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 the exit of a meddling executive. 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. 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. We might well call this trope "Greying the Beard".
Also note that just because a series eventually grows a beard doesn't mean it was actually bad to start with. Being So Okay It's Average is sometimes the worst offense a show can have before it evolves, or it takes a season or two of being just "good" before it develops the Myth Arc it became famous for. Calvin and Hobbes may have needed some time to develop into a truly great piece of work, but it was still an excellent and clever strip from the very beginning.
Does not refer to spontaneous generation from one's own body, or the acquisition of an opposite-sex partner to keep up appearances. Or feeling melancholic with facial hair.
Also note that fans can be starkly dividedas to whether a change is Growing a Beard or Jumping the Shark.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
While the first arc of Naruto was well-recieved, the series started growing with the Chunin Exam Arc. We're introduced to the Big Bad of part 1 as well as many Ensemble Darkhorses, and characters such as Naruto and Sakura start showing their signs of Character Development.
In the case of the Oh My Goddess! manga, it's "Growing The Ponytail". The series began somewhat crude and crass, and the main cast was comprised of only Keiichi and Belldandy, who then had long, silvery hair. As the series evolved and more characters were added, Kösuke Fujishima started making her (and her sister goddesses, Urd and Skuld, when they joined) look less Asian and more European. By the time Fujishima had gotten a firm handle on the character designs (with Belldandy in blonde hair in a bun and ponytail, with some dangling for good measure), the series had more or less become a light-hearted romantic-comedy.
Interestingly enough, the OVA (which debuted while the manga was still Growing the Beard) and the TV series (which debuted well after the manga had settled down) have Belldandy in a more European-style blue, gold, and white outfit the first time she appears, and with blonde hair in a bun and ponytail, and both series follow the light-hearted romantic-comedy formula to a "T". In other words, the "beard" had already been grown.
Magical Project S: Although it parodies the magical girl genre, never takes itself seriously and taking into account that this is a subjective trope from episode 19 you can see that besides the ever present jokes, there is an actual change of the status quo thanks to character development. It goes beyond being a parody show and adds psychological complexity to some characters (particularly Misao/Misa) that lead and from this point the characters were taken seriously beyond (but retaining) comic relief.
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 trend is continued in the following seasons, A's and StrikerS, as the story transforms into a psychologically complex, multi-dimensional saga.
Gantz, for the first nine volumes (and the whole anime series), consists of senseless killings; gory, horrific violence; Fanservice; and sex scenes. Thanks to the introduction of Tae Kojima and impressive Character Development for Kurono, however, the manga has since improved immeasurably.
Digimon Adventure started out as a fun, if typical, Trapped in Another WorldMons series. Things picked up at around episode 21, but it wasn't until the introduction of Vamdemon/Myotismon (an incredibly iconic villain for children's anime, even after a decade) that the series really hit its stride.
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...
Digimon Xros Wars began to really hit its stride with the commencement of the Death Generals arc, the reintroduction of traditional evolution and the conflict with Yuu Amano.
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 BastardTony, 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.
Arguably long before that. As early as the end of episode 2, we see evidence that Vash might not be the incredibly lucky but naive fool that he's appeared to be up to that point, and by the end of episode 5 any remaining shreds of doubt are removed. (Granted, the Brilliant Dynamites Neon episodes do occur after that, but it gets better again.)
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...
Some saw the improvement of the series purely in the fact that Renton wasn't beaten upevery other episode anymore.
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 unravelling the mystery behind a group of 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.
Katekyo Hitman Reborn! had a basically stagnant plot until Volume 9 with the arrival of Mukuro. The story and plot got a lot more interesting, hitting its stride during the Varia Arc and kept getting better from there. Even the art got better.
Your Mileage May Vary. Some liked the series more when it was a light-hearted comedy, some thought the change to straight battle manga made it better.
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 - a question to which the answer has always been "no." 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.
Jojos 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 Remake of the original Gundam series doesn't exactly help), but after a few Wham EpisodesSEED finally escapes this routine and sets off on a path to its own original, epic Grand Finale. To its defense, the first episodes do a good job of familiarizing and endearing the characters to the audience.
People had mixed views about the first tweleve episodes of Gundam Age. While not necessarily as bad as the Fan Dumb was predicting it would be, it seemed that AGE would be a kids version of Gundam with battles that were nothing to write home about. Then Episode 13 aired, which packed loads of action and Crowning Moments Of Awesome. The series followed that up with Episode 14, which proved to be a massive Tear Jerker to even those who loathed the series. And after that, Sunrise brought us Episode 15, which revealed that the Unknown Enemy's identity in what could be the biggest Wham Episode ever for an AU Gundam series. Add the sudden shift in the series' tone and you have what many fans are now calling a strong AU installment.
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. This is the source of a 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, it's not the series for you."
Don't forget how throughout the series the Big Bad Blackbeard himself has been growing a beard.
Candy Boy turns more and more into an emotional slice of life series with each subsequent 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.
The Axis Powers Hetalia was always a light hearted and cute Anime, but the third season (Named independently from the first three as "World Series") has a distinct Darker and Edgier feel, with darker colouring, more visible lines, better quality and more fluid animations, along with more original plots to go alongside the ones from the manga, it's also much funnier than the first two seasons.
Not to mention it now contains PRUSSIA! Which probably adds to the humour department.
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.
Also applies to Transformers Cybertron. After Armada had finished its run and been replaced by the dismal series known as Transformers Energon, fans were pleased to see humans who weren't annoying, a plot that made sense while staying strong throughout its run, a decent dub and enough CMOA's to make a very decently sized page.
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.
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.
The Manga's first arc (wich looks like shallow tortureporn at first) starts to grow the beard when the snail count visits his daughter.It's the first sign of the layered storytelling that the manga currently is known for.
Speaking of Berserk, the anime had a well-written but very slow start. It really gets interesting at episode 15.
Fist of the North Star starts off as a series of loosely connected story arcs where one thing leads to another. It isn't until the introduction of Kenshiro's three honorary brothers in the ways of Hokuto Shinken and their dispute over who will become the successor is where the main story truly begins.
Bleach grows the beard as soon as Rukia gets captured as the first true arc begins.
Prétear 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.
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.
Some people 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.
Some believe it was the fact that after Kamina's death, the comedy and action stopped intertwining during the episodes. While the comedy was still there, the action took center stage during a battle, and it slowly but surely became the kind of mecha series it was parodying.
SHUFFLE!! really got better and more dramatic with the beginning of Nerine and Lycoris' arc.
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 Moon Wo 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.
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood did this when it departed from material covered already in the first series, but particularly in episode 19 when Mustang Killed Lust in an absolute blaze of glory
The manga itself did this quite early. The manga's first book seems to set the series as a Mystery of the Week format, where the two brothers journey around and solve various problems via alchemy. As soon as Edward and Alphonse reach Central and meet up with Mustang, the story turns into a longer single arc.
Fullmetal Alchemist's first anime also started off as a very high-quality though fairly typical Mystery of the Week series where Adventure Towns were the main source of the plot. However, around the time of Hughes' death, it finally started to evolve into a truly dark and compelling drama. By the time Ed fought and killed Greed, its beard had grown out to roughly ZZ Top proportions.
Macross 7 picks up around episode 17, with the separation of City 7 from the fleet, and picks up once again in episode 27 with the creation of Sound Force.
After numerous false starts, Kiddy Girl-and manages to find its stride halfway through the series. True, it never reaches the emotional heights of its predecessor, but the story becomes much more serious and digestible—although Ascoeur's perpetually childish demeanor remains an ... uhm ... acquired taste.
Blood+ gets a bit better around the time Saya grows her hair out. It makes sense since so many things happened right before her hair style changed: Her younger foster brother is killed, Red Shield's HQ is destroyed, its leader crippled, and her angst filled Quest for Identity is finally completed. Not that there wasn't more angst, but the second half of the series was both more entertaining and more memorable.
Rosario+Vampire started as a lighthearted, Monster of the Week, Unwanted Harem comedy with relatively little depth to the characters. Starting somewhere around the Witch Hill arc and introduction of Ruby, the series had already started to develop a more realistic artistic style and more dangerous villains. With Witch Hill, the series took a huge swerve by entirely chucking the whole Monster of the Week thing in favor of significant character development, the ongoing backstory of Tsukune's ghoul transformation, multi-issue story arcs, blurring the line on how "evil" many of the bad guys are and focusing on some truly depressing subjects. Season 2 is flat-out seinen with little resemblance to the series start.
The first season of Fushigi Yuugi leads one to think it will be a typical Happily Ever AfterMagical Girl story. It's slightly violent, a few deaths of Mooks and the like, but the main characters always survive unscathed... until the first season finale, where the male lead's entire family is brutally murdered. From that point on, the series takes a much darker turn, and most of the main characters die.
Tenchi in Tokyo's low point has to be the thirteenth episode, 'Moon Mission'. Starting on the next episode however, the series takes a turn for the better, going exploring the family dynamic as the girls go their separate ways due to Yugi's plans.
Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ has one of these somewhere around episode 20. Up until then, the show had been incredibly light-hearted and silly, to the point where enemy elite mooks were painting roses in the sky with their mecha before going out to get shot to death. But during the short arc with Cecilia at Granada, Gottn tries to blow up a shuttle full of poor people in order to trap the Argama. This backfires when Cecilia discovers she has the bomb needed for this, and sacrifices herself to blow up Gottn's ship. Mainly considered to be Cerebus Syndrome, though.
The Yu-Gi-Oh! manga originally is a fairly episodic series where Yami Yugi plays various dangerous games against one-shot bad guys to punish them for their evil natures. However, when former one-shot bad guy Seto Kaiba returned as aBig Bad and started an Amusement Park of Doom, it resulted in a story arc in which Yugi's friends finally learn of Yami Yugi's existence. From then on, things became much more story-oriented and dramatic.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica starts off as a fairly standard, if somewhat ominous Magical Girl series. Then, come episode 3, viewers were left screaming "Did Mami's head just get bitten off by that cakeworm!?", at which point it became clear just what sort of series they were dealing with.
