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alt title(s): Grow The Beard 
Much better.
The opposite of Jumping The Shark, Growing The Beard is the definitive moment when a television series begins to become noticeably better in quality. This often involves a new writer or other creative person coming on board, or is because a meddling executive leaves. Getting someone new into a series with an abysmal beginning can be difficult, as they only have one's word that "it gets a lot better, really."
This often refers to an individual episode of a comedic series that deviates from an overall lighthearted tone and (successfully) reaches an impressive emotional depth, without inflicting Cerebus Syndrome by changing the tone of the series and focusing on drama and emotion to the exclusion of humour in subsequent episodes. The element can sometimes be attributed to a single, outstanding episode that defines the show. Other times it is just a general improvement, like the Trope Namer: Star Trek:The Next Generation (see below).
On the same vein, the quality of early episodes can be of decent quality to begin with, but may be a bit simplistic or unfocused. Growing The Beard in this case is giving the show an intellectual boost or otherwise an improvement in tightening the story.
Continuity Creep may contribute to the beard... but can also get excessive and invoke the opposite, Jumping The Shark. See also Surprisingly Improved Sequel.
Compare to Win The Crowd.
According to urbandictionary.com, the term comes from Star Trek The Next Generation, which started off relatively weak but began to get better when Commander Riker grew a beard at the beginning of season two.
Does not refer to spontaneous generation from one's own body, or the acquisition of an opposite-sex partner to keep up appearances.
Also note that fans can be starkly divided as to whether a change is Growing a Beard or Jumping The Shark.
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Examples
Anime and Manga
- Noir. The first few episodes were basically filler. The sixth episode "Lost Kitten" was a truly touching moral dilemma. After that it was crime thrillers and ancient conspiracy and female gunslinging action to the climax.
- The first four episodes of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha often scare people off, as it looks like your usual Magical Girl fare. Girl gets powers, fights Monster Of The Week, rinse, repeat, and the animation style jumps about quite a bit. Then the plot does a turnaround, removes the Monster Of The Week entirely, and adds the Dark Magical Girl and the space battle cruiser staffed by military-uniform garbed mages.
- The trend is continued in the following seasons, A's and StrikerS, as the story transforms into a psychologically complex, multi-dimensional saga.
- Digimon Savers starts off as "GeoGreymon victim of the week" series but starts to pick up with the introduction of Falcomon. Then Kurata shows his hand and the fun and genocide begins...
- Witch Hunter Robin was rather blah through its first twelve episodes or so, featuring a rather episodic plot involving the protagonists hunting down random witches in an almost Monster Of The Week format. All that changed during "Loaded Guns", when Robin's organization betrayed her, using her roommate Toko as bait for a trap that nearly led the titular character to her death, an action which kicked off the main plotline of the series. Since Witch Hunter Robin was a single-season show it's probable that this was deliberate.
- Blue Gender. The first ten episodes or so, out of twenty-six, are set on Earth. They're relatively lackluster, feeling more like a rip-off of Starship Troopers with a touch of Mobile Suit Gundam than anything else. They're also very episodic, and you can easily skip most of the first half... then Marlene and Yuji get to Second Earth, and the series takes a sharp turn towards fucking awesome. The introduction of Yuji's Evil Counterpart, Manipulative Bastard Tony, helps. The introduction of
NewtypesB-cells helps too.
- Fans of Mai-HiME believe that it grew its beard at its eighth episode, with events (the killing of Harry by Miyu and subsequent "death" of Kazuya) that kick off an Ancient Conspiracy's intervention and cause a breakaway from the hitherto-formulaic plot.
- For the first 20 or so episodes, GaoGaiGar was not particularly impressive and seemed to be a simple, poorly constructed Transformers ripoff like its predecessors... around episode 26, however, the first Big Bad reveals his hand, the truly epic fights begin, and the animation budget grows notably more robust. Then episode 31 occurs and the handbrake is removed from the wheels of badassery.
- Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle changed from a lighthearted series full of ShoutOuts to past CLAMP series into a much darker story once the group arrived in Acid Tokyo and several startling character revelations took place. Main character Fay also physically exemplified this trope by allowing his hair to grow out after this story arc. IF you consider Darker And Edgier to be better. Some fans were put off by the unrelenting gloominess of the next three arcs, but the complexity of the plot and characterization certainly mushroomed.
- Jubei-chan had about 7/10 comedy and 3/10 action. Then the sequel came, improved animation quality and turned that ratio on its head.
- Trigun's first few episodes can be accurately described as "The Wacky Adventures Of Vash & Friends". That all changed in the twelfth episode, which set up an overarching plot to a previously fillerish show.
- Eureka Seven was a quirky but tepid mecha anime for most of its first half, and most of its watchers were rather ambivalent towards it on its first Adult Swim airing. Then came the first-season finale, which, along with a marked increase in animation quality, set the stage for the rest of the show and was a wonderful Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming in its own right. Then the real fun began...
- According to the Word Of God and That Other Wiki, this was planned by the writers in advance: first give us a shonen-y love drama and then without a warning, turn the whole show into an epic of mind-blowing proportions.
- Though the episodes before it had had their highlights, the conflict at Narita in episodes 10 & 11 of Code Geass marked the point at which the plot hit its stride and entertaining plotlines were produced both for Zero's rebellion and Lelouch's life at Ashford.
- Some would place the beard-growing moment more at the episode 22 mark; this was not only a Wham Episode that really kicked the pace of the plot into high gear and led to some memorable moments, but it is by open admission of the studio the point at which the show received a substantial increase in its production budget (in response to the show's surprise popularity), with the visual results being very obvious from this episode forward. Of course, as with all major events, some found it a Jump The Shark moment, declaring it Ruined FOREVER and Discontinuity.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: the end of the first part with Kamina's death. Others place it after the Time Skip, or everything after episode 17.
- This one has something of a Broken Base; some people have considered either of the above two points to be Jump The Shark moments, and plenty thought it was just as awesome from the beginning.
- The Mahou Sensei Negima manga does this around volume three, when it begins to switch from an Unwanted Harem comedy to an action series. It really hits its stride at the end of the Kyoto Arc, around volume 6. Unfortunately, the anime adaptation didn't get that far.
- It grows an even longer beard when it gets to the Negi vs. Rakan fight. All eight chapters of it. For a series that started out as an Unwanted Harem WITH MAGIC, it has proved that it can pull off an absolutely EPIC and awesome battle. No longer can it be said that Negima is nothing but Fan Service.
- Gun X Sword starts a bit slow and episodic... and then at the end of the sixth episode, Van asks a waiter if he's seen a man with a claw. The response is as follows: "Yes. He's right over there." That moment starts the show's momentum going, and it never loses it until the end.
- R.O.D. The TV starts off very slow and episodic, with only the most superficial of connections to Read Or Die and a strange amount of time spent on Anita going to school. Then the show gets a kick in the rear when the entire Ancient Conspiracy of the British Library comes into play beginning with kidnapping Nenene and the destruction of the entire island of Hong Kong, and the main plotline becomes the focus and not the subplot.
- Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure begins as what could best be described as Fist Of The North Star with vampires for its first two arcs (Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency). With the Stardust Crusaders arc it really comes into its own with the introduction of battle spirits called "Stands" and does away with the Hokuto Shinken-esque martial arts used in the previous storylines. And in Part 4, the art noticeably begins to shift away from looking like Fist of the North Star and develops a completely unique style.
- Don't forget that for Part 3, Joseph literally grows a beard...
- Gundam SEED is rather slow-paced for the first 30 or so episodes (basically, every episode generally follows the ZAFT-attacks-Kira-saves-the-day routine; that these episodes are more or less a copy... uh, Remake of the original Gundam series doesn't exactly help), but after a few Wham Episodes SEED finally escapes this routine and sets off on a path to its original, epic Grand Finale. To its defense, the first episodes do a good job of familiarizing and endearing the characters to the audience.
- Many One Piece fans agree that it was around the Arlong Arc that the really good stuff got started. (and that the aforementioned arc was the first great one.)
- Candy Boy is turning more and more into an emotional slice of life series with each released episode, especially since the introduction of Kanade and Yukino's little sister Shizuku. Not bad for a show that was originally a one-time affair based around the gimmick of twin sisters who like each other much more than average.
- Last Exile spends the first three episodes with next to no plot development, only going into high gear around episode 4. Some fans push this ahead further to episode 7, when Dio is introduced.
- Princess Tutu is a good, but fairly typical Magical Girl series - until Kraehe shows up.
- Transformers Armada started out as a sub-par Gotta Catch Em All series, not improving at all until midway through the show's run when they did a heel-face turn with Starscream (who became a much more shades of grey character as far as honor went) as well as introducing Armada's surrogate Starscream, the villainous, backstabbing Thrust.
- The improvement first began with "Rebellion," when Sidways really starts to manipulate. By Starscream's Heel Face Turn, the beard is full and bushy.
- The original Getter Robo manga, despite being an influential and important series for the Humongous Mecha genre, is still a fairly typical shonen action comic with some shaky art. When the series was revived 15 years later in Getter Robo Go, now under the full creative control of Ken Ishikawa, things really started to take off.
- Nurarihyon no Mago started off as a fairly average shounen manga, about a quarter-youkai boy who's meant to be the next head of a youkai clan but just wants to live a normal life. But once he stepped up to accept his role as their leader, much of it's sparse fandom agrees that the story took a sharp turn upwards.
- Muhyo and Roji gets quite a bit more interesting than a Ghost Of The Week series when Enchu is revealed as a Big Bad, but the series truly gets interesting after Rio is revealed as a traitor, when the plot shifts to the war against the evil Ark organization.
- Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni is a mystery-murder anime (based off a sound novel series, and it's remakes) series revolving around multiple arcs every few episodes. The first two episodes are rather cute and slice of life-ish, with a pinch of scary mystery. It all goes down hill when the detective comes into the story.
- Dragon Ball: the second arc, which introduced Krillin and brought to the foreground the fighting/tournament-themed storylines that replaced the farce with which the series began. Others point to the Red Ribbon Army arc, specifically the introduction of Tao Pai Pai. Tao Pai Pai, with his utter ruthlessness and willingness to kill anyone who looked at him the wrong way, brought a new level of darkness and started the series down the line of plots (ultimately abused to the point of diminished returns by the end of the series) where Goku must use the Dragon Balls to resurrect those who have been savagely murdered by the forces of evil.
- While the Tien arc was good, the real Growing The Beard moment was Krillin's first death.
- Similarly, Dragon Ball GT begins horribly (so horribly, that FU Nimation initially omitted the first sixteen episodes of the series because they feared that they would derail interest in the US over the series) and largely does not improve until the introduction of Baby showed up on Earth in Dragonball GT. Ironically enough, this was the same episode in which Vegeta shaved off his facial hair.
- Okay, Kannazuki No Miko is a Twelve Episode Anime, but it still grows a definite beard halfway through. Be patient with the silly mechas and shonen anime clichés — when Chikane's issues take centre stage, that's when things are about to get way the hell more interesting.
- Monster really takes its time setting up its characters and situations, so that for its first 20-some episodes it appears to be a warmed-over Fugitive knockoff with a doctor on the run from the law helping people he meets while trying to find the real perpetrator. Then we get a complete shift in focus to Dr. Reichwein and some other new characters being affected by Johan's plans, with the series taking on a much stronger focus on uncovering Johan's backstory rather than simply chronicling Tenma's travels.
- Shuffle! really got better and more dramatic with the beginning of Nerine and Lycoris' arc.
- Your Mileage May Vary on that. To some the series merely traded its harem love comedy clichés for a set of drama cliches and the series didn't really grow the beard until the start of Kaede's arc.
- Rurouni Kenshin's first season, while mostly good, is more episodic, occasionally silly, and bogged down with filler. The drama and character development ramp way up with the onset of the Kyoto Arc.
- Berserk around volume 9 where stuff starts hitting the fan.
- Let's be honest, Berserk had a five-o'clock-shadow it's first volume, and by twenty-five it's grown into Alan Moore territory.
- The introduction of Kenshiro's elder brothers and the Hokuto Shinken succession dispute to the storyline in Fist Of The North Star, which is when Kenshiro begins to fight against opponents who are on equal terms with him. Before that the series never had much of a central plot, just short story arcs after short story arcs all following the same formula of Kenshiro going to a village and dealing with the gang of the moment.
- At the end of recap episode 15 of the first season of Da Capo, the show tells its viewers that the show is about to get a lot more serious. It is also at this point (or perhaps an episode or two later) that the series gets a lot better.
- The Queen's Blade anime makes a really bad first impression, with it's hentai-inspired character designs, fan service up the wazoo and copious amounts of fetish fuel. It redeems itself after a few episodes by presenting a rather gripping story and compelling characters, even though a lot of people may still be distracted by the show's huge focus on well-endowed female bodies.
- Chocotto Sister makes an almost seamless transition from a fanservice-laden moe-vehicle to an emotional rollercoaster-ride, leading to some very well-executed tear jerkers near the end.
Card Games
- Magic The Gathering was always a fun game, but the point at which it "grew up"—simplifying rules baggage, gearing toward tournament play, improving art standards, and kicking off its longest-lasting storyline—was the Mirage set. Probably not coincidentally, this was the first set that chief-designer-to-be Mark Rosewater worked on.
Comics
- Peanuts: in the first few years after its 1950 debut, it was a basic gag strip about children, with a few odd quirks (a kid playing Beethoven on a toy piano, a smart dog, etc.). Then in a 1956 sequence, Charlie Brown got his kite caught in a tree, and was so angry he decided to just stay there. This went on for over a week, with other characters walking by and making sarcastic or inane comments. Charles M. Schulz himself later identified this sequence as the moment when the strip's unique brand of humor finally took shape.
