While it can be easy to call foul on Seasonal Rot present in later seasons of a show, sometimes the early warning signs may have been on full display in earlier seasons without the viewers even noticing at first until they became impossible to ignore.
Shows with their own pages:
Other shows:
- American Horror Story: Asylum:
- The series has the infamous "Name Game" sequence, a silly and jovial musical number in Sister Jude's head, smack dab in the middle of an incredibly bleak episode. It was so effective not just because it came completely out of left field, but also because it demonstrated how far Jude had fallen and how absolutely broken her mental state was at the time. Later seasons of American Horror Story seemed to forget the second part and started throwing in musical numbers at random to try to replicate the success Asylum had. It wasn't too bad with Coven, where Stevie Nicks' cameo only lasted one episode and played on real-life urban legends about her being a witch. Freak Show, however, had five major musical numbers and a main character who was a singer for no particular reason, leading the season to be criticized for taking precious time away from properly serving its major characters, something at which Asylum excelled. Hotel, however, seems to have reversed this; while Lady Gaga (a pop singer by trade) does play one of the main characters, there are no musical numbers.
- Asylum also made an effort to streamline its plot arc by killing off supporting antagonists in the fourth to last ( Dr. Arden and the possessed Sister Eunice) and third to last ( Bloodyface) episodes, leaving the last two episodes as one giant, meticulously-paced biopic for the three main characters, all to much acclaim. Coven actually waited until its penultimate episode to dispense with its ancillary plot arcs by killing off Marie, Delphine, and the Axeman. Unfortunately, people didn't find the main plot nearly as interesting as the side ones and became irate at the amount of plot holes and contradictory world building left behind when everything was wrapped up.
- The Arrowverse had a habit of making Ascended Extras out of minor (sometimes In Name Only) comic characters and Canon Foreigners, as well as taking a Not His Sled approach to the material (for instance, making Slade Wilson a major figure in Oliver's originnote and making Mia Dearden, the second Speedy, into Oliver's sister Theanote , which was generally well-liked at first. Over time, however, this approach led to important characters from the comics being Out of Focus, Demoted to Extra, or being otherwise handled poorly, with the treatment of Black Canary (here an Adaptational Wimpnote who was unceremoniously killed off in what was widely viewed as an attempt to prop up Felicity Smoak as Oliver's true love)note and Wally West (reduced from Barry's sidekick who became a great Flash in his own right to barely appearing) being particularly decried.note
- This habit actually originally came from Smallville, which showed some heroes other than Superman and some of them became very important in the latest seasons (like Oliver Queen), whereas others ended up shafted note , but Smallville is generally regarded as having done a far better balance between focusing on Superman and giving the other heroes their own stories, not to mention it was a singular show explicitly about Superman, meaning Pragmatism was an effective excuse in ways it wasn't in a huge Shared Universe.
- Felicity Smoak, it can be surprising in hindsight to see that in earlier seasons, the character was actually quite the Ensemble Dark Horse. And in especially strong contrast to how greatly contested she'd become in later seasons as well as how her relationship with Oliver would come to be seen as a massive Romantic Plot Tumor, that very same relationship used to be seen as one of the show's biggest highlights. But in reality, it was a case of the former directly leading into the latter. The original love for "Olicity" came from the fact their relationship seemed to be quite natural and effortless, especially in contrast to the massive amounts of drama that typically plague romantic relationships on CW dramas. Unfortunately, upon becoming aware of said popularity, the creators naturally wanted to give the relationship generating so much buzz more focus. Unfortunately, the only way they could think of in which to feature it from there was to give the relationship all kinds of roadblocks and obstacles to work through... the kinds of storytelling conflict people liked the relationship for having a lack of. Once the ship was turned into the opposite of what people wanted it be and had previously loved it for being, a lot of opinions of "Olicity" soured fast.
- Many fans believe — as did series star Adam West — that the first season of the 1960s Batman (1966) series was the best one. Then, after the theatrical movie (which was released between the first and second seasons), the series increasingly became bogged down by broadly farcical or surreal humor, desperate pop-culture references, and way too many characters (Yvonne Craig's Batgirl in particular the final nail in the show's coffinnote ). But all those elements had been present in the show from (or almost from) the beginning; it's just that there was more of a balance of comedy and drama during the first season. To make matters worse, the show suffered a budget cut to accommodate the cast, meaning less special effects and cheaper sets - not that those were that good to begin with, at least partly because the show was always intended to be Campy and over the top.
- Baywatch: The Spin-Off, Baywatch Nights, is infamous for taking a massive Genre Shift in its second season, where, in an attempt to copy The X-Files, it was ReTooled into a supernatural thriller with aliens, demons and ghosts. The idea of there being explicitly supernatural elements in a franchise about lifeguards was the subject of mass ridicule and derision, but what few people remember is that all that stuff was actually present in the original Baywatch too. There are multiple episodes where characters have unexplained precognitive visions or dreams, at least one Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane plot about a ghost supposedly haunting the beach, an episode that ended with a one-shot character being abducted by aliens, and an episode where Summer is explicitly stalked and possessed by the ghost of a man who committed suicide during the 1930s. It's just that those episodes were in the minority, rather than the show's entire premise.
- Buffyverse:
- Many a viewer bemoaned Buffy benefiting from Double Standards in seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, particularly her abuse and rape of Spike being glossed over while his towards her was demonized. Faith benefited from those same Double Standards earlier in the series, as her Attempted Rape of Xander is forgotten, and her actual rape of Riley focuses instead on how this affects Buffy. These were easier to accept because Faith was a villain when she did that, and while she did get redeemed, she also voluntarily turned herself into prison to become The Atoner, only being freed because she needed to fight in the final battle.
- One of the most frequent criticisms of Joss Whedon’s works is how often, no matter how tough and badass his female characters are, he has them wear very skimpy and inappropriate clothing. While tight spandex is more acceptable on characters like Black Widow and Scarlet Witch (whose costumes actually received some Adaptational Modesty from the comics), Dollhouse was heavily criticized for existing mainly as an excuse to dress Eliza Dushku up in tight, sexy clothing (one episode even has her dressed as a dominatrix). This criticism was around as early as the first season of Buffy. Aside from the level of violence, the biggest complaint about the show was how completely unreal the clothing the female characters wore. Buffy and Cordelia, both 16-year-old high school students (Dawson Casting aside), were frequently clad in halter tops, micro mini skirts, crop tops, and knee-high go-go boots, clothes you'd expect to see on women in their 20s and 30s who were out clubbing. At the time, this could be forgiven owing to the fact that Teen Dramas of that era leaned heavily on sex appeal and Buffy wasn't particularly unusual in that regard, but as styles changed and Whedon's later shows ratcheted it up, that excuse no longer worked.
- A complaint levied at the show in its final season (and, to a lesser extent, the fourth season of Angel, especially during the period when Angel's latest Face–Heel Turn left Faith as the temporary protagonist) was that, for a supposedly feminist show, it featured a lot of scenes of young women being beaten up. In early, more episodic seasons, Buffy losing a first fight with a Monster of the Week wasn't so notable, since she usually came back and won by the end of the episode. But as the show became more arc-driven and weekly showdowns with the Big Bad became more frequent, Buffy's win-to-loss record got worse. In season 4, she lost every fight with Adam except the last one, and in season 5, she was regularly used as a punching bag by Glory. By the last season, Buffy, Faith, and the Potentials were repeatedly brutalized by the First Evil's agents with no pay-off for several episodes.
- Charmed:
- Seasons 6 and 7 were criticized for Phoebe's Serial Romeo tendencies and an excessive focus on her love life (though it did mellow off in season 8), with Show Runner Brad Kern in particular taking the heat for it. But the show had previously endured a Romantic Plot Tumor back in Season 2 with the Love Triangle between Piper, Dan, and Leo. That love triangle gets far less fan hate, however, as it was finished by the end of the season, and Piper stayed with Leo for the entire series afterwards. It also helps that Holly Marie Combs definitely had the chops to make a poorly-written storyline work.
- Later seasons' criticisms of episodes getting Denser and Wackier can also be traced back to season 2, which had plenty of silly episodes (girls transform animals into their dates, an evil Cupid splitting up couples) and a heap of Narm ("That Old Black Magic" in particular). Writing and production values got better in season 3, leading to the show Growing the Beard — making the later Seasonal Rot that much harder to take.
- The shameless fanservice the show got attacked for in later seasons (to the point where even the show's stars pushed back against it) was there as far back as season 1 in parts, with Prue wearing some very inappropriate clothing in her office, and the sisters were getting dolled up for nights at P3 as early as season 2. But the stripperiffic Cute Monster Girl costumes didn't really surface until season 5.
- Some fans hated the Genre Shift towards more overt fantasy elements in season 5. The episode "Once Upon A Time" in season 3 is the first of these, but it isn't disliked by fans too much, mainly because it's only one episode in an otherwise dark season, there is some concerns involved to keep the episode in tone with the rest, and there's no blatant Fanservice. Phoebe and Prue just act like children when they're hit with fairy dust. Had this episode been made two seasons later, they probably would have shoe-horned a Fairy Sexy costume in.
- While there was a unfavorable change in Phoebe's character in Seasons 5-8, a large portion of fans have marked Season 3, otherwise highly regarded as the show's best season, as where her character derailment started. The episode "Sleuthing with the Enemy" particularly gets noted as the start of this, where she suddenly gains a self-centered personality (dumping her responsibilities onto an already stressed Piper and throwing Prue's distrust of Cole in her face) and a lovestruck obsession with Cole, to the point where she's choosing her love for him over her sisters. But this was balanced out by her being much more sympathetic and caring to her sisters for the rest of the season, whereas seasons 5-8 largely kept her more sympathetic redeeming factors in uncomfortably short supply to the point of her seeming increasingly unlikeable.
- In the same season, Piper's "I want a normal life" wangst begins to worsen. In the episode "Once Upon a Time", she indirectly puts a child's life in danger by going on a strike to get her boyfriend back from the Eldes. However, she doesn't get it as bad because her scenes with Leo don't take up a large portion of this season, and she still has her occasional snark. Plus the Elders being Jerkass Gods against Piper all season helped more in her favor.
- In "Charmed and Dangerous", the sisters create an explosive potion as a last resort to mimic Piper's stolen power. Come Season Six, just throwing random explosive potions at demons becomes the default way of vanquishing them, a far cry from the creative methods from the earlier seasons.
- The Protagonist-Centered Morality the Halliwells were accused of in later seasons can be traced right back to Prue. She was frequently put on the moral high ground compared to her sisters, the narrative would bend so that Prue would be either right or otherwise justified, and she would never be called out for her actions like the other two. A lot of the criticisms hurled at Billie's character were the same flaws that Prue had in her earliest persona — being a Spotlight-Stealing Squad, impossibly overpowered, the narrative favoring her viewpoint over the others. Kaley Cuoco, however, didn't have as big a fanbase as Shannen Doherty, and Prue had the benefit of three seasons' worth of Character Development, making this an early problem that was eventually fixed more or less.
- Community:
- The Inspector Spacetime gag, a fairly obvious Captain Ersatz of Doctor Who. When it first cropped up in Season 3, it got some good response from Whovians. This led to it being used more and more, running the joke completely thin. Its overuse also ended up suggesting that the creators hadn't actually seen Doctor Who. This caused the Whovians to abandon the joke, leaving only the people who found Whovians obnoxious... just in time for the fourth season, which beat the joke to death.
