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alt title(s): Grow The Beard; Grows The Beard; Grew The Beard; Grown The Beard 
Much better.
"What's the reverse of 'jumped the shark'?" "They have submarined the shark."
"This is getting exciting! We've sat through the previews and it's time for the main attraction!"
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, the happy discovery of a popular character, or is because a meddling executive leaves. In general, this is where the franchise starts to find its voice. 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." Can occasionally accompany a downplay or removal of less popular characters.
If it is a comedic series then this is usually when it deviates from an overall lighthearted tone and reaches an impressive emotional depth. This is accomplished without invoking First and Ten Syndrome by changing the tone of the series by focusing on drama and angst and excluding humor and entertainment. If it is a drama (or something in between), this would be when the character dynamic is spelled out clearly and starts to resonate with the storyline.
The key to this trope is seeing a dramatic "before and after" difference along the life of a series. 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).
It's almost worthwhile to call this Finding the Beard, because nearly every serial media that persists has some degree of change from its initial variation. Continuity Creep, Win The Crowd, Story Arc and Myth Arc are all strong reasons why this can happen, helping the audience grow more interested in this new show. See also Surprisingly Improved Sequel.
Take note that this is not a requirement with every series. They may have just fallen away unnoticed. Maybe it started at a high quality and there is no dramatic difference in quality as mentioned, unless it only went downhill from there.
In general, this happens only once during a series run. But there are times where long after Growing the Beard a show starts to hit a low point like a Dork Age or Strictly Formula. A second Growing the Beard can occur with a refreshing of ideas and hitting a new high.
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.
Examples
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Anime & 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. *
This marks the point where the manga moved from a shonen to a seinen magazine.
- 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.
- The Akira manga picks up a lot of steam at the point where Akira demolishes Neo-Tokyo, transforming from an edgy cyberpunk story about psychic kids to an intricate, psychologically and politically riveting post-apocalpyse epic. The animé ends just at the point where the manga gets much richer and more involved. This may have been a wise filmmaking choice, since it would have taken what, four, five hours to even dent the plot of the last half of Akira?
- The Mahou Sensei Negima manga does this around volume three, when it begins to switch from an Unwanted Harem comedy to an action series with the arrival of Evangeline. It really hits its stride at the end of the Kyoto Arc, around volume 6. Unfortunately, the anime adaptation didn't get that far.
- Made somewhat more dramatic in the Del Rey version by the fact that the first few volumes were not all that well translated. Volume 1 in particular reads like a poorly-done Gag Dub, obliterating basically all of the Foreshadowing and starting the character development out on the wrong foot. The improvement in translation tracks the Genre Shift, becoming acceptable (ITTO) around volume 6.
- It's almost embarassing to mention, but that first translation sprung from the pen of none other than Peter David (!!)
- To be fair, it's easy to assume from the first volume or two that it was a simple Gag Series, and the translation does improve a bit in volumes 3 and 4.
- 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.
- Jojo's 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.
- One Piece was always fairly unique as a shonen manga with its blend of action and humor. The first few arcs are decent, but not terribly notable. This changed with the Arlong Arc, combining great action scenes, suspense and character development that captivated the audience and made them really want to see Arlong rightfully ground into the dirt. And it's only gone up from there.
- Common advice for people considering if they want to read it or not is "Read it up to the Arlong Arc. If you don't like it after that,
there is something wrong with you it's not the series for you."
- Candy Boy turns more and more into an emotional slice of life series with each sunsequent episode, especially from the introduction of Kanade and Yukino's little sister Shizuku onward. 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. By his SECOND Heel Face Turn, it's like the show's face is one bristly hedgehog full of beard hair.
- 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 its 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.
- 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. 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.
- CLANNAD was always a decent high school romance comedy, but it arguably REALLY proved its depth at the end of episode 18 when the other girls realised they had to give up on Tomoya because he loved Nagisa, and in episode 19 when Tomoya ran away from his broken home and moved in with Nagisa's family.
- Similarly, after ~After Story~ trimmed its beard by falling back into high school filler for the first eight episodes, it came back with a vengeance in episode 10 when -get this- Tomoya graduates and gets a job! Not the kind of thing normally seen in high school romance comedy, is it? The beard grows even longer in episode 12 when Tomoya asks Nagisa to marry him and by the end of episode 16 when Nagisa dies in childbirth this series has the kind of beard you expect to see in The Guinness Book of Records.
- 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 in its 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 its 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.
- Bleach either grows the beard as soon as Rukia gets captured, as the first true Arc begins, or at the end of said arc when Aizen steals the Hougyoku and leaves the Soul Society a traitor along with Ichimaru and Tousen.
