episode even time travel^note granted, those elements were present from the first season including time travel) and, naturally, characters started to get Flanderized. Also, as with Wizards of Waverly Place, the literal look and feel of the show changed from Seasons 1 to 2 when On Deck also switched to Hi-Def and had a different post-production process, resulting in the same "washed out" look for the early footage in syndication.
• Late 2000s editions of The Sunny Side Up Show definitely fit this trope. Chica was originally meant to lay surprise eggs that would crack open segments, and the Sunshine Barn was cramped, cheap, and resembled a decorated office, given Sprout was a small channel at the time.
• Super Sentai:
  • The first two shows, Himitsu Sentai Gorenger and J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai, are different in many ways to the subsequent shows:
    • They did not have giant robots. For a while they were not even considered part of the franchise, although this was mainly due to right disputes between Toei and Goranger/JAKQ creator Shotaro Ishinomori. Also, in Battle Fever J, the third series, the mecha fights were kick-started by the human-sized monster calling his 'little brother' (a giant robotic duplicate) to avenge him as he was dying, (something of the likes wouldn't be seen in the series until more than 30 years later with Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters) and the Battle Fever Robo was not made from separate vehicles, but was a non-transforming robot stored on a non-transforming airbase. Make My Monster Grow and Combining Mecha debuted in the following shows.
    • While the uniforms of Goranger and JAKQ are very different from later uniforms, they still somewhat resemble the traditional concept of a Super Sentai uniform. Battle Fever J on the other hand, featured face-shaped helmets with two-eyed visors and sculpted noses (a style which was only reused for a One-Shot Character in Hikari Sentai Maskman). Miss America wore a blond wig on her helmet and Battle Cossack is notable for being the only main member on a Sentai to wear orange until 35 years later with the arrival of ToQ #6. The goggle-like visors were not introduced until Denshi Sentai Denziman and the scarfs were eliminated after Dai Sentai Goggle Five.
  • Chouriki Sentai Ohranger: Olé vs. Kakuranger, the first film in the Super Sentai Vs. Series (not counting the earlier J.A.K.Q. vs. Goranger movie), had a slightly different title format than the subsequent Vs. films and the Kakuranger's giant robots are not even present.
  • J.A.K.Q. vs. Goranger established that various Ishinomori heroes existed in that continuity, including Kikaider, Kamen Rider V3 and Kamen Rider Amazon. This was never mentioned again afterwards - Super Sentai series were treated as separate universes until Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger and Kamen Riders and Sentai heroes wouldn't meet until the crossover between Samurai Sentai Shinkenger and Kamen Rider Decade.
  • A minor example is that the first three Sixth Rangers had vests. While the next proper Sixth Ranger wouldn't be seen until Megaranger sans vest, the vest wouldn't reappear until Hurricanger and Abaranger only to vanish again. Gokaisilver sort of had one with his Gold Mode power up.
  • When Ressha Sentai ToQger first appeared in Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger vs. Go-Busters, they had a few differences in their roll call- specifically, their final pose used in the show is instead a build up to a more traditional "Super Sentai" Stance. Also, behind them in the scene their team name is transliterated as "Tokkyuger".
  • For the couple of years Sentai had the next years team make their first appearance in the previous shows Crossover this pretty much always happened as things were not quite ironed out yet with the new team, Catchphrases were different, powers and equipment worked differently, personalities weren't quite worked out yet etc. For example Zyuohger's cameo had Tusk very loud and Amu almost royally polite when their personalities in the actual show are quite different. Kyoryuger's cameo had some of the team show up late because they were busy with their personal lives something that the show had in the first few episodes but was dropped by the time the team fully assembled. In the Gokaiger's first appearance they would call out the Ranger keys they were about to use which not only didn't happen in the show but when that appearance was revisited in the actual show (when they time traveled back to it), the extra lines were cut out.
  • The franchise's US DVD releases from Shout! Factory suffered from this, due to them not knowing either how to properly market it or design the DVD sets for it. Initially, Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger had "Super Sentai" plastered in front of it on online marketplaces while the DVDs would just say "Zyuranger", the subtitles would translate the name completely, and the subtitles themselves were a disgusting yellow rather than white like they would be from Kakuranger on (this one goes for Dairanger as well), which made them feel unofficial. Later sets would rectify these by having the official transliterated names on the covers and menus and would leave them untranslated (aside from Gingaman's name being translated in the opening title sequence and not in the episodes proper) and would have the subs be in white. The odd translation error and whatnot occasionally slips through, but the sets are much better off now. Also, the box art for the first couple of sets showed the heroes out of suit in order to better distinguish them from Power Rangers; later sets would show the suits instead, though Ohranger splits the difference by having a shot of the team in suit, but with their helmets off.