- The show has always relied heavily on meta-humour, but as the show went on the meta-ness gradually swallowed up the actual humour. Opinions vary as to at exactly what point it stopped being funny and just became obnoxious, but by Season 6 the show seemed to be incapable of doing any form of humour other than Lampshade Hanging and Leaning on the Fourth Wall. It didn't exactly help that many of Season 6's meta-gags openly joked about the fact that the show had outlived its own premise, and that most of the characters had devolved into one-dimensional caricatures of themselves, making those issues all the more noticeable. It was one thing for the writers to occasionally poke fun at themselves for indulging in sitcom cliches, but another thing entirely for them to hang a giant lampshade on the declining quality of their own work—which left many viewers feeling like they were being mocked for bothering to stick with the show.
- "Modern Warfare" was generally seen as the episode that locked in the show tackling a variety of different movie genres, and doing so with complete commitment to the joke as a Paintball Episode that turns into Die Hard. But beforehand the show was trying to find its own tone when it came to juggling the ensemble cast and their different motivations for attending Greendale. Once the show committed to the one-off episode parodies the characters and the setting became trapped by the genre spoofs. While the quality of the individual episodes could be quite clever the show struggled to find an identity that wasn't about what parody they were going to do that week. The second season had a two part Sequel Episode to "Modern Warfare," one part Western one part Star Wars, and the reception was significantly cooler.
- "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" is a perennial fan-favorite that's frequently cited as one of the show's best episodes, but it also started or codified most of the trends that are often blamed for causing the series' decline in the later seasons. It revolves almost entirely around a single high-concept gimmick, it features Pierce as the central antagonist (portraying him as an utterly detestable villain with zero redeeming qualities), and it relies on meta-humor and esoteric references for most of its jokes. At the time, though, none of that stuff really detracted from the episode's enjoyability. It helped that the central premise (an episode about the study group playing a realistic game of Dungeons & Dragons with Abed as dungeon master) actually was pretty clever and original, and the premise actually served a legitimate dramatic purpose that gave the episode a healthy dose of heart and pathos—since the plot is kicked off when Jeff agrees to play a game of D&D with a lonely geek to help him overcome his depression. Even Pierce's jerkassery (while pretty hard to stomach) was mostly confined to him bullying the others while playing the role of a villain in the game.
- "Remedial Chaos Theory" is also often cited as one of the best episodes of the show (if not the best), but it has an original sin of its own: introducing elements of fantasy and science-fiction into an otherwise fairly grounded story about friendship and growing up. The episode's central gimmick involves Jeff accidentally creating six alternate timelines after rolling a die to decide which of his friends will retrieve a pizza at Troy and Abed's housewarming party, with the party playing out very differently in each alternate timeline. But part of the reason the alternate universe gimmick worked so well was that it was used as a device for characterization rather than being the primary draw in and of itself; every alternate timeline explores a different facet of the study group's personality dynamic by showing a different future that might ultimately befall them—with one timeline involving Troy and Britta getting together, another involving Jeff and Annie finally confessing their feelings to each other, another involving Shirley having an emotional breakdown after her friends criticize her baking, and so on. It also helped that the writers deliberately left it ambiguous whether the events in the alternate timelines actually happened, or if Abed just imagined them. But the show's increasingly Denser and Wackier direction became much more divisive when later episodes started to rely more heavily on speculative elements like virtual reality, holograms, body-swapping, ghosts, robots, and mirror universes, and couldn't always round it out with the compelling character work that "Remedial Chaos Theory" did so well. Eventually, it all started to feel more indulgent than clever, not to mention a betrayal of the show's original preimse.
- Even in the earliest episodes, there were occasional hints that Britta wasn't quite as idealistic or informed about politics as she often pretended to be, and that she sometimes just ranted about various political causes to feel superior to other people. Even the second episode of the show, "Spanish 101", features her as the butt of multiple jokes after it turns out that she doesn't actually know that much about a political issue that she claims to be passionate about, and Shirley and Annie end up calling her out for rarely practicing what she preaches. This aspect of her character was a lot more tolerable when it was mostly used to round out her more positive traits (like her kindness, her charisma, and her willingness to call Jeff on his bullshit), but it provided the seed for her out-of-control Flanderization in the later seasons—which eventually turned her into a hypocritical idiot who was wrong about everything, and was seemingly hated by even her closest friends ("You're the worst!"). Most fans agree that Britta was among the characters most affected by inconsistent writing in the later seasons, which is often cited as a major reason for the show's decline.
- "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" is notable for being the first episode that depicts Abed as being genuinely incapable of telling the difference between reality and fiction—an aspect of his character that was taken to absurd lengths in the later episodes, to the point that most viewers found it annoying. note The difference in "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" was that his inability to tell fiction from reality was treated as a temporary delusion that lasted for just one episode, and the other characters reacted to it exactly how you'd expect: his friends became concerned about his mental state, he was forced to go to therapy, and he almost got kicked out of Greendale. The episode also actually used the concept for pathos and Character Development, since the climax reveals that Abed created an elaborate fantasy to comfort himself after being forced to spend Christmas without his mother for the first time. For that reason, the episode remains a beloved fan-favorite today, despite foreshadowing a few trends that are often blamed for contributing to the show's decline.
- Before Season Three's "In Name and Blood", Criminal Minds never revealed to the audience who the UnSub was before the team figured out who the UnSub was (besides "The Last Word", although that one still had one UnSub to be revealed at the end). Later episodes, including some hailed as classic episodes such as "Normal" and "The Uncanny Valley", would use this early reveal to good effect, illuminating some aspect of the UnSub that couldn't be brought out unless it was directly shown (such as the effects Norman Hill's wife's belittling had on Norman). However, as the series moved on the writers fell in love with the idea too much dragging it to the point where it is now where virtually every UnSub, even those who had no storytelling reason to be revealed, are revealed early to the audience, making the episode an exercise (sometimes painful) in watching the team try to catch the UnSub before it's too late. Fans often complain that this early reveal robs the show of what once made it good — the guessing game of who the UnSub was as a person — since now the audience now already knows the puzzle before it's finished.
- One common complaint leveled at the shows of Dan Schneider is the over reliance on Comedic Sociopathy and Karma Houdini characters. Sam from iCarly and Jade from Victorious were very controversial for getting away with tormenting other characters. This trend goes back to Drake & Josh, with the character of Megan being polarizing because she almost never got punished for her actions, but to a lesser degree than Sam or Jade. This is partially because Megan's main victims, the titular protagonists, were often self-centered and petty. Many times, Megan's pranks were in response to something they did. As such, her antics were more tolerable. Jade and Sam's favorite punching bags, Tori and Freddie respectively, rarely did anything to deserve their treatment. In the case of Sam, Freddie would eventually become a love interest, causing the relationship
to come off as abusive. - Dexter:
- Look back at the first two seasons of of the show and you'll find everything that annoys viewers about the later seasons: sloppiness from both Dex and the cops; Debra being needy and grating; annoying narration; too much time spent on the secondary characters' problems; love interests you wish Dex would kill already; fumbled endings to plotlines. This was all easier to forgive when the show's premise was still brand new and exciting. Another common complaint about later seasons was Dexter being unsympathetic. This was still true in the early seasons - he was a serial killer, after all. The difference was that later seasons kept insisting he'd changed and was a good person now, when he simply hadn't. He was every bit as callous, murderous, and self-centered in the first season, it's just that now we were being told he was a hero for it.
- The series also had the same issue with villains where it was criticized for pairing Dexter against people who were changed from being complex and sympathetic to almost cartoonishly evil to make it easier for the audience to be okay with him killing them. This started as early as the second episode which was criticized for its villain of the week being a serial drunk driver and became more apparent in Seasons 3 and 4 with Miguel Prado and Arthur Mitchell who both went from sympathetic and nuanced, intended as reflections of Dexter himself, to selfish, raving lunatics by the end to make Dexter killing them more acceptable.. But in the earlier seasons, Dex was still very much portrayed in the narrative as unquestionably a bad guy, and there were still plenty of sympathetic and complex victims to make as much clear. The fact that Miguel and Arthur were written well enough and were portrayed by compelling actors who made the shift more believable also helped. By the end of the series, however, the writers were set on making Dexter a full-fledged hero and gave little mind to making his victims sympathetic, making them monsters and cackling madmen that Dexter was completely in the right for killing.
- One of the biggest criticisms of the second half of the series is that Dexter never changes or has to grow or face any consequences for his actions. He is always afforded a way out of any hard choices by the writers so the series' premise never has to radically change and the audience won't turn against him. This video
posits that said issues started in the second season, widely acclaimed as the show's best, as Dexter is faced with a dilemma where he can let Doakes go and be caught or kill Doakes and go against his code of never hurting innocent people and rather than do either, the show gives him an easy way out by having Lilah kill Doakes and allowing Dexter to get away scot free, setting up a pattern where Dexter would always be given a way out, even later killing an innocent man in the fourth season but dismissing it because the man was a jerk anyway and never bringing it up again, and repeating the same issue with Doakes with Deb and La Guerta in the seventh season where Deb kills La Guerta for him, keeping Dexter's hands clean.
- ER:
- Season 5 features a storyline that was widely decried by viewers at the time of its airing — the Amanda Lee arc, where a woman is hired as Cook County General Hospital's new Chief of Emergency, only for it to be discovered a few episodes later that she had faked her credentials to apply for the job, no one vetted her properly, and when this information was discovered, she simply ran away never to return. The mark of a declining show, right? It turns out that this angle (a doctor misrepresenting themselves) appeared all the way back in Season 1. The critically-praised episode "The Birthday Party" features a character named "Dr. Koch", an apparent MIT researcher who wants to spearhead a new healthcare model at an associated hospital, gives lead character Dr. Greene some good advice regarding his marriage, follows several characters around the hospital and peppers them with questions and is generally seen as a well-meaning individual... until it turns out that he is a psych ward patient with no license and a history of getting involved in medical procedures, even being allowed to deliver children at one point. And worse, the psych reps who come to pick him up tell doctor Susan Lewis that he's been doing this for a long time, meaning the hospital was just as liable then as they were during the Lee situation. The difference is that the "Dr. Koch" plot was a minor sidestory in an episode focusing on the dangers associated with injured children and other grounded storylines, including a major character (Benton) seeing his mother get injured.
- The Dangerous Workplace trope, which was a hallmark of the last few seasons with patient attacks, gunfights and all other matter of violent incidents, was a staple of the series from the very beginning. Season 1 alone has a child striding through the ER holding doctors at gunpoint, a car driving through the front door of the ER wing and destroying the entire entryway, patients rampaging through the wing in a panic and all other manner of craziness. The difference is that these incidents were much fewer and far apart, and when they did occur, the material was shot in a far more grounded (or otherwise-unimportant) manner, with cast members appropriately responding to the threat and the matter with professionalism instead of (in many cases) callousness or flippant remarks.
- The once-per-season Thanksgiving Episode was marked by increasingly-ridiculous plotlines that would see characters put through hell in order to justify the holiday-themed timeslot (which was previously filled with reruns in past years). This reached its apex in Season 9's "Freefall", the infamous episode where Dr. Robert Romano (Paul McCrane) is killed by a falling helicopter that goes out of control due to a freak accident on Thanksgiving. What many forget is that the "Very Special Episode" flavor of ER can be traced back to the very beginning of the series, with the Season 1 episode "ER Confidential" being promoted overtly as a Thanksgiving Episode that was just as frivolous (the cast host a Thanksgiving potluck and have to deal with an animal rights activist, with plenty of corny humor to match). The difference is that "ER Confidential"'s hokey subplot was balanced by a pair of major plotlines that were much more grounded and focused (Carter dealing with a transgender patient dealing with depression, and Carol trying to deal with her feelings for Doug). More overtly, the episode that popularized the show's Very Special Episode tendencies (Season 6's "Great Expectations", also a Thanksgiving Episode) not only featured a genuine twist — Carol being pregnant with twins — but it set up a major character who would go on to become the de facto lead character for the second half of the series (Abby Lockhart), and started tying in the larger theme of Carol missing Doug Ross and wanting to get back with him. Later seasons would dispense with this framework entirely and focus on stunts that ended up turning off viewers instead.