- Pretear starts out as a rather stereotypical and average Magical Girl Show, at least until Takako shows up. Afterwards it takes a huge turn and shifts into darker territory before the lightheartedness returns at the end.
- Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex has a few rather unremarkable episodes at the beginning, basically introducing the members of Section 9 and the technology they use. With the fourth episode, the Laughing Man story arc kicks in.
- The first 12 episodes of The Big O are simply an average super robot show with a unique setting. Then comes episodes 13 and 14. Suddenly a complex, Mind Screw filled plot appears, the characters are revealed to be a lot more flawed and insecure than they were before, references to anything and everything start appearing en masse, and the whole thing just gets better overall. Of course, episode 14 did mark a change in producer and target demographic (Cartoon Network/Adult Swim became a co-producer, and the show became aimed primarily at American audiences), so that might be the reason.
- Umi Monogatari starts rather formulaic, with a fair amount of fanservice (especially surrounding Marin) and a monster of the week pattern—until the mood whiplash halfway through, when the story becomes much darker and laden with symbolism about intimacy and separation. The excellent music helps too.
- There are several things about early episodes of Urusei Yatsura that make them less well liked by fans of the series than subsequent ones. The art style is very primitive, the scripts contain primarily simplistic slapstick humor, and the majority of the episodes consisted of two separate stories (each occupying half of the episode's running time). After about 20 episodes, the drawing style began to improve noticeably, the two-part episode structure was dropped, the humor became more subtle and sophisticated, and there were occasionally more serious stories. The improvement likely was partly because of Mamoru Oshii becoming the director, and partly because of improvement in the original manga series.
- 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.
- I personally believe that Kamina's death was the moment the show started Growing The Beard, because it stopped being "The Kamina Show" and started focusing a lot more on Character Development, and how everybody was affected by Kamina's death, and how the characters became much more likable with more personality implemented, not that they didn't have any before.
- 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 clichés and the series didn't really grow the beard until the start of Kaede's arc.
- Itazura Na Kiss does this in tandem with They Do - the Happily Ever After end of the first season is in many ways the real beginning, because it drops most of the exaggerated Rom Com Dead Horse Tropes in favor of a more grown-up plot.
- Ouran High School Host Club does this in the manga. It starts off as an Affectionate Parody and slowly begins to grow the beard as we learn more about the characters and their past. As the story has gone on we've seen considerable character development, particularly with Hikaru and Kaoru. Tamaki also matures a bit (while still remaining the lovable idiot), and Honey and Mori finally graduate as the series falls out of Comic Book Time. Despite the story turning more toward drama, it hasn't sacrificed the humor.
- Full Moonwo Sagashite does this in the anime. It takes a good 30 episodes of happy fluffy fun times (if you forget the protagonist is going to eventually become mute due to a throat tumour or, alternatively, die) before things start getting serious and very emotionally hard-hitting. The second half of the anime is very nearly unrecognisable from the first.
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
- The first two arcs of Y The Last Man were a bit light on the drama, which was a tad jarring considering how much could've been done with the premise. Things got interesting in the astronaut arc, which skyrocketed the intensity in a refreshingly unexpected way.
- 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 its 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.
- Destro was far from "100% loyal" to Cobra Commander in the cartoon. He frequently butted heads with and even occasionally threatened him because he saw him as an idiotic lunatic (which is, of course, exactly what he was). In the first movie- The MASS Device- he berates the Commander for overusing his (Destro's) latest WMD, despite specifically warning him not to, and actually lifts him off the ground for it. The Commander waits until Destro's back is turned and then throws his staff at him. They do not get along.
- 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 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 past issue 25, completing its beard growing for many fans with the Mecha Madness storyline. The series later came close to JumpingTheShark (minus only the unrecoverable part; and fans argue 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).
- Speaking of Spawn it grew a beard once it became a dark horror comic.
- Tintin began as a series of rather childish wish-fulfilment adventure yarns with a cliffhanger, followed by a ridiculously improbable escape, on every other page. The Growing The Beard moment came with The Blue Lotus, when the creator started getting serious about his research and realistic portrayal of distant locations. (Cigars of the Pharaoh feels like it belongs with the post-beard works if you read the colour edition, but that came later.)
- Doonesbury was originally about a group of kids in college for the first decade or so of its run. Gary Trudeau took a 2-year hiatus and then began drawing the strip again, developing the art style and real-time storyline that the strip is known for today.
- While the art definitely improved after his hiatus, the writing of the strip had always been top notch. See Trudeau's Pulitzer he won in 1975 as evidence of that.