• Supernatural:
  • Watch the later season one episodes and onwards and remind yourself that at the time of the pilot, Dean and Sam haven't seen each other in four years and are not on good terms. Both brothers went through a lot of character development in Season 1, and a big part of that was that, as adults and no longer under their father's overwhelming presence (a presence that had mostly previously pigeon-holed them as "the obedient one" and "the rebel"), they understood and appreciated one another far more than they once did. For example, Sam only fully understood in Season 1 everything Dean had done for him when they were kids, and everything Dean had had to shoulder that Sam hadn't been aware of. Dean, for what seemed to be the first time, really understood what a misfit Sam had felt like in their family, how little he'd understood of their "mission," and that his independent streak was actually a good thing. Their new understanding of one another, combined with fighting side-by-side and saving each other's lives on the regular, combined with their isolation from general society, combined with some old dynamics between them (prank wars, Dean's protective streak), made them far closer and more reliant on each other than they potentially had been as kids, when they both may have revolved far more around their father than around each other (they were left alone as kids and had to rely on each other then, but due to their age difference and differing outlooks on life, potentially didn't view each other as emotional confidantes, though YMMV there). It was no accident that their relationship seemed to deepen quite a bit after the argument in "Asylum" and "Scarecrow," because they actually resolved some of what caused their estrangement. But yeah, their relatively casual reconciliation after a years-long estrangement is quite the contrast to later seasons, when the brothers split up for 1-2 weeks MINIMUM after arguments, angst like separated lovers the entire time, then have emotionally fraught reunions.
  • Demons in their first few appearances had some vaguely defined abilities that don't quite match up with their appearances in later seasons. First, that they would flinch upon hearing the name "Christo," which would seem to be a fairly easy way to check if a person's possessed or not, but this is never used again after "Phantom Traveler". When Meg is revealed to be a demon, the heroes are initially unsure if she's possessed by a demon or actually is a demon, which implies at least some of them can take physical forms. Later seasons establish demons only exist as incorporeal smoke and must possess a human to be able to do anything. The devil's trap/exorcism ritual are introduced as being extremely obscure, but quickly become the go-to methods of dealing with demons, not just for the Winchesters but seemingly all hunters. And finally, the special effect used for the demon's incorporeal form in "Phantom Traveler" is noticeably different than the one used in later episodes. Also, it is established halfway through Season 3 that all demons are former humans whose souls are so twisted by their time in Hell that they're no longer human (and as they're dead, this precludes them having physical forms of their own). In the Season 1 finale, it was implied that they were a self-reproducing race of their own, because the Yellow-Eyed Demon (Azazel) told Dean that Meg and a demon Dean had killed were his daughter and son (and Meg had addressed him as "Father" in a previous episode). Also, a monstrous girl-like apparition called an Achiri was referred to as a demon in the Season 2 finale, and was controllable by Ava because of it, but all demons since then have been black smoke possessing human bodies. Likewise in the season 1 episode "Shadow", Meg summons a Daeva, an incorporeal demon that can kill people without taking a human vessel, something that even high ranked demons introduced later can't do.
  • In the premiere of Season 2, Azazel is able to possess Tessa, a Reaper. Reapers are later established as a subset of angels.
  • In the Season 1 episode "Faith" the Reaper has a very creepy appearance, with wrinkly gray skin, sharp teeth, and a lot of eye shadow. All other Reapers in subsequent episodes have appeared as normal humans. This may have been Hand Waved by Tessa saying many Reapers take A Form You Are Comfortable With, however even when we see her true form it doesn't look anything like the original Reaper (being a skeletal ghost instead of a flesh and blood monster).
  • Vampires were also said to be extremely rare in their first appearance, to the point that John Winchester, a hunter of 20 years, believed them to be extinct before the events of "Dead Man's Blood". Nowadays, they're probably the most common type of monster on the show.
  • Episode titles in Season 1 are brief and announce the Monster of the Week or a theme ("Wendigo", "Bloody Mary", "Faith", etc.) while in later seasons they are often pop culture references.
  • Werewolves were stated in one early episode to be fictitious creatures based off exaggerated accounts of real shapeshifters. Later seasons clearly establish that werewolves and shapeshifters are two separate entities.
  • The show's signature use of "Carry On Wayward Son," doesn't occur in the recap of the first season finale, but rather for the episode immediately preceding the finale.
• Much has changed on Survivor since its debut in 2000, especially within the first few seasons of the show.
  • The cast of Borneo made numerous mentions of the fact that they were playing a game, and discussed how their actions would be judged by the "audience" watching at home (noted in Colleen's "We are on a game show!" quote). This was rarely, if ever, brought up again in later seasons.
  • Contestants in Borneo were voted off for making alliances instead of voting emotionally - you'd be hard-pressed to find an instance in the later seasons where the contestants didn't forge alliances in the first few days of the game. The contestants in the first few seasons also took things very personal - Richard Hatch and Kelly Wigglesworth were painted as villains for, respectively, forming an alliance/using strategy and winning a string of challenges to save herself after being seen as useless by her tribe.
  • Jeff Probst didn't have the show's terminology down correctly, and would often mix up the names of the various challenges and ceremonies. The contestants were also confused about the name of the different gameplay elements (for instance, B.B. referred to the Immunity Challenge as the "Indemnity Challenge"), and sometimes made no effort to complete the challenge (like Rudy's infamous "I don't know" responses during one memory challenge).
  • Several of the challenges in the first season were based off popular works like the then-recently released The Blair Witch Project. Later seasons had little, if any, reference to any piece of popular media.