- Friends gets a lot of flack on the internet over the Unintentionally Unsympathetic behavior of its male characters in later seasons: Ross' controlling, jealous and obsessive relationship with Rachel, Chandler's insulting Janice behind her back and still not breaking up with her, and Richard's unethical romantic relationship with a patient. Even disregarding Values Dissonance, the first seasons were full of scenes of the guys being unsympathetic. But, back when the show was just getting started, the Friends' world seemed to be much bigger - Rachel wasn't portrayed as being close to Ross (Monica wasn't even invited to her wedding), so his crush on her felt more like an unreachable interest in a popular girl, rather than a decade-long obsession with his sister's best friend. Chandler's dislike of Janice seemed to stem from natural differences rather than outright hatred, and Richard's interest in Monica was more forgivable when it seemed she was a stranger - he didn't recognize her when they met. Ten years with these characters refusing to move on from their issues left them much less sympathetic.
- Full House:
- The original show is now held up as a good example of what happens when fan reaction is taken too far by people behind the scenes. Once Michelle could speak, her one-liners were seen as absolutely adorable and she easily became the most popular character on the show, with merchandise featuring her easily outselling all others. However, the executives saw this, and as the Olsen twins got older and were able to handle more difficult scenes and dialogue, Michelle was pushed to the front of the show hard. Her status as the Creator's Pet meant she was featured heavily in later episodes and was often not held accountable for her behavior (often when she did misbehave, the blame instead fell on DJ and Stephanie for mistreating her, Danny for neglecting her, etc.) Because of this, Michelle nosedived from a fan favorite to easily the most despised character on the show.
- The sequel series Fuller House was criticized for having too many adult jokes and innuendos for a family show, and/or going back and forth between being a tween sitcom and a show aimed at adults. The original series had innuendos and mild swearing in its earliest episodes, and an inconsistent tone throughout the run, although the adult jokes and situations were phased out as Michelle became the focus of the series.
- Many fans of Glee will say that only the first season, and maybe the second if they're feeling charitable, was any good, with the third being when they felt the show went too far in earnest even if they debate over which episode specifically was The Last Straw. Those first two seasons, however, showed early signs of all the problems that would come to plague the show later in its run.
- If there's two things in the series that mark discussion of it, it's the idea that 1) a lot of the characters either were unlikeable from the start or eventually became unlikeable later on, and 2) the show ended up playing straight most of the things it was supposed to be criticizing. This was most true in the pilot, which is often described as a borderline Sadist Show where most of the characters are clearly meant to be huge jerks, or at least seriously messed-up. The thing is, that works because it's a Sadist Show, and the show doesn't want you to root for these people but see why they are the way they are. Meanwhile, the Broken Aesop moments work because they were meant to subvert traditional high-school sitcom structure, and also convey how amoral the situation was. Later on, the show tried to be sincere while still using the same messed-up jerks and hypocritical morals, and ended up ringing hollow. It's one thing when Will Schuester is planting drugs on Finn or orchestrating schemes to woo an unstable Emma while he's already married to Terri when he's meant to be a miserable person looking to recapture his high-school glory days, and it's another thing when he's meant as the Cool Teacher and mentor figure who genuinely wants the best for his kids.
- Emily Van Der Werff, writing for Vox, described the second episode, "Showmance", as "the exact moment Glee got bad", specifically for the plot of Will's wife faking a pregnancy in order to keep Will from leaving her, calling it soapy melodrama for its own sake that did little more than destroy the dramatic stakes of Will's decision in the pilot (him choosing between being a teacher or a higher-paid accountant while knowing that a kid was on the way) by establishing that Status Quo Is God. It wasn't too bad in this instance as the fake pregnancy subplot had genuine consequences and culminated in the implosion of Will's marriage, but it was nonetheless the first instance of the show's overreliance on increasingly ridiculous plot twists, its frequent undermining of the stakes of the characters' decisions, and its poor treatment of its female characters, all complaints that would grow ever more vocal with each passing season.
- The third episode of the show, "Acafellas", has its share of detractors for jamming several unrelated, distracting, and immediately-forgotten story lines together — something that was easier to let slide at the time of its release due to how early on in the show this episode was and the fact that the general Myth Arc of the show beyond its driving premise hadn't yet been fully established, but would, in time, become a chronic issue for the show and a primary cause for criticism.
- Later seasons of the show were criticized for seeming like they were written around the music first and the plot and characters second, as though the writers were less interested in crafting a compelling story than they were in selling records, iTunes singles, concert tickets, and merch. As noted by Joshua Alston for The AV Club, this problem first came up with a pair of back-to-back season one episodes, "Ballad" and "Hairography", which contained the first musical performances that didn't really do anything to move the story forward. This wasn't quite as big of an issue when the episodes in question were first broadcast since they were still balanced out by a relatively sufficient number of episodes and song performances that did advance the story. Unfortunately, as the soundtrack turned Glee into a Cash-Cow Franchise, performances like this grew increasingly common until they far outnumbered the songs that served more than the most superficial of narrative importance.
- "The Power of Madonna", another Season 1 episode, was the very first tribute episode to a specific artist. They performed a replication of Madonna's "Vogue" music video, which quickly went viral, and the episode itself garnered high acclaim. In the following seasons, Glee would produce more and more tribute episodes to dwindling success until it reach the point that they would be sharply criticized for them.
- The first-season episode "Theatricality" still remains one of the most contentious episodes in the series. While it was not the first Gay Aesop of the series, it was the first that had viewers questioning if it was actually effective. But since the episode got the writers praise from critics, continued use of this type of aesop would become a reoccurring trend that would plague the series.
- Shark Jumping cites the season two episode "Comeback" as the point where the show finally went too far, despite it being a decent episode that happened before serious Seasonal Rot set in, mainly due to it serving as a snapshot of everything that later seasons would be criticized for, including: clueless attempts at handling serious issues (in this case suicide), another tribute episode (in this case to Justin Bieber), characterization going all over the place, and an utterly anodyne cover designed to cash in on a hit pop song (in this case "Sing" by My Chemical Romance).
- The trope-naming Jump the Shark moment was merely the point at which Happy Days completely Flanderized Fonzie and lost track of its Fifties motif, both trends that had been present for a long time by that point. So much so that Fonzie's first Romantic Plot Tumor had happened the previous season, and his Promotion to Opening Titles had happened a season earlier. The first season was the only wherein he only starred recurringly, and his character was absent from the original pilot. The difference is, early episodes still portrayed him as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, as opposed to the Incorruptible Pure Pureness of the later seasons.
- Heroes:
- The series was derided in its later seasons for having long-term myth arcs that went nowhere or were squandered, stringing the audience along by cutting away from important action scenes or big moments, and featuring extraneous characters who did nothing to further the plot. The first season did all of this as wellnote , but it was excused at the time because the show was new and the premise still hadn't been fleshed out. By the second season, however, these problems (along with new ones, like romantic plot tumors and Claire's "magic blood") were starting to hurt the show's quality even before the 2007-08 writers' strike derailed the whole season.
- At the same time, there was the character of Sylar. Thanks to his "average Joe gone bad" origin story and Zachary Quinto's great performance, he became an Ensemble Dark Horse as the villain of season one — and much like Michelle on Full House, this eventually turned against the show once the writers started pandering to Sylar's fans. In doing so, they stripped him of everything that made him interesting and muddled his motivations to the point where he was acting strictly out of plot convenience rather than any coherent characterization, while also constantly giving him New Powers as the Plot Demands. The fans who loved Sylar early on turned against him, and then the show as a whole.
- The History Channel:
- Ever since 2009, the network has become something of a laughing stock for its focus on paranormal-based programming and reality series instead of actual history. The former was present even in the History Channel's heyday with shows like History's Mysteries, Incredible But True?, UFOs: Then and Now?, and Vanishings, many of which are still rerun on H2 today. While reality shows as such weren't around during History's early years, they did heavily feature Modern Marvels and other programs which stretch the definition of "history." You could also put in a pretty good argument for Life After People, which was a major success despite being the opposite of history — it was still a documentary, and heavily steeped in historical events, but it showed that a series could work out on the channel even if its content was entirely speculative.
- The network is often accused of pandering to Christian audiences with its abundance of Biblical-themed programs that have little basis in actual history. Even in its early days, there were always some documentaries on religious history, like Who Wrote the Bible?, The Ten Commandments, and the occasional episode of Ancient Mysteries; though obviously not everyone's cup of tea, they could at least be tolerated by a general audience because they made an effort to examine Christianity through a scholarly lens. That was before we started getting hour-long dramatizations of the Book of Revelation, miniseries about the Seven Deadly Sins, documentaries claiming that the Bible predicted human history, and—eventually—Biblical dramas that dropped the "documentary" pretense.
- Season 5 of House of Cards (US) drew a lot of derision from viewers for the sudden Plot Twist of Frank Underwood resigning as President of the United States and letting his wife succeed him, which struck many people as implausible to the point of being ridiculous; not to mention the previous twist of Claire becoming Vice President in the first place, which made the later twist possible. But in hindsight, even the first two seasons of the show (generally regarded as the best) required a hefty sense of Willing Suspension of Disbelief to take their biggest plot twists seriously. The finale of Season 1 featured the Vice President resigning in the middle of his first term to run for a governorship in his home state of Pennsylvania, and Season 2 featured President Walker getting implicated in a massive criminal conspiracy that he knew nothing about, despite all his power and resources. Neither occurrence was impossible, per se, but they were both improbable enough that (for some viewers) they clashed with the show's grounded realism. But it was also easy to forgive both, since they were considerably more modest in scope, and they were both necessary for Frank to ascend to the Presidency—which is what large segments of the audience tuned in to see in the first place. Once Frank actually did become President, the unlikely plot twists lost their luster for some viewers, since there was no longer a spectacular climax to look forward to.
- Season 4, meanwhile, was when the show introduced a lot of elements that would come back to bite them in the last two seasons, such as Tom Yates becoming Claire's romantic interest and Claire being Frank's running mate. Granted, season 4 as a whole was viewed by many as an improvement over season 3, but it was still the season when things started to get a little more preposterous and over the top, and the writers beginning to rely on shock value instead of Shakespearean character development and morality to advance their stories.
- One moment some viewers think marked the show's descent into ridiculousness was in season 2 when Frank kills Zoe Barnes by pushing her in front of a train. However, House of Cards (UK) protagonist Francis Urquhart also killed a young female journalist he was having a relationship with, named Mattie Storin, by pushing her off a roof. However, unlike Frank, Francis seemed shocked by what he'd just done and was haunted by it for the rest of the series.
- With regards to Netflix, one thing that started with House of Cards that arguably turned from a strength to a weakness was the practice of releasing whole seasons of its shows at the same time instead of one new episode per week. This practice was widely hailed at the beginning as a boon to serialized storytelling and to the then-new practice of binge-watching, and a signifier of the newfound freedom from the constraints of ordinary TV that streaming was sure to provide. However, as most streaming services have gone with the old once-a-week release model while Netflix has stayed with the all-at-once model, many have said that Netflix's model has actually made TV viewing more disposable and that the old model is actually better for building and sustaining interest in TV shows.
- Jeopardy!:
- The show frequently used categories with Punny Names or Theme Naming, but starting in the 1997-98 season, almost every category has some sort of pun or theme, almost to the level of Win Ben Stein's Money.
- "Celebrity Jeopardy" games started in the 1992-93 season as an amusing diversion for viewers occurring once per season. But by the 2000s, the celebrity games had become scenery-chewing, laid-back nightmares that led to less than half the board even being played. And later seasons have since seen more celebrity games per season, right down to a celebrity tournament that went on throughout the 2009-10 season.