- The comic B.C. is widely thought to have Jumped The Shark when Johnny Hart converted to Evangelical Protestantism. After he died, the strip was taken over by his daughter and grandsons and is suddenly funny again.
- Even some of Rob Liefeld's characters had this happen, specifically Supreme and Youngblood. This was mainly because after Liefeld left Image and went to Awesome Comics, he handed over all the writing duties to Alan Moore. Moore promptly deconstructed all the Dark Age stuff and reconstructed everything fun and silly about the Silver Age.
Fan Fic
- The Return really hit its stride when the author abandoned the last of Ranma canon, hit the Mode Lock and started treating it like original fiction. Seriously check it out.
- Neon Exodus Evangelion is not well-regarded by many an Evangelion fan partially because of this trope. In the first few chapters, Original Character DJ Croft replaces Shinji as the main character (there's a reason for this in the backstory) and more or less hogs the limelight, makes friends with just about everyone and generally shows off how cool he is. Not surprisingly, many people stop reading at this point and dismiss DJ as a Marty Stu. Then comes the battle with Leliel, and DJ's perfect facade begins to come apart at the seams, revealing a much more complex character underneath. Around the same time, the story begins to diverge farther and farther away from canon Eva until it hits full-blown AU status. While the fic's quality remains a matter of personal opinion, those who've read the story the whole way through generally agree that the more the story diverges from canon, the better it gets.
Literature
- The early 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 Colour 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.
- 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 as is common even when this trope shows up, a reader can't really skip the first book because it introduces so much of the setting and characterization.
- Word Of God stated the first book was written to intentionally resemble then-contemporary fantasy fare, which the series would then take into a new direction. The second direction is clearly better, even though the series has been running so long this no longer seems unique either.
- The series may have the unusual distinction of growing the beard twice. After the Author Existence Failure in 2007, young author Brandon Sanderson took up the reins using Jordan's notes, and his The Gathering Storm has another slightly different direction and is awesome in a refreshing new way.
- 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.
- In Terry Brooks' Shannara series, the second book Elfstones of Shannara is often cited as the best starting point, due to the first book, Sword of Shannara, being very very similar, and even downright identical in places to a certain other fantasy series.
- Lord Foul's Bane, the first book in Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant series, isn't very good. The series improves dramatically in the second book, titled The Illearth War, and stays that way.
- The first couple of Dresden Files books are pretty good, but not amazing; it's only really during the third that it picks up, beginning the tradition of totally over the top levels of awesomeness that would later become one of the series' hallmarks and starting Harry down the road to woobiefication and Character Development with Susan's being half-turned by the Red Court. It improves even further around Dead Beat, with the introductions of Cowl and Lash, Harry joining the Wardens, and the reveal of a traitor on the White Council.
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. (Apparently the beard was a Throw It In by Gene Roddenberry, Jonathan Frakes returned after the season break for script readings with that beard and Roddenberry felt it gave him a far more dignified appearance. It's hard to argue) 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 season finale "The 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.)
- 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.
- 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.
- The change of uniform started the "Growing the Beard" effect; starting with "Rapture", Captain Sisko began to embrance his role as the Emissary to the Prophets, and the even darker tone of the show started here.
- Bringing in the Defiant was also a big plus, some people were having a hard time getting into a Star Trek series that had very minimal traveling and no command chair for the captain to sit in.
- 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.
- The episode "Scorpion" was a gripping and downright terrifying episode showing an alien race more dangerous than the Borg, Species 8472. It also introduced Seven-Of-Nine, whose questionable allegiance gave the show a much-needed sense of contention and uncertainty.
- The hell of it was that Seven was OBVIOUSLY going to be yet another irritating character in a show that didn't need any more of 'em. Everybody was expecting a Cute Monster Girl with the Most Common Super Power, and little more. But she turned out to be Better Than It Sounds!
- 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 descendant played by the same actor) gains one between season one and two, along with a ton of Magnificent Bastard qualities. Of course, his once-super-competent assistant Baldrick goes rather the opposite direction, but that was seen as a necessary part of the overall improvement.
- Full House rose sharply in popularity when the plots started focusing more on the girls than the men.
- Please note that this was a rise in popularity, not nessecarily quality.
- 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. Seinfeld got more stubble with "The Parking Garage" but 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.
- Michael Richards also cites "The Statue" as the episode where Kramer started growing a beard.
- Referring to above, many refer to ''How I Met Your Mother's season two episode "Slap Bet" as the series' "The Chinese Restaurant".
- Some fans would say that The Pineapple Incident is the definitive episode. Others think that it was the episode "Okay, Awesome" which was a couple beforehand.
- 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 beard-growing 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, right?