Starting about halfway through the series (roughly around the 14th episode), the legendary anime Neon Genesis Evangelion abruptly swaps over from a light*
MASSIVEmileage variance exists as to whether this swap over was actually the result of beard growing or shark jumping, as the narrative change from light-ish and actiony to dark and contemplative lead to large numbers of fans feeling that the show had become overwrought and pretentious, and the change in animation style from rich and vibrant to experimental and minimal was sometimes blamed on Studio Gainax ostensibly running out of production funds mid-stride. Moreover, the psychological abuse of beloved characters, the decreasing frequency of Heartwarming Moments, and the ending leaving the series' narrative hovering in its Darkest Hour, an Hour made up of everyone's individual and cumulative Despair Event Horizons left quite a few loyal fans feeling the series grew its beard out only to use that beard for terrible evil. Nevertheless, it was these changes in tone that would provide Evangelion with much of its most rabid and enduringly massive fanbase, and bring it unprecedented levels of cultural respect both generally and, especially, within the humanities crowd, which at the time was extremely rare for a shonen anime.
The later chapters of Kodomo no Jikan tone back the overaggressive loli antics in favor of much darker storylines deconstructing the reasons behind Rin's behavior, as well as changing the relationship between Rin and Aoki such that the latter is actually concerned for the former rather than annoyed by the unwanted attention.
Comics
The Goon was the first ever comic series by writer and artist Eric Powell, and it shows. Less than a year and a couple of publisher switches later, he is producing one of the best ongoing series' around.
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.
Yorick, like Riker and Blackadder before him, has literally grown a beard by the start of that arc, although he shaves it off halfway through. Given how many other sci-fi references that series had, this may have been intentional.
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), but unfortunately that still wasn't enough to keep it afloat, and the comic was cancelled.
The last issue did acknowledge that they had still beat their original expectations. The original plan in 1984 was for a four-issue one shot, whose ending in issue 4 was rewritten when sales of the earlier issues proved popular enough to proceed with an ongoing series. By the time of the cancellation, there was such a thing as a "UK version", a syndicated animated cartoon that spawned a generation of quotations, an animated movie... and the cover of the last issue proudly proclaimed "Issue 80 of a four issue limited series!" Not too shabby for a comic based on an imported toy line.
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 G.I. Joe comic are largely self-contained stories (with one 2-issue story), many similar to the type shown in the later cartoon series, and it doesn't appear that anything really important is 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 botched 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.
It should be noted that Larry Hama would draw upon supporting characters and concepts introduced in several of the early issues later on, starting with reintroducing Kwinn in the Sierra Gordo arc that begins in issue #12. Issues 3, 5, and 8 are very much like cartoon episodes, while issues 4 and 9 are self-contained stories similar to the later Special Missions series.
Others consider the "beard growing" moment to be issue #21, which not only introduced Storm Shadow (who became so popular with fans that Hasbro agreed to turn him into a good guy), but was Larry Hama's ambitious "Silent Interlude" issue, an experiment in doing an entire comic with no dialogue or sound effects 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.
There's a rather silly rumor that this issue was supposed to have text, but was mistakenly sent to press without it. If the prominent "SILENT INTERLUDE" title on the front page wasn't enough, the author has debunked it as well.
May have been partially motivated by Hama's annoyance with the lengthy captions common in late 70s Marvel titles.
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, although based on the darker SatAM, started out as light comedy in the vein of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. It slowly grew more serious as it went on, adding more serious elements and having more of a continuing plot.
Similarly, Sonic The Comic grew its beard with issue 8 when a time-travel plot shifted the setting to one of Mobius ruled by Robotnik and Sonic leading freedom fighters against him.
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.)
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.
The British Anthology ComicThe Beano started in the 1930s but didnt really grow the beard until the 1950s when its most popular characters/comic strips began appearing such as Dennis the Menace, The Bash Street Kids, Minnie The Minx and Roger The Dodger. Although the comic did have it's highest readership before these characters were introduced but none of the characters from before the aforementioned four remain in the comic or are as popular (or long running) as these four.
Although the Tamers Forever Series is an undoubtedly fun and surprisingly well written series, it's still fairly average, until "Forget the Y2K, This is Madness!!", whereupon the series adopts a quality of writing that is on par if not better than that of professional authors.
Then along comes Silent Sorrow, which takes Emotional TorqueBeyond the Impossible, throws in a fantastically deep and complicated plot and wonderfully insightful Character Development and tops it all of by having a ridiculously large Holy Shit Quotient, essentially growing a beard so massive, it could be used as a rope ladder to heaven.
Film
While Dr. No was considered a good film, From Russia with Love is where things started to grow for James Bond. It was a stronger film and introduced many of the things we would think of with the series. It was an even greater hit and is among the fans often (and by Sean Connery himself) considered to be the greatest Bond of them all and put the series on the map. Goldfinger is another strong contender and was the start for the Bond-fever. The Spy Who Loved Me is often considered the film where Roger Moore grew the beard, but many also consider him to have lost it soon afterwards.
The Star Trek film series itself grew the beard between its first and second installments. The Motion Picture was devised as a grand meditation on man's place in the universe, but ended up as a shallow light show filled with wooden actors playing cardboard characters. In contrast, The Wrath of Khan was a swashbuckling adventure in space that dealt far more successfully with weightier themes than its predecessor. The film series went through the exact same cycle with The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country; the former film was a self-conscious epic that fell on its face, whereas the sequel was superficially a detective mystery, but one that dealt with dark and complex themes in an entertaining way. The cycle repeated itself once again with the Darker and EdgierNemesis, which was such a disaster that the series needed a reboot.
Food and Beverages
Pizza had been around for centuries as a flat bread with toppings. Later, it "showed some stubble" when tomato sauce was added in the late 1700s (tomatoes are native of America). It "grew the beard" when one final ingredient was added in 1889 when an Italian chef made one to honor the Queen that looked like the Italian flag. Tomato for the red, Basil for green, and mozzarella cheese for white. And yes, the name of the Queen was Margherita.
Speaking of pizza, Domino's launched a campaign in 2010 announcing that it improved its pizza recipes. Most people agree that Domino's pizza has gone from nearly inedible to pretty good. The addition of garlic seasoning in their crusts was the biggest leap forward.
YMMV when compared to pizza from independent local pizzarias. Especially when you consider that pretty much all they did was slather it with butter and garlic.
Of course, thnking of Pizza as growing a beard may be just the opposite of the intention of the trope
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.
Likewise, the first two Discworld books are straight parodies of Sword and Sorcery fantasy. The series began to grow its beard in Equal Rites and Mort, where it went from a parody of fantasy settings to using its fantasy setting to parody everything else.
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.
Incidentally, the main hero grows a literal beard in the course of the story, symbolizing his significant maturation from a lazy kid into a worthy king. The cover art makes the difference especially striking.
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, and the beard is completely grown in the third book, "The Dragon Reborn". 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.
The series may have the unusual distinction of growing the beard twice. After Jordan's death 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.
Let's not forget Perrin. Not only did he literally do it, but it's only really after his beard that he gets awesome and more than That Guy Who Can Talk to Wolves.
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 was a jerk during most of his school days, his revered teacher messed up badly, etc.).
This was apparently intentional. JKR claims she wanted the character to grow up with the readers (especially the ones who were the same age as Harry.) Books 1 2- Harry was still a kid, so everything was awesome in his eyes (even being attacked by Magical Hitler). 3, 4, & 5- He's a teenager and has begun to see the world as such. 6- He's an adult (in some places), so now shit gets real (like his favorite teacher getting murdered in front of his eyes). 7- He's now completely an adult, and the story takes on an adult-like format. Suddenly, everyone is dying and the world is going to hell. Proving that this trope doesn't mean things are getting better.
Harry Potter's continuous beard growth was highlighted by Order of the Phoenix, when Harry's character flaws lead to fatal consequences, and he finds out his father, who was thought to be a saint by Harry, was a vicious bully, completely arrogant of his flaws, and often rather cruel. Granted, his father also committed great acts of heroism, but humiliating the schools resident geek in front of the entire school and the person he loved most in the world was still a Kick the Dog moment. At the same time, of course, said resident geek was well on his way to joining the magical equivalent of the SS whose primary goal was the annihilation of the ethnic group his love was a member of. Nothing is cut-and-dry in this series.
This is definitely a Your Mileage May Vary area, because there are plenty of people who think the those are where the books took a sharp turn for the shitty.
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.
It's telling that the only book in the mid-to-late range that is generally well-received by fans is a take on "The Enemy Within" which is also the only book not ghostwritten until the final two.
A surprising leap in style occurred between books six and seven of Ranger's 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.
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 toplevels ofawesomeness 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.
According to Jim Butcher the first book was written to show a creative writing teacher how bad her method of writing was.
A moment like this for The Lord of the Rings appears in The History Of The Lord of The Rings. We see several early drafts of the beginning of the book that would become The Fellowship of The Ring. They are all very similar, in construction and tone, to The Hobbit. The original villain of the piece was always intended to be the Necromancer mentioned in The Hobbit. However Tolkien's original interpretation made him a fairly light-hearted, almost mischievous villain. However, somewhere along the line (in a moment which, sadly, Christopher Tolkien could find no record of) Tolkien realizes that the Lord of The Rings was actually Sauron, the villain from his Numenor legend. Tolkien then saw that the legend of the rings could be used as a way to explain how Sauron survived the destruction of Numenor. With the Smaug-like villain replaced by a character who was, for all intents and purposes, Satan, the book became more grounded and the story got much, much darker; growing into the legendary saga we have today.
By book five in the Lemony Snicketseries, the formula has started to feel a bit tired. While the characters remain strong and the events remain unfortunate, the end of The Austere Academy is the first time we hear the letters "V.F.D.". From there it escalates from a deconstruction of children's adventure novels to "My Very First Dostoevsky".
The first two Sherlock Holmes novels were huge hits in their time but many Holmesians agree that the Holmes and Watson that everybody remembers fondly didn't appear until "A Scandal in Bohemia", the first in a series of 56 short stories.
The first Rod Albright Alien Adventures book, Aliens Ate my Homework is a fun story about a boy dealing with a spaceship full of two-inch high aliens, hiding them from his parents and teachers by pretending they're toys and so on. The second book, I Left my Sneakers in Dimension X shifts the action from a generic small town to another dimension, revealing just how inventive Bruce Coville can be with aliens and settings, and that the plot of the first book wasn't so neatly wrapped up as it seemed. The final chapter reveals that Rod's father is apparently an alien and a former member of the Galactic Patrol. This leads to major Fridge Brilliance with regards to the first book - the aliens crashing through Rod's window was no accident, and their making him a deputy them may well have been down to his father having been 'one of the best'.