- Kamen Rider:
- In the early Heisei Era and a few parts of the Showa Era, the trope of the main Rider getting killed, only to come back to life was used quite a few times. While often seen as cliché, these moments garnered very little criticism at the time, as these would either happen at a point where it honestly seemed that the Riders would never come back due to being near the end (Such as Philip in Kamen Rider W) or, even if their revival seemed obvious, would end up coming back even stronger, resulting in a pretty awesome triumph as they came back to life, or giving focus to the characters who were dealing with what seemed like their final moments or doing their goddamn hardest to bring them back (such as in Kamen Rider Fourze, Kamen Rider Drive, and as early as Kamen Rider BLACK RX). This trope ended up being taken to its logical conclusion in Kamen Rider Ghost, where the main character ended up being killed and revived three times without even having to try to come back to life for two of them, meaning whenever he died and came back, it would feel less powerful and moreso at a cheap attempt at drama that would just cause more eyerolls from fans.
- The first half of the Heisei era suffered from the "Female Rider Curse" where a female character gains Rider powers, only to later be killed. This can actually be traced back to the Showa era's Kamen Rider Stronger, where Stronger's ally Tacklenote was killed off. Curiously, the "Curse" seems to be a series of misguided attempts by writers as homages to Tackle; while she was killed off due to being seen as The Scrappy by audiences of the time, according to the producer, if Stronger had a standard 52-episode run instead of just 39, they would've eventually revived her. The series has shown gradual, if slow, improvement since then, as the late-Heisei and Reiwa-era shows usually let their female Riders survive (or at least come Back from the Dead later) — Kamen Rider Gaim and Kamen Rider Geats did kill a few off, but those series had high fatality rates to begin with so the fact that some women died alongside men was mostly insignificant.
- The series' use of reverting a Rider's Final Form to their Base Form in the final battle dates back to Kamen Rider Den-O. However, there were plot reasons for these, such as Death Imagin proving too strong against Den-O's Liner Form and Zeronos' Zero form, fortunately their base forms were empowered by their allies, Kamen Rider Fourze had Gentaro Kisagari deliver his finisher to Sagittarius Zodiarts in his base form as a symbolic gesture of graduating to new worlds, Kamen Rider Wizard's Infinity Form wasn't powerful enough against the final opponent, but the Hope Ring provided enough power for Wizard's Flame Form to deliver the final blow, Kamen Rider Ghost has Takeru Tenkuji reverting back to Ghost's base form from Mugen Damashi, because it was connected to the Great Eyezer, and that it was defeated in it's giant form and that Takeru defeated it with the help of the Parka Ghosts, Kamen Rider Ex-Aid has Kamen Rider Cronus being defeated by the main Rider's base forms due to being massively Unskilled, but Strong and that his strength was blocked, and Kamen Rider Build has Sento using the Genius Fullbottle to create a new universe through distortion of reality, forcing him to use his base form and a combination of the gold Dragon and Rabbit Fullbottles to defeat Evolto. Starting from the Reiwa Generation, however, they would begin introducing souped-up versions of base forms as Extra Final Forms, with heavily mixed results: Kamen Rider Zero-One's Realizing Hopper form was derided for being a lazier version of Rising Hopper with a shinier Progrisekey, and lacking some of the powers that Kamen Rider Zero-Two had alongside MetalCluster Hopper. Kamen Rider Saber's Wonder Almighty form met similar criticism, though it actually had a new power, which made up for it. Eventually, Toei took note of the criticism and abandoned the concept for Kamen Rider Revice, and even its stage show had the Extra Final Form being a repaint of Kamen Rider Revice Thunder Gale rather than the Revi or Vice suit.
- One major complaint about Kamen Rider Zero-One is how one of the major villains Gai Amatsu is abruptly redeemed out of nowhere. The thing is, the same could be said for series director Yuya Takahashi's previous foray into the series with Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, with Kuroto Dan being on the heroes' side after his resurrection, but it was made very clear early on that he still isn't technically part of the heroes' side, and still had his own goals in mind, something that the post-series V-Cinema emphasized. Plus, there were a lot of hints for his god complex early on, so it was easy to predict why, and still made him sympathetic in the process, and this combination made him very popular in the process. Gai Amatsu, on the other hand, had his motivations be from completely out of nowhere, and the show kept treating him as a hero in spite of the insane amount of dog-kicking in the process, turning what could have been an enjoyable villain into a massive Base-Breaking Character. Yuya Takahashi's next work on the series, Kamen Rider Geats, also repeated this with Daichi Isuzu, with it being more glaringly obvious since it wasn't plagued with a Troubled Production unlike Zero-One.
- One of the main elements of Law & Order is the focus on the criminal process without a large amount of time spent on the personal lives of the detectives/lawyers behind it, which initially worked very well. However, upon later incarnations, problems began to emerge. Initially SVU allowed glimpses into the squad's home lives (namely Stabler's), but some seasons later and with a new showrunner, his family was more or less kicked off, much to the annoyance of fans (save the Die for Our Ship Elliott x Olivia) and established character development was muddled (such as Benson's deceased mother, who was initially loving, being retconned into a neglectful alcoholic). For Criminal Intent, it initially followed the mothership's formula to focus on the criminals/cases instead of personal lives. Then eventually did away with this by giving gratuitous screen time to Goren's mentally ill mother and addict brother amongst other things, which didn't appeal to fans who mostly hated the Genre Shift. Furthermore with all three versions this formula often meant new characters apparently had past skills or abilities that aren't seen or even fully explained, causing them not to be well received, and old characters were suddenly given idiosyncrasies and new personality traits that made no sense and were never seen before (most notoriously, Green's apparent gambling problem and Serena's coming out.) Even reverting back to their old respective formulas caused the fandom of SVU to be split in two and Criminal Intent's popularity with fans to gradually decline until it was cancelled.
- Season 1 of Lost suffers from many of the same problems that plagued the infamously polarizing later seasons: inconsistent world-building, over-reliance on mysteries and riddles at the expense of compelling conflict, a slow-paced plot that answers very few questions, and character flashbacks unnecessarily slowing down the plot. It was just easier to tolerate most of that stuff when the premise was still novel and fresh, we were still getting to know the characters, and the flashbacks were actually used to add dimension to the characters (compared to the later episodes, where they often felt like they were just used to pad out episodes' length). Since a lot of people initially expected the show to be a simple survival drama about castaways on a deserted island, the fact that the show even had an overarching Myth Arc (let alone one involving fantasy and science-fiction) was exciting enough to keep most viewers coming back for more. It also helped that the early episodes managed a fairly decent balance of drama and mystery, while the later ones largely emphasize the former at the expense of the latter—leading to many of the mysteries being resolved through vague Hand Waves that many viewers found unsatisfying.
- The later seasons of M*A*S*H are widely criticized for straying too far from the show's sitcom roots and basically being a Dramatic Half-Hour. However, while the show's early years, when it was a straight-up sitcom, are well-regarded, the show is widely regarded to have started Growing the Beard with Colonel Blake's death at the end of season 3. The show's middle years are often considered its best and are widely considered pioneering in the Dramedy genre, but its later years are often considered to have left comedy behind, not to mention becoming too Anvilicious and laden with Wangst.
- The Masked Singer Season 7 caught a lot of flack for casting the controversial (to say the least) Rudy Giuliani in what could only be seen as Stunt Casting of the highest degree. However, reality shows that employ celebrities have always had a habit of casting controversial figures as a way to build intrigue, with even previous seasons having casted controversial figures like Sarah Palin, Logan Paul, and Caitlyn Jenner. However, what made Giuliani's casting more egregious compared to the others could be chalked up to the following reasons:
- At the time of his appearance, Giuliani was still a prominent figure on the news and one who had still been saying controversial things on national TV. In comparison, Palin had mostly been out of the public eye, and Paul had for the most part apologized for his previous behavior.
- The show had become a major "comfort food" show to many especially in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic, so to many, seeing someone like Giuliani who only contributed to the news on TV most viewers were trying to avoid more jarring.
- Even those who didn't agree with Palin's politics at least agreed she put up a solid performance for someone who wasn't even an entertainer and thus her unmasking helped contribute to the "anything can happen" nature of the show. Giuliani meanwhile stood in place and spoke his words, thus making it even more obvious it wasn't an entertainer underneath the mask.
- Notably, due to the previous leaks of Giuliani being on the show, a lot of the intrigue was lost, and his appearance didn't boost interest or ratings nearly enough to justify his casting. With all the goodwill lost by his casting, despite claiming that they didn't regret his casting, the show quietly erased nearly all records of his appearance on the show.
- MythBusters faced critique in its later seasons for two major factors. The revival began with those same problems right off the bat, which combined with the challenge of restarting a beloved series was a factor in its only having one season.
- The overuse of explosions and high-speed camera footage as the show's main selling point. This has been true of the original series for a long time - the show famously hit the mainstream by blowing up a cement truck - but got so common in the later seasons that Adam and Jaime would regularly lampshade it, which made the whole practice wear out its welcome very quickly.
- The myths transitioning from well-known myths and urban legends to the investigation of movie stunts, tropes, internet videos, or 'myths' that were simply an excuse to do something cool was an extremely common (and inevitable, as there are only so many well-known myths) complaint of later seasons of the original. But while the original at least had the benefit of having these in name only myths being relatively balanced out by the investigation of genuine myths and urban legends, the revival made use of almost exclusively investigations of gratuitous stunts and Rule of Cool stuff right off the bat, which helped to very quickly turn viewers off from watching when such an approach had been a key factor in the original's decline.
- Once Upon a Time:
- Season 5 introduced the worst received arc villain in the series' history - King Arthur. Ironically, however, a lot of what made Arthur such a lackluster villain were elements that could also be found in one of the series' most beloved villains; Peter Pan of Season 3. First is the twist of the famous hero being the villain - and with Peter, it's actually rather in line with how morally ambiguous he is in the original book (early drafts had him as a villainous presence too). Arthur, on the other hand, has always been seen as The Hero, making the twist come across as having been done exclusively for cheap shock value. Secondly, both Arthur and Pan stand out as being human antagonists who accomplish their villainy through deception and mind games. Pan was more effective in this approach, as the arc slowly revealed his connection to Rumpelstiltskin (that he was actually the father that abandoned him, de-aged and trying to hold on to his youth), not to mention the fact that the character was already capable of being quite the crafty trickster in various other incarnations of his story. Arthur meanwhile can't even be a Badass Normal like he's usually portrayed, relying on the characters to become idiots for trusting him and a magic item whose usefulness stretches believability,
- Season 5 also introduced the much-despised Princess Merida from Brave, clearly trying to replicate the success of using Elsa from Frozen (2013) the previous season. The problem was that Brave was never as popular as Frozen, meaning not many fans were that interested in seeing a live-action Merida. Frozen also had rich potential for mythology to explore, especially with how the show tied it into the original Snow Queen fairytale it was loosely based on - whereas critics found that Brave's storyline just wasn't that interesting enough to warrant half a season's focus. Yet another problem was that Brave was an entirely original story, making it feel out of place, in contrast to how Frozen was adapted from a pre-existing fairy tale. Also, the Frozen characters were integrated into the main cast's storyline, with Elsa playing a supporting role to Emma's story arc of that season. Merida however saw the arc being put on hold for two episodes that focused on her flashbacks, becoming a Spotlight-Stealing Squad. While the Frozen arc was divisive, it has plenty of defenders, especially for Elizabeth Mitchell's performance as the Snow Queen - while most fans despise or are indifferent to the Brave elements.