- One of the first near perfect episodes was "Passion," which proved that Angel wasn't coming back any time soon because Angelus was responsible for the first major character death of the series.
- 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.
- Producer Bruce Kalish was known for over-using explosions and the like for his 4-year run after Dino Thunder ended. RPM was the first season in years without him, and was comparable to the series as The Dark Knight was to the Batman franchise.
- Babylon 5's pace greatly improved when Sheridan became the captain. (Given that the show was a carefully-plotted five-year Myth Arc, it is unknown whether the two are actually related.) 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 two aired seasons (one on KTMA and the other on the Comedy Channel). The second season bearding is pretty much Word Of God: the KTMA and first season episodes were mostly ad-libbed. When they started scripting the riffs in season two, the jump in the number of 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. Some fans, however, would put the beard-growing even later, at season 4 or 5, or even after the jump to the Sci-Fi Channel. Whilst earlier seasons each had a smattering of good episodes, the seasons didn't become consistently good until season 8. The only thing the troper hivemind can really agree on about the show's quality is that it got better for at least eight seasons.
- 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."
- Even more so with "Abbyssinia, Henry."
- Brendan Fraser's death on Scrubs. While the second season was considered among the funniest, that third season episode featured an amazing ability to show drama without betraying the personality of the characters.
- In a more literal vein, J.D. sports a grotty-looking beard. It seems to be partially on purpose as J.D. makes mention that everyone is expecting them to aim higher and perform better. Subsequentially, the show was praised by fans and critics alike for being funnier and more sincere than the previous few seasons of the series.
- The Season 8 episode "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. J.D. and Elliot discuss their decision to once again pursue a romantic relationship. After Elliot reiterates the past times they have hurt each other in romance, J.D. notes that since their last attempt they've both grown up significantly (J.D. became a Dad from an accidental pregnancy and Elliot persued a new career in private practice). 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.
- The general feeling by anyone not already a long-term fan is that season 3 is where is not only grew the beard but then proceeded to beat up the shark until it begged for mercy. Long-term fans however are in uproar over the killing of one of the favoured if not favourite characters in the series. Others think this just makes the beard longer by living up to the Anyone Can Die reputation.
- Angel. Season 1 was certainly decent, but at some point things got better. The first season finale was the first to demonstrate a sense of the long Myth Arc storyline Buffy was known for but was not restrained by the Half Arc Season long Big Bad story.
- When it started out, the show was really just Buffy, but in the grown up world. It stayed this course for a while until towards the end of season one, when Angel must perform a demon exorcism. This episode seemed to tell everyone that this show was gonna be dark, stay dark, and still be entertaining. And for those who still had doubts, the two-part Faith arc that followed cemented it for everyone.
- When Wesley stopped being so clean shaven, the show noticeably changed pace as it became heavily arc driven, a trait the show would have until the series finale.
- So would that be Growing The Stubble?
- 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.
- Newhart's biggest problem was that the show's regular Jerkass was a painfully unfunny Scrappy named Kirk Devane. The show gained an attractive stubble in the second season when it switched to film and more importantly Stephanie joined the cast, but it was still saddled with Krik. The show grew a full, beautiful beard at the start of the third season when Kirk was Put On A Bus and replaced by Michael who was actually a bigger Jerkass than Kirk, but was hilarious.
- 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.
- YMMV. Some of the best episodes occur during the first three 'down-to-earth' seasons. "You Better Watch Out" and "Master The Possibilities", for example.
- 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 its 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).
- The great things about Stewart are that he's not afraid of satirizing people he agrees with as much as people he disagrees with and he's willing to be the butt of his own jokes.
- On a related note, the show could be considered a growing-the-beard moment for him, especially after Death To Smoochy.
- 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-received line of episodes that came after "Stranger in a Strange Land".
- "One Of Them" was a Chekov's Gun version of this trope. While the interpersonal drama and general weirdness had already been introduced so wonderfully in "Walkabout" and stretched out in the episodes since, the second season's introduction of
Henry Gale Benjamin Linus, the show's first true villain, cemented the fact that a battle between good guys and bad guys would be a major component of the series — even if the characters and the audience didn't realise this at the time.
- 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.
- 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 its beard. Until then most of the episodes had been standalone 'John learns about the crazy universe' episodes, but Scorpius changed all that.
- The beard growing could have started slightly sooner, with the episode "Through the Looking Glass"; as this episode cemented the crew as an ensemble with Crichton as the "glue" holding them together; and set the tone of mixed humour/drama. Not to mention providing something of a relief after the previous "monster of the week" style, and the thoroughly Anvilicious episode just prior to it ("A Human Reaction"). The beard is fully grown by "Taking the Stone", which develops Chiana's character considerably, making her less of a gimmick, and more of a real person.