The Uncle John's Bathroom Reader trivia book series, beginning with volume 8 (Uncle John's Ultimate Bathroom Reader). This volume was was bigger than the last two volumes combined, and it started the gradual shift towards a more in-depth writing style. The evolution has continued in subsequent volumes, which now feature multi-part stories and an "extended sitting" section with even longer material. While the first few books had about 200 pages, the last few volumes have pushed 600.
Note: This trope does not apply to the original series, whose first season is arguably its best
:
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.
The death of Tasha Yar is also credited with giving the show a pathos in subsequent episodes that it didn't have before, especially since the death was senseless and abrupt.
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.)
The first season, and part of the second, was affected by a writers strike that hampered the script quality. Many point to the end of the strike as when the show really started to find itself.
It's probably more attributable to management change between seasons two and three. Maurice Hurley, the head writer, was replaced by Michael Piller, and Gene Roddenberry also took less of an active role due to declining health.
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.
But the place where it all kicked off would have to be the first season's penultimate episode, "Duet". Most of the first season had been rather lacklustre but the last two episodes were extremely well-written and showed just how powerful the local politics were going to be. From the second season onwards, the writing was of a consistently much higher standard.
The season 2 finale "The Jem'Hadar" also did something similar to what TNG did with the Borg by introducing a potent new enemy in the form of the Dominion. Led by mysterious "founders" and employing the titular Jem'Hadars as soldiers. The episode climaxed with the Jem'Hadar destroying a Galaxy-Class ship, the same type as the Enterprise of TNG, to show what a threat they could represent. The looming threat of the Dominion would drive much of the show before it escalated into the 3 season-long Dominion War, and would be the impetus behind many of the other changes mentioned above (the Defiant, Sisko's growing role as Emissary, etc...).
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. Although the Borg did suffer from Villain Decay, 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.
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 became showrunner, made a bunch of Authors Saving Throws*
with the Temporal Cold War, the Vulcans, and so on
and started organising the show to tie it in better with the original series*
with the ongoing arc of increased inter-species cooperation, increased hostility with Romulans (to lead up to the Romulan War), and establishment of the Coalition of Planets (as the League-of-Nations-esque predecessor to the Federation)
). Unfortunately, the show was cancelled at this point, so we'll never know if the beard would've stayed on.
M*A*S*H started doing this did this with the episode "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet", where Hawkeye is reduced to tears when an old friend of his dies on the operating table. Once "Abyssinia, Henry", aired, it became clear the show had moved from a straight-up Army comedy to a comedy with dramatic storylines.
Law & Order: SVU 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 permanent ADA Alexandra Cabot, the writers noticed that the UST between Benson and Stabler (allegedly due to actual chemistry between Hargitay and Meloni) was too much and toned it down, detectives Jeffries and comic-relief Cassidy were replaced by Tutuola, and the show began to distinguish itself as its own series.
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 Boyfriend" and "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.
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 Hyper Competent Sidekick Baldrick becomes a Bumbling Sidekick, but that was seen as a necessary part of the overall improvement.
In its first season, Chuck was a fun show, if occasionally uneven. The second season tightened up the spy plots, improved the action scenes, better-integrated the spy and non-spy elements of the show, and introduced mytharc elements, making it into a show capable of delivering 42 minutes of continual awesome.
Wizards of Waverly Place: The show started off as a typical whacky "Teen with a secret" Kid Com , but the show later picked up intriguing plot threads and had incredible continuity for a show of this type, as well as an improvement of the writing in general.
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. The series later became famous for them.
Others would argue the show at least grew some stubble in "Prophecy Girl", the first episode to really deal with bravery explore the impact such a great destiny had one what was essentially a scared teenage girl.
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. In Space is generally used as the template to which all later seasons owe their inspiration: a strong season-long Story Arc, aggressive Character Development, some sort of romance on the side and culminating into a big Grand Finale.
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.
Season 2 was where the show proved it had legs. Prior to that the episodes were very formulaic (with the exception of the Green Ranger saga) and the overall mood was almost pure cheese. When the genuinely scary Lord Zedd entered shit got real, starting with the destruction of the old Zords and kicking out the comical Rita Repulsa. This coincided with a noticeable boost in production quality (the actors appeared in costume with the helmets off, in addition to staging American-made fights scenes to better match the story) and the special effects jumped up in quality. Longer storylines became the norm and this got even more noticeable in season 3.
The series generally goes back and forth between strong periods and weaker seasons, which often results in Win Back The Crowd. 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 live action show.
Within individual seasons:
Lost Galaxy started off kind of slow and was too clearly riding the popularity of In Space. About the time the Magna Defender shows up it starts to make its own identity, especially with his Heroic Sacrifice and Mike returning to the group.
Power Rangers Samurai had a good deal of growing pains with Saban returning to produce the franchise and keep people excited about the new series. Much like the original MMPR the arrival of the Sixth Ranger, Antonio, proved to kick the series up a notch. There's also when Deker's human appearance (A bearded Rick Medina), which is also considered when the show grew into itself.
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.) Delenn grew some hair (but only on top of her head) after going into a cocoon in the beginning of season 2.
The ramping up of tension at the end of each season was planned, but the introduction of Sheridan was improvised. Sinclair was originally meant to be around for the full run of the series, but when JMS realized his arc had been largely resolved, he wrote him out with the intention of revisiting the character later, which he did in Season 3. He then created Sheridan expressly to have a lead character who would be a better fit for the story.
The beard-growing started in the middle of season 1, when Morden first arrived and the arc started to kick in.
The beard-growing second season of Charmed switched away from dealing with the Christian Church in season one and into dealing with Wicca, started to grow the characters as both people and sisters and added the plotlines of Piper and Leo, Phoebe and college, and Prue's new power.
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.
Flash Gordon starting getting better half way through the first season.
Ben Sullivan'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. Subsequently, 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 more consistent and less Wangsty, 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. A few long-term fans 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.
The show again grew a beard with season 5, after the controversial and heavilyWangsty season 4 (which downright wrecked all the characters' lives, introduced a Squicky relationship between two characters that borderlined on incest, and a season finale in which the defeat of the Big Bad led directly to a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero vibe). Then came season 5, and the show became more dramatic, treating the main characters as a true ensemble instead of singularly focusing on Angel, leading to a much more character-driven narrative. Spike coming Back from the Dead and subsequently regaining his original level of Bad Ass was icing on the cake.
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 character 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 Kirk. 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 series 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 series 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 series with the introduction of the Starbug spacecraft and more shows about getting off the ship that the show really hit its stride.
The series one finale of Red Dwarf ("Me^2") 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.
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.
The main reason Married... with Children decided to abandon all traces of subtlety and go for all-out farce was that Roseannewas airing at the same time, and it cornered the "Realistic Deconstruction Of Idyllic 1980s Sitcom Families" market far more effectively, so the producers of Married... with Children decided to go into overdrive. As a result, it became very popular with young men, who (as Katey Segal noted in the Reunion Show) don't tend to watch sitcoms, and that's why it lasted for so long. It probably would have been cancelled much sooner otherwise.
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, or basically Comedy Central'sanswer toTalk Soup. 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 show didn't change overnight with Stewart's arrival; his first year or two they did basically they same kind of material as under Kilborn. Stewart himself said that the 2000 recount was when the show found its voice.
On a related note, the show could be considered a growing-the-beard moment for him, especially after Death to Smoochy.
Writers and correspondents have noted that part of the improvement involved the role of the correspondents. During the Kilborn era, correspondents only appeared via field reports, in which they mercilessly mocked the subjects they interviewed for whatever oddity attracted the show's attention. Stephen Colbert, who served under both Kilborn and Stewart, later joked he wished he could leave his soul behind when he went on these assignments. When the Stewart-led show tried to hire Colbert's friend, Steve Carell, Carell explained he'd rather the correspondent always be a bigger joke than the subject. The resulting shift towards the dumb correspondent character archetype allowed the correspondents to appear in-studio (usually claiming to be reporting live on location via Chroma Key background), with Stewart playing Straight Man/Only Sane Man to their nonsense. It also, by extension, led directly to The Colbert Report.
And recently, Stewart came back from a short sabbatical with a beard. Though the beard itself didn't last long, many fans consider the bearded and post-bearded episodes some of Stewart's best.
In 2002, Top Gear was Uncancelled and subsequently the show was given a huge revamp to an entertainment show about cars with a studio format along with the return of one of the old show's presenters (Clarkson), while still including the car reviews of yore, albeit with much, much higher production values. To say it's displaced the older Top Gear (1977-2001), is a massive understatement. In the second series, James May replaced the second-hand car salesman Jason Dawe, giving the current dynamic of Clarkson, Hammond and May.
Even then, the show still had some beard-growing to do: the segments are somewhat poorly paced, and the reviews, while excellent, quickly become routine. Then they introduced the Cheap Car Challenges. And wacky, absolutely over-the-top segments like Car Darts and Caravan Conkers. The show really hit its stride then.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles didn't truly start to get good until about midway through its first season (about the time when Derek Reese shows up).
Not to mention that around the beginning of the 2nd season, John Connor grew a freakin' ZZ Top size beard.
"Homecoming" marked the moment Heroes went from being an X-Men wannabe to the show that made NBC relevant again.
It is a common opinion among viewers that as of Volume 5, the show got over its Seasonal Rot and is growing the beard again. Or was. Sadly it wasn't enough to prevent the cancellation, or possibly bring back the many viewers it had lost.
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", and after a slump in season 2-3, hit back immediately after the widely panned "Stranger in a Strange Land" in "Tricia Tanaka is Dead".
"One Of Them" was a Chekhov'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 GaleBenjamin 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 and 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 Morecambe and Wise". Their 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.
This basically killedFarscape 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 Crichton 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 Smart) and makeup get significantly retooled.
It got good when they stopped resisting the madness - the crew stopped calling John nuts and started one-upping him with whacked ideas of their own.