- Prison Break:
- Season 4 isn't fondly regarded by many people, largely because it completely dropped any pretense of being about a prison break, and subsequently lost the elements that made it unique. Once Michael and Lincoln finally got out of prison and escaped the law, the story became a fairly generic action thriller about government conspiracies and evil mega-corporations, which few people found particularly original or compelling. But the fourth season's story didn't just emerge from thin air—it was the culmination of plot points that started all the way back in Season 1. From the beginning, the show's whole premise was that it was equal parts Conspiracy Thriller and Great Escape story, and that Michael and Lincoln's escape from Fox River was just the first chapter in a larger Myth Arc; even the first trailers heavily hinted that the next chapter would involve unravelling the conspiracy that got Lincoln framed for murder in the first place. Case in point: about half of Season 1's running time is all about Veronica Donovan's efforts to prove Lincoln's innocence, and the very first episode features "The Company" murdering a clergyman who tries to delay Lincoln's execution. Even then, most critics agreed that the conspiracy plot was the weakest part of the show, and that it wasn't nearly as interesting as Michael's ridiculously detailed escape plan. But once the conspiracy took over the entire show, its flaws just became more obvious.
- The later seasons suffered a lot from inventing convoluted reasons to keep major characters in the cast, even when they didn't have an obvious role to play in the narrative anymore. Bellick was the first character to fall victim to this in Season 2: as a prison guard, he didn't have much reason to stick around after Michael and co. escaped from prison. But with him, the writers at least gave him a (somewhat) plausible reason to stay in the show, by having him fired from Fox River for failing to stop the initial escape, then becoming a bounty hunter to get revenge on Michael for outsmarting him. It also helped that the show introduced Agent Alex Mahone around the same time, so there was a new antagonist to balance out the old one. It seemed a bit more far-fetched when Mahone (an FBI agent) stayed around after Michael and Lincoln successfully fled the country, not to mention when Fernando Sucre (Michael's cellmate) joined The Plan to take down the Company—which he wasn't remotely qualified for, and had very little reason to care about.
- John Abruzzi's return in Season 1 was the first time that the show copped out on the death of a major character, which became something of a trend in the later seasons. But it was tolerable there, because the writers played fair and intentionally left it ambiguous whether he actually died: he was last seen being rushed to the hospital with a slit throat, a potentially fatal injury that was nonetheless plausibly survivable. It was a bit harder to tolerate when the show killed off Sara Tancredi in Season 3 in as unambiguous a manner as possible, only to backpedal and reveal that it was a trick; considering Lincoln found her severed head in a box, it was pretty obvious that the writers didn't originally plan to bring the character back. And of course, Season 5 went all the way and revived the entire show, even after the original series finale explicitly ended with the death of Michael Schofield, complete with an engraved tombstone.
- Quantum Leap (2022) catches flack for how its newer time travel or holographic mechanics don't fully mesh with those of the original series. However, much of what the team experiences has precedence for things that were accepted on the original Quantum Leap.
- Ben is able to leap outside of his own lifetime thanks to his new leaping parameters focusing his momentum and slingshotting him out of his lifetime a la a gravity assist. However, on the original series, Sam was able to leap outside his lifetime twice, which was accepted due to other pseudoscientific explanations each time (a neuron/meson swap and a genetic link with the leapee). Likewise, Alia was implied to have the ability to leap outside of her own lifetime, which was accepted as the Evil Project being more scientifically advanced than Sam's.
- The quantum accelerator is mostly guiding Ben's trajectory this time, so he's not completely Unstuck in Time like Sam was. On the original series, Lothos was able to somehow guide Alia's leaps, which was also accepted as the Evil Project being more scientifically advanced than Sam's.
- The holographic Addison is able to make it look like she's sitting down on chairs near Ben. The original series' hologram Al could also do this; it was originally accepted as just a function of the Imaging Chamber, although one of the spin-off novels says that Al kept a folding chair available in the Imaging Chamber just in case.
- The original sin in the BBC's Robin Hood was the moment that the writers became more interested in Guy of Gisborne (and specifically, his volatile relationship with Maid Marian) than with every single other character on the show. This led to more and more screen-time being devoted to Guy and Marian as a potential couple, until the point where the writers (presumably) realized that they'd gone too far with it, and needed to derail it pronto. Unfortunately, their solution was for Guy to stab Marian to death in a jealous rage at the end of Season 2. There are plenty of reasons why Season Three is considered terrible, but it's mainly because that without Marian, the story had absolutely no emotional center. There was simply nothing left to care about, or to look forward to.
- One of the biggest criticisms of Series 7 of Robot Wars, which killed the franchise for 12 years, was the egregious amount of Executive Meddling, mostly surrounding Storm 2. The very first instance of this was back in Series 1, after the three stock robots that the producers had entered to make up the numbers all made it through the first round at the expense of actual competitors. The producers panicked and contrived to have them exit in the Trial stages: Grunt drove straight off the Sumo ring, Eubank the Mouse drove into a wall and "broke down", and WYSIWYG was eliminated despite another robot having been immobile for longer. On this occasion the Executive Meddling was a good thingnote , but it set the tone for later series in which it was used far more negatively.
- The second and final season of Rome gets a lot of criticism for its absurdly compressed timespan, attempting to chronicle around 17 years of Roman history in ten episodes. It's easy to miss, but Season 1—which is quite a bit more highly regarded—also had a pretty compressed timespan, chronicling eight years of Roman history in twelve episodes. Though this was a major flaw of the series from the beginning, it was forgivable in the first season because the pacing was a bit more reasonable, and personal drama always took precedence over grand historical spectacle. Pullo and Vorenus developed organically as characters, and Caesar, Brutus, Atia and Octavian went through enough Character Development that the actual historical events surrounding them didn't seem rushed. But by the time the quickened pace was increased by Season 2, the compression became impossible to ignore. Pullo and Vorenus had some reasonably compelling arcs, but they ultimately stayed oddly static after nearly two decades. And as historical events took center-stage, it became harder to forgive the writers for failing to utilize promising storylines involving the plot against King Herod, the war against Brutus and Cassius, and Cleopatra's court. note
- Saturday Night Live
- The production methodology that has had from the beginning (six days to come up with around an hour of comedy material minus musical guest segments and commercials) guarantees that the show will be inconsistent even on its best days. This also ties in with Web commenters who rip guest hosts and cast members for reading from cue cards and not memorizing their lines. Sketches are rewritten practically up to air time, with frequent changes in the 90 minutes between the dress rehearsal and the live broadcast, so everyone is forced to use cue cards. Some people are just better at not making it obvious.
- The actors breaking character and laughing. Given it's a live sketch show that's on every week, this sort of thing could be excused when the sketch is genuinely funny, the actor is actually trying to keep a straight face, and it doesn't happen too often. But as time's gone on, more and more cast members and hosts can't help laughing, causing the idea to wear thin, especially when the jokes weren't even that funny to begin with, leading to claims that some of the breaks are intentional to get laughs in poor sketches, something that the show itself had acknowledged.
- Accusations of certain cast members hogging up too much spotlight go all the way back to the days of Eddie Murphy, with the man literally hosting an episode while he was still a cast member. People didn't complain then because Murphy's legendary run was viewed as being just that good, especially since he debuted during the show's infamous sixth season, and he was only on the show for four seasons so his time in the spotlight was fairly brief in the grand scheme of things. But in recent years, many of Lorne Michael's favorites receive backlash from overexposure, particularly since many of these cast members now stay on the show for over ten seasons. This also works in individual cases where a cast member may be great, but when they're pushed to the center stage so often it feels like too much of a good thing. Also, starting in the early '90s the casts have generally been larger than in the '70s and '80s, making it all the more glaring when one cast member hogs the spotlight.
- Starting in the 2016 election season, the show's faced criticism for using Stunt Casting with former cast members and celebrity guests in satirizing major political figures instead of some of the show's regular cast members, most notably with frequent host Alec Baldwin playing Donald Trump. Although this was a practice that stretched as far back as the 1990s, e.g. a 1993 sketch had Phil Hartman as Bill Clinton appearing with former castmembers Jan Hooks as Hillary Clinton and Dan Aykroyd as Bob Dole, despite neither of the latter two appearing as a host. The practice didn't garner as much criticism back then due to the fact the show mostly stuck to using previous cast members who did quality impressions rather than impressions of varying quality from any celebrity they could get to appear. Plus, they didn't appear on such a frequent basis that they could be considered a Fake Guest Star, like Baldwin as Trump. Furthermore, one major antecedent for the trend of this kind of stunt casting was Tina Fey as Sarah Palin in 2008 when Palin was John McCain's running mate on the Republican presidential ticket. However, even before Fey was cast as Palin many people had already noted the resemblance between the two, making the casting a natural fit, whereas Baldwin and Trump lacked that kind of connection in people's minds before Baldwin was cast as Trump(which, appropriately enough, was Fey's idea). Also, SNL already had a long-running Trump impressionist working for the show in Darrell Hammond, whereas Palin wasn't a national public figure before 2008 and so had never been portrayed on SNL. Additionally, The fact that Palin's ticket lost(and that it was made clear that, with Fey busy with 30 Rock, that if Palin had become VP the role would've been given to Kristen Wiig) made it so Fey's Palin impression didn't overstay its welcome,. Baldwin continued to play Trump throughout his entire presidency, making it all the more glaring that someone who was never a cast member was playing such an important recurring role.
- The 1994-95 season is one of the most infamous seasons of SNL, but the seeds of its failure were sown in the better-regarded previous few seasons. The late '80s period, with a cast led by the likes of Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman, is one of the most beloved in SNL history, but Lorne Michaels was worried about a dramatic drop in quality when they left, so in the 1990-91 season he added a bunch of new cast members in the hopes of slowly preparing them to lead the show. These cast members, led by the likes of Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, and David Spade, brought a younger, brasher style of humor that complemented the style of the veteran cast members. However, they didn't have enough depth or range to lead the show, so after Carvey and Hartman left the levels of sophomoric humor reached critical mass in 1994-95(and reports of their sometimes juvenile antics behind the scenes didn't help the show's reputation), resulting in more than half the cast replaced for the start of the 1995-96 season.
- Scrubs:
- The later seasons are often criticized for pairing J.D. and Elliot, despite the early seasons going out of their way to demonstrate that they were horribly ill-suited to each other (indeed, creator Bill Lawrence has made it clear that he never intended them to end up together). But this was just one of numerous times that the two got back together after their initial breakup in the first season; ironically, the first time that it happened was in Season 2—which is widely considered to be the show's best season, and frequently cited as its Growing the Beard moment. Fans just didn't mind at the time, since the writers actually managed to use that plot development as a vehicle for fleshing out the characters' relationship, and it came with believable consequences (they find that they still aren't emotionally compatible and try to become casual sex partners, but find that it puts too much of a strain on their friendship). By contrast: when they got back together in Season 8, many people strongly disliked the writers' attempts to paper over their flaws and insecurities to make them seem more compatible, which largely just made both of them less interesting. It also helped that J.D. and Elliot were both single when they got back together in Season 2, so their romantic reunion didn't require derailing their relationships with other characters.
- The final season is widely disliked for shifting the focus to an entirely new group of medical students while relegating the longtime main cast to supporting roles, resulting in a Post-Script Season that felt like a glorified Spin-Off to most people. Notably, though, many well-regarded previous seasons had also introduced new crops of medical interns to the cast (Lonnie in Season 3; Keith, Cabbage, and Gloria in Season 5; Ed, Denise, Katie, Sunny, Howie, and Derek in Season 8). The difference was that previous seasons generally kept the new interns as supporting characters, allowing them to gradually become more prominent with time—so it never felt like they were being forced on the audience. They were also used to facilitate the main cast's character growth, since the audience got to see how they acclimated to their new roles as leaders and mentors to a new generation of newbie doctors. By contrast, the shift to the med students happened so abruptly in the final season that it became painfully obvious that the network was just desperate to keep the show going without the lead characters, and couldn't find a worthwhile use for the new guys.