- It also helps that the beginning of the second season saw D'Argo's character (he Took A Level In
Badass Smart) and makeup get significantly retooled.
- 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. Acclaimed stage veteran 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...
- This has even been lampshaded many times by the people behind the show.
- Though there were a few decent episodes in its first season, 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.
- The general consensus is that Merlin grew the beard around episode eight, which, along with the five episodes which followed it, was noticably darker in tone than the first part of the series. A lot of fans identify it as the point at which the show stopped being a Guilty Pleasure.
- Legend of the Seeker really comes into its own with "Denna" (1x08), where the series becomes darker, more dramatic and a bit, erm, kinkier. The second season takes things more literally as Richard grows a beard, as a reference to the second book.
- Yet another literal beard-growing moment: Masaharu Morimoto, Iron Chef Japanese on Iron Chef, originally came off as very stern and kind of arrogant; when he appeared on Iron Chef America, he'd grown a beard, gained 10 or 15 pounds, wore glasses, and was suddenly very soft-spoken and personable.
- The original Battlestar Galactica doesn't really find its stride until the last two episodes of the season, after the show had been offically cancelled.
- Mama's Family grew the beard after it was canceled by NBC and then brought back in first-run syndication. The vast majority of fans seem to prefer the syndicated episodes over the NBC ones, and find Iola and Bubba (who were added in syndication) funnier than Fran, Buzz, and Sonia (who were written out after NBC).
- Parks and Recreation started out as an underwhelming clone of The Office (it's from the same creators)set in a government office instead of a corporate one. Luckily, it quickly developed past this, thanks in large part to Amy Poehler's portrayal of hopelessly naive and idealistic main character Leslie, and the emergence of Chris Pratt as a breakout character. The show's all-inclusive political humor (poking fun at the workings of government without making any stances) helped set it apart too.
Music
- The Beatles' had the most iconic, both literal and figurative beard growing in rock history.
- George Harrison had one by himself. 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).
- In a reversal, Paul McCartney literally growing the beard during the "Get Back" session signaled the end of The Beatles.
- 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.
- Quite a few people also agree that they grew the beard again with American Idiot, where they got more thoughtful, deviated a bit from the pop-punk formula and started taking themselves seriously. This beard-growing process probably started with its two predecessors, Nimrod and Warning.
- A definite case of YMMV, since "thoughtful" can easily be replaced by "political," which isn't a good direction for punk.
- 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.
- Silverchair's problem was that the band's musical and lyrical content had become hijacked by the skeletons in its lead singer's closet. The CD booklet for "Neon Ballroom" had an upbeat front cover which concealed some extremely disturbing imagery, and the themes in the songs (and some of the filmclips) were worse.
- Take That are actually better now that they have reformed in their thirties than they ever were when split up as a manufactured boy band.
- 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.
- The Offspring's first 2 albums (their self-titled and Ignition) were such generic punk rock albums that most non-fans don't even know they exist. Smash on the other hand was just that- a smash-hit success with iconic tracks such as 'Come Out and Play' and 'Self Esteem' taking them to the top of the punk scene. The band arguably did it again when their concept album Americana let them break into the mainstream, especially the phenomenally popular (and Trope-naming) 'Pretty Fly For A White Guy'.
- Pantera was originally a glam metal band during the 80s. Then came their 1990 album Cowboys From Hell, where they started becoming much heavier and screaming the lyrics.
- 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)
- Actually, among the hardcore Queen fans, the most popular album is probably Queen II, precisely because of its harder, less commercial sound. At any rate, by The Game in 1980, most fans agree that the beard had been shaven off.
- 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.
- 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.
- Belgian 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.
- Similarly, Sentenced was an unremarkable doom/black metal band until Love & Death, which is Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
- YMMV indeed. There's a common opinion that they grew their beard already with Amok. They are also one of the cases where they grew their beard back with The Cold Dark Light after losing it with mediocre Frozen and utterly awful Crimson.
- 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.
- Talk Talk started out as a typical cheesy, New Wave-y 80's synth-pop band shamelessly ripping off Duran Duran. They grew dramatically over their careers, getting more experimental, culminating in their fantastic final album Laughing Stock, which pioneered the genre of post-rock and really showed off what they could do. Unfortunately, they broke up immediately afterwards...
- Finnish folk-metal band Korpiklaani broke out of relative obscurity as the synthesizer-heavy, predominantly folk-sounding Shaman; when frontman Jonne Järvelä's work with similar folk-metal band Finntroll inspired him to change the name, drop the synthesizers in favour of more standard Metal-style guitar work and traditional instruments such as the jouhikko, accordian, fiddle, and bodhran, while replacing the Saami-language lyrics with more accessible English and Finnish. Not only did this result in a larger audience for the band itself; but also made them instrumental (pun intended), along with fellow Finns Ensiferum, Finntroll, and Moonsorrow, in the rapidly-growing popularity of the folk-metal genre as a whole.