Where it stopped becoming a 'human in alien environment' gig and started becoming Darker and Edgier was around the episode "A human reaction" where John encounters the ancients (which is also about the time the Mind Screw kicked in). This set the point where the show started Growing the Beard at lightspeed.
Gossip Girl didn't really get into the swing of things until the seventh episode. Before that, the characters were interesting but all the relationships were essentially static (Blair fights with Nate, Serena and Dan get closer, Chuck enjoys hookers, Vanessa and Jenny sit at home alone). In that episode, Nate and Blair finally break up and the viewers love what ( read: who) Blair does after.
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.
The first truly great SG-1 episode was There But For The Grace Of God, near the end of season one. Nearly the entire rest of the series took its cues from it in tone, it stepped out of Star Trek's shadow and stopped trying to copy it and it became much better for it.
Another great (though controversial) turning point for the series was in the first episode of season nine. After eight seasons of the same team, Jack O'Neill, the main character had left, and the show was continuing without him, now putting newcomer Cameron Mitchell in the metaphorical captain's chair. This ushered in an era of more special effects, higher stakes, and an entirely different brand of comedy.
Of course, there is another prevailing opinion that the vast number of fundamental changes also made it an entirely different show which had few claims to the title of SG 1 anymore. The creaters even acknowledged this when at one point they considered simply ending SG 1 and giving the show a completely new title, but shamefully dropped this attempt at honesty for the sake of gaining the accolade of longest running SF series.
Stargate Atlantis was more or less the Stargate setting as a whole Growing the Beard, as Atlantis has always maintained a higher quality of character development, plot, and visual design.
Actually, Stargate Universe was the attempt to grow the franchise's beard as a whole. The show itself started to grow the beard with the episodes "Subversion" and "Incursion", parts 1 & 2. No literal beards, but (like the Farscape example above) it seems that the introduction of an out-and-out villain made the folks on Destiny remember that they had other things to do than just mope about being stuck on a ship and switching bodies to have sex. Stuff like...kicking ass.
And it seems to have the beard in full by mid-Season 2. Destiny's mission is finally made clear, the crew has gained control of the ship and are working together toward a collective goal (for the most part). By mid-season, they've unwittingly been pulled into a war with a new alien race, hinted by Word Of God to become the new Big Bad of SGU.
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 blackmailed his way into the escape plan, 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 noticeably 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.
Essentially, the show got interesting the second that Mordred showed up.
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.
Season 2: Cara, a bi-sexual warrior who used to fight for the Dark Lord has joined the Light Siders and does Deadpan Snarker sarcasm; Richard grows 5 day stubble and as of Feb 2010, the plots are more interesting.
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 officially 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.
Like the situation in Star Trek: TNG, the sitcom Family Ties improved in the second season which is the time Michael Gross, the actor playing patriarch Steven Keaton grew a beard. It started out mainly about the divide between ex-hippie parents and their children, mainly their eldest son, a conservative, Alex. It still remained that way after the first year but it also became clear that Michael J. Fox became the breakout star of the show, showing natural comic gifts and more episodes were written bringing depth to his young Republican character.
In Sesame Street, the characters' reaction to Mr. Hooper's death is the first of many attempts to teach young children about topics that are hard to talk about.
No Beard, but Lincoln Heights becomes more watchable as the kids grow older.
Whose Line Is It Anyway? started off as a rather basic improvisation show, featuring a lot of games that are great practice for real improv actors but which aren't particularly funny for anyone watching them. Over the years it started playing to its strengths, and fans almost universally agree that since then it has become remarkably better. None of them can agree, however, on when it went from "boring" to "funny." Most often you will hear one or more of the following reasons, all of which are also common reasons given that the show Jumped the Shark:
John stopped appearing on the show
(Tony/Mike/Greg/Ryan/Colin/any combination of the five) started appearing on the show
Ryan became the show's regular
Ryan and Colin became the show's regulars
The British players left/were sacked
The show moved to Hollywood
Drew replaced Clive as host
Wayne became a show regular
Celebrity guest shows (Richard Simmons)
The X-Files grew the beard in Season 1, episode 13: "Beyond the Sea". Before this there was very little character development, the acting was horrible and it was almost completely unrelated monster of the week episodes. Music, cinematography and writing also became steadily better after this point.
The Muppet Show was funny from day one, but it wasn't until the second season that a lot of the main characters' personalities and appearances really jelled; season one Fozzie was a borderline Jerk Ass, Gonzo was a pathetic little nebbish, and Miss Piggy was, literally, more two-dimensional. There was also an upswing in guest stars after the show got popular; initially, the guest stars mostly came from Hollywood, but the appearance of ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev (at his request) gave the show an extraordinary amount of credibility, leading great performers in many fields to appear on the show.
24 was a fairly unremarkable police/office drama until about 5:40 AM. The show suddenly kicked into full gear at that point, with the death of Poor Man's Mena Suvari, the unveiling of Ira Gaines' "I Have Your Wife" plot, and the wonderful last-second plot twist, where Teri finds out her new friend is actually The Mole, all dropped on us in rapid succession. This episode set the tone for the rest of the series.
Die-hard fans would argue immensely over this, but the Uncancellation of Doctor Who after either a nine- or sixteen-year hiatus, depending on how you count the TV movie, was the point where the show started gaining viewers and accolades for the first time since arguably the seventies, including two BAFTAs for the first new series.
Although not quite on the same level, many fans cite Season 25, and the 1988 serial Remembrance of the Daleks, as the point where 1980s Doctor Who began demonstrating a fresher, more confident and mature approach after several years of muddling along in a rather wobbly (at best) fashion, particularly after the brief mid-eighties 'hiatus' and the less-than-well-received Seasons 23 and 24. Unfortunately, by this point the damage had arguably been done, and it wasn't long after that it was cancelled.
For classic series fans, the first appearance of the Daleks in the second story was a massive step up after a mostly dull introduction story featuring cavemen.
The first nine episodes of The Wire are perfectly serviceable police drama. You start to get invested in the story and wondering how the detail is gonna put the Barksdale crew behind bars... and then The Cost happens. In a single scene, the show's HSQ shoots into the stratosphere and you realize that while you weren't looking, the characters slowly snuck up on you and made you care for them. It's impossible not to be addicted after that point.
Season 1 and 2 are certainly good Television but Season 3 is when it really lives up to its promise. We're back on the street, new characters such as Bunny Colvin and Tommy Carcetti are introduced, we get a better balance between worlds and we see the social side of Police Drama. This coincides with Omar growing His goatee into a thick beard and Cutty, also bearded, arriving onto the scene. And then Season 4 also improved on that, continuing to look on the politics but also the education system.
For Firefly, it's "Our Mrs. Reynolds." As with Dollhouse, this is not to say that the preceding episodes are bad. It's just that this is the moment when the show's budding sci-fi, Western, action, comedy, drama and True Companions elements fuse together into the wonderful insanity we Browncoats love so well. The addition of YoSaffBridge is just icing on the cake.
The Boris Karloff hosted 60s anthology series Thriller had one, thanks in part to Executive Meddling. Early episodes dealt with standard crime based thrillers, similiar to Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Network executives asked the producers for more traditional horror stories, in line with Karloff's presence and the Universal lot available to them. Fans considered the gothic horror stories that followed when the series truly hit its stride, Stephen King even called this the best series of its type thanks to these episodes.
Fringe arguably grew its beard in the last third of season 2, starting with the episodes "Jacksonville" and "Peter".
Most Game Show fans think that Wheel of Fortune grew the beard when it eliminated the shopping rounds and had contestants play for cash. As a result, the game became much faster-paced, allowing for much longer puzzles that could lead to much bigger payouts.
The syndicated Superboy TV series was about Clark Kent/Superboy as a college student facing kind of lame problems and adversaries. The special effects were also very crude. In the second season they changed lead actors and had more deadlier villains including a new actor played Lex Luthor who became Ax Crazy and a Complete Monster. The effects got better and as the series continued it became Darker and Edgier.
The creator himself said that The Big Bang Theory only took hold after a few episodes. The comic charm of the series was there from the beginning but the exact dynamic between the main characters weren't figured out. It would be either episode 5, where Sheldon is fired (and has no place to focus his eccentricities) and his mother is recruited by Leonard to set him straight, or 6, where the guys attend Penny's Halloween party in full nerd costumes (which basically becomes a series staple) and you get the first nugget of Leonard and Penny's relationship going somewhere.
The Vampire Diaries was, at first, just a Twilight wannabe with often cheesy diary sequences. It's around episode 6 of the first season that the show fleshed out the vampire mythology and showed that Anyone Can Die by killing off Vicki, who was one of the main characters up until then.
The first Season of MadMen is quality television but it is in season two that characters become more developed, stories become more focused, the changes of the era come into play more and the actors are given more to work with. Kinsey also grows an Orson Welles beard.
Critics would argue that Nixon vs. Kennedy at the end of the first season was the real turning point for the show. Mr. Campbell, who cares.. indeed.
SportsCenter has been a daily staple of ESPN since the network debuted in 1979, but the show really became big in the mid-'90s, with a batch of humorous, Catch Phrase-spouting anchors led by the duo of Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick, also including Craig Kilborn, Kenny Mayne, Rich Eisen, and Stuart Scott.
Conan, an example of actual beard-growing. After being dumped from a short and frustrating stint on NBC's Tonight Show, Conan O'Brien returned with a late-night talk show on TBS — far more relaxed, confident, creative, and funny than what he'd done before. And with a beard.
That wasn't his first beard-growing (figuratively). After becoming the host of Late Night in 1993 as a self-proclaimed "complete unknown," Conan struggled for his first few years as host before he found his voice and became a late night TV star.
The Drew Carey Show became much better after the first season, when Lisa, Jay and Mr. Bell left the show and Mr. Wick became the new boss.
Curb Your Enthusiasm hit its stride mid-Season 2, and then again in Season 6 with the introduction of Leon as a main character. The divorce of Larry and Cheryl in series 8 may have done this again.
The first season of Ashes to Ashes had a lighter feel to it, with Alex (in over-the-top 80s outfits) often treating her situation with a kind of detached amusement and e.g. Ray and Chris often used just for comic relief. Things improved a lot when the show adopted a more gritty serious-police feel in season 2.