  • The merge was instead called a "merger" in the first season, and the players knew in advance when it would occur. It happened at the same time in the next few seasons, allowing the show to do a twist in Thailand where the tribes were brought together on one beach and incorrectly assumed they had merged, when in fact they had not. In more recent seasons, the merge time has varied in order to keep the players guessing about when it will happen.
  • Nearly every challenge features non-stop play-by-play narration by Jeff Probst. In the early seasons, this was edited out, and all we heard from Jeff during challenges was occasional words of encouragement to the players.
  • The shooting style changed greatly from the first two seasons. The production crew seemed apt in Borneo and Australia to focus on "slice-of-life" scenes instead of predominantly focusing on the strategy or tribe politics. In addition, scenes shot during natural disasters and accidents (see Michael Skupin's burn wounds or the camp flooding in Australia) seem much more unfocused and panicked, with included interviews by the medical staff.
  • There was no tribal switch, Exile Island or Hidden Immunity Idols in the early games, meaning they were played slower and more methodically, where survivors didn't have the luxury of finding a "free pass" to the next round.
  • In the first season, Jeff actually announced the winner on the night of the final votes, rather than a live segment. In the second season, instead of announcing the winner, Jeff, to the shock of the players, announced that the winner will be announced at Los Angeles in a live segment after the show's finale is broadcasted on television, then promptly left the island via helicopter (the live segment of the final episode opened with the players at Los Angeles, waiting for Jeff's helicopter to arrive). Each subsequent season's live segment presents Jeff's announcement of the winner to seemingly take place on the island, until a Studio Audience is suddenly heard cheering at the reveal of the winner, cuing a Reveal Shot showing that the players are actually at a studio. However, this changed back starting in Survivor 41 and 42, where the winner was revealed on the island. According to Jeff this change will remain with future seasons.

T

• Tales from the Crypt: In the first season, the Crypt Keeper looked rather different than how he looked in later seasons, wearing a hood and having no hair. He also seemed more refined when discussing the intros to the stories in the first season- saving his puns for after the story was over. Compare this to later seasons where he drops puns in all of his appearances.
• This happens fairly frequently in That '70s Show:
  • In the early episodes, Hyde has a crush on Donna. This only lasts a little while before that subplot was thrown out, although, unlike many of the other examples on this page, it wasn't entirely forgotten.
  • The first season also features the lack of Idiosyncratic Wipes (they didn't start using the wipes of the cast dancing in front of the trippy backgrounds until the second season) and a different version of "That 70s Song" (performed by rock singer Todd Griffin; the one everyone remembers was performed by Cheap Trick and debuted in the second season).
• Top Gear:
  • A fan from later days might wonder if they've downloaded the wrong show. The Stig is wearing black, James May is nowhere to be seen, Clarkson seems aware that he's hosting a television show instead of just behaving like a child and some guy named Jason interrupts once an episode to give you incredibly boring tips on buying your next car. And that's before you throw in more disconcerting stuff like a slightly different version of Jessica and the audience not cheering through transitions.
  • Go back even earlier, to the pre-relaunch seasons, and you'll find that Top Gear was a magazine style programme hosted by a large ensemble cast of presenters and made up of serious road tests of high performance cars. It had no wacky challenges, no Richard Hammond (and James May only joining in the original programme's final seasons), not even The Stig. The only thing it had in common with the current incarnation of the show was the theme music and the fact that Clarkson was in it (although he was just one of the many presenters, and not one of the main hosts either, and not to mention he was putting on a posh accent in those days). Of course, these episodes are not syndicated these days, so Keep Circulating the Tapes.
• The Tomorrow People (1973): The Origin Story from the 90s series had a different theme song and different visual and sound effects for teleportation. Adam had long hair. Megabyte looked younger. Lisa and Kevin were prominently featured (Lisa would never appear again, Kevin would disappear after a supporting role in the next story). Adam and Megabyte didn't interact with each other until the final scene despite being best friends in subsequent episodes. There are also lengthy scenes on the island where the Tomorrow People's ship is buried and Tomorrow People jaunt into the sea around it when breaking out, two elements dropped outside of stock establishing shots.
  • Similarly, the first season of the 70s series has the Tomorrow People surrounded in an aura of light when they jaunt instead of just fading in and out (there is a Handwave of this at the start of Season 2). There's no Elizabeth, a mainstay of later series, with Carol featuring as the female lead instead. There also seems to be less direct involvement with the Galactic Federation: On encountering their representative, Steen, the TPs are utterly bewildered at the idea of an adult with their powers. Also, John is said to have built the lab and the TIM computer, which jars horribly with later seasons when Philip Gilbert (who voiced TIM) appeared physically as Federation representatives whose voice TIM was modelled after: It was retconned that John merely assembled TIM using components sent by the Federation.
• Total Divas:
  • Season 1 had a full set of opening credits, complete with soundbites from each cast member. Starting with Season 2, only a title screen was shown and the credits were dropped.
  • Season 1 had nearly all the performers referred to by their real names, with only Eva Marie going by her stage name^note Although the Bella Twins were still treated as if 'Bella' was their real last name, they were referred to as Brianna and Nicole; Nattie and JoJo are likewise just nicknames of their real names. From Season 2 onwards, any performers are known under their character names - such as Summer Rae, Rosa Mendes, Alicia Fox and Paige. This is referenced whenever someone who was introduced in Season 1 is shown - as there will usually be a title card with both names. For example, 'Ariane/Cameron'.