- Country music artist Jamey Johnson's first album, The Dollar, was fairly well-received among critics, never mind that he wrote the reviled Trace Adkins song "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk". Due to Executive Meddling, this album had only one chart single before he got kicked from the label. His next album, That Lonesome Song, was independently released before Mercury Records picked it up. The result was a Top 10 hit with "In Color" and a gold album, as well as a Grammy nomination and an album that is being heralded as one of the best country albums of the 2000s. Keeping with the theme, he literally grew his beard out longer between the first and second albums.
- Canadian Technical Death Metal band Cryptopsy started out as a fairly standard Death Metal band with traditional song structure and some progressive elements. By their second album, they had become one of the most innovative and Technical bands on the Death Metal scene.
- Sugarland's first album, Twice the Speed of Life, was fairly well-received by music critics. After Kristen Hall left over Creative Differences, the group was reduced to a duo composed of Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush. Their first release as a duo, "Want To," became their first #1 hit, and their two duo albums (Enjoy the Ride and Love on the Inside) have been met with even stronger critical acclaim, including a Grammy and several Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association awards. These latter two albums were also produced by Byron Gallimore, who has been commended for taking a more stripped-down approach to the duo's music (most evident on "Stay").
- Faith No More really picked up in terms of quality and popularity when Mike Patton took over as the singer and primary songwriter.
- The Flaming Lips' In A Priest Driven Ambulance: Though they'd begun gradually growing into their signature sound for the previous three full lengths (after a psychedelic garage rock EP with Wayne Coyne's brother Mark on vocals), it's generally considered their first cohesive album. It's also the first time long time producer Dave Fridmann worked with the band, and when Wayne Coyne started using his trademark higher pitched vocal style much more.
- It took 9 more years until they've released the widely acclamied magnum opus The Soft Bulletin. Their NINTH album.
- General consensus in ABBA fandom (if such a thing is possible) places this moment somewhere around the third and fourth albums, ABBA (1975) and Arrival (1976). The band members themselves pin this more firmly on ABBA and the release of "S.O.S." as a single, when the public stopped dismissing them as one-hit wonders and they settled on a pop style. (Waterloo, their second album, is a mix of attempts at different styles as they tried to find their place. Ring Ring is just... um... yeahhh.)
- Of Montreal started life as folky, hippie pop rock kind of band and kept up the style for numerous albums. It wasn't until Aldhils Arboretum that their music started to become the more danceable, funky synthpop that people know the band for today, with each album up to the present getting better and better.
- Their live shows are also Growing the Beard. Around the time Sunlandtic Twins was released the most ridiculous part of the show was Kevin Barnes opening the concert wearing a wedding dress. After Skeletal Lamping came out, their show has expanded to include costumed performers, light displays, and video displays more or less on par with the Flaming Lips.
- German power metal band, Blind Guardian goes through a sort of extended beard growing process starting on their third album, Tales from the Twilight World. While their debut and sophomore albums were fairly typical speed metal fare, Tales from the Twilight World saw the introduction of a number of new trends in their otherwise straightforward blend of fantasy lyrics and fast guitars.
- As far as beards go, "Tales" was but a thin goatee compared to the long and bushy beard Blind Guardian would grow with their 1998 album "Nightfall in Middle Earth." Though the two albums following "Tales" saw further evolution in Blind Guardian's musical style, it was "Nightfall" which took their carefully written fantasy lyrics and studio wizardry to new heights and set the stage for their brilliant later material.
- Pink's 2000 debut Can't Take Me Home was met with lukewarm reviews. It wasn't bad, but critics labeled her as Fiona Apple SINGING R&B! She took the hint, and her next album combined her tough-girl appeal with a more appropriate rock flavoring, while retaining her R&B roots, and the rest is history.
- Disturbed's debut album The Sickness, despite making waves thanks to the popular hit Down wih the Sickness, didn't go far beyond the simple drum-lines and repetitive riffs present in most nu-metal of the time. A short two years later after an extensive touring cycle the band recorded Believe, a significant leap both lyrically and musically, currently the band's best critically recieved work to date. Ten years after their debut, the melodic focus remains and the band is still going strong.
- The first two Metallica albums showed a growing musical identity almost track by track (Compare "Hit the Lights" on Kill em All to "Fade to Black" on Ride the Lightning, but most fan's agree that Master of Puppets solidified Metallica's legendary status (When the band shaved said beard (if at all) is still hotly debated to this day.) Cliff was the beard.