- Fans often lament the show becoming too "cartoony" in its later seasons (which is often cited as a major contributor to its Seasonal Rot), but the early seasons were also pretty cartoony—which was a big part of their charm. From the beginning, a core part of the show's premise was its unique mix of wacky visual humor and solid (and often surprisingly well-researched) medical drama, with Bill Lawrence outright describing his original vision as a live-action version of The Simpsons. But this worked during the show's Golden Age because the writers were usually able to maintain a solid balance of drama and farce, with plenty of truly hard-hitting plot turns to prevent the humor from getting too grating. Around Season 5, though, the balance started to tip toward humor, often making the ridiculous sight gags feel like a substitute for compelling drama rather than a complement.
- SeaQuest DSV is generally regarded to have undergone major Seasonal Rot in season 2 with the addition of out-there sci-fi elements that didn't fit in the show's premise and setting. However, elements like those weren't entirely absent in season 1; telepaths appeared just a few episodes in, and aliens made an appearance later in the season. Those were the more the exception than the rule, though, and unlike in season 2 the show mostly stuck to plot elements more appropriate for its near-future underwater Earth-based setting.
- Sesame Street:
- Elmo started out as a third-string character, but when Kevin Clash took over as his puppeteer in 1984, his popularity skyrocketed thanks to Clash's take on him, giving Elmo his defining Cute, but Cacophonic personality and habit of annoying everybody in his vicinity. Little kids loved Elmo because of what a brat he was, and parents and older kids loved him because they saw him as a hilarious parody of their own bratty kids/younger siblings. The problems began around the mid-'90s, when Elmo's popularity led to him slowly taking over Big Bird's position as the show's Audience Surrogate. As childlike as Big Bird was, he was still emotionally mature enough to allow the show to use him as a vehicle for the serious topics and social commentary that elevated Sesame Street above its peers, while Elmo was simply a jerkass who could not be taught a lesson due to his immaturity. It reached its nadir in the late '90s and the '00s with the "Elmo's World" segments that took over the last fifteen minutes of each episode, and the "Elmo the Musical" segments that followed it in the '10s.
- Fans have complained about the overuse of celebrity guest stars at the expense of the existing characters, but they have been a staple on the Street as far back as the beginning, with the very first being James Earl Jones reciting the alphabet and counting to ten. In the old days, this was a fairly novel thing, as there had been nothing else quite like Sesame Street and the celebrities were a way to appeal to parents who watched the show with their kids; seeing a celebrity show up was a genuine surprise as a result. However, with the rise in other programming and the Internet competing for children's attention, the producers seemed to cling to this gimmick more often to drum up publicity and show that they're still relevant, especially in press releases where they easily spoil what was once a surprise.
- Sherlock:
- Based on the idea of bringing Sherlock Holmes into the 21st century, the first two seasons were praised for their clever writing, shocking twists, willingness to play with the source material, interesting character relationships and fascinating larger-than-life personalities. However, by Season Three and carrying on into Season Four it was felt by fans that these elements had grown out of control. The shocking twists which had originally captured the audiences got more and more elaborate until they pushed suspension of disbelief. With some twists having no purpose in the story other than to be surprising, or were introduced out of nowhere. The show's focus on character relationships ended up taking more and more of the screen time until fans complained that it led to the mysteries being short-changed, to the point where the second and final episodes of Season Four had virtually no mystery whatsoever, in favour of focusing entirely on exploring and testing the characters relationship. The larger-than-life characters ended up either distracting from the actual plot or being underused. And by the end, many stories were more or less entirely new, bearing only the slightest resemblance to what they were supposedly based upon.
- Another problem fans have with Seasons Three and Four is the feeling that events had simply gotten too unrealistic. Overall, the series has always straddled the line of plausibility, the seemingly impossible mysteries and sheer brilliance of Sherlock Holmes being one of the main draws. Mycroft’s presentation of being a more or less an all-powerful shadowy figure in government capable of sending messages through ATMs being another example. Nevertheless the first two seasons managed to stay relatively down to earth, with more unrealistic ideas being revealed to have mundane explanations. For example, in the Season Two finale Moriarty claims to have a code that allows him to hack any computer regardless of its security level, which he uses to simultaneously hack a prison, the Bank of England and the Tower of London. However, the entire code is revealed to be a ploy, and he actually used a different method: he simply bribed key members of staff to let him in. Season Three, however, began to incorporate more unrealistic elements, and play even the more implausible ones completely straight: Such as revealing Watson’s wife Mary to secretly be an ex-special forces agent of the Jason Bourne variety, and having Charles Augustus Magnussen, the Napoleon of Blackmail, possess no actual physical copies of his information, keeping it all in his head. The Christmas special rested on the idea of accepting the existence of a massive secret cult of women from all different walks of life, with no real links to one another and an incredible amount of resources, all working together just to kill a few abusive husbands, in Victorian Britain — with no explanation of how exactly they were formed, worked or managed to keep secret, although this one at least has the justification of being mostly set inside Sherlock's own mind. Season Four simply took the idea further, introducing Eurus Holmes, Sherlock’s even more brilliant sister, who could just waltz out of the most secure prison in Britain, anticipate events to the point of precognition, brainwash people by having a simple conversation with them, and pretend over the phone to be a young girl alone on a plane, despite the girl and the plane being visible to the audience. The writers pushed the audience's suspension of disbelief until it broke, and then carried on like they hadn’t.
- Another common complaint of Season 3-4 was the fact that Sherlock's deductions had become completely implausible and not fun to watch. But this was present in the first two, as well, where many of Sherlock's deductions are either massive leaps in logic or reliant on knowledge the audience doesn't have or couldn't possibly have (one episode's plot relies on Sherlock knowing about an assassin who hadn't even been mentioned in the episode beforehand), as opposed to the original stories, where they'd usually be based on presented evidence or real facts to allow the audience to figure it out with him. The difference was that in the first two seasons, the show at least made some effort to walk the audience through how Sherlock figured something out or planned something, where later seasons wouldn't even bother — with the tipping point being the show's outright refusal to explain how Sherlock survived the events of the second season finale.
- Sleepy Hollow took a severe hit in ratings in its second season, which was chalked up to the newfound emphasis on Abraham von Brunt, Henry Parish, and Katrina Crane, which sapped time away from the more popular characters and threatened to boil down the End of Days to the hurt feelings of a scorned lover and a petulant man-child. Thing is, the reveal of the Horsemen's true identities and Katrina's importance as the motivation (as a mother/ex-fiancée) to at least two of the show's Dragons was already present in the first season (and heavily criticized there as well). While it was blown out of proportion in season 2, the seeds of the show's downfall were already an intrinsic part of season one.
- The Season 2 episode of Sliders, "Invasion", introduced the Kromaggs, a xenophobic species bent on dominating every Alternate Universe where humans were the dominant species on Earth. Most agree the episode wasn't that bad in and of itself. It was actually an interesting concept, until the Kromaggs became the sole focus of the series starting in Season 4 (after a season-long absence, no less).
- Stranger Things:
- Season 3 was criticized in many circles for its blatant Product Placement, most heavily of Coca-Cola and Burger King (who, not-so-coincidentally, both had advertising tie-ins with Stranger Things). Critics point to a scene where Lucas Sinclair interrupts a dramatic moment to monologue about how cool, refreshing, and delicious the New Coke is, one that seemingly existed entirely to tickle '80s nostalgia in a way that functioned almost like a commercial break (to be sure, the scene is making fun of New Coke, but in such a way that it felt like a playful jab rather than a genuine Take That!). Plus, much of the action takes place in a shopping mall bombarded with logos. However, the show has been rich in product placement since season 1, from Eleven's love of Eggo waffles, to Bob working at Radio Shack in season 2, and various other nostalgic references to products and media of the 1980s. However, these product placements didn't disrupt the narrative as much in the first two seasons, instead functioning as a way to set the time period and lend authenticity to its nostalgic period piece setting. Furthermore, it's not like the 1980s movies that the show is homaging weren't rich in product placement themselves; E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (one of the biggest inspirations for the Party's connection with Eleven) famously had its Reese's Pieces tie-in. In the third season, however, with the show now being a smash success that corporations were eager to attach their brands to, the product placement crossed the line into outright advertising that soon became distracting.
- Hopper in season 3 has been widely criticized by many for being a dangerous exhibition of toxic masculinity. Hopper was always an impulsive hothead who had a tendency to act like a jerk, but fans were more willing to tolerate it in the first two seasons because he was also good at reading people, had moments of reflection over his rash decisions, and showed empathy for other people's feelings (especially with Eleven and Joyce), and both he and the show treated his behavior as a realistic character flaw to overcome. Even his blowing up at Eleven in Season 2 was a result of extenuating circumstances, because she had endangered her safety by leaving the house and using her powers in public, and he had the realistic fear that the Government Conspiracy would take her away — and after a night to cool off, he realized he was out of line and left a message to apologize. Not so much in season 3 where he, along with the rest of the cast, was Flanderized, resulting in him being characterized more like a cannonball blasting through, trying to get what he wants with absolutely no regard for anyone else and no awareness or consideration for the pain he is causing, and only caring about how things will affect him personally. With much lower, more mundane stakes, he blows up at Mike, bullies him into hurting Eleven, and gloats about it the next day. Moreover, his dismissive and often misogynistic treatment of Joyce is in marked contrast to the supportive way he treated her in the previous seasons.
- A common criticism of Season 4 is the Four Lines, All Waiting used to spread out the cast. But in the first three seasons they always did this in spreading out the cast into 3 or 4 groups and have them work towards a goal before having them join together in the last 2 episodes of the season. The issue here is that in the first three seasons all of the character's goals connected reasonably well heading into the finale and unlike Season 4 every plotline took place in Hawkins or very close by whereas 3 of Season 4's 4 major stories take place away from Hawkins. However in season 4 Jonathan, Will, Mike and Argyle's roadtrip to find Eleven and Joyce and Murray heading to Russia to save Hopper have barely anything to do with the main plot in Hawkins and were seen as drawn out at least partly so the characters in the Hawkins plotline can't get help from the others. It takes until the end of penultimate episode of the season for the roadtrip plot to do something that affects the other plots. Meanwhile it takes until halfway through the finale for the Russia plot to affect the plot of the other characters stopping Vecna. This is potentially a symptom of the show's increasingly large cast. In the show's first season there were 10 characters in the main cast and 2 of them, were Brenner a villain and Karen who is not directly involved in any of the plots. So that leaves 8 main characters split in 3 plots. In Season 4 on the other hand 8 main characters alone were apart of the plot in Hawkins and 8 other main characters combined were in the 3 other plots leaving things feeling bloated.
- A common complaint of Season 4 after it wrapped up was that the shows creators are too afraid to kill off major characters. Now no major character introduced in the first season was killed off in either of the first 2 seasons and no one complained since the show was still new and still developing those characters. The point that this first started to be complained about was when Hopper was seemingly killed off in a big Tear Jerker in the Season 3 finale only for The Stinger to heavily hint at his return and the trailers for the next season to confirm it. Season 4 did the same with Max first introduced in Season 2 died in a massive Tear Jerker only for Eleven to use her powers to bring her back albeit in a coma. Meanwhile in order to show stakes the show kills off new characters in each season with Barb's death early in Season 1 and Bob and Alexei's deaths in late season 2 and 3. Meanwhile in the Season 4 finale a major new popular character in Eddie Munson is killed off in the finale with several fans complaining about the old characters having Plot Armor. It is notable that of the 4 main cast characters to have died, Billy and Brenner were villains and Bob and Eddie were introduced in the season that they died.
- Season 3 was criticized in many circles
- One major criticism of the notorious Aaron Sorkin flop show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was how self-important the characters were. This was also a common criticism of Sorkin's previous show, the much more highly-acclaimed The West Wing, but there the characters' self-importance was more justified because that show was set in the White House, whereas people found it glaring on Studio 60 that people working at a comedy show were acting like their jobs were the important thing in the world.