- Literal example: Green Arrow was just a cheap Batman knockoff with an arrow gimmick until he started sporting a goatee and became a "socially conscious" modern-day Robin Hood.
- The US Transformers comic was okay, occasionally outstanding, for the first several years of its existence, until writer Bob Budiansky tired of it and started writing such gripping tales such as the human-sized Transformers who joined the pro-wrestling circuit or had romances with giant Amazon women in space. UK Transformers writer Simon Furman took over for the last two years of its run and the stories saw an immediate and significant upswing into epic, mythology-driven and long-running arc plots involving both new and old characters. Many old fans who'd gotten bored during Budiansky's reign returned to the fold and sales saw a significant upswing (passing 100,000 a month), making the decision to cancel the comic in 1991 all the more inexplicable.
- It took a while for The Incredible Hulk to settle down on how they would go about their portrayal. Hulk ranged from good, to downright evil, from Banner's intelligence to being completely incapable of abstract thought. They were even unsettled in color, and how he transformed. It wasn't until the first Hulk Annual that they settled down in, green child-like Berserker, who speaks in Hulk Speak, and is powered by Unstoppable Rage.
- The first story arc of classic graphic epic The Sandman, lasting for seven issues, seems to set the title up as just another horror title. With issue 8, "The Sound of Her Wings", the comic introduces Death (one of its most popular characters) and led to the series becoming an ensemble series, with other characters existing alongside Dream, having adventures that Dream finds himself drawn into.
- The first year's worth of the Marvel GI Joe comic are largely crap as far as nothing really important happening. It wasn't until issue #14, with it's introduction of Destro into the comic book, that the series really took off. Much like Marcia Cross in "Melrose Place", Destro stirred shit up with his first appearance, taking Baroness's loyalty from Cobra Commander as well as rekindling their former off-camera love affair. And unlike the cartoon, where Destro was 100% loyal to Cobra Commander, Destro's relationship with Cobra Commander hit the bricks almost immediately when Cobra Commander tried to kill Destro to keep him from (potentially) usurping his leadership, culminating in a blotched attempt on his life that nearly killed the Baroness and led to a massive multi-year war between the two men over the course of the Marvel series.
- Others consider the "beard growing" moment to be issue #21, which not only introduced Storm Shadow (who became so popular with fans, that Hasbro agreed to turn him into a good guy), but was Larry Hama's ambitious "Silent Issue" as far as an experiment in doing an entire GI Joe comic with no dialogue whatsoever. The issue garnered much critical acclaim, helping GI Joe go from lame toy tie-in comic to an actual well put together comic book in the eyes of many comic fans.
- TMNT Adventures started out with adaptations of the cartoon, then followed it up with a couple of short humorous story-lines. By issue 10 it had shifted to an ongoing story, but this Troper feels it truly hit its' stride around issue 29 when Ninjara was introduced.
- Sonic the Hedgehog started out as light comedy in the vein of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. It slowly added more serious elements, completing its beard growing for many fans with the Mecha Madness storyline. The series later came close to JumpingTheShark (minus only the unrecoverable aspect; fans also disagree as to when this occurred), but has since re-grown a beard with the writings of Ian Flynn.
- The entire company of Image has arguably undergone this. Image was founded by several artists from Marvel Comics, all of which were known for Darker And Edgier series, and the original titles such as Youngblood and Spawn reflect this. After the departure of founding member Rob Liefeld in 1996, things began to look up, with several lighter titles such as Bone and less Dark Age grit (which means that the early comics haven't aged well).
- The first two Tintin albums are a long way short of the quality of the mature works. The third book isn't great either, although it just crosses the line enough to find a place in the list of the series on the back cover.
Literature
- The pre-1990 Discworld books (at the latest, up to Small Gods) felt far different than their latter counterparts. Particularly glaring within the separate section of the Disc mythos: compare and contrast the Granny Weatherwax from Equal Rites to the one in Carpe Jugulum. Or the Lord Vetinari in The Color of Magic (Word Of God had to step in and confirm that it was the same Patrician, and not one of his thoroughly insane predecessors) to the Magnificent Bastard of the Moist Von Lipwig books.
- Lord Foul's Bane, the first book in Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant series, isn't very good. Skip it. The series improves dramatically in the second book, titled The Illearth War, and stays that way.
- Actally, many readers think the first book is the best, and none of the sequels ever match it.
- The Dragonbone Chair, the first book in Tad Williams' Doorstopper fantasy series, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, tends to drag on and doesn't introduce the main antagonist until several hundred pages in. Once the series gets going, it's very good, but you still have to get through much of the first book to get to the good stuff.
- This seems to be the case with most of Tad Williams' doorstoppers. The protagonists only know that their lives are going to hell; they don't know why, there are webs within webs, etc. Awesome characters, storytelling, worldbuilding, and prose keep this from becoming the problem it would be in the hands of a less capable author. But it's a given that you will have no idea what's actually going on until the last five hundred pages or so.
- Gardens of the Moon, the first book in Steven Erikson's gargantuan Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence, drops the reader in the middle of an ongoing war with little explanation of what is going on. The lack of scene-setting or explanations for concepts in the book have led many to give up on the novel, as acknowledged in later editions by the author. Fans suggest that the book doesn't settle down and become comprehensible until a good 150 pages in, and many suggest skipping it and starting with the more traditionally-structured second book, Deadhouse Gates (set on a different continent with different characters) instead.
- David Brin's novel Sundiver, the first set in his Uplift Saga universe, is poor, and it is usually recommended that readers skip to the second, Startide Rising, instead. This is made easier by the second book being set 300 years after the first, featuring a totally different cast and having minimal references to the first book.
- The Aubrey-Maturin series picks up considerably with 3rd and 4th books HMS Surprise and The Mauritius Command, after being given command of the titular Cool Ship and heavily reducing the land-based romantic storylines of the 2nd book Post Captain.
- Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World, the first in his Wheel Of Time series, cops a lot of flak for its "borrowings" from Lord Of The Rings. The second book, The Great Hunt, takes the story in a completely different direction and is much better. However, given the amount of plot and character information given in the first book it is difficult to recommend that new readers skip it.
- The Dark Tower fans generally consider the series to have properly begun in the second book. Stephen King (the author) agrees so heartily that he actually re-wrote the first book to try and make it suck less; fans are divided as to whether this was an improvement.
- There are quite a few fans who consider the first entry in the series the best book (and one of his better books period, and that it only goes downhill from there.
- Harry Potter did it with The Prisoner of Azkaban, the third book of the series. The first two were fun, wonderfully-painted page turners with magnetic characters but didn't seem to be much more than that. Then book three's title character, who was mentioned very briefly at the start of book one, is brought into focus and it just builds from there, making it clear that this isn't just some fluffy kid/teen series but an incredibly intricately plotted seven part Myth Arc.
- An even more noticeable instance of the trope is the fourth book, Goblet of Fire. Not only does it double the page count of the previous books, in fact tripling it over the first book, the climax is the turning point of the series. Up until then, it had been lighthearted and innocent for the most parts, but after this book, the series takes a swift turn into dark and grim territory, with a high body count, and adult themes and concepts introduced.
