Franchise Original Sin / Western Animation

If you're watching your favorite cartoon and wondering "Why isn't this as good as I remember it being?", the reason why might just be greater than simple Nostalgia Filter.

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Shows with their own pages:

• The Simpsons
• SpongeBob SquarePants

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Other examples:

• Adventure Time: Princess Bubblegum's darker side was emphasized as early as Season 3, with her creation of Lemongrab being something akin to a Mad Scientist creation. It was well received, giving some more depth to her character. Later seasons, however, are criticized for taking this dark side and taking it to borderline sociopathic levels, with the infamous "PB ranting about Wizards believing in magic" scene being The Last Straw for many. Season 7 received praise for addressing this problem through a storyline in which PB's behavior ends up getting her dethroned temporarily.
• Animaniacs:
  • One major criticism of the first season of the 2020 revival was the sheer volume of jokes involving politics, especially those that make unsubtle jabs at Donald Trump and his supporters. However, the original 1990s run was no stranger to politically related humor; Bill Clinton and his administration were a major target of mockery more than once (complete with a joke about Bill himself playing the saxophone being amongst the lyrics of the opening theme tune), there was a famed gag in which the Warner siblings are confirmed to have gotten lost in a forest after Wakko points out that a supposed 'map' is actually a Republican party candidate flyer, and one Rita and Runt short in the 1st season had Newt Gingrich becoming Runt's ditzy caretaker, among other jokes. But this was mitigated by the fact that the original cartoon largely aired at very specific times each day and were separated by the time in between broadcastings of episodes, which made it easier to avoid getting overloaded by political matters and also made it easier for other less political jokes to have the time to take the spotlight. The revival, however, had its entire first season made immediately available in its entirety on Hulu, which meant it was very easy for people to get overloaded with the more politically based jokes over the course of binging the entire season in a short period of time. Furthermore, while the original cartoon had the political jabs and jokes seem relatively even balanced so that neither side of the political spectrum seemed to be getting the brunt of the mockery compared to another (with most of the political jokes largely present in the later seasons also helping in this regard), the 2020 revival's 1st season, despite making a couple of jokes at the expense of Hillary Clinton, seemed to have a rather overt partisan leaning that made an especially large number of jokes at the expense of Trump and the far-right while also having it be present in the 1st season right out the gate, which made the revival come across as overly biased. The 2nd season of the revival would ultimately address this by somewhat toning down the political humor and jabs at right-wing political groups in favor of a more balanced take in the vein of the original.
  • On a related note, another strongly criticized element of the 1st season of the revival is an overly large amount of topical humor that involved mocking a large number of contemporary trends and spoofing likewise contemporary pop culture. The original 1990s run was itself no stranger to such topical humor, with the Kids' WB era being particularly notorious for relying more on then-modern media like Rugrats, Friends, Power Rangers, and Pocahontas. But much like the political content, the original series largely had the most blatant uses of topical humor present in the later seasons, while also allowing more opportunity for being balanced out and avoiding chances of overloading viewers via the broadcasting schedule, whereas the revival's 1st season made an incredibly large usage of such humor right out the gate in a format that allowed the entirety of said 1st season to be easily binge-watched in its entirety within a short period of time, which left it very open for complaints of being too dated.
  • Another primary criticism of the revival is the lack of variety in its shorts, with the majority of the episodes consisting of two shorts each featuring the Warners and one short each featuring Pinky and the Brain sandwiched in between, with only the occasional exception. But the original 1990s incarnation of the series didn't entirely escape similar criticism itself. More specifically, in the Kids' WB era, with Pinky and the Brain having had to be dropped for a while due to spinning off into their own separate show, Minerva Mink only being relegated to cameos in other characters' shorts due to the few shorts dedicated primarily to her in earlier seasons causing her to be deemed 'too sexy' for kids to watch, the Good Idea Bad Idea segments getting phased out, and Rita and Runt starting to get featured less often due to Rita's voice actress Bernadette Peters having been deemed too expensive to keep onboard for long periods of time, the show was largely being carried by the Warners and Slappy Squirrel in a format similar to that of the revival. The difference, however, is that the original incarnation still had enough additional characters (such as the Goodfeathers and Buttons and Mindy) appearing in their own shorts frequently enough to allow the show to not feel too confined to Slappy and the Warners and retain the variety show format it was known for. The revival, on the other hand, has largely stuck to the aforementioned Warners-PATB-Warners format with only the occasional outlier in the form of a brand new original short concept, while so far having all the other characters from the original show be relegated to brief cameos in a single episode (with only Chicken Boo in particular being able to so far get a 2nd cameo appearance in the 2nd season), making the revival come across as too Strictly Formula.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: The signs of the series focusing on teenage romance and Ship Tease at the expense of plot and character development could be seen all the way back in the original series, as later seasons gave those subplots more focus in response to the creators realizing how large and vocal the shipping community was, but because the 3 season story arc had already been planned out there was only so much room for those scenes to be inserted and for the most part they didn't feel like they got in the way. Come The Legend of Korra, which had a brand new story arc built from scratch around older teen protagonists, and the creators put in far more romance and a Love Triangle from the second episode to the point it became a Romantic Plot Tumor that made many fans dislike one of the central characters (Mako) and the rest of the plot, including the main antagonist and the social forces behind his movement, felt rushed and underutilized. Later seasons tried to undo the damage by having Mako and Korra break up, and fan consensus is that it wasn't until season 3 that the story began to truly feel more balanced. Another major factor is that, unlike the first series, the first season of Korra was written under the possibility that it was a self-contained mini-series that could be expanded into three more if the former was successful while a combination of Troubled Production and Book 2 serving to deconstruct the previous events led to Seasonal Rot. Seasons 3 and 4 were made back to back and feature far more confidence in shoving the romantic material to the side.
  
  By a similar count, despite that fervent shipping fandom, the romance being none too great was a problem in the original as well. Part of the reason Zuko/Katara became such a notorious Fan-Preferred Couple was that the canon Katara/Aang and Zuko/Mai were seen as lacking chemistry and intrigue (even the show itself joked about how a lot of fans seemed to prefer Katara and Aang to be Like Brother and Sister), and the comparatively well-received Suki/Sokka is mostly done as an arc after two episodes. But the romances were minor enough as an element that they were easy to ignore or leave fans room to imagine more interesting things. When Korra (and the ATLA sequel comics) focused more on romance, it became a real problem; Korra's main pairing early on in particular is essentially a Suspiciously Similar Substitute to Zuko/Katara, being the pairing of a passionate and action-oriented female Waterbender and an angsty and aggressive male Firebender, and yet ended up achieving absolutely none of the fame of its non-canon parent.
• In Ben 10
  • As the Ben 10 franchise went on, one of the most major complaints about it is that many aliens in the sequels use similar abilities, as well as many outright having the same power. Surprisingly, the first show could run into this problem too, with a few aliens with redundant abilities that could sometimes render another alien obsolete (Benvicktor/Frankenstrike, along with super strength, has lightning powers, and generally does everything Four Arms could do, except without the arms). Thing is, for all the moments in which some aliens had relatively similar abilities to each other in the original series, the majority of the aliens had just enough uniqueness in their abilities for it to appear as if the writers were genuinely putting in effort to allow each of Ben's alien forms to stand out on their own^note For example, Four Arms had both the aforementioned four arms as well as Super-Strength, Heatblast had pyrokinesis, Wildmutt has Super-Senses and all the natural ability of an Angry Guard Dog, XLR8 had Super-Speed, Diamondhead could weaponize his crystalline body, Ripjaws was an aquatic alien with several abilities themed after fish, Stinkfly could both fly and spew nasty smelling slime from his eyes and mouth, Ghostfreak had various abilities similar to those typically found in ghosts, Grey Matter was incredibly small but also incredibly smart, and Upgrade could merge with technology and use them to fight for him, etc.. However, as an increasingly large number of aliens in later installments of the franchise used very similar powers to not only their predecessors in earlier installments but also each other, the increasing lack of creativity and originality in the aliens' abilities only became all the more difficult to ignore.
  • Ben 10: Alien Force was the beginning of the overt focus on old elements, pandering to first-series fans, and sometimes script-recycling criticized more heavily in later installments, where after the show got a mixed reception when it first premiered, primarily for the shift to a Darker and Edgier tone. The show eventually started also bringing back other classic series elements but tried to tell new stories with them at first (notably, Kevin becoming a composite of the types of matter he absorbed in season 3, but remaining an ally of Ben). As time went on, more pandering began to build up starting in season 1 of Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, such as Kevin's insanity and being a composite form of Ben's aliens near the end of season 1, and featuring a guest appearance from the original Ben. This eventually culminated in the base-breaking Ben 10: Omniverse, where flashbacks now regularly showed young Ben, accompanied by a Denser and Wackier tone attempting to emulate the lighthearted classic series, and claiming that the same future Ben originally witnessed in the third season of the original series was once again his canon future (one where Ben married his first love interest, Kai, and had a son named Ken), even though there's just as much debunking that future (the Ben in that future, as seen in the first series, retained the original form of the Prototype Omnitrix, which in the present recalibrated and later self-destructed during Alien Force); all despite these elements either contradicting with established canon, coming across as obnoxious and gratuitous pandering instead of loving homages, or feeling like unimaginative rehashes of earlier stories and plot points.