Arguably, it grows it again in season 3. The previous three A 2 A villains ( Tim Price, Supermack, and Martin Summers) are revealed to all be Disc One Final Bosses. The realBig Bad, JimKeats shows up, unanswered questions from Life on Mars begin driving the plot, and Gene himself comes under scrutiny by Alex.
Community started growing stubble in the first season with ninth episode, Debate 101. The beard, of course, became fully grown with Modern Warfare.
In the first episode of season 3, Dean Pelton showed up for the new school year sporting a manly new beard and vowing that things were going to be different this year. By the end of the episode, his beard had been forcibly shaved off, and he was forced to sadly admit that this year was going to be the same as last year, but without money. Given the show's constant trope-awareness, this is assuredly a lampshading of this particular trope.
Weeds started out as a very dark dramedy with some interesting characters but didn't really get great until Season 4. The characters moved to a new town and the comedy got seriously amped up. It wasn't even until Season 5 that it got its first Emmy nomination for Best Comedy Series.
The Man Show saw a major upswing in quality once it reached it's third season and fourth seasons. Almost all of the rehearsed sketches were phased out and replaced with Adam and Jimmy going out and messing with people on location, the misogynistic rants and tedious macho behavior diminshed and gave way to a lot more Self-Deprecation, Adam and Jimmy got better with their timing, and the cringe-inducing homophobia disappeared and increasingly blatant and funnier Ho Yay increased.
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.
While recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, arguably their best but certainly their most influential album, all The Beatles actually grew mustaches.
Arguably, Ringo Starr joining the band could be a signature event, as this marked their break into the mainstream. Unlike the others, Ringo (the oldest of the Beatles) was already a well-established musician and along with manager Brian Epstein introduced a note of maturity to the band. Ringo also not only grew the beard, but has kept it to this day.
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.
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.
Bruce Springsteen released two critically acclaimed albums in 1973, called Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ and The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, but popular success eluded him. His third studio album was essentially his last chance - it had to do well, or he was out of the music business. That album? 1975's Born To Run, one of the greatest albums of all time, which also signified a shift into more down-to-earth songs about relatable experiences. The rest is history.
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.
While none of the member of Genesis are well known for their beards, it's generally agreed that the introduction of Steven Hacket and Phil Collins boosted the band from a largely forgettable pop and folk group to being one of the giants of prog rock. If there are any literal examples, then Phil's beard during the Trick of the Tail and Wind and Wuthering tours would have to count, given that Seconds Out (recorded during those tours) is generally considered to be their best live album. And after he shaved it off, the band really began to change direction and lost a lot of their progressive rock prestige.
Atomic Kitten's early music was in the typical bubblegum style of the Spice Girls and 90s pop scene and their record sales were not good. They released one more single "Whole Again" which was their first number 1 and their style changed for the better after that. Also Kerry Katona left the band and was replaced by Jenny Frost. The group's most famous songs "It's OK", "The Tide is High (Get the Feeling)", "Be With You" and "If You Come To Me" were all released after Kerry left the band.
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 a revival of their career after half a decade of stagnation.
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.
Some music connoisseurs would mark One Hot Minute, particularly the song "Aeroplane", as the apex of RHCP's Era of Beard, with a somewhat quick falloff with the success of Californication as its cause.
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)
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.
Arguably so. However, it was Swordfishtrombones, his first album after marrying Kathleen Brennan, that began his massive shift from classy crooner to the legendary rambling, storytelling, weirdo king he is now. And all the better for it.
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 MeddlingGone 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".
Belgian indie band Vive la Fęte 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.
Their real popularity started when the mainstream heard Dropkick Murphys later on because of I'm Shipping Up to Boston, featured in The Departed and now a trope in itself in Boston sports. This popularity had nothing to do with the musicianship beard they had started with Blackout.
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.
It can be said that they have done this twice. When Bruce and guitarist Adrian Smith returned in 2000, many fans considered the accompanying album "Brave New World" to be a return to form for the band.
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.
The beard literally being that of then new bass player and part-time vocalist Marco Hietala.
Similarly, Sentenced was an unremarkable doom/black metal band until Love & Death, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
Dutch Goth Metal band The Gathering started out as a fairly generic Death Metal band, with bog-standard music, uninspired lyrics, and stereotypical growling vocals. Their second album did change things up a bit, but was inconsistent, lacking focus and direction. With the addition of incomperable vocalist and lyricist Anneke van Giersbergen came a major change in tone; and their third album, Mandylion, became a landmark of Goth Metal, practically defining the genre and achieving substantial critical and popular acclaim.
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.
Musical historians note a similar effect in Haydn's music as when he entered his "Sturm und Drang" phase. The compositions become a lot more expressive, and minor keys are a lot more prominent.
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 (1972's "Whiskey in the Jar") and a solid album (1973's Vagabonds of the Western World) 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, best known for "The Boys Are Back In Town", 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, 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 and his life completely unraveled (despite Trace Adkins recording another one of Jamey's songs and George Strait doing the same). After he cleaned up, he released his next album, That Lonesome Song, independently 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. And to think that his third album, the Distinct Double AlbumThe Guitar Song, has been just as critically acclaimed as That Lonesome Song.
Canadian 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, but still seemed a tad formulaic. 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"). This sound seems to be carrying over to album number four, The Incredible Machine.
Faith No More really picked up in terms of quality and popularity when Mike Patton took over as the singer and primary songwriter.
Mike Patton grew an extra-long beard through his work with Mr. Bungle.
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 acclaimed magnum opus The Soft Bulletin. Their NINTH album.
U2 had arguably grown the beard several times during their career, depending on who you asked. But people universally agree that War was superior to their first two albums: the good-but-rough-round-the-edges Boy, and their pompous, repetitive October. War showed some heavy militaristic drum beats, strong riffing, and some of their finest anthems ever written (New Year's Day, anyone?).
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.
P!nk'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 fans agree that Master of Puppets solidified Metallica's legendary status.
A residual beard was still obviously apparent in And Justice for All.
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.
One may wonder if Foo Fighters had a period of beard-shaving during the movie soundtracks and There is Nothing Left to Lose period, due to too much soft-rock poppishness, began to accumulate stubble during the harder One by One, and then returned to beardy goodness by the time Echoes, Silence, Patience, & Grace was released.
The consensus is that the band really hit their stride once Taylor Hawkins joined the band, as he was the first drummer who not only could play as well as Grohl, but stood out as a charismatic musician in his own right. These days he is considered the second Face of the Band.
This trope can also apply to Nirvana itself. The band's first album, Bleach, was far grungier and less cohesive than their later, more critically and commercially successful albums. Bleach was rather boilerplate Grunge, much to the chagrin of Cobain himself, who struggled with his love of pop music in the face of the unforgiving and critical grunge scene. Only the Beatles inspired song, "About a Girl" provided hints towards Cobain's predilection for combining a heavy riffs and poppy songwriting.
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 was not universally popular with the fans - some preferring the older, lighter psychedelic stuff - and Roger Waters soon developed mixed feelings about the larger, mainstream audiences.
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.
One could argue that Radiohead finally merged their years of experimentation with their old pop savvy, creating a lean, mean, music machine in In Rainbows, resulting in much beard growth.
My Bloody Valentine grew the beard when their second album, Loveless, propelled them from an influential shoegaze band to the influential shoegaze band.
While they were always good, many fans agree Steely Dan grew the beard with The Royal Scam, when their music became less commercial and more experimental, not to mention a lot more sardonic. Pretzel Logic is also a popular choice.
Katy Lied is considered this by many fans because it has a notably laid back sound to it that the band would make their trademark later on.
The Runaways, despite the success of their single "Cherry Bomb", were commonly derided as merely a gimmick band, and their amateurish early performanced did little to help their image. Internal tensions and Kim Fowley's poor management prevented them from ever really growing their metaphorical beard. However, members Joan Jett and Lita Ford went on to grow their own beards with highly successful solo careers. Also of note, vocalist Micki Steele was briefly a member before going on to major mainstream success with The Bangles.
"Live To Tell", aside of a huge Tear Jerker, is generally considered the turning point in Madonna's career as it was the song that had her go from the mall rat teenybopper critics loathed to a young adult who was capable of singing soulful ballads about serious issues of human survival and courage.
Beginning as an R&B "Mod" band, then doing Power Pop, The Who grew the beard with the recording and release of Tommy. This isn't to say that their before then didn't have great moments, but that's when things really started to click and they became popular in the States.
Although progressive death metal band Between The Buried And Me never had a truly hated album, it's commonly stated that they really start to reach greatness with the album Colors. It's where they started some of the genre mixing that is one of their trademarks at this point. The Great Misdirect, which is the follow-up album, is also considered about on par with Colors.
The band Brand New can be said to have done this with their album The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me. Where before they sounded like another blink-182 clone, with The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me you can see a definite attempt at doing something personal and original, as well as Darker and Edgier.
ZZ Top in the 80's, who also had grown literal beards by then.
The Moody Blues: what the heck happened between Go Now and Days of Future Passed?
Denny Laine and Clint Warwick quit, and Justin Hayward and John Lodge replaced them.
Most fans of the band Skillet would like to forget that their first few albums existed, given their garage-quality recording and general lack of creativity. After the band underwent some substantial lineup changes (only one original member is still in the band), experimented with new styles and sounds, and signed to a bigger label, fans generally consider their album Comatose to be when they grew the beard. Some stubble may have been visible on their previous album Collide, and some would say the beard hadn't fully grown in until their next album, Comatose, which is when they started touring with the likes of Three Days Grace and Breaking Benjamin and getting significant radio airtime. Still other fans feel that the band grew its beard with Collide, and that the changes that came with Comatose signified the band beginning to Jump the Shark.
You forget those who became fans in those early days and miss the experimental sound as opposed to the generic as it gets rock radio sound. Hey You, I Love Your Soul is a sadly forgotten classic, Broken Base anyone?
TNT started off as a generic Hard Rock outfit with 1st singer Dag Ingebrigtsen but grew into a Hair Metal outfit with Progressive Rock tinges around the time Tell No Tales was released with 2nd singer Tony Harnell.
The Dutch symphonic metal band WithinTemptation started out with epic-sounding music, a great singer, and unremarkable fantasy-themed lyrics, but after their album Mother Earth, which had two noteworthy songs but was otherwise forgotten, their next albums The Silent Force and The Heart of Everything show a remarkable jump in quality of lyrics and a much more deep and mature sound in general.