- In this case, it is a metaphoric case of growing a beard. The first two books were written about a boy of 11 and 12 years old (pre-puberty). As Harry grows up (post-puberty), he sees the world through increasingly adult eyes, becoming more aware of the deep problems in the world and the flawed nature of many of the adults in it (his father is a jerk, his revered teacher messed up badly, etc).
- The Eyre Affair, the first book of the Thursday Next series, isn't bad, per se, but features disappointingly little use of the series' central gimmick of the title character being able to enter works of fiction and a comparatively conventional "stopping the bad guy" plot. Starting with book two, Lost in a Good Book, Jasper Fforde really went to town with the concept with all kinds of Painting the Fourth Wall and nods to all kinds of different literature. Also, while some important plot threads are introduced in book one, the second really begins the series' fascinating juggling act between all its different subplots that frequently collide or call back to events several books previous in unexpected ways.
- Animorphs at first did it with the third book in the series; while the first two had helped to establish the core plot and the setting, the third book took a more unique turn, centering around Tobias, the most mysterious member of the group who in the previous books had been trapped in the form of a hawk. Other points later in the series' 54 book run could also be considered 'Growing The Beard', depending who you ask. Perhaps when Marco's mother is revealed to be Visser One, when the conflict escalates to a full scale war in the later books, and more gradual as the characters grow more mature over time. There is also a very notable beard-growing for the companion books such as the Andalite Chronicles and Hork Bajir chronicles, with much more mature and engaging storylines following on characters on exotic alien worlds. On the other hand, some fans argue that the later books in the core series saw a decline in quality, where Applegate had many of the books ghostwritten (though she heavily edited them to fit), and in the climax of the series where some were upset at Rachel and Ax's deaths.
- A surprising leap in style occurred between books six and seven of Rangers Apprentice, with more originality, humour, and maturity in the following stories.
- Ian Rankin, acclaimed Scottish author of the Inspector Rebus novels, started out the series with quite straight forward serial killer and murderer hunts. The fourth novel, Strip Jack, had a change in tone in dealing instead with the sordid life of a (fictional) British politician. Afterwards, the series began to focus more on the morally gray world of big business and British politics, and the relationships between the two. The series was much better for it.
Live Action TV
- Let's look at the different Star Trek series:
- The Trope Namer is the second season of Star Trek The Next Generation. At that moment, we see Commander Will Riker sport his distinctive beard, marking his growth into something other than a Kirk clone. Meanwhile, other characters begin to find their niches, such as Geordi La Forge being assigned as Chief Engineer, where he could do something other than use his visor as a plot device. Though it was the third season that showed the most improvement.
- This trope could well have been named for the episode "Best of Both Worlds", in which Next Generation not only became a great show, but also emerged from its predecessor's shadow. (It also marked Next Generation starting a fourth season, something its predecessor never did.)
- It's also worth noting that in the ninth movie, Riker shaved off his beard. The ninth and tenth movies are generally considered to be of far less quality than the seventh and eighth.
- As far as some are concerned, Star Trek really picked up shortly after Gene Roddenberry's death and the show was taken over by people who were slightly less idealistic than Roddenberry. On the other hand, others seem to consider that idealism to have been the the show's whole point. And because we're talking about sci-fi here, on the gripping hand, others consider that many of these same people failed to grow the beard necessary to help Star Trek Voyager and in a timely fashion to save Star Trek Enterprise.
- Star Trek Deep Space Nine did the same, with Captain Sisko growing the beard this time. (This one isn't generally considered an improvement so much as a change in tone.)
- Sisko's shaved head starting with season 4 could also count to a degree, though this was really just taking the changed tone from his Growing The Beard to the next level (which would lead to the epic 3-season long Dominion War storyline.
- Many Star Trek Voyager fans felt the show grew its beard when it left the lackluster Kazon behind in favour of a much more serious threat: the Borg.
- Most viewers agree that Enterprise was just finding its voice in either the third season (which was a tight, serialized full-season arc in the style of Deep Space Nine) or the fourth (where Manny Coto was Running The Asylum, resulting in tons of Continuity Porn). Unfortunately, the show was cancelled at this point, so we'll never know if the beard would've stayed on.
- Another literal Beard-Growing moment is Blackadder, where the titular character (or rather, the relative played by the same actor) gains one between season one and two, along with a ton of Magnificent Bastard qualities.
- Full House rose sharply in popularity when the plots started focusing more on the girls than the men.
- Law And Order Special Victims Unit was given a very different look at the start of the second season that greatly improved the atmosphere of the show: Olivia got a haircut, Stephanie March joined the cast as Alex Cabot, detectives Jeffries and comic-relief Cassidy were replaced by Tutuola, and the show began to distinguish itself as its own series instead of just a Law And Order spin-off.
- Seinfeld began as a fairly innocuous observational sitcom, but took a sharp upswing in the last two episodes of its second season: "The Chinese Restaurant", a real-time episode with a single set, garnered impressive critical acclaim, while "The Busboy" started the show's practice of weaving together the various subplots at the end of each episode. However, it didn't really grow its beard until "The Limo", late in season three, which saw the show introducing more off-the-wall elements into the mix.
- Referring to above, many refer to ''How I Met Your Mother's season two episode "Slap Bet" as the series' "The Chinese Restaurant".
- Madan Senki Ryukendo, around the 30th episode, took an upward climb in quality. The show expanded focus to characters other than the heroes and embraced its silliness, while moving away from the bad parts that were present in the beginning. Because of this, the last half of the series became one of the best toku shows yet.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Spike's arrival in Sunnydale proved a noticeable upswing, but the true Growing The Beard moment was probably the resurgence of Angelus, cementing the shift from Monster Of The Week episodes to a darkly comedic, character-driven series. True Art Is Angsty, after all.
- You could also argue that the beard grew a few episodes later with 'Passion' - a moving and powerful episode that featured the very first major character death in a series that would later become known for them.
- One can also argue the beard grew earlier, in the season 1 finale, a first sign of Joss's sad and brilliant writing, and just how good Sarah Michelle Gellar had become. YMMV
- Power Rangers began as a show where a Five Man Band does humanitarian stuff around their school, fights the Mooks, then the Monster of the Week, and then goes back to school - Strictly Formula. Starting with Power Rangers in Space, plots became more complex and characters more human as it went on, and Card Carrying Villains were replaced (to some extent) with villains with better-defined motivations.
- Even before this, the initial series would probably have collapsed into obscurity without the Green Ranger and the Dragonzord. They modified the dynamic of the team (and the show) and, perhaps more importantly to Haim Saban and Bandai, sold more toys.
- Babylon 5's pace greatly improved when Sheridan became the captain (whether or not the two are actually related is up for debate). One character did grow some hair, but only on top of her head as Delenn grew hair after going into a cocoon in the beginning of season 2.
- The Beardgrowing did, however, already start in the middle of season 1, when Morden first arrived and the arc started to kick in.