  • In general, Ben being an obnoxious Idiot Hero was much easier to swallow when he was 10, and therefore younger and a complete newbie (in the original series). And while Original Series!Ben was certainly immature, part of what made him compelling was that he showed true compassion and bravery many times, not to mention he was more Book Dumb compared to Gwen rather than outright stupid, as shown by his constant resourcefulness and quick thinking when it came to heroics. Rampant Executive Meddling in response to complaints of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! from fans towards the original run of Ben 10: Alien Force's first two seasons, such as claiming that aging Ben up to 15 years and writing him more maturely made him a Flat Character, caused his immaturity to reawaken from arrogance, where it was less humorous and caused Seasonal Rot. Ben 10: Ultimate Alien tried to balance this out and somewhat make him, now a 16-year-old, more mature again, but further seasonal rot in tandem with the show's darker themes reaching their most extreme caused Ben 10: Omniverse, the last of the sequels from the original continuity, to depict the teenaged Ben as a flanderized version of his original child self for the sake of humor despite him being much more experienced by then.
• Part of the reason Chowder became popular was its heavy usage of Painting the Medium and fourth-wall-breaking jokes. In the final season, gags about breaking the fourth wall became so overused that the novelty wore off.
• One of the most infamous elements of the DC Animated Universe is the over usage of The Worf Effect on Superman, which became the subject of considerable fan complaints over the course of Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. But for all the complaints made about this detail, one would be wise to remember that the character was fairly frequently subjected to the worf effect in his DCAU debut series Superman: The Animated Series. However, instances of Superman undergoing this treatment were comparatively easier to tolerate in that series because Superman himself, by virtue of being the undisputed main hero of the story, was still able to get back up and defeat the threat the majority of the time despite previously getting successfully taken down, with the times in which he didn't prove the one to finally defeat the threat being few and far between. Later entries in the DCAU, in contrast, had the vast majority of the times Superman fell victim to the worf effect be immediately followed up by one of his allies in the Justice League stepping up to take on the threat in his place while he was recovering, sometimes even immediately after having to rescue him, which in turn led to the threat often being resolved by one of said allies instead of Superman. As a result, it wasn't long before Superman's supposed status as the most powerful member of the team soon began to come across as an Informed Attribute.
• Drawn Together was never to everyone's tastes, being one of the most unabashedly trashy Animated Shock Comedies on television from the very start. The thing is, earlier seasons had a few surprisingly heartfelt moments that, combined with the show's "take nothing seriously" attitude, gave it a sense of sincerity. That became lost when the third season put more focus on its Vulgar Humor and flanderized its cast into one-dimensional unsympathetic jerks. In one such instance, Claire went from a kind-hearted if unintentionally racist and homophobic Disney Princess into a vengeful, fundamentalist Alpha Bitch. This came to a head in the Grand Finale, which not only upped the raunchiness to the point that it came off as mean-spirited but also somewhat clumsily tried to justify it.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • The show has never really had strong continuity, since it was always meant to be a gag-based show for children. Occasionally you'd get a nod to a previous episode, but that was about it. Given the show's episodic format, most fans let it slide. But later seasons are often criticized for outright ignoring what little continuity had already been established. As an example, Season 10 Episode 1 had Cosmo and Wanda lose their wands. About 30 seconds later, we see... Cosmo using his wand. Then it disappears and becomes "lost" again.
  • If you ask any fan where the show went wrong with Cosmo and Wanda, chances are they'll probably say when they made them into a complete idiot and a total nag, respectively. During the Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts, Cosmo and Wanda were already a bit goofy, with Cosmo being The Ditz compared to the cool one and Wanda becoming more of a nag. Most fans were okay with this since it was Divergent Character Evolution, but it would foreshadow how they would be portrayed in much more Flanderized fashion later on.
  • For many, the most glaring element of the show's downfall was it constantly adding in new main characters. The first addition, baby Poof, though a divisive character in his own right, was at least somewhat tolerated because he was the only one at the time, his reason for being (Cosmo and Wanda wanting a baby of their own) made some sense, and the writers appeared to be putting some effort into exploring what he brought to the table. That same goodwill couldn't be extended to another new character, Sparky the talking fairy dog. Not only did he give the impression that Timmy was retreating into a magical double life instead of brightening his own, but Sparky didn't exactly win over fans on his own merits. Not more than a season later, there would be a third addition to the godfamily in the form of Chloe Carmichael, a Parody Sue who Timmy had to share his godparents with — the reason for that requiring a lot of Retconning. On top of that, Poof was Put on a Bus (despite Poof's Evil Twin still appearing) and Sparky was simply removed without explanation (which admittedly, was Butch Hartman addressing fan hatred of the character), making it all too easy to assume that the show was running on fumes. As a result, the show was all but officially cancelled following the end of the season.
  • One comparatively minor additional element of criticism for the later seasons was the overuse of pop culture references, outdated memes, and 2010s slang in an attempt to pander to newer audiences. Thing is, the show had fairly often made use of pop culture references, meme culture nods, and timely slang even in its heyday. The key difference in this regard between the earlier seasons and later ones, however, is that the earlier seasons came when the show as a whole was still fresh and contained various other high-quality elements to make it easily enjoyable without feeling too reliant upon these more overly timely elements. And the fact that said timely elements usually tended to be featured in fairly small dosages and occurred fairly spread out from each other compared to the show's other forms of humor also helped. But by the time of the later seasons, not only had the 'timely elements' gratuitously increased in frequency, but they were also popping up at a time when the show as a whole had already shown signs of heavily declining in quality and reaching the point of having long since expired and reached the need to be put out to pasture, resulting in the immensely increased frequency of references to contemporary or outdated pop culture, memes, and slang feeling more as if the show were trying desperately to stay relevant instead of like enjoyable flavor dressing.
  • Timmy eventually became extremely selfish and only cared about getting what he wanted. While he had his selfish moments in earlier seasons, he was still a good kid nonetheless. However, in the final two seasons, his selfishness has become his defining trait and is much worse than before. His selfishness becomes even more apparent in Season 10 upon the introduction of Chloe Carmichael, just to make his status as her foil more obvious to viewers. Timmy's equally criticized tendency to not think things through was likewise part of his character as early as the series' very first episode. But again, it worked fine as an understandable flaw for him to have to struggle with as a result of his young age, and he still worked to set things right once it became clear that things were at best not working out as he intended and actively harming others at worst. But this same flaw became more annoying than compelling when he ended up still having not learned to move past it even after untold years had gone by in-universe and it ended up getting severely flanderized into carelessness and irresponsibility; something that, in combination with his aforementioned selfishness, made him come across as increasingly unsympathetic.
• Family Guy
  • The pre-uncancellation seasons already showed many of the traits that would fully manifest once it came back, including Cutaway Gags, Overly Long Gags, and the main characters bordering on Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonists. In the earlier seasons, these were balanced out and broken up enough that it wasn't as much of a problem, and the formula was new enough that they were still genuinely surprising when they happened and not expected as they are now.
  • The criticism of religious people seen in the series can be spotted as early as Season 2, with "Holy Crap" focusing on Peter's Catholic father Francis who comes and makes things worse for the Griffin family while living in the family's house. However, Francis is balanced out by the Pope who is a Reasonable Authority Figure and grows impatient with Francis’s nastiness, implying the issues with Peter's father are more linked to zealotry and a general mean attitude rather than completely stemming from Catholicism. This is in contrast with the infamous Season 7 episode "Not All Dogs Go To Heaven", which operates on the idea that Belief Makes You Stupid altogether.
  • The cast’s horrific treatment of Meg is now one of the most frequently criticized aspects of the show, provoking many appalled reactions from fans; despite the show’s attempts to play her treatment for Black Comedy, quite a few people have pointed out that it often crosses the line into outright emotional abuse. But in some ways, this can be traced back to the earliest episodes, where Meg was a considerably different character. While her family certainly didn’t hate her in those episodes, one often got the sense that the writers didn’t particularly care for her: she was the least developed of the Griffin children by a pretty wide margin and didn’t really have her own comedic gimmick like her parents and siblings did. In later seasons, the writers never really gave her Character Development, but they did give her the "gimmick" of being despised and/or ignored by her entire family — which many fans liked even less. If you compare Meg’s appearances in Season 1 to her later appearances, you’ll notice that she isn’t exactly less of a Flat Character in those early episodes, but she at least wasn’t just the object of other people’s hatred.