  • Season 1 also portrayed Nattie as The Mentor and Cool Big Sis of the group, there to help the other girls out. Possibly to differentiate her from Naomi, Nattie was shown in a far more eccentric light in Season 2 and the show amped up her rivalries with the younger women. Naomi then took on the Only Sane Man role.
  • Season 2 started showing flashbacks and incorporating far more Manipulative Editing that hadn't been as prominent in Season 1.
  • A more meta example is that Season 2 was the only time the show tried to sync up the episodes with WWE's regular programming - featuring matches built off what happened on the latest episode. In Season 3 this was gradually phased out.
• The first season of Trailer Park Boys utilized its pseudo-documentary format far more thoroughly, with an actual sound and cameraman following Ricky and Julian. Ricky would complain about having to drive them around, other characters would comment on them and occasionally react negatively to being filmed, they even become a plot point in one episode when Julian is forced to drive one of them to the hospital after he is shot while Ricky and Julian were breaking into a shed. Later seasons partly dropped this, with only the camera-style and one-on-one interview segments, along with only a handful of references to an actual camera crew being present, being kept in.
  • Bubbles in the first season also had a much different attitude towards Ricky, treating him with outright hostility whenever he was around, and only being friendly with him in a handful of situations (such as when Ricky needed him to take part in an amateur porn film). This flies in the face of their relationship in later seasons (and a christmas special which acted as a prequel to the series), where it is established that they (along with Julian) have been friends since childhood.
• The first few episodes, or in general the entire first season of True Blood, are quite different from the series onwards. For one, the setting was much more dreary, gloomy and more horror-esque, the characters were more realistic in their emotions and vampires seemed to be more archaic, rule-bound and "cool". The first season resembled the first Sookie Stackhouse novel quite well, and followed the books' mystery structure. The second, third and fourth season have since discarded the first season's gloom and have become even sexier, gorier, bloodier - and yet, also much more like a soap opera, with a huge cast having their own issues - many of them not even supernaturally related. In addition, the structure of the books was ignored in favor of very loosely adapting plot elements. The True Blood fandom remains divided over which version of the show was better; the dark, brooding first season, or the action-packed, character-focused later ones.
  • Special effects have also drastically changed over the seasons. In the first season, vampire fangs ran out (like they did in the books), suddenly appearing out of the blue and slowly sliding out. Starting in season 2, vampire fangs began coming out more rapidly and aggressively, now also producing a "click"-sound as if someone's loading a weapon.
  • In the first season and second season, vampire death was portrayed differently as well. A vampire who was staked would slowly dissolve and a vampire who burnt in the sun (like Godric) would catch blue flame and turn into dust. Come season three, vampires started exploding on impact, especially when hit with a wooden bullet, and popping like balloons when staked. Vampires burning in the sun now turned into goo as well. It becomes really weird when you come back to this dialogue in season 2.
    Steve Newlin: [on staking vampires] I hear it makes them explode.
    Jason: Nah, they kind of just.. fall apart.
  • Sookie's southern accent is much thicker in the first season. Anna Paquin was cranking her "Rogue" voice up a notch.
• Early episodes of The Tudors can appear very surprising to viewers only familiar with the later episodes due to the surprising lack of deference shown to Henry VIII by several of his courtiers. Several characters address him simply as "Henry" rather than "Your Majesty" (in later series, only the Duke of Suffolk ever does, and even in his case rarely), and close advisors explicitly telling Henry he is wrong is far more common. Indeed, in the second episode Thomas More actually physically manhandles Henry and not-so-subtly orders him to keep quiet. Justified in that Henry's authority grew with his reign's longevity and his growing experience of ruling.
• The first season of The Twilight Zone (1959) did not feature the iconic theme or Rod Serling appearing at the beginning of the episode. Instead it featured a shorter, less memorable theme, and Serling introducing the episode in voiceover. Several episodes also featured Serling giving a narration about halfway through. The famous theme and Serling's on-camera introductions both started with the second-season premiere.
• Twin Peaks is set up so that almost every episode covers a day. Yet, there is no effort to maintain continuity with hairstyles for Lara Flynn Boyle and Sherilyn Fenn. They both have short hairstyles (especially Sherilyn Fenn) in the first season, but let their hair grow out for the second making it look like their hair was growing about an inch a day. Being that it's a David Lynch show, the weirdness probably wasn't a concern. Additionally, the pilot episode used different sets for the RR Diner, the Great Northern Hotel and a handful of other locations, and the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department features at least one officer who never reappears in later episodes.

U

• Ultra Series
  • Everyone knows the franchise is all about giant monsters battling the heroic Ultramen, but less known is that Ultraman wasn't a part of the franchise until the second series. Indeed, Ultra Q, the first installment in the Ultra Series features no superhero action, but instead sees a motley group of ordinary folks who come across all sorts of strange encounters with kaiju, aliens, and even weirder phenomenon in the style of The Twilight Zone (1959) and Japan's sci-fi films of the period. And then after Ultraman came Ultraseven, which eschewed the rampaging kaiju for alien invaders in stories closer to Star Trek or Doctor Who than to Ultraman and Godzilla. The Ultra Series as known today only began to take shape with Return of Ultraman.