- Supernatural:
- A major criticism of the show from Season 6 onwards has been that it gets hard to root for Sam, Dean, and Castiel when they seem to just fuck up continuously and most of the major threats they solve are their fault in the first place. This trend originated back in Season 4, firstly with the revelation that Dean selling his soul to save Sam led to his being tortured in Hell for 30 years, then agreeing to end the torture in exchange for spending 10 years torturing people himself, which in turn led to the first seal breaking, making it possible for Lucifer to be freed, and then with Sam killing Lilith, breaking the last seal, and actually freeing Lucifer. The difference was that in early seasons, Sam and Dean tended to acknowledge their mistakes eventually and at least attempt to learn from them, whereas later seasons have them making the exact same mistakes over and over again and continually insisting that they did the right thing the whole time. It also helped that the early seasons portrayed fighting demons and angels as being way outside the scope of anything Sam and Dean were used to dealing with, making their incompetence at it more understandable. By the time we get to later seasons, however, they've been dealing with these entities for years and have a fairly good understanding of how they work, so it got a lot harder for the audience to excuse their constant screw-ups.
- Later seasons, especially Season Six and Season Eight, received a lot of criticism for introducing multiple interesting storylines and characters, then unceremoniously dropping or short changing them. However, this has been a problem that has plagued the show since the start. The Season One episode “Home” built up Missouri Moseley as an important character to the Winchesters to the point where she was even the one who introduced John Winchester to the hunting world, only for her to never appear again until eventually returning just in time to be killed off all the way in season 13. Tom was unceremoniously killed by Dean midway through the season's finale. The Season Two finale casually killed off all the special children, and dropped what had been up to that point the show’s main plotline with little resolution and multiple questions left unanswered. Etc. The difference was that in the early seasons, the main plot and characters were interesting enough you could ignore this: Azazel is still considered to be among (if not the) show’s greatest villains to this day and the replacement main plot was his demonic army being released upon the earth, thus changing the series forever. Likewise, the show was still new enough for fans to excuse these events and it only happened occasionally. By contrast Season Six introduced Heaven’s civil war, Heaven’s missing weapons, the monster uprising, the surviving members of Campbell clan, the Alphas and Eve and then unceremoniously dropped all of them in favour of a storyline that seemingly came out of nowhere, leaving fans upset at the sizable amount of unanswered questions and underserved interesting plotlines and storylines left in said out of the blue new storyline's wake. Similarly, Season Eight casually dismissed Ensemble Darkhorses Linda Tran and Benny, built Naomi up as an important figure then killed her off in favour of Metatron without even revealing what type of angel she was, and almost completely brushed over Dean spending a whole year in Purgatory in favor of focusing on yet another round of bickering and feuding between Dean and Sam.
- Super Sentai/Power Rangers:
- The Red Ranger always has slightly more powers or upgrades than the rest of the team; such as a better and/or second mecha, a motorcycle, a Super Mode, etc. This is often not a big deal, since the Red Ranger is the leader of the team, so him having Protagonist Powerup Privileges would be logical. However, this sometimes gets more and more out of hand until some seasons give Red such preferential treatment the series turns into 'The Red Ranger and his Incompetent Friends.'
- In Power Rangers, Lost Galaxy was the first series to include a rotating roster of villains, with new generals and new head evils arising over the course of the season. At the same time though, what kept that from dragging down investment in Lost Galaxy's characters is that the generals were at least interesting thanks to their Evil Virtues, and this stabilized out by the 2nd half of the series to being consistent again. However, some later seasons would have this as an issue where a rotating cast of less interesting villains didn't engage as much as in the past.
- The addition of civilian superpowers in the years when Disney was adapting Power Rangers. The very first season to use it was the last season fully made by Saban Entertainment, the fan favourite Time Force, which had Trip (A Rubber-Forehead Alien with Psychic Powers) and Katie (A Designer Baby with Super-Strength), but since the characters were Not Quite Human, fans accepted it. The first season to use them for all the main rangers was Ninja Storm, where the Rangers were ninjas-in-training so it made sense that they could use Supernatural Martial Arts even when unmorphed. However, all the following Disney seasons also gave their Rangers gratuitous extra superpowers, to various degrees of justification (the Rangers of Mystic Force and Jungle Fury were wizards or warrior monks-in-training, Dino Thunder and SPD worked them into the plot as having powers was why these guys were selected to be Rangers, and Operation Overdrive and tacked them on for no reason). This eventually wore off over the end of Disney's tenure and the start of Saban Brands': RPM (the final Disney season) downplayed the powers by making them accessible only as Rangers and not as civilians; and Samurai (Saban's first post-Disney season) used the 'Supernatural Martial Arts-in-training' justification (and had the excuse of it being a holdover from the source footage, Shinkenger). After that, the following seasons just didn't have extra powers outside the Ranger arsenal.
- Many people criticized Power Rangers Samurai for being just Shinkenger with a few minor tweaks and little else, while one could say the same about Power Rangers Time Force, one of the most well-liked seasons, as aside from some slight differences, it was mostly just a dubbed version of Timeranger with even a similar plot. However, Time Force had given its characters mostly equal development to its Sentai counterpart, even adding in developed characters with large changes to major ones, and besides most PR fans not being aware of Sentai at the time, the time-travel plot could easily work without too much trouble in other countries. Meanwhile, Samurai hadn’t had quite the time to develop its characters as well as Shinkenger, and the changes added in had given the characters less depth than before. Shinkenger was also very much a Japanese-oriented story that when transferred to America, resulted in many cases of Values Dissonance that either had to be cut out or, to an American audience, just made some characters seem, at best, a little odd, and, at worst, rather dickish.
- Power Rangers S.P.D. was the first show in the franchise where gratuitous explosions were commonly used throughout fight scenes. In this show they weren't too obnoxious thanks to the editing and fight choreography both generally being pretty tight, but they would happen at an even greater frequency and take up much more screentime when they did appear in some later series.
- Survivor:
- Multiple seasons have been critiqued for having the "merge" be rather boring, as players choose a Boring, but Practical strategy of simply voting out all the other tribe one by one (known as "Pagonging") resulting in almost no drama, or simply deciding to vote each other out instead and throw away a massive numerical advantage. This results in a rather boring show where there's almost no drama of who's going home next as any individual wins only delays the inevitable. The strategy of "Pagonging" dated back to the very first season named after the decimation of the Pagong tribe but it didn't hurt viewership because it was both fresh and new and also framed Pagong's defeat as both a Genre Shift (the show changed to be more about strategy when the pre-merge was more about the adventure) and Cerebus Syndrome (Pagong were framed as the heroes and Tagi as the bad guys so it was effective and harrowing to see them slowly defeated). Seasons that were more framed about strategy didn't do this.
- Reusing locations has happened multiple times prior to the American edition adopting Fiji as its permanent location. However, it has been pointed out by multiple producers (of multiple editions at that) as often being a necessary evil due to needing a local government that can participate. It didn't get the hate it did then because while they were reused Fiji has been used for 10 straight seasons, which is a lot more than any other location.
- A lot of the post-Game Changers seasons have been criticized for either having too many twists overlapping with one another (causing a pileup of game-breaking advantages), or twists that were advertised as being potentially changing but in actuality not. This actually dates back to plenty earlier seasons, such as Thailand offering the "Mutiny" twist (which allowed people to swap teams) that ultimately led to nothing, or Cook Islands's hidden immunity idol giving Yul a free pass to the final three. The reason why it gets more hate in later seasons is because, normally the early seasons had one or two twists while later seasons pile on advantages and twists to ludicrous levels, such as the infamous Advantageddon from the Final 6 of Game Changers that took out fan favorite Cirie, something that could have never happened even 10 seasons earlier as they had not gone overboard yet.
- Several seasons such as Redemption Island and Edge of Extinction were seen as dull. However, Pearl Island (one of the most beloved seasons) featured this as a twist as well - and the returning players had a significant impact on the game. Additionally, other editions had featured a twist that allowed evicted players to return to the game, years before "Redemption Island" or "Edge of Extinction". It worked better in Pearl Islands because it didn't take up nearly as much time, it wasn't guaranteed that someone would return unlike in Redemption Island or Edge of Extinction, and the returnees made the premerge entertaining, meanwhile in Redemption Island seasons the players normally get voted out early after coming back, making it seem pointless, while in Edge of Extinction like the eponymous Edge of Extinction seasons, the second returnee won the game after getting voted out third making a whole lot of the season seem pointless to viewers, while in Winners at War, the first boot returned in the finale and came within a few late game mistakes of potentially winning. It struck a good balance.
- Constantly bringing back past players and having a hybrid season of "Fans vs. Favourites''. In the first 20 seasons, there were 4 seasons bringing back returning players. In seasons 21 through 40, there were double that, and they especially leaned on bringing back only 2 to 4 returnees against a cast of primarily newbies. It was done early on but fairly lightly.
- The idea of a "Bitter Jury" or a player who wins by playing "to the jury" rather than "For the game" has been quite a base breaker ever since the middle years of the show. However, complaints of a bitter jury or undeserving winner date back to many of the shows' inaugural seasons wherein players would often win due to different circumstances. There was heavy backlash to Richard Hatch winning the very first season because he was considered to be the Big Bad of the season. Tina winning season 2 over Colby, The Hero received similar backlash. But because they received solid edits that showed why they were deserving a lot of fans still thought they were deserving winners. When the winner started to get edits where they didn't come off as a deserving, strategic winner is what caused fandom wars to this day over seasons such as All-Stars with Amber being shown as Boston Rob's Number Two and beating him (when Rob said after the season that the two were completely equal partners), Samoa, when Natalie was depicted as one of Russell's dumb-ass girls and received 93 less confessionals and destroyed him in the jury vote, and Kaoh Rong where Aubry got a growth arc and got plenty of confessionals detailing how she played a strong strategic game while Michele got good focus but not really in strategy and won with not too much struggle.
- One of the bigger complaints about Game Changers was that there were plenty of players who didn't fit the title and most of those who did were voted out early resulting in an endgame of not especially popular players. All-Stars, a not super popular but still better received season, had a similar complaint, but at least gets by on both the fact that it was the first returnee season and there was a much smaller returnee pool than Game Changers but also All-Stars still had some fan-favorites get far like Rupert and Boston Rob getting as far as he did was one of the things that cemented him as one of the franchise's icons.
- According to Jeff Probst, the universally panned Final Four twist in Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers was added to the game for the more savvy players to make it to the end and win in which that is the same reason why production changed the final two to the final three. While the final three has a huge Broken Base in itself, it lacks many of the complaints that the final four twist has such as undermining the significance of winning the final immunity, and removing fundamental social strategy from the game.
- A common complaint about Redemption Island and to a lesser extent South Pacific as seasons is that they bring back returning players as captains of tribes of new players which most fans looked at as a ploy to give them an extra advantage for the win and also be a Spotlight-Stealing Squad. Redemption Island being the Rob show, and South Pacific giving much more focus to Coach and Ozzy as opposed to the season's winner are the big complaints. This can be traced back to the first time it was ever done in Guatemala, a fairly well-liked season that brought back two players from the previous season Stephenie and Bobby Jon and had them on opposite tribes. Stephenie was a Spotlight-Stealing Squad at the expense of the season's winner and her being surrounded by loyal fans in the way that Rob was do resemble the disliked seasons more. This is generally seen as not as bad, for the main reasons of Stephenie and Bobby Jon (especially the former), were incredibly popular so they averted Creator's Pet accusations, the idea of giving the two Ulongs a second chance was seen as a good one, the edit was much more balanced than in Redemption Island or South Pacific, and the season gave decent focus to the other players.