- Inverted later, as when Sheridan literally grew a beard at the end of season 4, the series pretty much Jumped The Shark.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 grew a beard right after its first aired season on KTMA, when it went from ad-libbing in the theater scenes to scripted jokes. Later MSTies who watch the early KTMA episodes would barely recognize the show. The second season beard is pretty much Word Of God: the KTMA and first season episodes were mostly ad-libbed when it came to mocking the films. When they started scripting the riffs in season two, the jump in the number really good lines was clear (The addition of TV's Frank didn't hurt). A significant number of MSTies, however, point to the third season as the point where the show really hit its stride - "Cave Dwellers" and "Pod People" are often seen as the first truly great episodes in the show's run.
- Flash Gordon starting getting better half way through the first season.
- M*A*S*H did this with the episode "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet."
- Brendan Fraser's death on Scrubs.
- In a more literal vein, it appears that in the upcoming and likely last season of the show, the main character of J.D. will be sporting a really grotty-looking beard.
- The end segment of the first episode of Season 8 explicitly outlines both the writer's hopes that the show will "Grow the Beard" during it's final season and their strategy for doing so by returning to the themes and defining character traits explored during the first two seasons of the series.
- Following the first two episodes of Season 8, the show was praised by fans and critics alike for being both funnier and more sincere than the previous few seasons of the series.
- The fourth episode of Season 8, entitled "My Happy Place," features an extensive discussion between J.D. and Elliot which suggests that decision to have J.D. grow a beard may have been an explicit homage to the internet phrase reflective of the writers hopes that the show would close on a better note than previous seasons. J.D. and Elliot discuss their decision to once again pursue a romantic relationship. After Elliot almost explicitly acknowledges that the show is returning to a plot device that they have relied on time and time again, J.D. notes that, as of late (e.g., in the first few episodes of Season 8), a lot of things have changed for the better. He then notes that "I've changed too. I have a beard now."
- Many people say this of the second series of Torchwood, compared to Series 1. Whether or not this made it great, good, or simply less painful to watch depends on who you ask.
- The tone certainly became much
darker lighter, and the main characters more competent... and then half the cast was killed off one by one.
- Angel. Season 1 was certainly decent, but at some point things got better.
- The sixth episode of Supernatural - Skin - was when it was starting to get really, really good. It was the start of squicky gore, uneasy subtext (the misogyny of the shapeshifter and Shifter!Dean's near-rape of Becky), festering issues, awesome acting and more insight to their brotherly relationship. All the things that Supernatural is loved for.
- The first season of Newhart was frighteningly bad. None of the wacky townspeople existed yet, nor did Michael and Stephanie. The show was more a bland sitcom with standard recycled plots. Worst, it was taped, rather than filmed, so the entire look and feel was different. When the show switched to film, it grew the beard.
- The first season of Red Dwarf was something of a mixed bag, with the inexperienced actors taking a while to find their feet and the writers not sure what tone they wanted to hit. The second season saw a notable improvement with the introduction of the android Kryten (although not as a regular at first) and an upping of the SF elements. However, it wasn't until the third season with the introduction of the Starbug spacecraft and more shows about getting off the ship that the show really hit its stride.
- The season one finale of Red Dwarf ("Me2") definitely stands out as a "growing the beard" moment; it was the first real "spotlight" episode for Arnold Rimmer and was the first time we got to crawl inside his head (via the subplot regarding Rimmer's final words before dying) towards Rimmer's inferiority complex and his deep-seeded self-loathing, leading to Rimmer becoming more of a sympathetic and fleshed out character. Which is made all the more ironic given that "Me2", by all accounts, was thrown together at the last minute to replace the originally planned finale.
- The second season of Robin Hood is generally considered of a much higher standard than the first, with a more consistent tone between episodes and better character development.
- Married With Children is a rather bizarre example in the sense that it started out more subtle and down-to-earth, but actually dramatically improved when the show became more wacky, to the point where it basically became a live action cartoon, while it still retained most of its core themes and jokes. A rare case of Flanderization actually improving the show's overall quality.
- Gotta disagree with this one. Certainly the show gained a larger (and more vocal, judging by all the hooting and hollering) following when they turned up the volume on the cartoonishness, but in the early days the Bundys were far more realistic and thus came across as an actual human family.
- For example: Peg was just a lazy housewife as opposed to a criminally-negligent shrew who once served her family a single M&M for breakfast.
- Bud was just a typical little brother as opposed to a creepy sex addict.
- Kelly was just streetwise as opposed to the town bicycle.
- And so on. The harsh gags about their general displeasure with their lives and each other were softened by the fact that they really did love each other, and the social commentary had more bite because the show was more real. There were some really great episodes those first three years, before it became cartoonish to the point of ridiculousness.
- The Daily Show, when it started out in 1996 with Craig Kilborn, made fun of the news media but it didn't have any particular focus; it seemed like a generic news-parody show. Jon Stewart's arrival in January 1999 changed everything, as Stewart's vision of the show was less about mocking celebrities and their scandals and more about hard-hitting political satire with a left-wing slant, which led to the show becoming more serious minded with it's humor and interviews (which began to attract major political figures, elected and retired, to the show to be interviewed by Stewart, who evolved into quite the capable interviewer).
- To use the very metaphor this trope employs, the election of an incompetent right-wing President was the smoothest, softest, most rugged beard a left-wingish news-parody show could ever grow.
- The second year of the new version of Top Gear when they replaced the second hand car expert with James May.
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles didn't truly start to get good until about midway through its first season (about the time when Kyle Reese's brother shows up).
- 'Homecoming' marked the moment Heroes went from being an X-Men wannabe to the show that made NBC relevant again.
- Though Lost was extremely intriguing for the first couple of episodes, the end of "Walkabout" absolutely sold the series.
- It could be argued that Lost grew its beard in "Walkabout", then jumped the shark somewhere midway in season 2 (possibly around "Fire+Water", but some more cynical viewers will place it back to the season premiere), reaching an all-time low in season 3's "Stranger in a Strange Land", only to surprisingly grow its beard back at the exact moment Jack also decided to grow one: in the season 3 finale, "Through The Looking Glass".
- ...or it grew it back with the incredibly well-recieved line of episodes that came after "Stranger in a Strange Land".
- Tru Calling is generally accepted to have improved with the addition of Jason Priestly's antagonist time traveller. Whether the improvement was from "terrible" to "mediocre", or from "good" to "excellent" is still contested.
- The first season of the US version of The Office went through some serious growing pains. While only the pilot was a direct lift from the original British show, it was still an uneasy mix of the British version's "humor of discomfort" and more American style jokes. The season was only six episodes long, however, and contained enough genuinely hilarious moments to give it promise. With season two, the writers gained more confidence in allowing the characters to have their own personalities apart from the ones that inspired them, which also allowed for an increased focus on the other people working at the office.
- This troper and every fan of the show they know always, without fail, describe the final scene of The Dundees(the Season 2 premiere) as the moment they fell completely in love with the show and have watched it religiously ever since.