  • Ultraman have the Ultras themselves, with Ultraman being uncharacteritically violent in fights (even assaulting harmless kaiju, like Gavadon who's only trying to sleep and Seabozu who accidentally crashed on earth and wanted to find a way home) and performing some rather brutal overkills and taunting wounded kaiju. In the finale, Ultraman's superior Zoffy even shows no concern for the life of Ultraman's host, Shin Hayata when separating him from Ultraman, requiring the latter to talk him out of leaving Hayata's body to die and letting him heal the human.
  • Return of Ultraman, despite being the Franchise Codifier, have it's share of oddities:
    • The first sixteen episodes seems on the fence regarding whether the main Ultra hero is supposedly a new character or the original Ultraman (hence the now-Artifact Title), said Ultraman is unnamed for his entire series (he was later christened "Ultraman Jack" after Tsuburaya runs a poll sometime in the 80s, a decade after the show ended) and using attacks similar to the original Ultraman. Ultraman Jack eventually gains his iconic weapon, the Ultra Bracelet, and from that point onwards Jack develops his own identity. The original Ultraman eventually returning in the episode "When the Ultra Star Shines" confirms that yes, they're two different characters, and Ultraman Jack's appearances later in the franchise will call him as such.
    • Ultraman Jack's first kaiju decapitation is done on Sadola (in episode 3) via the Ultra Slash, an attack borrowed from the original Ultraman. Further cranium removals by Jack are done with his newly-obtained weapon, the Ultra Bracelet, and Jack's Ultra Slash wouldn't appear in his show (save for video game spinoffs) until five decades later in Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Absolute Conspiracy.
    • The series finale sees Ultraman Jack refusing to let his host, Hideki Goh, transform to fight a monster. No such thing happens further down the franchise.
    • In early episodes, Kishida was a total hothead who would get mad at Goh (Ultraman Jack's human host) just for questioning him. It was more noticeable in the two-part episodes "Two Big Monsters Attack Tokyo" and "Battle! Monsters vs MAT". Thankfully this trait fades after a while by making him strict but reasonable who isn’t afraid to hide his smile from time to time.
  • Ultraman Ace is the first installment that veers into superhero-action territory with an introduction of the first Big Bad, Yapool. In it's debut and appearance in episodes 1 - 22, Yapool is a collective group of aliens called the Yapool-Men who operates from a different dimension, rather than a single entity, until audiences finally sees Yapool as a single, giant kaiju-sized opponent (dubbed "Giant Yapool" by the show) where the latter form would be representative of Yapool in subsequent installments. The Yapool-men concept wouldn't appear in live-action all the way until Ultraman Decker, in an episode celebrating the 50th anniversary of Yapool's debut.
  • The following show, Ultraman Taro, have some oddities in it's early episodes. Namely, the pilot implies the titular Ultra was Born as an Adult through a ritual by merging him with a deceased human named Kotaro Higashi. Later installments, like Taro's sequel movie Ultraman Story would retcon his origin by showing Taro growing up as a child.
    • To a lesser extent, Taro is the first Ultra whose human host needs to holler the Ultra's name aloud (TARO!!!!), which he... doesn't, in the first dozen or so episodes. Higashi yells Taro's name before his transformation a quarter through the show, and subsequent series (Leo, 80, etc) would follow suit.
  • Ultraman 80 begins mostly as a school drama with the titular Ultra's human host, Takeshi Yamato, assuming the role of a schoolteacher. The school setting was abruptly dropped one-third into the show and discontinued, with the series' remaining episodes following the sci-fi / kaiju theme of it's predecessors. Turns out it was the results of some Executive Meddling who disagrees with the school plotline, which leads to some Creator Backlash - including series producer Noboru Tsuburaya. The school storyline does get a proper conclusion a quarter-century later in Ultraman Mebius.
  • The spin-off miniseries, Ultra Fight, gets rebooted with it's first installment, Ultra Zero Fight having its share of oddities as well. There is the absence of an actual Big Bad, lack of a coherent storyline (it seems to run on a Random Events Plot starring Ultraman Zero) and the entire series is a Bottle Episode, with Ultraman Zero being stuck on the same planet from episode 1 to 12.
  • Ultraman Ginga is the first installment among the "New Generation Ultra Heroes" line and in retrospect, contains its share of oddities. It's made on a shoestring budget (Tsuburaya was recovering from a huge recession at the time) and it shows with a cast consisting almost entirely of college-age teens, the storyline being a Slice of Life drama, and the monsters appearing in the series are all recycled from previous installments. Ultraman Ginga himself and the monsters also runs on Your Size May Vary a few times, with trees and telephone poles standing to their waists in a few episodes where the penultimate fight takes place in broad daylight (Ginga S later retcons it by revealing Ginga's size as micro to infinity).
  • The second and third New Generation shows, Ultraman Ginga S and Ultraman X both have traditional attack teams similar to the prior shows, complete with Cool Plane and Family-Friendly Firearms. Starting with Ultraman Orb, they were phased out due to not selling enough toys, in favour of increased focus on monsters. Even when Ultraman Z brought them back, they lacked the familiar traits in favour of keeping the focus on monsters they controlled. (Specifically, robotic ones).