- Torchwood always had a campy, sexual, and grim feel compared to its [[Doctor Who parent series]]. Torchwood: Children of Earth was considered the Growing the Beard moment due to it containing a dramatic five-episode story arc that is considered by many the best series of Torchwood, plus with the shocking death of one of the main cast. However, in Torchwood: Miracle Day severe Seasonal Rot set in when it tried to recreate the same effect as Children of Earth to less successful results. The sex scenes that had helped Children of Earth stand out from the Tamer and Chaster parent series were seen as dragging the story out, the brutality that had previously been a shocking indicator of heightened stakes became distracting, and the deaths were poorly paced and felt like they were there for shock value rather than for any true narrative weight. And while the five episode story arc from Children of Earth is considered to have allowed the story arc in question all the time it needed to reach its full potential, the 10 episode length of Miracle Day left the story feeling dragged out, with significant pacing problems and a lot of padding, and there was a significant drop in viewers around half-way. To make a long story short, while Children of Earth had previously allowed itself to adequately stand out on its own merits separate from its parent series and gained critical acclaim for such, the later efforts to continue the momentum resulted in Torchwood as a whole becoming widely hated due to moving too far away from its roots to the point that it not only felt weaker and less effective over the course of subsequent series, but also felt too difficult to fit into contiwhonity anymore.
- True Blood. Since so many people wondered when the show took such a turn for the worse, others were quick to point out that, frankly, it's always been a drunken hayride in terms of being good and terrible at the same time. The only difference is now that they've gone through vampires, werewolves, fairies, etc., they've introduced everything and the thrill of discovery is over.
- In general, a lot of the problems people complain about in the later seasons (added sideplots, expansions of supernatural creatures, Bill becoming unlikable, etc) can easily be traced back to the early seasons. It can be pretty painful to get through season 1 because the murder-mystery story dragged on (and could have easily been solved in six episodes as opposed to dragging it out for the entire 12-episode season), the tone was dour, most of the characters were unlikeable (due to the show focusing more on their flaws than their strengths), and the romance between Bill and Sookie is unpleasant to watch when you know what's coming in season 3 and what exactly Bill did to get into that relationship.
- When The Twilight Zone (2019) premiered, several critics lambasted the show as overly politically correct; this review complains about "on the nose dialogue" that's "painfully speechy." But the blatantly political and, speaking frankly, liberal bent of The Twilight Zone—which can be attributed to Rod Serling and his frequent Author Tracts—goes back to the very first series. Episodes from the original include "The Mirror," which has a main character who is Fidel Castro in all but name; "He's Alive," which features an immortal Hitler fueled by hate and prejudice; "The Gift," a thinly-veiled allegory about trusting immigrants (in this case, an extraterrestrial); and "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" (often cited as one of the show's best), where invading aliens specifically outline how their plan revolves on invoking humanity's natural distrust and hatred to have them destroy each other. The same episodes, and many others, ended with speeches from Serling that hammered home the morals in clear, concise language. Each subsequent revival had similarly political episodes, with the eighties series frequently touching on the Cold War and the New Aughts one bringing up reality television and the dangers of technology, especially computers. But while the original series and its previous two revivals had their episodes largely separated over the course of long periods of time via their broadcasting schedules and pushed messages that America was largely united in support of, and came at times where any complaints of being too preachy were difficult to notice, the 2019 revival had its entire first season made available for binging within a short period of time, and was released at a time where not only was America heavily divided on the subject matter of the Anvilicious messages, but also had the internet around to immortalize the complaints and make them easily archived for future viewers to see, which made it very easy for people to complain about the lack of subtlety in its messages.
- A growing criticism of the 2020 Netflix revival of Unsolved Mysteries is how the show ignores important information to push a narrative and/or sensationalize the mystery in question; for example, the first episode theorizes that Rey Rivera's death was a homicide by ignoring the FBI's diagnosis of Rey Rivera's mental health and by falsely claiming that Stansberry silenced potential witnesses with a gag order. It should be noted that the original version of the show had the same problem as well (e.g. The segment on Shane Stewart and Sally McNelly claimed with questionable evidence that a Satanic cult murdered them.), but there are two reasons why this flaw is more obvious now:
- The first is that the original show had at least three mysteries per episode, so the show missing a few vital facts for each case had some justification due to the format's time constraints. However, this excuse doesn't work for the Netflix version because each episode concentrated on one mystery instead.
- The second reason is that the True Crime genre is much more popular in 2020, so there is a higher chance that viewers will be familiar with the case in question, not to mention that said viewers have access to the Internet and can factcheck details about the case from other sources.
- The Walking Dead:
- The show's regular use of bottle episodes, which, for better or worse, became near-ubiquitous from Season 7 onwards, can be traced back to the Season 3's "Clear", an episode that followed a trio of characters (Rick, Michonne and Carl) as they left the Prison completely and journeyed back to King County to obtain a stash of weapons, running into original survivor Morgan (from the pilot, "Days Gone Bye") and exploring the latter's sense of isolation and paranoia. This was followed by the massive critical success of Season 4B, which segmented all the main cast into smaller groups taking part in their own adventures in specific episodes. What later seasons don't take into account is that 4B worked so well because it followed a period of highly-serialized storytelling, and the subdued pace and emphasis of character development was seen as a new and fresh (if not desperately needed) direction in which to take the show. The episodes also followed single narrative threads to emphasize that the character pockets were separated from and had no way of contacting or finding one another, contributing to a heightened tone of isolation and despair, while later bottle episodes tend to follow characters/groups who happen to be alone in locations for regular, story-related reasons (with a few exceptions, such as "Slabtown" or "The Cell").
- One of the main problems commonly cited with later seasons of the show is that it doesn't seem to know how to wrangle its large cast, throwing them in wildly disparate plots that seem to be going nowhere and moving at a snail's pace. This problem first cropped up in season three, when the show split its time between the prison and Woodbury. There, this decision was actually praised as correcting the pacing issues of season two, which was widely criticized for having most of the characters spin their wheels at Hershel's farm, by adding both a human villain in the Governor and splitting a portion of the cast away from the less interesting day-to-day survival stuff at the prison. Unfortunately, each time the show recycled this formula, it split the cast into ever-smaller groups each time, stretching the story that much thinner.
- The Too Bleak, Stopped Caring sentiment caused by a massive number of Red Shirt characters being offed anticlimactically during the "All Out War" arc, in which numerous denizens of both Alexandria and the Saviors compound are seen and killed with little in the way of development (or dialogue), was present from the very beginning of the series. S1's fourth episode, "Vatos", ended with a twist where the Atlanta camp is invaded by a pack of walkers during an impromptu fish-fry, effectively wiping out the entirety of the Red Shirts (survivors who didn't have any lines or were merely window dressing), along with a pair of supporting characters in Amy and (an episode later) Jim. The difference in "Vatos" was that the "fish-fry attack" was an incident that came to drive the deepening rift between Rick and Shane over the first two seasons, with it being referenced repeatedly as both characters argued over whether or not Rick should have left the camp with the group to get the bag of guns in Atlanta in the first place, and showing that the sacrifice of so many characters wasn't going to be glossed over or ignored. By the time "All Out War" rolled around, and the show had the budget (and extras) to depict larger battles where supporting characters were offed like flies while the main characters sported copious amounts of Plot Armor, was much less accepted, particularly as the end consequence was functionally glossed over due to a five-year time skip early in Season 9.
- The first season of Westworld ended with, among other things, a game-changing revelation regarding the relationship between two of the main characters. The Rewatch Bonus stemming from this twist was so strong that a number of viewers felt that the first season was actually BETTER when they went back and watched it again to look for clues hinting at the future plot twists. This foreshadowed what would become the most common complaint about the second season, as viewers criticized the show for using similar tricks to hide important plot details solely for the sake of setting up later plot twists, to the point where many felt that it was making the story harder to follow as it unfolded. When the season finale aired and tied off many loose ends, many fans were left wondering why the show had been so cryptic with its story rather than let it play out as a fairly straightforward adventure.
- One of the largest complaints about the revival of Whose Line Is It Anyway? was the overuse of celebrity cameos that took up most of the episodes, meaning that almost all the games were front-loaded to allow the guest to have enough time to justify their appearance. This can be traced back to the Drew Carey period where they would also have celebrities on for the whole episode or take up a large amount of time. However, the cameos during the Drew period were either the 4th seat, thus meaning instead of hogging a large amount of screentime, they were actually part of the cast such as Robin Williams, or they appeared in one game that was intentionally set up to be the big moment of the episode, such as Richard Simmons and Jerry Springer. The revival has the cameos appear in multiple games that often don't use them in a meaningful way, such as having drama actors be involved in singing games meaning they can't show their improve skills, and because many of the cameos come from new shows or ongoing ones, it results in them going across as glorified advertisements instead of fun guests. Cameos like Richard Simmons simply cannot be replicated in the revival because of how often they use cameos, and how much the cameos don't feel as involved as the older version.
- One of the biggest complaints about the fifth and final season of The Wire is how unrealistic Jimmy McNulty's fabricated "serial killer" is in a show that's otherwise grounded in its depiction of Baltimore. Yet far-fetched plots had been done in the earlier seasons, namely season 3, when Major Colvin essentially legalized drugs and managed to get away with it for a long time, and season 3 is held in higher esteem than season 5. There's a couple of factors at hand for this:
- While Hamsterdam and the "serial killer" are both unrealistic stories, how they're handled gives Hamsterdam more leeway. The Hamsterdam arc shows up as early as Season 2, with the first appearance of Colvin in "Stray Rounds", but also at least one very specific reference to how the community is held hostage by the corner boys through a shot in the end-out montage in the last episode of Season 2. And then during Season 3, it takes half the season for Colvin just to set up Hamsterdam, and the viewers get to take part in the genesis of it after witnessing motivations from external pressures and internal cognition. The "serial killer" arc in Season 5, on the other hand, all originates within half an episode (two if you believe that the police department's budget crisis counts as direct exposition). It starts with McNulty learning about post-mortem bruising, then he goes to Homicide unable to get financial backing from the Feds to investigate the vacant murders, then there's a bar scene where Freamon, Bunk and McNulty discuss the media motivations to what kinds of murders get focus, and then McNulty's serial killer is born. So whereas Hamsterdam feels like an extremely rational course of action due to a slow and steady build-up, the serial killer story feels rushed.
- In addition, the personalities of the characters behind these arcs matters too. Bunny Colvin is a sympathetic character, who only wants what's best for his community while also meeting the demands City Hall is placing upon the police department to lower the crime rates. He clearly is "one of the good guys", as much as this is possible in the scope of this show. He's also doing it after seeing a detective nearly die in a sting operation for a pitifully small amount of drugs and since his kids are grown and he is retiring soon, he figures he has nothing to lose even if it all goes to hell. McNulty is mostly likeable in the first four seasons, but is really despicable in season 5: drunk, not giving a shit about anyone else, and though you can argue he's doing kinda the right things by willing to get a more functional police department, he does it for selfish reasons (getting the money spigot turned on so he can bring down Marlo Stanfield) and is still a working detective with a family to support which he doesn't care about risking for the sake of getting Marlo.
- When it came to X-Play, the show suffered some serious Seasonal Rot, with those seasons criticized for straying further and further away from video games, and were going more and more into Fan Hater territory, especially where JRPGs were concerned. The short-lived revival, while putting the focus back on video games for the most part, was also criticized for seemingly disrespecting fans, with some of the hosts acting smug without having really earned it. However, many who were able to find ways to go back to the older seasons found that these flaws were present even in the show's glory years. The difference was that the skits were able to stay at least somewhat relevant to the games being talked about, not to mention many who weren't fans of these tendencies tolerated these issues because the show didn't have much in the way of competition when it started, whereas the later seasons and the revival are now seen as everything bad about the early seasons without anything to at least make them tolerable, while YouTube alone has multiple reviewers doing what X-Play used to do, and many would argue they even improved on it.