- Dave Grohl. In his first band, Scream, he was just a regular drummer. This was the case with his first album with his next band (Nirvana's Nevermind), but his songwriting contributions increased by In Utero. Upon Kurt Cobain's death, Grohl started his own band, Foo Fighters, who became better over the years, culminating with the critical and commercial smash Echoes, Silence, Patience, & Grace. Oh, and he also literally grew a beard.
- Pink Floyd admit that they spent most of their early career not knowing what they were doing. They started off covering songs, experimented with psychedelia, then Syd Barrett joined and was able to front the group and write singles, then he left, and group had to go back to doing "long stuff", as they put it. Then, during production of Meddle, they managed to get their heads around the whole process of having ideas and turning them into albums. The next album, Dark Side of the Moon, stayed in the charts for 741 weeks, and subsequent releases and tours were correspondingly bigger. Of course, this change wasn't universally popular with the fans, some preferring the older, lighter psychedelic stuff.
- Radiohead definitely grew the beard when they put out their second album, The Bends. They went from a generic rock act to a promising one and, from there, one of the biggest bands in rock.
- My Bloody Valentine grew the beard when their second album, Loveless, propelled them from an influential shoegaze band to the influential shoegaze band.
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.
- Resident Evil 4 was far, far less of a joke than the previous 2 games of the series due to the massive changes in controls, camera, setting, everything, and wound up winning Game of the Year at quite a few websites and magazines. It even has a higher score rating than the first game (which itself wasn't too bad)
- Not really many people ever played Grand Theft Auto 1 or 2, but once the change to 3D went full in the 3rd game, it was an immense hit, and essentially one of the first well-done open-world sandbox games.
- While the first three Final Fantasy games were groundbreaking at the time, the series really took on its story telling excellence in Final Fantasy IV
Web Animation
- Red Vs Blue first started off as a novel concept, but all but two of the actors were amateur, the sound was muffled and the overall pacing was slow. Season two picked things up immensely, but season three was really where Roosterteeth got into the swing of things.
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.
- 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.
- It also grew a beard when the comic developed a story line instead of stand-alone gags about the rules of D&D.
- A more exact change for the improvement of the comic would arguably be either the fight against Xykon on the first dungeon or the whole Azure City War, moments by which the comic stopped being just another gag-a-day comic and showed an actually interesting storyline in its whole right while still keeping the jokes and the silliness which the storyline only helped making more funny.
- Achewood began life as a hit-and-miss gag strip about a house full of "alive stuffed animals," but with The Party arc it began to develop into a complex, layered, plot-and-character-driven slacker epic.
- The exact moment Penny Arcade started being funny can be narrowed down somewhat definitively to "Claw Shrimp." It's definitely the oldest strip you'll hear referenced.
- 8-Bit Theater starts getting better around the Elfland arc with the introduction of Drizzl, but it only starts to be really funny around the time they enter Dwarfland for the first time, before which it can actually be somewhat tedious.
- Although Problem Sleuth was pretty funny when it started out, the gradual Art Shift, combined with the accumulation of parody Soup Cans puzzles (each more impenetrably complex than the last), strange characters, downright bizzare game mechanics, Lampshades, Chekovs Guns and Crowning Moments eventually elevated the series to absurd levels of awesomeness by the time the Final Boss Battle rolled around.
- I must say that the first part of Problem Sleuth at least as entertaining, if not more, than the part with the final boss battle. On the other hand, the current adventure running, Homestuck, didn't really start to pick it up until a bit into Act 2.
- Word of Hussy even states that Act 1 turned out to be more of a prologue than a fully-fledged act. Act 2 is where the plot really begins to kick into high gear (along with the surreal humor that MSPA is known for.)
- Though it took off quickly, the first few storylines of The Adventures Of Dr Mc Ninja were rather different than the current blend of awesome and funny it is today. Chris Hastings himself advises new readers not to start with the first, Ronald Mc Donald-centric story. The next two stories, while well-done and humorous, were essentially setting up the character and playing off a tired "pirates vs. ninjas" theme. The comic really hit it's Cool Versus Awesome-plus-funny stride in the 4th story arc. Specifically on this page.
- Dead Of Summer grew its beard around the halfway point of Book 1, as they focused less on the Ludicrous Gibs and more on Character Development. The Art Evolution happened around that time too, resulting in more detailed, clearer drawings. The beard was fully grown by the time Book 2 rolled around; things soon became very character-driven. And then The Protomen show up.
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.