  • One of the most frequent criticisms is despite the show's supposedly progressive slant, the show is reliant on offensive stereotypes to the point of outright bigotry. The show has always had stereotypical characters, of course, but in earlier seasons nearly all of these stereotypes mocked the stereotypes themselves far more than it did the minorities they represented. It was such a successful formula that many of these stereotypical characters were widely praised by the same ethnicities they seemed to mock. However, over the years, the writers seem to have gotten the idea that this means people like having their ethnicity and sexuality mocked, and that they can indulge in racial humor and still come off as progressive. More and more, recurring characters are intended to be sympathetic despite being increasingly exaggerated stereotypes. This also hasn't gelled well with the show's increased use of religious and political strawmen, since the show depicts those stereotypes as being true and expects the audience to take them at face value, at least from an in-universe perspective. The resulting implications that the writers genuinely believe non-straight, non-white, non-cis people only ever behave a certain way have driven many fans away.
  • For people who hate Brian, a lot will be surprised to learn that a lot of his worst character traits were fully on display in the early seasons and were the reason the character was generally liked. However, they were either far more restrained or the show acknowledged that they made him a bit of an asshole. For example, he still acted as a mouthpiece for the writers (literally in a sense as Brian's voice actor is showrunner Seth MacFarlane using his normal speaking voice), but this was normally limited to quips, and other characters commented about how it could get annoying. In later seasons these short quips turned into full-blown Character Filibusters, and anyone not holding the Strawman Ball either agreed with Brian or got out of his way.
• Futurama producers describe being torn about the removal of jokes, characters, and plotlines from finished episodes, as sometimes good jokes were lost to trim an episode to 22 minutes. But that process led to well-received episodes where only the best jokes made it to air. The direct-to-DVD movies were criticized for dragging on plots that in earlier seasons would have been resolved in a single episode, but were still beloved by the show's fanbase. When the same problems were criticized in Cohen and Groening's next show Disenchantment, it was a lot harder to defend, since that show had no pre-existing fanbase, and repetitive characterizations and plot points made the show feel bland and convoluted.
• While Goof Troop was well-received and considered a good show in its own right, many have blamed it for planting the seeds for the Younger and Hipper slant and Totally Radical themes that took over many later shows for the Disney Afternoon television block; the shows that had taken on those themes were considered the killers of the block itself during the latter half of the '90s.
• One of the most pervasive flaws of King of the Hill was how Hank was always right about everything, and anything that didn't gel with his conservative values was always wrong. As this article explains, Mike Judge had always wanted the show's Central Theme to be about the brand of good old-fashioned integrity that Hank exemplifies proving superior to any snooty bleeding-heart liberals and whatever modern-age PC hogwash they were espousing. Earlier seasons had the counterbalance of co-creator Greg Daniels, who liked to write episodes exploring a character's struggles and shortcomings. Because of this balance, other characters had their time to shine, while Hank's uptight, stubborn, out-of-touch nature was often treated as flawed and often made him a less-than-ideal Family Man. As a result, his role as the diligent, no-nonsense, ethical Only Sane Man was more sincere and broadly portrayed; anyone could appreciate what Hank stood for, regardless of their standing on the political spectrum, since it wasn't being made out as the end-all-be-all way to live. Eventually, Judge and Daniels became less involved with the show, and the balance began to waver — mass Flanderization ensued, not just of Hank's uptight conservatism, but eventually his role as the Only Sane Man as well. The show fell into a formula of Hank railing against anything that could be considered nontraditional, such as Boy Bands, Open Minded Parents who preferred Gentle Touch over Firm Hand, nerdy Tabletop Game enthusiasts, Bobby being In Touch with His Feminine Side, owning a pet other than a dog, or even Canadians, all of which portrayed as little more than asinine. Because of this, Hank who was meant to elevate the the humble Bible Belt conservative wound up unintentionally embodying its worst characteristics — in particular its bullheadedly insular and jingoistic attitude against any ideals other than its own.
• One of the most notorious flaws in John Kricfalusi's cartooning was his propensity for long, dragged-out, slow-paced cartoons devoted solely to being utterly deranged and gruesome. This sort of content was present in his most famous and most beloved work, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and made for some of its Signature Scenes. The difference then (apart from the obvious fact that Ren & Stimpy was among the first to dabble in such content) is that such scenes were just that: scenes — they lasted long enough to leave an impression without overstaying their welcome, often served as a contrast to the wackiness present in the rest of the episode, and as a result came with a proper setup and payoff. John K.'s later work, such as Boo Boo Runs Wild, Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon", and Cans Without Labels devote their entire run-time to being as dark and demented as possible, all at an excruciatingly slow pace, as if that sort of thing alone makes for an entertaining cartoon.
  • To go into detail, compare "Sven Hoek" from Ren & Stimpy to "Ren Seeks Help" from Adult Party Cartoon. The former is famous for its scene where Ren, in a slow and unnervingly serene matter, describes the abuse he plans to inflict upon Stimpy and Sven as they cower in fear. Part of why the scene works is that it starts with Ren reacting to the absurd mess they made (which is Played for Laughs in of itself) and has a punchline in Ren whizzing all over their favorite board game (only to find that it's called "Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence" for a reason). The latter, however, starts right out of the gate with a first act devoted entirely to overblown melodrama over something that never gets revealed to the audience, spends the bulk of the episode describing in lavish detail how Ren spent his childhood mangling and torturing small animals to the point that their mere existence is utter hell before subjecting them to Cruel Mercy, and comes to a climax that only serves to reinforce what the entire episode has been drilling into the viewer (that Ren is twisted in the head).
• Looney Tunes
  • Bugs Bunny was always supposed to be witty and resourceful from the start without the extreme absurdity nor the over-the-top wackiness of Daffy Duck. This still didn't mean that Bugs had Plot Armor to carry the day after every short starring the character back in The '40s, but it was fairly established even then that he was smarter (at least where street-smarts concerned) than the average Looney Tunes character. Chuck Jones took these features to their logical conclusion and added a Bing Crosby-esque sang froid element to Bugs Bunny in The '50s, making his version the definitive one; the studio has been reluctant to wander away from this take too much. But ever since, Bugs seems to be permanently stuck in lower-quality iterations of the Chuck Jones version, making him often seem smug and petulant (the cover image in his trope page is his current default expression) while doing very little and allowing other characters to steal the spotlight.
  • Daffy Duck was made into a more overconfident and self-indulgent character quite early on, long before Chuck Jones retooled him into an egotistical foil for Bugs. However, this was only to give him some degree of pathos and motivation compared to the one-dimensional heckler he was in his earliest shorts by Tex Avery, and even after Jones' retool, harks back to his wackier more competent characterization reemerged every now and then. However, Daffy went on to trade many hands, with most trying too hard to emulate the frustration of Jones' version, Flanderizing him into a pompous, bitter Jerkass with an almost Non-Indicative Name.
  • During the 1950s, many shorts (particularly those directed by, again, Chuck Jones) moved the focus away from slapstick and towards dialogue and the interplay between various characters, while the animation (with a handful of standouts) became noticeably stiffer and more limited. This era yielded some of the best shorts in the franchise due to Jones's excellent writing chops and the character-based humor being well-defined and effective, but it was in many respects a harbinger to the franchise's 1960s Audience-Alienating Era. When the shorts could no longer fall back on Jones's strong writing after he left the studio, it became very evident that the animation and slapstick was declining to Hanna-Barbera levels. Jones's love of interplay and crossovers also proved the patient zero for the baffling pairings of the franchise's later years—the most infamous being Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales, which dominated the studio's later output despite the two having little to no chemistry or reason to compete.
• Milo Murphy's Law: This show has some noticeable flaws that its parent series Phineas and Ferb had, but were only magnified here. To go into detail:
  • The first sign of this comes from the idea of a shared universe due to merging with its parent series. Phineas And Ferb also did this with the Marvel and Star Wars crossovers. While they have their fair share of detractors, most people still like them, and even those who don't agree that they're both self-contained one-and-done events and the show still stands on its own feet (the fact that the Star Wars crossover was explicitly non-canon also helped). That's not exactly the case here, with the heavy number of references to its predecessor in season 1, culminating in Doof appearing in the season 1 finale, and then the shows become heavily integrated after the crossover. And as a precise result of just how heavily integrated both shows became to each other in the plot, it is believed that the fanservice for Phineas and Ferb fans ultimately ended up hijacking Milo, turned it into "Phineas and Ferb 2.0", and undermined the show's ability to stand on its own without assistance from its predecessor.
  • Another aspect criticized here is the liberties taken with continuity and story elements. What made a similar approach mostly work in Phineas and Ferb is that the show was largely episodic already, and only developed arcs later near the end of season 3. This series, however, had an overarching Myth Arc from the very beginning, which left the various liberties, contradictions, and outright retcons present in its continuity a lot harder to swallow.
  • The last point to talk about is how the show seems to be less about the main character Milo himself and more about the supporting cast. While Phineas and Ferb didn't completely escape this criticism, it was something that happened gradually over time, and they still managed to be active players in many situations and was thus mostly tolerated. In the case of this series, Milo, despite his active tendencies, tends to be someone who mostly just reacts to whatever comes his way, and because more focus involving the overarching story is on supporting characters (like Cavendish and Dakota) and not Milo himself, he's a borderline blank slate.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • A lot of the major flaws that various characters have that were criticized in season 3 and beyond (e.g. Marinette's treatment of her romantic rivals, Adrien's Entitled to Have You attitude towards Ladybug, and Alya's inability to check her sources) have been present in the characters since season 1. They were forgiven back then because there were also signs of Character Development that fans thought would stick; however, when it became apparent that they would continue to have these flaws, the criticisms fans had became more widespread and vocal.