- Morecambe & Wise's first tv show Running Wild was widely considered to be a disaster, with one critic saying "Definition of the week. Television - the box in which they buried Morecombe & Wise". Theyr next series Two of a Kind written by Sid Green and Dick Hills was better received, however their classic years are considered to be when they moved to the BBC and Eddie Braben became their scriptwriter. This is the era when the relationship between them was finally established with Wise as the egotistical idiot and Morecambe as the down-to-earth clown, as well as introducing the elaborately staged guest appearances.
- Farscape. This basically killed Farscape in Australia. The Nine Network hyped Farscape to the point of stupidity, then put it on in prime time. Unfortunately, the series was slow to build, with Chrichton in particular starting off as an annoying putz. The ratings slumped dramatically and Nine began to bounce it about from timeslot to timeslot and play episodes out of order.
- Most fans consider the introduction of Scorpius as the big bad and the kicking off of the big myth-arc about wormhole weapons and the Scarran/Peacekeeper conflict at the end of season 1 to be the moment the show grew it's beard. Until then most of the episodes had been standalone 'John learns about the crazy universe' episodes, but Scorpius changed all that.
- Season 11 of Frasier, which ended the series on a positive, brilliant note after the oft-criticized Seasons 8-10. The original show runners returned for the final season, and everything, including the titular character's love life and the Official Couple, was handled much more deftly. Laura Linney, who had never done a sitcom before, won a much-deserved Emmy for playing Frasier's final love interest. Began with a brilliant subversion of Law Of Inverse Fertility. In every sense, a rather amazing eleventh-hour Renaissance, particularly since Season 10 had some of the more cringe-worthy moments of the show's run.
- In the introduction to her first solo cookbook, The French Chef Cookbook, Julia Child publicly disavowed the first 13 episodes of her show The French Chef, claiming (not implausibly) that WGBH had erased them and they were unwatchably terrible; the book thus begins with episode 14, and most of the first 13 were eventually reshot.
- Stargate SG-1 starts off very slowly, and takes more than a season to coalesce around a unified, sensible mythos and begin its story arcs.
- Dollhouse, the current page-quote provider, simmers along until "Man on the Street" (1x06). From then on...
- The Shield is an interesting example of the trope kind of backfiring on the show; actor David Rees Snell (who played popular supporting cast member "Detective Ronnie Gardocki") grew a beard in season three, replacing his trademark moustache. The change in the actor's facial hair divided fans, as did season three on a whole. The fifteen episode season was widely panned by fans and critics, due to it's massive amount of filler, shock for shock's sake storylines (including a character being orally raped and another murdering an innocent kitten just because they could), the removal of a popular newly introduced supporting cast member (Tavon), and the fact that numerous episodes of the season seemed to focus on main characters of Vic Mackey and Shane Vendrell feuding over Shane's new girlfriend. The show did recover with seasons four and five, though they ended up having to invoke stunt casting (bringing Glenn Close and Forrest Whitaker onto the series) to distract the press from the dismal season three.
- Though there were a few decent episodes in its first season, this troper believes The Odd Couple took a giant leap in quality when, starting with Season Two, it was filmed with three cameras and a live audience. Right from the second season's first episode, the show suddenly demonstrated more energy (and fun) as the cast fed on the live reactions of the audience.
- Prison Break led off with some good episodes, but really grew the beard in the two-parter "Riots, Drills and the Devil" (episodes 6 and 7 of season one), which set the benchmark for all subsequent episodes in pace and tone. Robert Knepper's character T-Bag became part of the main cast, the Michael/Sara relationship really kicked off, most of the main characters got to show off the traits that would define them and drive the show for the rest of its run (Michael being the hero, Lincoln being brawny, etc), and the Evil Government Conspirators started taking a more active role in the fate of the protagonists.
Music
- George Harrison of The Beatles. While not, strictly speaking, actually bad, his early works tended to lean a bit to the saccharine side of things, and most of his best performances were on songs written by John and/or Paul. However, he eventually became an accomplished songwriter in his own right, even managing to hold his own in a solo career after the band broke up. (Like Riker, he also grew an actual beard in the interim).
- He did more than "hold his own" in his solo career; he was actually the first Beatle to have a post-Beatles #1 solo hit. After The Beatles broke up, Harrison had a whole bunch of material that Lennon and Mc Cartney never let him use.
- This troper cannot possibly agree to such gross diminishing of Harrison's Beatles input, which, admittedly scarcer than that of Lennon/Macca, often ranked among THE BEST Beatles material ("Taxman" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", anyone?).
- R.E.M.'s fifth album, 'Document'. As music writer Garry Mulholland puts it in This is Uncool: "the moment Michael Stipe stopped mumbling gibberish into his fringe over tinny old Byrds riffs". A bit harsh perhaps, but undoubtedly the record that made them mainstream.
- Green Day's 'Dookie', the third album. The first two records are respectable but very lo-fi. They even re-recorded 'Welcome to Paradise' for Dookie to make it sound a bit less tinny.
- David Bowie was in the music business for five years before "Space Oddity"...and even then, his most iconic "early" (glam) songs (most of them actually Vindicated By History after "Ziggy Stardust" brought him back into the public eye) didn't come until his partnership with Mick Ronson.
- The three original members of Rush were Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and John Rutsey. They were a decent if generic rock band with some definite promise. Then Rutsey left the band because he could not handle the rigors of the touring schedule. The next album, Fly By Night introduced the new drummer Neil Peart. Not only is he pretty much the consummate rock drummer, but he wrote the band's lyrics. Goodbye cutesy songs like "I Need Some Love", hello prog rock history. Rush became famous for their concept albums, their evolutionary style and their incredibly deep lyrics.
- Silverchair, with "Diorama", once they grew up, stopped whining, and brought in Van Dyke Parks.
- Bob Dylan grew a mustache with "Blowin' In The Wind", where he finally learned that he didn't need to cover the same folk songs as everyone else; he could write original songs and make more timely statements. Then he finished out the rest of the beard three years later with "Like a Rolling Stone", where he figured out how to combine his main influences (folk, rock, blues, Beat poetry) into a single unified whole. Then after his motorcycle accident he literally grew a beard.
- For their first two albums The Monkees simply provided vocals to songs written by outside writers, with music by session musicians (except Michael Nesmith, who was allowed to write and produce his own songs). Then, after music coordinator Don Kirshner got fired, they got to record the albums Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, Ltd., where they played their own instruments, wrote a good portion of the songs, and demonstrated that they really had some talent. And if you look on the back cover of Headquarters, they literally grew beards as well (though they shaved them off in time for the second season of the TV show).
- Arguably, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have grown the beard three times in their career. The first time was with The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, their first solid album after two previous ones struggled with inter-band tensions that often verged on Executive Meddling. The second time was on Blood Sugar Sex Magik, where they first united with producer Rick Rubin and broke into the mainstream. The third was Californication, which started an eight-year period during which they produced the best music of their career.