• Due to being cancelled and then uncancelled, the first season of Unforgettable is different than the other 3, having a more serious and dramatic tone while the others feel more lighthearted. Also, they change most of the cast other than Carrie and Al (explained by them being transfered to another division), and they also drop the subplot of Carrie wanting to find who murdered her sister without resolution.

V

• The Vampire Diaries, in the first few episodes, features Damon being able to control fog and a crow. Both disappeared without any explanation of how Damon did that and were never mentioned again.
• Victorious: Most characters are fairly different from how they were in the pilot. Trina started as "talented, but not enough to justify her ego" and became "untalented". Jade was significantly deepened, saving her from being an Alpha Bitch. Robbie, while still not suave, became capable of normal conversation with the opposite sex. Rex's design is very different from the pilot, including paler skin, a thinner body and neck, paler complexion, and smaller eyes/mouth. Cat's hair is no longer curly as well. Probably the biggest changes include Beck and Tori no longer seeming to be romantically interested in each other, and Cat's transformation from normal-but-ditsy in the first season (particularly the pilot) to full-on dumb in the later seasons.
• Vikings has undergone several changes since the first season. Naturally, since the show currently has spanned across 2 decades, changes in uniform and such are natural.
  • The most prominent change is the visual look. The first season had a very earthy look, with no obvious tint. Greys and browns where dominating. In season 2, the show started to tint scenes slightly green which got more noticible in season 3 and from season 4 there is a clear blue tint used.
  • The look of the vikings themselves has changed in noticible ways. In season 1, the producers experimented slightly with tattoos as part of the viking-look. Those who had tattoos where mostly hidden unless the characters took of their tunics, but since season 2 most of the vikings has a tattoo. In season 1 & 2 the pagan priests only had black make up on their eyes (like Floki) and mouths (like the Seer), but since season 4 they have make-up that cover their entire face. Actually, most of the people conducting a sacrifice wears heavy make-up since season 4 despite it never being used prior.

W

• The Walking Dead (2010):
  • In the first few episodes, the walkers are seen running and climbing after survivors while avoiding obstacles. Later episodes show them as much less mobile and more mindless. This is especially so with the show's first scene, which depicts a little girl walker holding a teddy bear, and Morgan's undead wife, who somehow retains enough intelligence to try the doorknob and look into the peephole of his front door. On later episodes, not only are the walkers never seen holding anything, but it's heavily implied they don't retain any traces of the people they once were, and that any suggestion that they do is delusional. Notably, in the spinoff series Fear the Walking Dead's pilot episode, which explicitly takes place at the onset of the undead outbreak, the first zombie we see becomes a mindless, violent walker immediately after reanimating.
    • Season 11 would eventually fix this via retcon, explaining that there's a variant breed of walkers that are more intelligent than the more common type, retaining enough human intellect to do things like climb, open doors, and use basic tools.
  • Glenn's introduction is him casually calling Rick a dumbass. Later episodes would establish Glenn as extremely mild-mannered who only uses profanity during danger and/or tragedy.
  • Rick's Southern accent is much thicker in the first few episodes.
  • "Vatos", the fourth episode of the first season, has supporting character Jim undergo Sanity Slippage due to apparent visions and precognition, pre-emptively digging graves for no reason and telling Lori to protect Carl. ("I remember now, why I dug the holes.") No other episode of the series ever delves into this strange phenomenon, and even though there are instances where Divine Intervention is suggested (via Father Gabriel, whose arc has him lose faith in God and eventually reaffirm it after being saved / witnessing remarkable events), no one ever remarks on Jim's visions again, even in later seasons where he gets namedropped (like Season 5's "The Distance").
  • The first episode of Season 2, "What Lies Ahead", has the survivors happen upon a large number of stalled cars that were stuck in a highway jam outside Atlanta. When the survivors investigate several of the vehicles, they explicitly find corpses that haven't reanimated, and died in their cars without any explanation given. This is a far cry from The Reveal (which was established in the previous episode, though not elaborated on until the mid-season) that any human being that dies reanimates as a walker, regardless of the circumstances or cause of death.
• War of the Worlds (1988):
  • The first few episodes lacked much of the strong narrative tales that defined the latter half of its first season. Norton Drake had an exaggerated Jamaican accent, Harrison Blackwood had a girlfriend who was set up as a supporting character, the villains were generic Irish terrorists with modulated voices and the plots went from "stealing alien war machines" to "infiltrating a location-of-the-week".
  • The existence of General Wilson (played by name actor John Vernon of Animal House fame) is this, particularly as he stops appearing in-person by the fourth episode, and the majority of his mentions after this are through other characters talking about him. When Wilson is said to have gone missing (and presumably killed by the Morthrai) in the second-season premiere, it packs very little resonance as the character hadn't been seen on-screen for an entire season by that point.
• In The West Wing:
  • The first mention of the First Lady involved press inquiries over her use of a Ouija Board. This was never mentioned again, and seems quite out-of-character for the First Lady we eventually meet (who is a surgeon and a Harvard Medical School professor). Presumably the original character design was less "Hillary Clinton" and more "Nancy Reagan".