  • The introductions of temporary heroes. Season 2 started this trend with Alya/Rena Rouge, Nino/Carapace, and Chloé/Queen Bee; it was praised back then because all three were major characters, so them becoming heroes seemed natural, and they got plenty of development related to their new statuses (with Chloé even getting her own story arc). Season 3 introduced five more heroes; all of them were generally well-received as well, though at least two of them (Luka and Kagami) were contested due to their status as base-breakers, and the debut episode of one of these heroes was considered rather weak. Season 4 was when this practice started getting criticized; eight new heroes debuted, half of them debuted in the same episode and thus got no individual time in the spotlight, and fans especially criticized the decision to immediately give new character Zoé a Miraculous instead of giving it to an established character.
• My Little Pony (Generation 4), which includes My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and My Little Pony: Equestria Girls:
  • One of the biggest points of contention for G4 is the large number of antagonists being Easily Forgiven without punishment or consequences for their villainous actions. This phenomenon occurred in My Little Pony long before fan complaints about it started during Season 3 of Friendship is Magic ^note When they reformed Discord in "Keep Calm and Flutter On"..
    • The original G1 series My Little Pony 'n Friends and its TV specials had reforming villains, but they actually showed some sign of decency beforehand; this ranges from having misgivings about their actions that grow over the course of the story, to not realizing the full consequences of what they’re doing and being horrified when they come to light, to outright hating the Big Bad and planning to jump ship at the first opportunity, and the worst of the villains did not reform and were either properly defeated or killed outright. The most notorious examples from G4, however, showed no signs of regret, conflictedness, or anything to suggest they actually deserved forgiveness until the last moment when it turns out they "just wanted friends all along".
    • The first episode of Friendship Is Magic had Princess Luna get immediately forgiven for trying to bring The Night That Never Ends to Equestria. But she was Princess Celestia's beloved sister, introduced alongside a compelling enough motivation and backstory to grant her Ensemble Dark Horse status, her wrongdoing fell under Cartoonish Supervillainy (which also applied to Discord turning Equestria into a World Gone Mad) and they were committed as Nightmare Moon, meaning Luna's willfulness was debatable. This made her forgiveness perfectly justifiable in-and-out of work. Later examples were guilty of willfully committing more realistic wrongs^examplesBabs Seed, Sunset Shimmer and Diamond Tiara were cruel bullies; Starlight Glimmer ran a dictatorship-inspired cult and nearly doomed Equestria seeking revenge for the destruction of said cult; Juniper Montage lashed out over self-inflicted problems; Wallflower Blush's actions were compared by some to a school shooting with at best a last-minute Freudian Excuse that tended to make them Unintentionally Unsympathetic^examplesBabs wanted to avoid being further bullied but her actions were worse and unnecessary than required for that; Diamond Tiara had an abusive mother but we only saw a Nice Guy father to influence her prior; Starlight lost her friend when he got his Cutie Mark and had to move away, which are similar situations that Apple Bloom and Moondancer went though without descending into villainy; Juniper's seeking popularity to get friends was blink-and-you'll-miss-it and only properly elaborated on in the novelization; Wallflower stole memories as revenge for people not noticing her despite making no effort outside her introduction to actually be noticed. Season 8 onward tried to fix this by having the subsequent and remaining Big Bads be portrayed as irredeemable, have the cast be colder to and punish them, and limiting redemptions to mere jerks or minor antagonists to mixed reception.
    • The first Equestria Girls movie has Sunset Shimmer get immediately forgiven by the heroes for years of being an Alpha Bitch bully and brainwashing the school, with the consequences she faces being unserious throwaway mentions. At the time, it was criticized as it came almost instantly and with a suddenly tacked-on motive of just wanting friends, which felt like nothing more than a contrived excuse to redeem her. However, this was comparatively tolerated as she had an interesting backstory, and many fans correctly predicted her next appearance would have her face due consequences of still being hated and an outsider by the rest of the student body, demonstrating that just because some people instantly forgave Sunset, it doesn't mean everybody else would automatically do so. Even the heroes don't fully trust the former bully despite being the only people around willing to hang out with Sunset and give her a second chance. This means that Sunset would have to properly earn her redemption by helping defeat the villains of Rainbow Rocks^note this was in fact absent from the first draft of the script, but it got added once the writers realized it was an important story to tell. The subsequent three movies' villains either weren't redeemed or were sympathetic enough that their redemptions were uncontroversial. Then, every Equestria Girls special that came after Legend of Everfree all had villains who were redeemed despite them coming off worse than Sunset pre-Heel–Face Turn as they committed misdeeds worse than anything Sunset willfully committed onscreen^note Juniper Montage's worst actions were before she was shown to become magically corrupted; Wallflower Blush was treated sympathetically by the story despite her actions being completely voluntary and was never at any point magically corrupted by the Memory Stone; Vignette Valencia showed no signs of magical corruption as stated. The specials' shorter length also meant their redemptions were even more rushed, interesting or redeeming factors in the villains were fewer if not absent, and left no time or opportunity for them to return to get a proper redemption like Sunset. It got to the point where even the director Ishi Rudell criticized all the redemptions both this show and Friendship Is Magic pulled.
  • The Season 2 finale "A Canterlot Wedding" introduced viewers to Twilight Sparkle's never-before mentioned brother alongside the first alicorn who isn't Celestia or Luna, and was given a massive 'Royal Wedding'-themed marketing and toyline push by Hasbro in a clear attempt to ride the mania created by the previous year's real-world royal wedding of Kate and Prince William. My Little Pony will always be a Merchandise-Driven show, and "A Canterlot Wedding" is still a widely-liked pair of episodes, but for Friendship is Magic, it was the first really blatant example of a story being introduced in service of the toys, something that became more common and disliked in future seasons.
  • The fights against the villains became increasingly criticized for using The Worf Effect, Idiot Ball, Militaries Are Useless, and Anti-Climax Boss. At first, the fact that there were any fights in My Little Pony was so surprising and cool enough most fans were willing to overlook this. However, it got worse as the series went on, as the Sorting Algorithm of Evil and Serial Escalation reached the limit of what they could get away with without falling into this. The first villains, Nightmare Moon and Discord, were Physical Gods who could only be defeated by the Elements of Harmony, justifying only the heroes being able to oppose them, with Princess Celestia contributing though cunning plans keeping her from being useless. The Season 2 finale had the Changelings; despite them being weaker, they successfully overran Canterlot despite its army being mobilized. This combined with all the bad decisions and bad judgements the heroes made beforehand, as well as Celestia getting defeated in her first on-screen fight, caused the first backlash. This was mitigated by the Changelings grabbing the element of surprise so tightly even fans didn't see them coming, Celestia's loss being due to unique circumstances even the villain was surprised by (and Celestia was winning the fight before those unique circumstances set in), and the heroes still put up an epic fight and were only beaten by sheer numbers. This keeps it very well received by most who didn't expect any action, much less that kind of bar-raising. The Season 3 opener was criticized for its lesser action, but still worked as Sombra, was so Crazy-Prepared that he nearly won without a fight and the Princesses' noninvolvement was justified as them testing the heroes. The Season 4 opener and finale were very well received, to the point the latter is oft considered the best episode of the series, thanks to it having the best action and justifiably threatening foes, which again raised the bar to the point most overlooked the heroes and Princesses poorly thought out plans indirectly enabling Tirek's actions. The contrivance started to set in Season 5, as Starlight Glimmer inexplicably rivaled Twilight Sparkle in power despite being a regular unicorn, which was harder to ignore as the action was not struggling to up the ante. The Season 6 finale had all the heroes and Princesses getting defeated offscreen by the aforementioned Changelings without anyone noticing or any kind of explanation given all the circumstances they needed last time. This denied a chance for action and upped the contrivance to the point it broke Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Not helping was that by that point the expectations for action was was raised to a point it couldn't measure up and the aforementioned Starlight Glimmer was the only one (besides three allies she had) left to save everyone; this added to her criticism of making the other characters look bad to give Starlight unfair favoritism. My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) only added to this, as an Actionized Sequel that amped up the action ended up amping up the contrivances as well while also making them so central to the story it was harder for viewers to overlook.
• My Little Pony (Generation 5): Like in the early episodes of My Little Pony: Make Your Mark some of the episodes in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, especially earlier ones, have characters acting annoying or stupid for the sake of the plot, plot holes, pacing issues, kids show cliches, and lackluster humor. In the preceding series, though, these problems tended to be lesser in scope and overshadowed by good instances of Worldbuilding, Character Development, original humor, set-pieces, musical numbers, and characters acting lovable or compelling, even before the show Grew The Beard as writers and fans got used to the writing of My Little Pony being enjoyed by older ages and having to live up to higher standards. Make Your Mark however, despite facing both its predecessor series and pilot movie as a Tough Act to Follow, seems to approach itself as a standard young children's show for whom these issues don't matter, and has fewer musical numbers or interesting set-pieces to fall back on when it comes to making episodes fun to watch.