- Well, except for the fact that there is a pretty large contingent of fans who think Californication was the beginning of the end for the band.
- Though many believe that Queen was awesome from the very beginning, it is widely accepted that their moment of glory that started them on their track to becoming legendary was their fourth album, A Night at the Opera, the album that gave us the legendary song Bohemian Rhapsody.
- It's also fairly well accepted amongst fans that the beard growing process began with the previous album Sheer Heart Attack, moving from a heavier and proggier sound to a more commercial and varied output. (And it had both Killer Queen and Now I'm Here, fan favourites)
- Not to mention that Bohemian Rhapsody is only the fifth or sixth best song on the album.
- Everyone's opinion of the quality of The Smashing Pumpkins' music is different (for those who don't instantly dismiss the band). But the general consensus is that, while Siamese Dream was an improvement over Gish and the point the band really took off, 'Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness' was a wonderful album that really showed what the band could do. Just don't ask people about what happened after that.
- In a reversal, Paul McCartney literally growing the beard during the "Get Back" session signaled the end of The Beatles.
- Tom Waits was always pretty good, but "Small Change" was the album that convinced him that he would be doing this professionally for the rest of his life.
- In the case of the seminal English punk band The Clash, many critics - including Allmusic Guide
 - believe that the band grew their beard in a case of Executive Meddling gone horribly right, the US version of their self-titled debut album which replaced five filler album tracks with singles such as "White Man in Hammersmith Palias" and "Complete Control".
- London Calling, their third album....I mean....holy crap. The same goes for Joe Strummer's solo career. Earthquake Weather was alright...ish. Rock Art and the X Ray Style was pretty good. But Global A Go-Go and Streetcore are classic.
- French indie band Vive la Fête released three or so albums which mostly consisted of swing music and mellow electronica. Then came their 2003 album Nuit Blanche, which managed to be not only Darker And Edgier but all the more fun because of it.
- With Blackout, Dropkick Murphys moved toward a more melodic, folk-influenced sound, more distinct from the rest of the Boston hardcore scene. This is the album that cracked the American market at large, after years of local fame.
- At the start of their recording career, Iron Maiden released a couple of albums with Paul Di'Anno on vocals. While the opinion of these varies wildly among fans, it was the release of Number of the Beast, combined with the introduction of Bruce Dickinson to form their most well-known lineup, that really propelled them into notoriety.
- Prog-power-something band Kamelot started off in the interesting experimental genre of abominable in the middle of the 90s, after which the departure of (I have to use this word in its loosest possible sense) "singer" Mark Vanderbilt and his replacement with Roy Khan signalled the start of their evolution into a mature power metal sound. Whether this happened on their fourth or fifth album is debatable, but with each release leaning more and more away from power metal it's possible that they're still growing a very big beard that will be complete at some point in the future. (Relatedly, said new vocalist Roy Khan appears to sport a slightly stupider beard each time an album's released. Could this be a coincidence?)
- Finnish power metal band Nightwish started off with generic power metal fantasy lyrics (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but by the album Century Child, their lyrics had shifted more towards themes of tragic romance, sin and temptation, betrayal, and personal growth and struggles, generally considered more mature than their previous work.
- Ludwig Van Beethoven did this twice. Musical historians divide his career into three profoundly different periods: Early, middle and late. Transition from early to middle coincided with the death of his teacher, Haydn (whose shadow he had been trying to escape), and middle-to-late transition came about after he learned to deal with the complete loss of his hearing.
- Cat Stevens was a talented but not too exceptional teen idol singer in the 1960s. Then, after almost dying of tuberculosis, he literally grew a beard and made the album Tea For the Tillerman, which first showed him to be a brilliant and mature musician.
- Thin Lizzy were always a cut above their Irish rock contemporaries, but even with the presence of a hit single (1973's "Whiskey in the Jar") the band never found its feet until its fifth album (1975's "Fighting"), by which time it had exchanged its single guitar player Eric Bell and its wishy washy folk-rock quality for duel lead guitarists Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham and a hard rock ethos. Their very next album was Jailbreak ("The Boys Are Back In Town", anyone?), beginning a streak of five (or possibly eight, depending on whether you like the Snowy White/John Sykes era) high quality albums that brought them fame and fortune.
- While Stone Temple Pilots were never critical darlings, it was generally accepted that their second album, Purple, showed a more mature and experimental sound than their debut album Core, which was blasted as a derivative ripoff of grunge bands such as Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam.
- Florida metal band Cynic started out as a pretty straightforward death metal band. They eventually began incorporating jazz and prog elements into their music, culminating in their debut full-length album Focus, which was a prog metal masterpiece.
- Unfortunately, the band broke up soon after. Until they reunited and released Traced In Air in 2008, which was more than a worthy comeback in the eyes of fans.
Video Games
- Sam And Max: Season Two is widely considered to be much, much better than Season One, due to having harder puzzles, more variation in locations, more unique episodes, a much more coherent story arc involving most of the supporting cast and killing off the Soda Poppers.
- Street Fighter: The first game was pretty messy. The second game became so popular people tend to forget that the roman numeral II means it's the second game.
- The Metal Gear series only really picked up and coalesced into the Deconstructor Fleet we all know and love starting with Metal Gear Solid.
- Both Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy began as Japanese ripoffs of popular western RP Gs (Ultima and Dungeons and Dragons, respectively,) had highly experimental sequels, and didn't really become their own thing until their third games, which both utilized multiple world maps and flexible party-creation and battle options.
- Most fans would argue that Final Fantasy grew the beard in the fourth game. The first three games laid the groundwork; the fourth game firmly established everything that the series is known for today.
Web Comics
- The beginning of Dan And Mabs Furry Adventures, to be frank, absolutely sucked. Then the author resumed updating after a year's absence, at which point the art quality massively improved, the characters' personalities became more distinct, the plot picked up, the worldbuilding started to improve, the separate species were introduced... In general, it just, very abruptly, became worth reading.
- 1/0 had no point save getting a girlfriend when it started, nor did Tailsteak have any art experience, and it shows. The reason there was No Fourth Wall was that Tailsteak never bothered to put one in, and found he couldn't do much in the way of jokes with one. Then he started taking real advantage of its absence, using it for creative character interactions. Then said characters started spiraling out of control in just the right ways.
- Erfworld was almost painful to read for the first few strips (comparable to a novel with the first hundred pages removed) until Parson and PLOT finally showed up and distilled the story down to a manageable scale.
- The "Sister" arc of El Goonish Shive.
- Sluggy Freelance grew a beard with the Vampires arc, the first truly serious one in the series, and while it still maintained the humor that was popular with fans, it also showed that it was able to sustain drama and tension.
- The beginning of Bob And George is all but a mess. Random filler strips, jokes that don't quite take off, and the occasional hint that, at some point, there would be a drawn webcomic with Bob and George. Once the last part was completely eliminated and the "Just Another Day" arc started, it finally got into its true plot and humor.
- xkcd started out as a merely okay collection of sketches and comics the author made when he was bored. Then, with comic #70 it finally grew into the intelligent gag strip we all know and love.