  • President Bartlet, too. Through much of Season One, he was a One-Scene Wonder with an occasional focus episode. According to Aaron Sorkin, this was intentional, as the writers didn't want Bartlet to steal the spotlight from his staff. Martin Sheen ended up having such great chemistry with his costars that Sorkin rethought the character and integrated him better into the ensemble.
  • The first major appearance of the Secret Service was an amusing Bullying a Dragon scene where a couple of frat boys harassed Zoey, the President's daughter, and she ended up using her panic button, having a pile of Secret Service-men swarm the bar and one of them grabbing the main aggressor and growls "Don't move! I Swear to God, I'll blow your head off!". After this, the Secret Service were always portrayed as an agency with the utmost professionalism and known for always keeping it cool in action. Although in fairness, most of the times we see them after that they're not trying to intimidate someone who, as far as they're aware, is threatening someone they're charged to protect.
  • The first five episodes have a different version of the now iconic theme song.
  • In one episode, midway through Season 1, Tim Matheson as VP John Hoynes attempts a Texas accent. It's bad. Thankfully, it was never heard again.
• Wheeler Dealers, an automotive restoration show that airs on Discovery networks in the UK and Velocity in the US, has steadily evolved over time. In the first several seasons...
  • Each car was fixed and sold over two half-hour shows instead of a single hour-long show.
  • The budget was tiny, starting at just 1,000 pounds. Budgets now start as high as 20,000-25,000 pounds.
  • Mike and Edd seldom interacted. Instead of taking the car to be worked on directly to the shop, they met at a random site where Mike handed off the car to Edd. Now, Mike takes the car directly to the workshop, where he and Edd discuss options.
  • There was a segment around the beginning of the second half-hour where Mike found an original or fully-restored version of the car they were working on and test drove it. That's been dropped and replaced with segments in which Mike takes parts to be restored by specialists.
  • Edd didn't join Mike on the final test drive before the sale for the first several seasons.
  • There were more occasions where they lost money on the car. One first-season episode saw the dealers purchase a car for 400 pounds, spend 945 on fixing it and sell it for just 700 because the paint over the repaired wings (fenders) didn't come out as it should due to the low budget.
  • Edd had a more stilted delivery and never did studio voice overs. All his narration was delivered as he worked on the car.
• Wendell&Vinnie: Aunt Willma was set up in the first episode as a villain who wanted to gain custody over Wendell in the pilot. Second episode onwards, she's simply a side character who even helps Wendell with Vinnie.
• Whose Line Is It Anyway?
  • The first few seasons of the British version have a much different feeling from later ones. This is mostly because barrister Clive Anderson is getting used to his role, and in the first season John Sessions is the only permanent improviser. Later show staples Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles do not appear in season 1 at all, and are only gradually added to the mix (Ryan starting in season 2, Colin in season 3). Sessions appears less and less over time, departing after season 3, and by season five Stiles and Mochrie are very much regulars, becoming permanent fixtures by season 7. Greg Proops, also a freqeuntly-seen regular (though never a permanent improviser like Ryan and Colin) , does not appear at all in season 1, debuting in season 2.
  • The first season of the American version did not have Wayne Brady as one of the permanent cast members alongside Ryan and Colin. It can be jarring watching one of the early episodes and not seeing Wayne at all. (Although he's only missing in 4 episodes.) The first season also features a darker lighting scheme, which looks a bit odd compared to the later seasons. Also, Drew, like Clive on the UK version, had not yet completely warmed up in his role as the host, and there wasn't as much banter between him and the performers between games.
  • Viewing early seasons of the UK version and then comparing to any seasons of the US version can be jarring given how many of the challenges in the early UK version are literary, or otherwise very academically-inclined in nature. You'd never, for example, see anyone in the US version being required to improvise a speech on turtles while imitating the writing style of W. Somerset Maugham.
    • Many of the early UK improvisors had scholarly backgrounds, and were quite adept at using their specialized knowledge in improv games: John Sessions and Stephen Fry both had master's degrees in English literature; Jonathan Pryce trained to be a teacher; Griff Rhys Jones studied history and English; Graeme Garden has a medical degree; Tony Slattery read Modern and Medieval Languages, specialising in French literature and Spanish poetry; Sandi Toksvig read law, archaeology and anthropology; Jimmy Mulville read French and Classics. (Rhys Jones, Fry, Garden, Slattery, Toksvig and Mulville are all Cambridge graduates.)
• In the first episode of Will & Grace, Grace's assistant Karen is a bored trophy wife who speaks in a fairly nondescript voice. But almost immediately after that, Megan Mullally developed the blaring, high-pitched voice famously associated with the character. Also before long, Karen (who had been, at worst, indolent) became a caricature of the super-rich, a constant substance-abuser who barely recognized the humanity of the poor and had no concept of what life was like for people who don't have servants. In addition, Karen and Jack would go on to become, essentially, the show's Beta Couple, but they share no scenes in the pilot. Despite being established as fixtures in the lives of the respective leads (whose friendship longs predates the first episode), they have a scene in the second episode where they meet for the first time.