The Sugababes cover of Freak Like Me was very well recived by critics and fans.
Blue Cheer's first album, Vincebus Eruptum, was a heavy, and sometimes silly, take on Jimi Hendrix's blues style. However, their second album, Outsideinside, began showing the band injecting their own personality into their music while retaining their heavy edge, resulting in what is probably their best album. Sadly, further beard growth ended when original guitarist Leigh Stephens left and the band turned into an average, hard rock group.
Hank Williams, Jr. figuratively and literally grew the beard (the literal growth was done intentionally, to hide facial disfigurement that resulted from him falling off a mountain) around the time that he started moving from being an expy of his dad to forging his own sound by combining the best of Southern rock and the then-prevalent "outlaw country" movement. Unfortunately for him, the sound was pretty much passé by 1990.
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band grew the beard sometime during the summer of 1967 in which their basic blues music showcased on their debut, Safe As Milk, took a turn for the weird, eventually resulting in the avant-garde outings that they became famous for.
Yes began growing one when guitarist Steve Howe joined in time for their third album (The Yes Album), where his presence led to the band to delve further into longer compositions such as "Yours Is No Disgrace" and "Starship Trooper". It continued into sessions for the fourth album (Fragile), with Hammond Organ addict Tony Kaye being replaced by synthesiser wizard Rick Wakeman, who was also experienced in longer compositions. It was then topped off by a change of image directed by their record company, abandoning off-the-wall graphics and gurning mug shots in favour of a more chilled and mature presentation, including gatefold sleeves, printed lyrics, and pictures of their homes, families and instrument collections. The bands original sleeve concept for Fragile (a broken china plate with the title on) was rejected, and they were introduced to artist/designer Roger Dean, who designed the iconic "fragile planet" sleeve along with their logo and many of their subsequent album sleeves and stage sets.
Alice Cooper was a psychedelic garage based group that didn't gain much success until hooking up with Bob Ezrin for Love It To Death, which launched the Coop's golden age.
The Rolling Stones were writing songs as early as their first album, though it wasn't until the release of their 1965 single "The Last Time", that the Jagger/Richards songwriting machine went into full swing, shifting their material from covers to originals.
And they grew a second beard in the late 60s. They did this after the very badly received Their Satanic Majesties Request, which was a blatant ripoff of Sgt. Pepper. With Beggar's Banquet they returned more to their roots and the beard really grew out when Mick Taylor joined the band for their next album, Let It Bleed, which had a heavier and bluesier sound and really took away the label as "Beatles-ripoffs". Together with the popular follow up Sticky Fingers and their Exile On Main Street these four albums are regarded as their high point in their discography.
Donovan grew one with he went from penning Bob Dylan-styled numbers to finding his own voice within the psychedelic movement with Sunshine Superman.
The Megas' Get Equipped album, although still amazing, had a sort of amateurish feel to it. Their later songs are noticeably better made although Megatainment could be chalked up to Entertainment System collaborating with them on it
Just compare any Get Equipped song to the acoustic album or any song on the Sparked a War single.
Happened with Jefferson Airplane with the release of their second album, Surrealistic Pillow, which included the hit singles "Somebody To Love" and "White Rabbit", a more solid set of songs and the inclusion of singer Grace Slick.
A two way example occurred with Jethro Tull; after original guitarist Mick Abrahams was replaced with Martin Barre, the band moved away from the British blues exhibited on their debut, This Was, for a more eclectic, prog based sound. Meanwhile, Abrahams was growing his own beard when he formed Blodwyn Pig, improving on the blues formula from his previous group.
The underrated Big Brother & The Holding Company was destined for obscurity, until they hired blues singer Janis Joplin.
Depending on who you ask, Deep Purple grew the beard either with their self-titled third album, which perfected their brand of psychedelia, or with Deep Purple In Rock, which shifted the band into hard rock territory.
While Paranoid (1970) is Black Sabbath's greatest commercial success, hardcore fans see Master of Reality (1971) as where they hit their stride, in-part due to the band achieving a heaviness the likes of which had never been seen at the time, influencing many metal bands in the process. The band would continue their artisic and commercial success, reaching a peak with Sabotage (1975), and then a Dork Age followed by a second Beard in 1980 with the arrival of Ronnie James Dio and Heaven and Hell.
Dream Theater reached their breakthrough with their sophomore album Images and Words, with the arrival of James LaBrie as singer to replace the rather lackluster Charlie Dominici, a more epic, progressive songwriting style, and vastly improved production.
After King Crimson's first line-up collapsed, Robert Fripp struggled to keep a new one afloat while trying to top the success of their first album, In The Court Of The Crimson King. Four albums and three lineups later, Fripp finally hit paydirt with the heavy jazz fusion of Larks' Tongues In Aspic.
While all The Move's output is quite good, Shazam could be seen as this, with the band going from late sixties pop to a heavier, more ambitious direction; one notable example being the successful transformation of "Cherry Blossom Clinic" from a three minute pop tune to a seven and a half minue epic with an extended acoustic coda.
When Mandy Moore's career started in 1999, she was lumped in with the pop princess craze, her first couple of CDs full of bubblegum hits such as "Candy". After a few years of nearly exclusively acting, Moore leapt back into the music scene with her 2007 album "Wild Hope", a vastly different album from her earlier work and one that received a good deal of critical praise. "Amanda Leigh", released in 2009, has received even more favorable acclaim, and even Moore's acting career seems to be improving with films such as Tangled on her resume.
Justin Timberlake after Futuresex/Lovesounds seems to be this, though he hasn't released any new albums since. The album helped him drop his image as "that guy from *NSYNC" and even was on Rolling Stone's "Best Albums of the 2000s" list.
It could be argued that The Byrds grew one wih the release of their 1966 album Fifth Dimension. Although the band showed some promise on their previous albums, they were mostly known for covering various artists, including Bob Dylan, and filtering their work with the jangle sound that made them famous with "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Turn, Turn, Turn". Album three showcased the band focusing their songwriting ablilities and incorporating various styles shuch as folk ("John Riley"), country ("Mr. Spaceman"), and jazz-raga ("Eight Miles High").
Stevie Wonder around the time of Music Of My Mind. While he was already a critically hailed artist in the late 1960s, he felt constrained by the business aspects of Motown. When it came time to renew his contract, Wonder refused unless he was given free artistic control. Eventually, Motown gave in and Wonder released a series of albums in the mid 1970s that rank among the best the soul genre has to offer.
Polish Black Metal / Death Metal band Behemoth has undergone two points which could be called growing the beard. Their first two albums were well written, but not particularly innovative pure black metal, but with the release of Pandemonic Incantations, drummer Inferno joined the band, and they began to experiment with death metal influences. The next album, Satanica, continued to show improvements, but the beard was fully grown with the release of the acclaimed album Demigod, which featured some of the most intense Harsh Vocals in death metal. With the release of their latest album, Evangelion, it's obvious that it's here to stay.
Metal band Slipknot's first two albums were well-received by critics, but they were widely criticized by heavy metal fans for their generic sound and almost complete lack of creativity. Even today, the band is one of the most hated in their genre. It seems that the band heard this, because it took them four long years to make their next album, Vol. 3 (The Subliminal Verses), which featured much better songwriting, a heavier sound, and more polished production. If you pay no attention to the distinct voice of Corey Taylor, you would probably question if it was the same band. The album was essentially raw modern heavy metal that changed the way critics looked at the band forever. Even some of the people that hated the band began to give them a chance. Their next album, All Hope Is Gone, continued the trend. Since Paul Gray's death, they haven't been making new music, but who knows what they will do next?
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.
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.
Similarly, Berke Breathed acknowledged that Bloom County didn't really take off until Opus, Binkley and Milo became the central focus. He admitted that early on, he didn't know what direction to take the strip (leading to a massive Retcon of nearly the entire first year and a half), and that he often cribbed Doonsebury in the earliest strips.
Dick Tracy has suddenly come back to life with the retirement of Dick Locher and the hiring of a new team.
Anytime you put a wrestler in a hardcore match with Mick Foley, this will happen.
The Undertaker had grown stagnant as a wrestler, and hadn't wrestled an interesting match in years. Then Mankind shows up in 1996, and proceeds to take The Undertaker to the limit, now, both men are legends.
Triple H had recently won his second World Title from the Big Show, but fans didn't really take the guy as a serious champion. Most still saw him as Shawn MichaelsDepraved Bisexual cohort from DX. Until his matches with Cactus Jack at the 2000 Royal Rumble and his other match with Cactus Jack in a Hell in a Cell at the 2000 No Way Out. For the next 10 years, he became the top dog of the company. He's wrestling royalty.
Randy Orton was considered nothing more than a bland third generation wrestler who only got there because his dad was Cowboy Bob Orton. Kind of like how fans first responded to The Rock. After a feud with Mick Foley culminating in a match at Backlash 2004, he became a real main eventer, and beat Chris Benoit for the World Heavyweight Championship at the main event in Summerslam four months later. Today, he's practically the face of the company.
Edge had already built up quite the midcard following thanks to the three-way feud between he and Christian, the Hardy Boys, and the Dudley Boys in the early 2000's, but most people didn't take him seriously as a main event talent, even with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it WWE title reign under his belt in early 2006. Enter Mick Foley again, and a hardcore match at WrestleMania 22, and suddenly Edge had become cemented as not only a main event talent and worthy champion, but a future legend.
Kurt Angle was always seen as a great wrestler, but people didn't start calling him the greatest wrestler of all time until he shaved his head after losing a Hair Match to Edge in 2002 (making this, in a way, a reverse Growing The Beard!). He would get his first legitimate reign as champion later that year.
Dwayne Johnson began his pro wrestling career as Rocky Maivia, a one dimensional face in a time where people wanted something more. He would shortly make a heel turn, constantly refeer to himself in the 3rd person, take the mic and run with it, and even main event Wrestlemania as The Rock. Now many consider him the greatest wrestler of all time, and easily the most charismatic man in wrestling history.