- Mega Tokyo starts off as a fairly lacklustre 4-panel comic with two video game guys getting into hijinks. It takes about fifty strips before it gets into the ridiculous multi-person romance and off-the-wall zombie-robot-Godzilla adventures at the same time.
- The webcomic Brawl in the Family stars various Nintendo characters in wacky situations, such as King Dedede in a parody of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. It started out as one-trick pony sketches on Game FA Qs about Kirby eating things.
- Lampshaded recently in The Order of the Stick: upon his reunion with Haley, Elan demonstrates unusual (for him) wisdom regarding outer appearances, and Haley mentions that she half-expected him to "grow a beard". And he has, figuratively speaking.
Western Animation
- While not considered bad, the first season of The Simpsons seems jarringly different than other seasons to more recent viewers, due to the show's slower pace, Homer's voice, the quirks of the animation style, etc. The show really picks up in the second season, and then really hits its stride by the third season.
- Debatable, but the third season (specifically, "Parasites Lost") is the first real glimpse of what Futurama is most highly regarded for — the ability to mix comedy and melancholy, which leads into its centerpiece plot.
- The 1990s Fantastic Four and Iron Man cartoons both grew their beards in Season 2; while not rejecting their first seasons, the shows suddenly took a leap forward in quality.
- Transformers: Beast Wars was very episodic, though still enjoyable, in its first season, but the first season finale and follow-up in the second season began an "Epic kick". By the third season the plot threads were woven much more tightly and characters gained depth. It may not be incidental that the first season was also the longest (in fact as long as both of the other two together).
- Transformers Animated was fairly disliked early on for its exaggerated animation style, the episodes were merely decent but not spectacular. Thrill of the Hunt introduced some of Ratchet's backstory in the original Autobot/Decepticon war and the results were both shocking and mature. It also introduced a popular rivalry between Prowl (Ninja) and Lockdown (Pirate).
- The Batman does this with its first season finale, when the characters begain to gain some depth and it was not so blatantly Merchandise Driven. Most notably, Joker (often slandered as the character who suffered the worst Adaptation Decay) shows his nasty side for the first time, Batman / Bruce goes through his first real trauma in his career, and one of the show's best villains (Clayface) is created (arguably exceeding his comic and B: TAS versions). It grew the beard again in the fourth season, which was not only a marked improvement over a decent third season that was nonetheless probably weaker than the second one, but probably the best for overall storytelling (as well as introducing their excellent version of Dick Grayson).
- Batman The Animated Series received significant praise from the get-go, but the early episodes were mostly just straight forward film-noir stories. Heart of Ice introduced a bitterly tragic Mr. Freeze that redefined Western Animation.
- The animation quality got better over time,too.
- At least until season 3 where the animation got so bad that this troper stopped watching it
- The Duck Dodgers episode "Of Course You Know, This Means War (and Peace)" provided a very compelling, drama-laden episode that didn't break the tone of the rest of the series, the following episode actually being used for the snapback.
- ReBoot, mostly a highly episodic children's show in the first two seasons, abruptly became much deeper and somewhat darker in the third season, with a season-wide plot arc that made the show much more entertaining to an older audience. This is likely because they went into syndication in the third season and were no longer subject to ABC's Broadcast Standards and Practices which had constrained them up until that point (including giving Dot a "uniboob" because they didn't want things to be sexual at all).
- Near the beginning of season three, Enzo loses a game which ultimately results in him becoming older and literally growing a beard.
- For this troper it seemed the series began that beard-growing during the latter half of season two, particularly the Web-Creature Invasion arc.
- The Raccoons when the human characters were dropped in the second season and the setting changed to a fully Funny Animal world. With that new focus, the plots became more original and the characters more complex, such as Cyril Sneer becoming more sympathetic as a Anti Hero.
- American Dad is widely regarded as becoming a more coherant and original show after the two part episode "Stan Of Arabia"; stepping out of the shadow of its predecessor by avoiding that shows excessive use of flashbacks and focusing on plot elements that weren't just easy political targets.
- Most X Men Evolution fans agree that that show stopped being a "kiddie cartoon" around the season 2 finale. Then came season 3...
- Teen Titans season 1 was painfully slow, Anvilicious, and couldn't escape the label of "Justice League lite." Something at the end of Season 1 just clicked and showed that yeah, they can do drama. Then Season 2 said "yeah we can also do superhero comedy!"
- Justice League Season 2 is considered a vast improvement over Season 1. Mostly thanks to writer Dwayne McDuffie joining the crew, but also managing to seriously think a few plots through (everyone loves "A Better World.")
- The first season of WITCH was okay, but then Greg Weisman was called upon to produce its second season, which many consider to be a vast improvement. Sadly, the show was cancelled afterwards.
- Megas XLR was kinda undercooked before "Dude, Where's My Head?" found the right balance of character focus, snark and shout outs. And of Coop smashing up Mecha Mooks/New Jersey.
- Although Daria was golden from the first episode, "Cafe Disaffecto" was the episode where the show began to hit its stride creatively with regards to Daria being a force of nature within Lawndale, wrecking havoc against the status quo in her own passive-agressive manner, via causing a riot with her anti-communist "Melody Powers" spy stories after being pressganged into participating in a coffee house open mic night event by her parents and her school.
- Some South Park fans argue that seasons 4, 5 and 6 were the golden age of the show and the time during which it really kicked off, subtly combining the crude humor of seasons 1, 2 and 3 with the extreme Author Filibuster of later seasons.
- While Season One of Danny Phantom did hint of a Myth Arc, the first was really meant to establish the characters' personalities and work the overall structure of DP's world. It was when Season Two rolled that the story really got going. Characters gained Character Development, Continuity Nod were key to future episodes, and the story arcs only expanded from then on.
- Code Lyoko starts out pretty formulaic in Season 1, but in Season 2 character development begins, and the show becomes less repetitive.
Real Life
- During his election (and the campaign beforehand), Abraham Lincoln was clean shaven. While he was President-Elect, he grew the beard history remembers so well.
- And he did it when informed that a beard would make him look distinguished and presidential. It worked.
- Another literal example: "Playoff beards" in the NHL. It is a tradition now that players stop shaving when the playoffs start until their team is eliminated (the start of which is attributed to Philadelphia's "Broad Street Bullies" back in the 1970s). It also just so happens that playoff hockey is infinitely better than regular season hockey due to the fact that it's the only time that a game will keep on adding on overtime periods until somebody wins. (Regular season hockey has only one overtime period. It used to allow for ties if no one had scored by the end of OT, but recently started holding shootouts instead.)
- To shave during college finals week is considered bad luck. This may have something to do with luck, or it may have something to do with the cumulative effects of spending five extra minutes studying each day instead of shaving.
- Does this go for girls as well? You might want to be careful about spreading this superstition if you don't want to see and increase in hairy legs and pits during finals.
- Billy Mays' beard became progressively fuller and more trimmed as he got more successful.
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