• The first episode of The Wire has two such moments: the "camera" sequence in the elevator (where Jimmy McNulty is seen, from the perspective of a security camera, waiting in an elevator) and the flashback sequence at the end of the pilot (which reiterates why the informant was killed). David Simon is on record as saying HBO mandated the "flashback" sequence because they felt viewers wouldn't understand what was going on, and it's never been used again. Another minor example is the use of a backing track to underscore certain scenes (such as Avon Barksdale's walk into The Pit), which ran counter to the general tone of the show (no music used at all, except when it was played via a car speaker or music player and in the end-of-season montages), and were never used again after the first season.
• The FBI headquarters set in the pilot of Without a Trace is completely different from what we see in subsequent episodes.
• Wizards of Waverly Place
  • The show has a very different feel in season one. It is very episodic and feels more like a typical light hearted Kid Com than the darker arc based show it would become. Alex is more nice and more of a typical teenaged girl, and while lazy and not interested in learning, is a pretty far cry from the anarchist she would become. Justin only uses magic when necessary whereas later on he's full out Mad Scientist. Professor Crumb's school isn't around and it seems as if Jerry (and other Wizard parents) are solely responsible for assesing their kids' progress and policing their kid's actions. The Sub Station is more populated and seems as if it is actually somewhat successful (a running gag in later seasons is how it's always empty). Spells are longer and rhyme whereas they would eventually require only one or two words. Also Zeke is stated to be older than Justin whereas they seem to be the same age later on and it's implied Justin is more than only a year older than Alex.
  • Even when the show was transitioning to the one more familiar with later viewers, things were still off. WizTech went from being a soft-mix parody of Hogwarts and a regular tech school (references were made to competing institutions) to almost being synonymous with the wizard realm itself and Professor Crumb went from school headmaster to being the supreme ruler of the wizard realm.
  • The show even had a literal different look between Seasons 2 and 3. That's when the transition was made from standard def to hi-def, and at the same time started farming out post-production to a different company. In addition to the different aspect ratio, the "feel" of the footage is vastly different and the old footage now looks somewhat washed-out on Disney Channel's hi-def feed. The aspect ratio/post-production switch also roughly corresponded to the use of better special effects (or at least, the switch made them look more polished) and when the show really started to get into multi-episode plot arcs (the first notable one, "Wizards vs. Vampires", occurring just before the Season 2 finale).

X

• The X-Files:
  • Mulder's basement office is noticeably different in early episodes (including the pilot) than in later seasons. For one, it's much better lit and usual and seems to have a much different floorplan. It also fluctuates between having windows and not having windows. Scully also fluctuates between having her own desk (like in "E.B.E") and making it a plot point that although she and Mulder are partners for years, she doesn't have her own desk (in season 4's "Never Again").
  • Mulder had a penchant for wacky ties that disappeared sometime in the early seasons. He also had glasses off and on in season 1. Scully also suffers from some terrible fashion sense in the first couple of seasons, where her wardrobe consisted of brightly colored, boxy, badly fitting pantsuits—a change from Scully's signature style of later seasons of well-cut black skirts and collared shirts. Some of this were just unfortunate fads (some of the outfits are very 90s), and other aspects of her wardrobe were a case of Hide Your Pregnancy, in that Gillian Anderson became pregnant relatively early into the series, and they tried to conceal it behind loose-fitting clothing until she was finally written out of several episodes prior to giving birth.
  • Scully's character in the pilot. At one point, she finds marks on her back similar to ones found on the victims in the case. In a very un-Scully like manner, she runs to Mulder's room, drops her robe, demands to know what they are, and then throws herself into his arms in relief when he says they're just bug bites. Even later in season one, Scully becomes infamous for her rigid control on her emotions, her staunch independence, and her unfailing logic. By "Irresistible" in season two, Mulder is trying to convince her that she doesn't have to be strong all the time and that it's okay to show weakness in front of him.
  • Scully also apparently has nieces and nephews that come and go as the plot demands. There are some shown in "Beyond the Sea" and Scully mentions babysitting her nephew in "Home" but they are never explained nor mentioned again. By season 5 (when her brother Bill and sister-in-law Tara have a baby), it's implied that Matthew is the first grandchild; there's a deleted scene from season 4's "Memento Mori" in which Bill mentions he's the "last chance" for the Scully name to be passed on, implying that none of the Scully siblings had children.
  • On a story level, Chris Carter and Co. hadn't yet settled on the blend of monster of the week and mythology episodes which dominated later seasons. While the mytharc was only loosely established, conspiracy-centered episodes made up a much higher proportion of the first season than later ones, with even nominal standalone shows like "Ghost in the Machine" and "Young at Heart" adding conspiracy elements.
  • The early seasons were filmed in Vancouver, and the crew took advantage of the city's rainy climate, using the frequently overcast atmosphere to give the episodes a dark and appropriately eerie feel. When the show moved to California, episodes got much sunnier and brighter.

Z

• Z Nation: In the first episode Addy seems to be filming the results of her zombie kills, a trait that disappears without explanation. Also, Murphy seems to be less of a Deadpan Snarker than in later episodes, but that might relate to the death of Hammond, who intimidated him into remaining passive.

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