- Even more jarring to see the Tracey Ullman Shorts
- 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 Marvel Action Hour, 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. Basically, the entire production crew from the first season was fired and replaced.
- 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).
- Megatron Rising is also a possible point for Beard Growth, setting up the more sustained arcs of the second season.
- The DCAU has some examples:
- Batman The Animated Series started off fairly action oriented, with early episodes like "On Leather Wings," "Christmas With The Joker" and "The Last Laugh" being primarily fast paced and minimal plot. "Heart of Ice," though, is generally regarded as one of the best of the entire series and legendary for reinventing Mr. Freeze as a tortured soul who lost his wife.
- 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 such as "A Better World" and especially foreshadowing of the events of "Starcrossed."
- There's also Hereafter, where Superman gets sent onto a desert planet with a red sun and has to survive without his powers. Not only is the first part, where the people of Earth think Big Blue is dead, genuinely touching, but Supes' interaction with the only intelligent inhabitant of the desert planet is some of the best-written stuff the series saw. And if that isn't anough to convince you, Superman literally grows a beard.
- Justice League Unlimited started off as five o'clock stubble during their intitial couple of episodes, but one Wham Episode after another proved to be one of the most enjoyable series of the DCU. The creators admit that they stuffed a lot of the "comedy" episodes at the begining because once they picked up the mytharch, they were not going to slow down.
- While not really in the same continuity, just compare the bearded Aquaman of Justice League to the non-bearded Aquaman of Super Friends.
- 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.
- 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!"
- In particular, "Masks", the episode that kicked off the Robin story arc at the end of the first season, introduced the Not So Different dynamic between Robin and Slade, and started developing Slade's motives and plans beyond the generic evil of his first few appearances really marked the moment of beard growth for many.
- 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.
- Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. Steven Sondheim purportedly called Matt Stone and Trey Parker after seeing it in theaters to tell them it was the best musical he'd seen in years.
- Code Lyoko starts out pretty formulaic in Season 1, but in Season 2 character development begins, and the show becomes less repetitive.
- 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).
- In the first season of Spiderman The Animated Series, most of the episodes were self-contained and centered around the villain of the week. In other words, it looked just like Batman: The Animated Series except in all the noticable ways in which it was inferior to Batman (cruder animation, less exciting violence, less complex villains). The second season kicked off with a season long storyarc, "Neogenic Nightmare", and the show became a multi-part Soap Opera that was less about the villains and more about Peter's personal life, the effect his powers had on his personal life, and the supporting cast. It's this format that has helped this show be fondly remembered...and helped it regularly trounce Batman in the ratings.
- Your Mileage May Vary heavily though; some find the first season the best and think that the show got progressively weaker overtime (it certainly got weaker in terms of animation past the first season, even John Semper said as much.)
- TheFairlyOddParentsin it's sixth season. In the fourth and fifth seasons the three main characters had gone through so much flanderization that they became extremely unlikable, particularly Timmy and Cosmo. With the birth of baby Poof, however, the show returned to much of it's original charm. The quality of the episodes is, also, notably better.
- Some people actually consider Poof to be when the show jumped the shark.
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.)
- Billy Mays' beard became progressively fuller and more trimmed as he got more successful.
- An inversion: Throughout the 1986 season, Roger Clemens followed a routine of not shaving on days he pitched. After being removed from Game 6 of the World Series, with his team, the Red Sox, on the verge of clinching the title, Clemens shaved, wanting to look good for the anticipated postgame celebration. The Mets saw that Clemens was clean-shaven, became angry, and we all know what happened next.
- It could be said that Johnny Damon's shaving of his beard was another inversion of this, especially considering he had just joined the New York Yankees after the Red Sox won the World Series.
- Jason Giambi did this with a mustache. Not only did it allegedly help him break out of a long slump (along with a golden thong), but it helped him regain a measure of his popularity with the fans that had been lost following the steroid allegations.
- Finland becoming a Grand Duchy of Russia following the War of Finland. Up until 1809, the land been a big forest with a couple of towns, ruled by the Swedish kings. When Tsar Alexander I took over, he had a new, modern capital with a neo-classical centre built, gave the country its own senate and supported the national awakening of the Finns. He didn't boast about having "lifted Finland among nations" for nothing.
- Archbishop Cranmer was just a dependable Archbishop who gave Henry VIII his divorce. Then Henry VIII died and Cranmer literally grew the beard, showing his forsaking of the corrupt practices of the (cleanshaven) catholic church and his move toward a protestant book of Common prayer that was his defining feature.
- Without a beard, Brad Pitt looks funny. With a beard, even dudes find him attractive.
- By now though, the beard is just disgusting.
- Brad Pitt looks funny without a beard? YMMV
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