• PAW Patrol:
  • Talking dogs aside, the show has always had a few fantastical episodes, such as "Pups and the Ghost Pirate" and "Pups Save Christmas" in Season 1, or "Pups Save a Mer-Pup" and "Pups Bark with Dinosaurs" in Season 2. It wasn't until Season 6, however, that some fans began saying that the show had become unrealistic, mainly due to this season's gimmick being the superpower-focused Mighty Pups, Super PAWS subseries, resulting in far more fantastical episodes. What isn't helping is that the older fantastical episodes were either All Just a Dream or Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane, but Mighty Pups, Super PAWS, despite obviously being fantastic in nature, is somehow considered "realistic" by the show's standards, making fans question the logic there.
  • The show seems hellbent on adding new members to the team. It all started with Everest in Season 2, but that happened early on, everyone fell in love with her back then, and she was the only one at the time. And then she was later sidelined in favor of new members.
• Peanuts animated specials: The major part of the strip's humor is Charlie Brown being a woobie Failure Hero. However, while such jokes regarding Charlie Brown's misfortunes are funny when kept to the concise storytelling form of the comic strip, Charles Schulz's original plots for the animated specials eventually lost all proportion for the stories' tone. This led to specials with infuriating levels of sustained and illogical cruelty against our hero that tended to anger viewers, sometimes to the point of writing letters of protest. Of the specials, It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown, Someday You'll Find Her, Charlie Brown, and Happy New Year, Charlie Brown are particularly grievous offenders (the first features Charlie Brown being blamed for losing the homecoming football game when it was really Lucy repeatedly yanking the ball out of his way through force of habit, while the other two end with Linus romancing girls on whom he knows Charlie Brown has a huge crush as well as the senselessness of a grade school student being assigned to write a book report on War and Peace).
• The Penguins of Madagascar: Some of the later DreamWorks Animation's shows like Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, Monsters vs. Aliens (2013), The Adventures of Puss in Boots and Megamind Rules! would often receive criticisms for downgraded animation quality and flanderization of the characters, leading to many older fans considering them to be cash grabs that lacked the spirit of the movies. Despite having a much better reception, this show ended up kickstarting these trends.
  • The show flanderized aspects of the personalities of the Penguins and the Lemurs but those were relatively minor characters in the movies, who mostly served as comic relief. The Penguins in particular were very close to being Satellite Characters to each other. As a result, not only did the exaggerated characterizations not downplay more complex and sympathetic characters, they actually managed to flesh them out. Kowalski's The Smart Guy status and Rico's Stomach of Holding actually became more impressive in the series. Skipper, Private, Maurice and Mort were given more characterization. And while fans are split over King Julien's handling, his role was still not that far of a stretch from the movie's version to become jarring. Also, Heroic Comedic Sociopath aside, the penguins remained sympathetic and heroic characters, even more that the movies arguably, so fans didn't see an issue with the changes. Fans however did take an issue when later shows turned heroic three-dimensional characters into one note-jerkasses and took away the elements that make them badasses in the movies or made them more incompetent for the sake of Rule of Funny.
  • The show is a clear victim of No Flow in CGI but it managed to play with it's limitations, it averted the more complicated scenarios from the movies to focus on the relatively minor Central Park Zoo and the New York City and deliberately Adapted Out the main characters in favour of focusing on the less complicated to animate Penguins. Compare this with later shows that tried to recreate the more complicated character designs and scenarios from the movies they were based on, and you get Unintentional Uncanny Valley.
• Some of the biggest complaints that fans have with Planet Sheen stem from Sheen’s Character Exaggeration making him incredibly selfish, obnoxious, arrogant, uncaring towards his friends, and often the cause of the very problems that would need to be solved in every episode. Elements of this can be traced back to The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, in which Jimmy himself had quite an abrasive personality, being smug, somewhat lazy, opinionated, and selfish, regularly acting like he was the smartest kid in the world who always knew what was best. In fact, even in the original movie Jimmy's pride was always presented as his Fatal Flaw, with his Too Clever by Half attitude often causing problems and him regularly being forced to admit he was wrong and needed others’ help. However, Jimmy was... well, a boy genius, capable of casually building revolutionary technology whilst living in a town full of gullible and foolish people, thus these flaws made perfect sense to his character. More importantly, Jimmy still possessed enough redeeming and sympathetic traits such as his bravery, loyalty, and compassion, and as such would always put his talents to good use to undo any damage he had caused, and even then he never got off lightly for his many stunts (to the point that it was almost a Running Gag that they had made him very unpopular with the townsfolk). Sheen, presumably to make his show a Spiritual Antithesis, was constantly portrayed as a complete idiot who, while truly well-meaning, often made things worse than he found them through his sheer stupidity, arrogance, or refusal to listen to common sense, yet still acted like he knew what was best, also losing all his redeeming traits save a shallow friendliness. He would regularly ignore everyone’s warnings and do things that were incredibly stupid, then blame them for not telling him when things went wrong, only to come out on top due to the efforts of others or sheer dumb luck, get away scot-free, and still be celebrated as a hero regardless of the damage he caused. Whilst this was intended to be Played for Laughs, it instead made Sheen into an obnoxious Designated Hero.
• Popeye has a reputation for being Strictly Formula because of the color shorts made by Famous Studios, which overused the plot everyone associates with Popeye (him and Bluto fighting over Olive Oyl and Popeye eating Spinach to defeat Bluto). While Max and Dave Fleischer invented that plot and made use of it, the cartoons made by the Fleischers were much more varied in their stories overall. Many shorts lacked spinach, Bluto, or both, many more shorts featured Popeye and Bluto doing things besides fighting over Olive Oyl, and others still featured characters like Wimpy, Swee'Pea, Poopdeck Pappy, and Eugene the Jeep to do different kinds of stories.
• Rugrats:
  • While fans have many different ideas about what caused the show's Seasonal Rot, its increasing reliance on extended over-the-top Imagine Spots is sometimes held up as a symptom of its declining quality, as it increasingly shifted the focus away from the simple day-to-day struggles of the babies. In truth, though, the show was always known for its surreal and fantastical overtones — but in its early days, the babies didn't need Imagine Spots to make their world seem like a bizarre wonderland because the quirky writing and animation made the entire setting seem surreal. The Imagine Spots just drew a clear line between the mundane world and the world of the kids' imaginations, where none had existed before. Case in point: compare Season 2's "Toy Palace" with Season 5's "Submarine". The former revolves around the ensuing hilarity when Tommy and Chuckie spend the night in a sprawling toy store that (apparently) includes life-size robotic gorilla toys, automated Old West towns, and a working time machine; the latter just has the kids pretending that a van at a car lot is a submarine, which ended up making the more overt and clear case of them using their imagination to pretend they're in a bizarre situation instead of merely thinking they're already in a genuine bizarre situation made it a lot harder for viewers to get invested.
  • On a related note, a few early episodes in Seasons 2 and 3 do feature extended plots that take place in the kids' heads, with "What the Big People Do", "Reptar 2010" and "Angelica's Worst Nightmare" being a few notable examples. But while those did push the show in a Denser and Wackier direction, they're still tolerable because the writers actually put some imagination into the Dream Sequences, and often used them for Character Development. Rather than just allowing the writers to put the kids in implausible situations, they were used to show a baby's skewed perspective on the world, giving viewers insight into how the kids think. "What the Big People Do" shows what they imagine the adult world to be like, "Reptar 2010" features a Rashomon Plot where each of the kids imagines themselves as their hero Reptar (with the plot changing to reflect each of their personalities), and "Angelica's Worst Nightmare" is a darkly humorous horror story that shows Angelica's fear of losing her parents' attention. It wasn't until the plots that took place in the kids' heads started largely being used more for the sake of it without containing any underlying character development to compliment them while also using them as an excuse to place them in increasingly implausible and unrealistic scenarios that they finally began to overstay their welcome.
  • Fans lamented the show becoming Lighter and Softer in its later seasons, which led to the writers relying increasingly heavily on a formulaic story structure, with most episodes revolving around the babies having a series of misadventures stemming from their misconceptions about the world—which were usually caused, reinforced, and eventually resolved by a series of contrived coincidences and/or Angelica's fibs. But the roots of this could be seen from the very beginning of the series: it was a show about babies that was fairly grounded in reality, so it was always going to have a cutesy, innocent element; likewise, the stories about misconceptions were largely necessitated by the premise, since it was all about babies expressing their view of the world around them. What made all this work during the show's golden age was the more surrealist tone that wasn't afraid to venture into darker territory, creating a counterbalance. When the show was unexpectedly revived for a fourth season in 1996 without co-creator Paul Germain's involvement, it found itself lacking that surreal element — which meant that the episodes about misconceptions had to rely more heavily on contrived coincidences to drive the plot, often making the babies' adventures come off as pointless fluff. While the show could manage a few well-received moments and episodes in its later years, it often got so saccharine that it felt more like a glorified Nick Jr. show than a full-fledged Nicktoon.