The entire industry of Professional Wrestling itself is one of the great American success stories, going from "soul patch" to "Greek Orthodox priest" in a mere three generations. A key splash of Minoxidil came in the 1930s, when Boston promoter Jack Pfefer started to move the image of the business away from "actual sport" to stylized, circus-style entertainment. But the beard really got bushy in the 1990s with the advent of Monday Night Raw: now the disjointed spectacle coalesced into a weekly soap opera with recurring characters and much more interesting storylines. The final touch, arguably, was Vince McMahon establishing himself as an on-screen villain toward the end of that decade, providing a sort of axis for his elaborate fictional world.
Tabletop 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 head-designer-to-be Mark Rosewater worked on.
Video Games
Sam And Max Freelance Police: 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.
Season One also grew the beard with Abraham Lincoln Must Die. It's no coincidence that this is the episode that's given out for free (for good reasons).
The Devil's Playhouse (Season Three) is also this. A darker, much tighter storyline spoofing the works of H.P. Lovecraft and The Twilight Zone, with top-notch writing, acting and humor. Max gaining some rather fun psychic powers and The Soda Poppers staying dead certainly helped too.
Resident Evil 4 was far, far less of a joke than the previous few 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. The gameplay and puzzles were more acclaimed than in the PlayStation titles (which themselves weren't too bad)
Even before that was Resident Evil 2, which, rather than having a B-Movie story like the first game, ended up having one of the most engaging plots in the series. Later, the first game was remade in 2002, doing a few Retcons and trying to connect it to the later installments.
Not really many people ever played the first two Grand Theft Auto games, but once the change to 3D went full in Grand Theft Auto III, it was an immense hit, and essentially one of the first well-done open-world sandbox games.
Not many people? The first game at least was quite popular, if only for the at-the-time unique gameplay and controversy. Most players were thinking "This would be even better in 3D."
The Sega Superstars games only started to pick up praise from the critics with the third installment, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing.
The first Guild Wars campaign, Prophecies, is generally considered to have long, monotonous levels compared to the other games. It also had very little max-level content and was almost completely serious, when reaching max level early on in the game and having a slightly dry sense of humor would later become part of the games signature style.
City of Heroes. Initially a passable MMO whose main strength was the amazing costume editor, the addition of a mission creation tool to allow players to create their own instances for other players to enjoy took the game to the next level.
The mission creator is recent, but many players will also attest that the game has steadily and massively improved since launch due to major rebalancing that actually worked (despite copping some rage at the time), addition of many costume parts, improved writing, and a general dev focus on player-friendliness. While it's hard to place a particular turning point, the release of City of Villains could be considered a major game changer.
There are a number of changes which qualify, but the most marked turning point is probably the sale of the franchise from Cryptic to NCSoft, the creation of Paragon Studios, and the departure of much-loathed original lead developer Statesman. Several changes prior to this change were pretty good (particularly the City of Villains expansion and the addition of an an economy in Issue 9), but most of the real solid improvements came afterward (including weapon customization and the ability to play arcs you've outleveled through time travel in I11, I14's aforementioned Architect system, power customization in I16, and the recent Going Rogue expansion).
Heroes Of Might And Magic V started out as a 3D-remake of the third game with awkward translation and mostly lazy cutscenes (using the existing animations of heroes and units instead of moving the mouth). It grew its beard over the course of the two expansions, particularly the second.
Neverwinter Nights started out with a rather boring story, full of Plot Holes, with about 2 three-dimensional characters in the entire game. It started growing its beard with the expansions, but the real potential of the engine didn't really emerge until the greatest works of toolset manipulation (A Dance With Rogues, Sanctum of the Archmage, The Bastard of Kosigan, the Shadowlords series, and more) started to show up.
Star Control was a relatively popular turn-based strategy game including a spaceship melee mode a la Spacewar. The sequel, Star Control 2 increased the scope of the original with a story-driven adventure mode and various other elements. Star Control 2 went on to become widely considered one of the best video games of all time. Alas, there was no Star Control 3.
Whilst there may never be a consensus as to what point this happened in the series, Final Fantasy is usually credited with this. Some commonly invoked examples are: FFIV, when a Final Fantasy with set characters first arrived in the US, as well as being the first on the SNES; FFV, which was the first time the series looked at itself from a retrospective point; FFVI which is often seen as the culmination of all the lessons learned in FF's I-V; FFVII which had the greatest duality of Sci-Fi vs. Fantasy in the series; or sometimes even FFT, which was among the first FF's to use very complex and conflicted characters who developed over the course of the game. Remember, of course, that the fanbase will never agree over this.
In addition, one could argue that after the first game in the series, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is where the series got some stubble, espessially with the addition of the spin-dash, and Tails, and that Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is where it got a full grown beard and indeed hit its peak.
In a hardware example, the PlayStation 3 started out as a laughing stock with a ridiculous price point, very few quality exclusive titles for well over a year after launch, and a fair amount of meme-generatingidiocy by Sony's PR department. By holiday 2009, they had launch a new slimmer model, dropped the price in half, and started a new campaign of genuinely funny advertisements featuring Sony's fake Vice President of Whatever-The-Hell-He-Wants-To-Be-VP-Of Kevin Butler. The fact that the PS3 had finally developed a very respectable game lineup didn't hurt either.
Dungeons and Dragons Online This game grew a beard in September 2009 when the game went to a Free to Play model and Turbine sued Atari (the digital rights manager of D&D). All the updates since Update 9 have featured much better quest designs.
The first two Duke Nukem games were fairly unremarkable 2D side-scrollers. With Duke Nukem 3 D the genre changed to first person shooter complete with innovate weapons, impressive (for the time) level design, and a raunchy sense of humor. As a result Duke Nukem has become one of the most famous video game heroes of all time.
Duke Nukem 3 Ditself grew a beard about halfway through its development, as it was originally intended as just a 3D continuation of the original platformers with none of the humor and personality that the final version would be famous for. This version, retroactively dubbed LameDuke, was mercifully put to rest and eventually retooled into the game we know and love today.
Assassins Creed II was much more strongly received than the original game as an almost-entirely across-the-board improvement on the original in game terms, plus introducing a beloved protagonist in Ezio Auditore da Firenze.
Ezio later grew a goatee of his own in his late 20s after being wounded and waking up from unconsciousness; when he helped put an end to Savanarola's reign in Florence almost a decade later, it also served to reflect his newfound maturity as expressed in his speech to the Florentines, and by Revelations it had grown into a full-fledged beard.
Persona3 was this for the Persona series. While the others were certainly good games, this was the installment that made the series famous. It was the first to come to the US without having been butchered by borderline racist translators and also introduced the social link system.
While the gameplay of Gears of War had always been good from the start, the plot of the campaign didn't really start to develop beyond a blatant Excuse Plot until Gears of War 2.
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 Rooster Teeth got into the swing of things.
The real growing the beard moment came with the Recollections trilogy. Blood Gulch Chronicles was undoubtedly hilarious but there were arguably just as many shows out there that were just as good if not better. Then came the Recollections trilogy with EPIC!! fight scenes interesting plot/character development, surprisingly good acting, an awesome villain and a really gripping story, and it STILL managed to stay absolutely hilarious. All this served to finally cement Red vs Blue up there as the greatest Web show of all time, with quality on the level of the best of professionaly made movies
I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC began as some somewhat amusing shorts, though it relied a bit on sticking to the Mac ad series, and the stopmotion was rather jarring. The series really got funny when it just picked up the concept of a dick-waving contest between the two giants and ran with it. In other words, the second Random Guys Green Goblin showed up.
Also on the dramtic side, it grew a dramatic beard the moment it revealed that Superman was missing, and the casual "After Hours" had suddenly become a Crisis Crossover.
Related to this was Lex Luthor and Superman's argument about erasing the marvel universe when viewers suddenly realized the series could also be incredibly deep.
It grew the beard a second time, going from great to awesome, by adding one character - Deadpool. "Rorschach and Deadpoooooool. A nut and a fooooooooool."
Homestar Runner's first major cartoons (which have since been removed from its site) were fairly awkward and at odds in characterisation with later installments. Around the point of the Fluffy Puff Commercial or Where's The Cheat, the characters started to reach their current form.
The Strong Bad Emails have almost always been the main draw for the site, and grew its beard when the show became longer and had more outdoors scenes. A decent bet would be the first Compy email "invisibility", which is a prime example of Strong Bad's Imagine Spots.
The first two episodes of There she is!! are great, but it isn't until the third episode that the story really starts to pick up. This is mostly because, while the first two are pretty much standalone stories, the last three episodes work as a trilogy.
Web Comics
The beginning of Dan and Mab's 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.
El Goonish Shive started to grow the beard with the Sister arc and finished at the end of Grace's Birthday Party.
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.
Megatokyo starts off as a fairly standard 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.
Lampshaded 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.
Of course, an easy moment to pinpoint is the beginning of the second arc, which also coincided with the enhanced art. Perhaps in Oot S's case we should call it Growing the Clasp?
Also, before the Azure City War, we saw Xykon as a humorous and somewhat incompetent villain, only a threat because he is quite powerful. Then he forces the entire (bar a few) Sapphire Guard to slaughter each other with one well placed spell on a bouncy ball. And then he acts (in the author's words) like a total dick about it. Sure, he gets his ass handed to him a few strips later, and he remains comedy gold throughout the series, but we never see him the same way again, and we really understand just how much of a threat to the world he is.
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.
Something similar happens in Homestuck (see its entry in It Gets Better). The start of the story deliberately had a slow pace, involving a boy trying to handle his Inventory Management Puzzle. And then suddenly there's reality-altering video games. And then there's meteors. And then things get weird.
Though it took off quickly, the first few storylines of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja 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 McDonald-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 its 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.
The Dragon Doctors: The strip began as a one-shot for a group of TF fetishistsfans, and the apparent hasty writing of the first half of the first chapter reflects this. As the author begins fleshing out the world, the comic gets much more interesting.
Two Evil Scientists started as a fairly decent Sonic and Mega Man crossover comic, with the first few arcs showing the heroes of the Sonic and Mega Man series battling the titular scientist's robots. The story took a unique turn following the Metal Devil arc, and the quality's been going up since then with no sign of stopping.
Black Adventures really got its act together in the third chapter when the story became more tied in with the games and the writing got more consistent.
Some fans would state that Slightly Damned grew the beard when Rhea and Buwaro escape from the Ring of the Slightly Damned and meet Kieri. This is not only when the storyline really picks up, but when the improvement of the artwork starts becoming more noticable.