• Scooby-Doo has a few examples;
  • Many long-time fans have argued that the franchise's formula stopped working around the time that they tried to bring real monsters into the show (notably in The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, the direct-to-video movies, and the live-action films), which killed the elements of mystery that gave the original series its charm. While the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! generally stuck to the famous "Scooby-Doo" Hoax for most of its stories, genuinely supernatural elements have been around as far back as that series, and not all of its Monsters of the Week turned out to be costumed crooks. The villain of "Foul Play in Funland" was a real robot gone haywire, one scene in "A Night of Fright is No Delight" had a bone floating onto Scooby's plate from the air with no explanation given, and the supporting characters in "That's Snow Ghost" were implied to have faced a real Yeti in a flashback. But this was all mitigated by the fact that there were still mysteries to solve and that the latter two cases were largely flavor-dressing or relegated to the background. Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (usually regarded as one of the best stories in the franchise), likewise had it as a selling point that there were real monsters in it. But again, the difference was that there was still a mystery to solve and enough plot twists (the zombies are on the heroes' side for one) for it to all feel natural and still come across as an authentic Scooby-Doo story. Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated did use real monsters as well, but like with Zombie Island, there was still a mystery to solve, and many episodes had the classic "Scooby-Doo" Hoax anyway. But as much later entries in the franchise continued to make increasingly large usage of real monsters and equally increasingly downplayed the mystery aspect of the show, fans began to feel alienated due to the real monsters and lack of mystery now seeming to have overstayed their welcome to the point that they'd robbed the show of its original charm.
  • Everyone and their mother points fingers at Scrappy-Doo — the overconfident ankle-biter who always threw himself In Harm's Way — as one of the all-time worst characters on TV. The thing is, Scrappy's debut gave the show some of its highest ratings and are credited with saving it from cancellation. Inside A Mind posits that the problem was not Scrappy himself, but how he was utilized. Things were fine when the core of the show was still intact but struggles keeping a consistent cast together led the show-runners to decide that since Scrappy was such a hit, they could use him to trim the fat, so to speak, cutting Velma, Daphne, and Fred (seen as the less memorable members of the gang) and have him take over for them.^note Though Daphne was restored to the main cast later on. This meant that Scrappy was the one who found clues, got kidnapped, and set the traps, which not only clashed with his stated characterization but made Scooby and Shaggy seem even more bumbling and useless. Not helping matters were some even more questionable retools, such as having the gang encounter real monsters and pairing Scrappy with cowboy-themed Suspiciously Similar Substitutes of Scooby and Shaggy. All in all, Scrappy was pushed front-and-center into a show that was already losing its way and never meant to be his in the first place. At that point, further retooling to get things back on track wasn't enough to save the original run of Scooby-Doo, and Scrappy's infamous reputation sticks with him to this day.
  • Once it was released, Velma quickly became regarded as the new nadir of the franchise for betraying its child-oriented roots and being too dark and meanspirited for its own good, despite the fact that similarly Darker and Edgier Scooby-Doo projects aimed at mature audiences such as the Supernatural crossover "ScoobyNatural", Scooby Apocalypse, Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, and most notably Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated had been released earlier to surprising acclaim. However, what allowed them to escape the vitriol that Velma received was their portrayal of Mystery Inc. as a likable band of True Companions, containing some moments of levity (mainly through the titular character), and utilizing the dark content to enhance their sincere plots, as opposed to the rampant Adaptational Jerkasses, the complete absence of Scooby-Doo himself, and gratuitous shock value moments of Velma choking out its intended premise as an origin story for the group.
• The Smurfs (1981):
  • The most divisive complaint about the show's decline in popularity was when the Smurflings and Puppy were introduced. As a result, there were much less episodes centered around such characters as Jokey, Hefty, Tailor and Dreamy. Another issue is the new storylines dumbed down into being lighthearted and comedic, far more than when it was in its first four seasons. However, the series still retains its original premise in the Middle Ages (despite the shift in tone).
  • Most fans can agree that the ninth season was when the show finally ditched the original premise in favor of going through time travel. Characters, such as Wild and Sassette, would appear depending on the episode. A few, such as Jokey, Painter and Baby, were treated less like characters and more like plot devices. The pop culture references were even used more often and the slapstick humor had been amped up to Tex Avery levels. Not helping is the Smurfs meeting up with dopplegangers of already existing villain characters, such as Gargamel, Azrael, Scruple and Hogatha.
• South Park:
  • The series made its name with a purely episodic format; while there might be a Sequel Episode to a previous one, by and large, each episode was a self-contained story. However (as outlined in this video by PIEGUYRULZ), starting in season 10 it began experimenting with multi-episode story arcs, with the two-parters "Cartoon Wars" and "Go God Go". Many seasons after that would each have arcs that lasted for more than one episode, such as season 11's "Imaginationland", season 12's "Pandemic", and season 14's "200" and "201", providing a nice shift from the usual gag-a-day humor that the show was built around. Season 18 marked the tipping point in introducing full continuity between episodes throughout the season, with multiple arcs that flowed into one another. Fan opinions on the arcs were mixed, but overall, season 18 was still well-received.
    
    Season 19, however, had a season-spanning arc that was tied into every episode, with the final three episodes (out of a ten-episode season) devoted purely to wrapping it up. The arc left the show feeling bloated, with less time to turn its satirical eye to other targets, losing the scattershot, highly topical humor that had been one of its trademarks. These problems only got worse in season 20, as every episode in the season was part of a linear story arc that continued from episode to episode, unlike season 19 where the episodes, while part of the overall season arc, had plots that were largely self-contained. Eventually, real life wrote the plot in a way that Trey Parker and Matt Stone hadn't foreseen, forcing them to hastily rewrite the season finale to reflect it^note The planned resolution was that Mr. Garrison, running for President as a stand-in for Donald Trump, would ultimately go down in defeat to Hillary Rodham Clinton, as many people, Parker and Stone included, were predicting Trump would do against Clinton in real life. Trump winning left Parker and Stone blindsided and derailed their planned ending. and, in the process, abandon several subplots that they had spent the entire season building up. The general consensus was that, on a show as famously rapid-fire and up-to-the-minute as South Park, trying to do a serialized story-line just doesn't work — a consensus that Parker and Stone agreed with when they went back to an episodic format in season 21.
  • A common complaint of Season 20 and 23 is how in both those seasons the focus character (Gerald Broflovski in Season 20 and Randy Marsh in Season 23) never get any major punishment for their atrocious actions that would be treated as crossing the Moral Event Horizon in most shows. However, actions of similar severity can be seen in early seasons such as Wendy getting a substitute teacher fired into the sun due to being jealous of Stan's attraction to her and Cartman deliberately causing the deaths of Scott Tenorman's parents and tricking Scott into eating their corpses in the form of chili. The difference between the earlier examples is such acts were contained within one episode rather than being linked to a season-long arc, making them easier for audiences to shrug off.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: The romance has often been seen as one of the show's greatest weaknesses in later seasons, but it's been like that since the beginning with the show constantly pushing a Star/Marco pairing despite them having more of a sibling-like dynamic. It worked better then since it was rarely in your face and they still showed support for each other, unlike later episodes, where it becomes the main plot despite them not having enough meaningful interactions in those later episodes.^note Marco being frequently absent in season 3 despite moving to Mewni means that most statements about him and Star having a healthy relationship are all talk and no show.. This reached its nadir in Season 4, where the show’s continued ignorance of the Myth Arc was seen as one of the main reasons the fandom called discontinuity of the season.
• A lot of the more debated aspects of the later seasons of Steven Universe can be traced to the less divisive earlier seasons:
  • Though "townie episodes" (episodes centered around Beach City and its residents) only started to receive flak towards the end of Season 3, a lot of the elements that came to be criticized about them were there in the earliest episodes; the focus characters were frequently divisive or flat-out hated, the events didn't contribute much to the overall plot beyond often negligible bits of Worldbuilding and Character Development, and they tended to take up a significant chunk of the episode count. Most fans let it slide then, as the series started out as more of a Monster of the Week show. Later seasons had the series knee-deep in the large Myth Arc, so having these episodes in between Story Arcs that permanently altered the series' status quo felt rather underwhelming to some fans. The first human-centric episodes also tended to still have some sort of magic element to them to give them some action, but as the series went on the Beach City episodes on average had less Gem-related content, making them feel more mundane and "boring" to many viewers.^note Compare "Frybo", an episode about Steven helping Peedee with a job by using Gem shards that led to the creation of the title villain, to Sadie Killer, a fairly low key episode about Sadie joining a band The much longer wait between episodes almost certainly didn't help, as fans would sometimes wait months for a heavily promoted new episode only to find out that it focused on an unpopular or irrelevant side character and didn't move the plot along whatsoever.
  • As Robobuddies argues in "The Steven Universe Rant", the show has always had a habit of subverting common genre tropes by turning them on their heads. While this worked for the more overused and obnoxious tropes, along with the more dramatic ones in small doses and as jokes, the latter became far more frequent as the series went on, leading to many wasted opportunities and, ultimately, a near-total lack of any sense of drama.
  • Rose Quartz was shown to be more or less morally perfect upon her introduction, and it wasn't until later that the show started including flashback episodes that highlighted her character flaws. When this first happened, it was applauded because it gave more nuance to Greg and Rose's relationship and served to flesh out her character. However, as time went on, more and more of Rose's flaws and mistakes were revealed, to the point where audiences began to lose sympathy for her. First was "Bismuth"'s revelation that Rose poofed and bubbled the titular character, but the details of the incident were never revealed in full, making it appear unjustified to many. Then "Back to the Moon" seemingly revealed that Rose shattered Pink Diamond which, combined with the previous twist, came off as hypocritical to some. Then the Drama Bomb "A Single Pale Rose" had the story-shattering reveal that Rose Quartz and Pink Diamond were actually the same person (the latter character was set up as a Spoiled Brat in "Jungle Moon") and Pearl was her slave. The Reveal made Rose and Pearl's romantic relationship come off as inherently creepy to some; because Pearls are programmed to worship the gems that own them, it's unclear whether Pearl's feelings for Rose were ever genuine or just an extension of her programming (or a combination of both.) Then there's the fact that Rose/Pink's decision to fake her death was what lead to the corruption of most of the Gems, meaning she's indirectly responsible for the events of the show. By the time Steven Universe: The Movie and the Steven Universe: Future episode "Volleyball" revealed that Rose abandoned Spinel, who considered her a close friend, by making her wait millennia for her in an abandoned garden, in a way they had many parallels to Parental Abandonment to some and permanently damaged her original Pearl during a temper tantrum, which is all but explicitly compared to abuse, respectively, a vocal portion of the fanbase had concluded that Rose had crossed the Moral Event Horizon, transforming from a flawed character to a villain in all but name. As a result, she became a massive Base-Breaking Character, with many wondering why the show even considered suggesting that she might be forgivable, let alone remotely morally upstanding.
  • The strict focus on Steven's point-of-view, give or take the occasional flashback or Imagine Spot, rarely hurt the show early on since the world was relatively self-contained (Beach City, the Temple, and the Gems' occasional missions), the cast was fairly small, and it helped focus on Steven's personality and Character Development. As the show continued and its universe expanded, however, more and more fans saw this narrative choice as problematic, both for story (Steven needs to be present for all major story events) and character development (Steven missing out on a major character moment means the audience does as well). Major examples of the latter include Lapis, who goes from barely tolerating Peridot in "Barn Mates" and "Hit the Diamond" to being her best friend in "Beta"; Amethyst meeting and befriending several of the Quartzes that were produced in the same Kindergarten she was "born" in long before she existed during the events of "The Zoo", which helps her overcome a lot of her self-esteem issues; and Lars going from being a moody, insecure teenager to a heroic spaceship captain (even stealing a Gem ship) in-between "Lars' Head" and "Lars of the Stars" with his new friends, the Off Colors. All of these are huge changes in characters' personalities and interesting story-lines that were never really explored in any depth, all because the show never bothered to deviate from Steven's point of view.
  • While "Change Your Mind" was well received, a major point of contention was the seeming redemption of the Diamonds. Some of this traced back to the earlier Heel–Face Turn of Peridot; back then many felt that it was very abrupt and contradicted her previous characterization of near-worshiping the Diamonds and not understanding why the Crystal Gems wanted to protect the Earth. The difference was that Peridot didn't really do that much wrong outside of antagonizing the Gems and checking up on The Cluster, and being raised in Homeworld's strict caste system was a decent enough Freudian Excuse for some people, meaning that the idea of her reforming wasn't too hard of a pill to swallow. The Diamonds, on the other hand, did far worse actions: Yellow Diamond nearly destroyed the Earth — in a project that involved fusing the remains of dead gems together and many compared to human experiments — just to spite Rose Quartz^note Ironically, it's this act that made Peridot's aforementioned redemption more believable, as she was appalled that Yellow would prioritize an old grudge over the welfare of her people.; Blue Diamond nearly shattered Ruby in a way that was set up to evoke prejudice towards mixed relationships and homophobia in particular, ran the Human Zoo, a facility that abducted humans and treated them like animals, and personally abducted Greg herself just because he empathized with her feelings of loss; and White Diamond brainwashed multiple Gems, including the other Diamonds after they turned on her, with her overall character being compared by many to an emotionally abusive mother. In addition, many thought that their Freudian Excuses weren't handled that well: Yellow and Blue's grief about Pink Diamond's supposed death wasn't hinted at in their first appearances and they openly call each other out for how poorly they handle it (Yellow for denying her grief and trying to erase all memories of Pink, Blue for refusing to move on after literal millennia), while White had the least amount of screen time out of all the Diamonds, giving the show little time to explore her perfectionism. This made their apparent redemption come off to many as either rushed or completely undeserved.
  • One minor gripe fans had with Future and The Movie is that, despite taking place two years after the end of season 5, most of the human characters barely look older, even Steven, whose age-up was specifically pointed out by the crew ^note Compare the previous time Steven aged into a teen, where he was much taller and had visible peach fuzz, to his growth in the movie, which was memetically summed up as "he has a neck now". This was also apparent in the original series, in which at least two years and a half pass, and none of the humans age in any noticeable way, with only Steven (who ages depending on his mental state) having an excuse. The difference was that The Movie put emphasis on the Time Skip and the fact that the characters, Steven in particular, have gotten older, with one of the songs having the lyrics "Here we are in the Future", making it easier to notice.
• Teen Titans Go!:
  • One of the many things fans/detractors complain about is the Family-Unfriendly Violence. And while this complaint is sometimes justified (the complaint is usually that the Titans are violent towards each other), complaints regarding violence in general are a bit strange, since the original cartoon was an action series where the characters used violence in every other episode. The difference with TTG is that it's a comedy, which makes all the violence seem a lot more jarring and out of place.
  • Certain complaints about the series — particularly the different characterization and the heavier focus on humor — aren't actually all that different from criticisms of the original cartoon from fans of the comics or other more serious DC action shows such as Batman: The Animated Series or Justice League. While the original cartoon had dramatic story-lines, they were lightened quite a bit from the original comics, where, for instance, Slade was downgraded from a more sympathetic Anti-Villain (his occasional mercenary work left out in favor of the goal of getting an apprentice by any means necessary from manipulation to blackmail, at the same time that his original comic-book name of Deathstroke also got left out alongside his typical swords and guns), the heroes had less characterization, and comedic animesque pratfalls and/or expressions were frequent, moreso in more lighthearted episodes. The main difference was that the Titans still had depth and characterization, they were still able to act like heroes, the dramatic and serious moments were still given the weight they warranted, and several fans to this day are intimidated by Slade (and most fans admit that, if nothing else, Ron Perlman's voice was pretty memorable). Go! merely put a bigger focus on humor and dispensed with dramatic story arcs. Meanwhile, the release of the direct-to-video DC films Justice League vs. Teen Titans, Teen Titans: The Judas Contract, and to a lesser extent the Grand Finale of the DC Animated Movie Universe, Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, have given the Titans their most authentic treatment yet.
• Tom and Jerry:
  • The title characters would in some of the original shorts be friends and speak, though rarely (and something would always come between their friendship, making them fight again). These elements are what is most reviled about The Tom and Jerry Show from the 1970s, and Tom and Jerry: The Movie, where this went on for longer periods of time than before while leaving moments of them fighting each other and Tom chasing Jerry in criminally short supply.
  • When Tom and Jerry began appearing in Direct-to-Video crossover movies in the late 2000s, such as with The Nutcracker and Sherlock Holmes, it was either accepted or ignored, because at least they still had some measure of originality. Eyebrows were raised when they crossed over with The Wizard of Oz, but it being a public domain story that they at least attempted to do different things with (although heavily basing it on the 1939 film), it was largely excused. It finally seemed to cross a line with the release of Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, an animated Shot-for-Shot Remake of the 1971 film adaptation with Tom and Jerry thrown in as an afterthought, sparking outrage and ridicule across the internet, mostly from people who didn't know that the movie series had been doing these kinds of crossover plots for around a decade, and ultimately becoming a Franchise Killer for those movies.
• Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race drew ire from fans when Geoff and Brody were brought back and made it to the finals. However, previous seasons of the show had brought back contestants who had been eliminated. The issue with Geoff and Brody's return was that the contestants who were brought back before them never made it to the finals on any occasion, thus making Geoff and Brody's successfully making it into the finals after having previously been eliminated come across as unfair.
• Many fans (and even the creators) lament the reduced role Brock played in The Venture Bros. movie finale - while Doctor Venture and the twins had their own subplots and relationships with other characters, both new and recurring, Brock was mostly just supporting General Gathers and manning the airship. His relationships with characters like Molotov Cocktease and Wariana went unexplored, and he didn't get any kind of closure. The problem is, despite being an Ensemble Dark Horse and the most Bad Ass character in the show's universe, Brock's role in the story had been diminished before: during the first half of Season 4, he was absent, having been replaced by Seargent Hatred, and despite having an increased role after Gathers took over OSI, he went back to work of the Ventures during the New York seasons and had no closure in his relationship with Molotov. It wasn't as bad then (altohugh some fans considered the Brock-free season 4 to be a Dork Age), because he was still allowed to show some Bad Ass skills and be relevant to the plot.
• Most of the more debated aspects of Young Justice (2010) Seasons 3 and 4 aren't new:
  • The voice acting. As noted prominently in the trivia section, Young Justice has always had to employ clever audio tricks or heavily reuse voice actors (or not have characters speak at all), because many episodes feature so many different characters that bringing in a different voice actor for each is not practical from a budget standpoint. This is usually mitigated by the talent of the voice cast (Bugg has the same voice actor as Wally, but you'd be hard-pressed to mix them up), there being in-universe reasons for characters having similar voices (Superboy is a clone of Superman; M'gann based herself after a character played by Marie Logan) as well as the fact that most of the main characters are all voiced by different voice actors, but with each actor doing several smaller roles; but each season adds more and more characters meaning more and more roles to voice in addition to the ones that already exist, so some of the voice actors end up voicing many, many roles. The issues some have with the voice acting for child characters, such as Amistad (voiced by Khary Payton) and Lian (voiced by Zehra Fazal), is, however, new, simply because characters of their age weren't present in prior seasons, and can probably be explained by the fact that they are young children being voiced by adults.
  • Character Relationships. The show has always been weird about pairing characters, developing relationships, and teasing others, with many of the most prominent relationships being created whole cloth by the show itself, and many other relationships not getting the proper development or setup. Conner/M'gann and Wally/Artemis, as can be shown by entries covering the earlier two seasons, had some detractors because they had no basis in the original comics. But at the same time, there were just as many people who considered themselves fans of both pairings precisely because of said lack of basis due to how that made the pairings completely unique to the show and thus able to stand out on their own merits provided within the show's narrative. Cassie/Tim are a rather infamous example of the show suddenly pairing characters with little to no build-up, as the two had never even been shown speaking to each other before they were stated to have gotten together, and each having more prominent love interests (or at least Tim does, Cassie's (who is actually Conner) is taken) than each other in the comics (though they have dated in the comics, it's just not the relationship most fans of either character like, and said "relationship" only lasted as far as a kiss born from grief). But again, much like with Conner/M'gann and Wally/Artemis, others were willing to give the relationship a chance due to both how it was largely unexplored territory for the show compared to the two characters' more prominent relationships with other people in the comics and the possibility of becoming better developed later in the series. The sudden Ship Tease of Will/Artemis, however, has neither of the reasons for defense that the other aforementioned pairings have. For unlike the aforementioned pairings, is neither unique nor conductive of potential for better development as a romantic pairing to make fans more receptive, but just involves two characters that most fans particularly don't want to see become romantically involved with each other (as opposed to just apathy), whether it be the No Yay of in-laws becoming romantically involved while the spouse is still around (and may not have left of her own free will) or the fact both characters are part of other pairings that many prefer.^note The 25th episode of season 3 addressed the problem by having Artemis and Will, despite briefly kissing at the beginning of the episode, not actually get together at the end by realizing they had No Sparks and that they can still work together as friends to take care of their families.
  • Representation. Greg Weisman had incorporated greater diversity into his previous shows in the past, and Young Justice is no different. The show has always been invested in having a racially diverse cast, with characters such as Artemis becoming half-white, half-Asian (which is also a side effect of the full-Asian Cheshire becoming her sister), the dark-skinned Kaldur being created to take the role of Aqualad, several Hispanic characters such as Jaime and Eduardo Jr. having prominent roles, etc., which is generally considered a good thing, or at least not a negative. However, a problem with Violet is that being Muslim isn't a racial trait (which is a very common mistake many make), and their appearance (dark skin, headscarf, dresses conservatively) fits the stereotype of what many assume a Muslim woman looks like, while also being from the fictional nation of Qurac. While adding a heroic Muslim character is commendable and the show notes that there’s nothing wrong with wearing a hijab as a way of practicing Islam, religion isn't bound by race ^note For example, 95% of Chechnya, Russia's citizens practice Islam and most people who live there are very light-skinned. There are also many Jews who are of Ethiopian descent or are Hispanic/Latino., thus it requires more than what most Race Lifts require to properly represent. And Young Justice, like most popular entertainment, has always skirted around religion, with none of the characters ever referencing it in either belief or disbelief. It's obvious why the creators would want to specifically represent Muslims (as opposed to other religions) given topical events, but Violet was probably never a good fit given their new origin of being the spirit of a Motherbox, an extraterrestrial pseudo-mystical object/being that would have no investment in any human religion. Season 4 addresses the complaint by having them briefly discuss her Islamic faith in a credits scene while introducing the Muslim character of Khalid Nassour and portraying his own faith as a Muslim more accurately.
    • What also helped Greg Weisman with representation, however, was that the characters whose races were changed were either original characters bearing an existing name or characters who were very minor and thus prone to less criticism for having their background changed. Season 4 ended up towing the line in a different way with the first Race Lift handed to a much more notable character from the comics than those before, General Dru-Zod, a major Superman villain, which gathered more criticism from audiences despite no attention being called to his changed race in-universe.
  • One significant criticism of season 4 was the extensive focus on the traumas suffered by Beast Boy, which while a more realistic depiction of trauma, was happening to a famed comic relief character in the comics who usually put a smile on in spite of his suffering. But he had shown problems with coping with his losses as far back as season 2. There, he had a brief moment where a waterfall on Rann reminded him of his mother's death and another where he watched his mother's old TV show. Being the only such moments showing how he was hurting, it was used to show emotional depth, and he didn't angst over it every episode. Season 3 expanded on how he coped with several deaths of people in his life (both revealed in flashbacks and having already been known to have died in season 2), but he had been Demoted to Extra at that point, so it was A Day in the Limelight for him until he retook his spot in the cast, and even then he still didn't angst over any of them throughout the season (Wally's then-recent death was being grieved over by other characters like Dick and Artemis instead). In contrast to both earlier seasons keeping his trauma in check, season 4 used it to make Beast Boy become far more paranoid and agitated. This initially fit with his focus in Miss Martian's arc, but following Lor-Zod's seemingly successful murder of Superboy, he was handed a depression arc that excessively stole screentime from Artemis', Zatanna's, Kaldur's, and Raquel's arcs throughout the season and further contributed to the divisive nature of his characterization, and had a less satisfying payoff for some (his recovery is shown in less detail than his downfall aside from his new therapy dog Wingman, he never joins the final battle against the forces of General Zod nor encounters Lor-Zod, and he mentions Superboy being alive without his reaction to Superboy's survival being shown onscreen).
    • It also highlights another recurring theme that took over the plot, the usage of therapy. Therapy sessions had been featured as far back as season 1, but as the show was focusing on the more realistic consequences of featuring teenagers as child soldiers, it made sense some would need to seek mental help for their actions. It remained in subdued use throughout the series, until season 4 where Beast Boy's aforementioned mental trauma and the attempts to help him and provide him therapy took up large portions of screentime from other major characters.
  • The show's tendency to use Faking the Dead, sometimes treated with equal weight to real deaths to avoid actually killing characters off, and largely avoiding the use of C-List Fodder as other iterations of DC comics stories would do, started to become more visible by season 3 and reached its apex in season 4^note With the season long focus on Superboy being thought dead and Nightwing, Rocket, and Miss Martian being thought killed for a single episode and the Targets comic miniseries^note Where Miss Martian, Tigress, and Arrowette are seemingly attacked by their mind-controlled teammates only to have planned the whole encounter in advance to trick the Light, with the actual deaths instead being given to civilians such as Joan Garrick, villains such as Baron Bedlam and Lor-Zod, and non-Justice League, non-Team heroes such as most of the Doom Patrol and Tomar-Re. But it had warning signs from the earlier seasons where this was kept in check. The season 1 episode "Failsafe" killed nearly every hero off on Earth before turning out to take place inside a mental training program, and season 2 had as a major plot point Artemis Crock faking her death to become Tigress and aid Aqualad in infiltrating the Light. However, both instances still had consequences. The Team members who underwent the simulation had to seek therapy when Miss Martian inadvertently hijacked control of it, and Artemis' undercover role was concealed from the Team by Nightwing, causing various consequences for these actions, and it was later followed by an actual death, the Heroic Sacrifice of Wally West in the season 2 finale. Season 3 had the only faked death courtesy of Forager tricking Lobo into crushing his shed exoskeleton, but most other episodes would have Halo (who can heal from fatal wounds) seem to take all the gory deaths meant for other heroes. Season 4 marked the point where this was no longer able to be tolerated, as not only were several heroes only thought dead for at least one episode before turning up alive, but the entire season hinged on the fate of Superboy, who was still shown in the intro despite being presumed killed four episodes in and resulted in consequences audiences were less tolerable about for being nearly nonexistent (Superboy seamlessly returned to his old life unscathed) or for dragging on too long (such as Beast Boy's depression arc). This also continued the growing problem with the show building up such a large cast of characters, as the show became much darker and more violent, avoiding killing off major heroes permanently further contributed to the show's bloated cast.

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