The 500th strip of Questionable Content is universally recognized as a turning point, when the strip began focusing less on one-off gags and introduced some real character development and plot arcs. The art was also steadily improving throughout the series.
Boxer Hockey started off with sub-par to decent art, had a cast of generally cliche characters*
A dumb character, who shared a nickname with the author, the jerk, The Big Guy, the Only Sane Man, and their coach.
, and sometimes relied on Dead Baby Comedy and gay jokes. During the strip's four-year life, Tyson Hesse, the author, attended college. Over the years, it resulted in the cast having heavy development, well thought-out jokes, and absolutely beautiful art. Tyson Hesse is now considered a professional artist, and is doing freelance jobs for Reverge Labs and Dark Horse Comics. In short, it went from this, to this, then finally to this, and improves every day.
Our Little Adventure, about 80 or so pages in. The characters look less wonky and the story starts to seriously move.
A Loonatic's Tale began in 2007 as a comic the artist/co-writer drew in her spare time at school, with poor art and writing and awkward layouts that culminated in a style switch (including dropping colour from the pages) halfway through the third storyline. Then the comic went on a several-month hiatus during which the artist entered a few Original Character Tournaments, started attending art college and generally worked on improving her craft. Now the comic is back in full colour, and both writing and art have greatly improved in quality.
While writing the first few comics of Princess Pi, the cartoonist seemed conflicted between his desire to give Princess Pi genuinely threatening villains, and his desire to make her adventures as random as possible. This resulted in comics that went too straightforward to allow randomness, and some where the randomness overpowered the conflict. He claimed to have eventually found a "groove" with "Princess Pi vs. The Alpha Bitch". Indeed, the story does an entertaining job of creating random threats without losing sight of the main conflict.
Web Original
Red Letter Media's Plinkett reviews were excellent deconstructions of the Star Trek film franchise, but there was little else to them other than the movie reviews. It wasn't until the Star Wars prequel reviews that Plinkett became a fully fleshed out character: kidnapping, rape, murder, and all. The reviews themselves were also a significant jump up in quality, to the point of being a must-see for any sci-fi fan.
While not bad in the least, The Nostalgia Critic was a little less focused in subject matter at the start of his show. He found his footing and niche sometime after starting up thatguywiththeglasses.com and uploading to Blip.tv. A good bet would be his review of The Wizard or Batman and Robin. His yelling felt less like pathetic whining and more hammy and over-the-top, more visual gags were in place and the increased time limit of Blip meant he could focus on more aspects of the film. Both reviews had gags that still resonate two years later.
Doug Walker feels somewhat embarassed when commentating on his review for Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue in 2010, spending most of the review explaining what he hadn't got right with the Nostalgia Critic character.
While opinions differ on where exactly The Nostalgia Chick got consistently good (whether it was Nella coming in more often or it was where she started looking at tropes as well as doing reviews), but the first step was probably the Black Comedy-filled "Top 10 Disturbing Songs" list where she proved dark humour is what she's incredibly good at.
The New Adventures of Captain S grew the beard with episode 6, Nigel Strikes Back, when it became Darker and Edgier, focussed more on the characters' motivations and generally gave more reasons to the audience to care more about the events of the series.
These days it's hard to picture The Cinema Snob minus the beard. In the beginning he looked old, dorky and neurotic. Also, the video camera stock was as crappy as the films.
Atop the Fourth Wall was pretty much just like any other review show for its first several months, though a very good one. And then Mechakara appeared, helping the show stand out from the pack with its genuinely suspenseful and compelling storylines, as well as some of the best production values seen in such a series. And all without losing focus on the reviews themselves.
Though there is a growing number of people who wish that Linkara would dial down the number of Myth Arcs he's been putting in his reviews...
His review of Superman At Earth's End can be considered a Beard moment as well, ditching the early "Now we've got it" intro and having memorable skits that would become recurring gags, such as "I AM A MAN", "Because Poor Literacy Is Kewl" and "Of course! Don't you know anything about science?". To say nothing of the ending, which would give the show its tagline of "Where bad comics burn".
Tree Fog started out with simple song covers, but it really took off when it developed a plot with the band splitting up. This coincided with the shaving of Alex's beard, strangely enough.
The Spoony Experiment's beard-growing moment is (according to both by fans and Noah Antwiller himself) the review of the The Thing computer game, which marked the point where reviews were scripted instead of improvised and where Noah developed the sarcastic and snarky personality that would become a hallmark of the Spoony character.
MarzGurl had reviews of some rather unremarkable animes early on during her time on TGWTG ; one of her few claims to fame was having blue hair. In early 2011, she started reviewing the entirety of the Land Before Time series, including the short-lived TV show and some video games. As it went on, some of her fellow reviewers begged her to stop for her own sanity. Afterwards, she has started reviewing more mainstream animated films, such as documenting Don Bluth's career.
Western Animation
Looney Tunes: The early shorts started as shallow, musical oriented Disney ripoffs, but in 1935, Tex Avery and Bob Clampett decided to bring back the fun of old rubberhose cartoons (at a time when Disney was becoming a major force in the industry) which slowly led to the creation of beloved stars like Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, and the rest of the Looney Tunes ensemble, while previous Disney-derivative stars like Beans the Cat and Oliver Owl faded into obscurity.
Speaking of Classic Disney Shorts: While these old shorts are generally well liked among classic animation fans as a whole, its near universally agreed that these shorts reached their peak in the mid 30's to early 40's, with hits like The Old Mill, Clock Cleaners, Lonesome Ghosts, and Thru the Mirror.
In fact, Disney as a whole gradually grew the beard in the 30's, when Disney pushed for higher quality, more naturalistic animation, ditching the crude rubberhose style of the early cartoons for the most part, with the epitome of their beard growing being the first five Disney features: Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi.
If you ever find the shorts produced by Walt Disney's first animation studio, Laugh-O-Gram Studio (your best bet would be the Beauty and the Beast Blu-Ray), watch them in chronological order.*
You may notice a gradually reduced reliance on Overly Long Gags, and a stronger desire to actually tell a story, featuring endearing characters. Even then, the visuals have nothing on the shorts and movies later produced at Walt Disney Animation Studios.
The early Woody Woodpecker shorts have not aged well, and it's easy to see why: in Walter Lantz's attempt to imitate Tex Avery and Bob Clampett's fast paced slapstick style of comedy, he missed the point. The gags were very Warner Bros. deriative and presented without much conviction, Woody didn't have much consistent characterization, the timing was slow and mushy, and the animation was some of the sloppiest of any cartoon from The Golden Age of Animation. Fans agree that things got much better when Disney veteran Dick Lundy arrived at the studio in the mid-40's and took the directors reign-he improved everything, the timing, the animation, the pacing, the gags, everything, bringing the series to what is considered its peak with classics like "Solid Ivory," "Banquet Busters" and "Wet Blanket Policy." And prior to Lundy, Shamus Culhane also beefed up the quality and direction of the series over Lovy.
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. The reason was largely financial: the initial Tracey Ullman shorts were done on the cheap (starting with a two-man animation team, one of whom was Matt Groening), and improved as more funding was added. The first season was a half-length trial - with the second season, they got a full whack of funding and were able to set down a regular writing and production cycle and firm up the designs.
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.
Transformers Prime started off fairly strong but some people complained that it was too reminiscent of the Transformers film series in both look and story structure (although with a greater focus on the robots). Once the initial miniseries was over and the series proper got started, fans started to really pick up on the high-tension/horror-themed episodes like "Scrapheap," "Predatory," "Operation: Breakdown" and "Rock Bottom." Those episodes in particular started to show how dedicated the series was towards balancing both story and characters.
Now we have "Partners", where Starscream defects from the Decepticons and becomes neutral.
Batman The Animated Series started off 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". This was all largely evident in the season opener "Twilight" which was more aggressive in scope and personal in the stakes than almost anything in the first season.
During the commentary track on "Twilight," Bruce Timm and those with him also say that starting with Season 2 they wanted to push themselves more than they did with the first season. They use the metaphor of ringing a bell; that if you're going to ring a bell, do it as loud and as hard as you can.
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. It broke the mold of him having The Worf Effect to showcase the other league and put him by himself in a hostile and unfamiliar environment.
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.
Actually, it was near the end of the second season when the story began to pick up, starting with the introduction of Andria and culminating with the Wham Episode finale.
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.
The first season of Teen Titans was 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.
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, wreaking havoc against the status quo in her own passive-aggressive 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.
Another good example would be the third season's first (production-wise) episode, "Through A Lens Darkly", where the title character diverges from being an Invincible Hero-like protagonist and made her into more of the Broken Ace she would become in later episodes.
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. Stephen 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 more substantial character development and plots occur, 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 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 Diniverse 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 Spider-Man: 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.
Codename: Kids Next Door: Before the 1st season finale, the show was a series of unconnected stories about five kids sticking it to the adults, and a certain bunch of kids who live down the lane. And then said kids whip out a cigar they found at the end of a previous episode....
The 2nd season finale (E.N.D.) was also this to a lot of fans, for developing the organization more, putting the characters in more danger, and showing that not every operative is a good guy.
The movie Operation Z.E.R.O. was a Crowning Moment of Awesome and a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming that shot the series in a magnificent direction with the introduction of Bigger Bad Grandfather, the mysterious Numbuh Zero ( Monty Uno, Nigel Uno's normally ditzy dad turned [1]), the missing Sector Z, the Recomissioning Module, and many, many more strange plot twists.
Then comes the splinter cell that comes into focus near the end of the series, followed by mysterious events happening to Numbuh One. It all leads up to a master plan that comes to play in the Grand Finale, Operation: I.N.T.E.R.V.I.E.W.S., giving the show a brilliant sendoff, albeit a Tear Jerker.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars started out with some good points of praise alongside a lot of elements that fans did not care for, such as the goofy battle droid humor. The first season episode "Rookies" is generally cited as the moment the show improved because it introduced the coldly efficient commando droids and was an atypical story focusing on a small squad of clone troopers. It also had two uses of the word "hell" as a swear, stunning most of the viewers who believed it was watered down for kids. However, it didn't slip by the radar for long and got removed from the dialogue on-air.
Street Fighter:The first season was mostly stand alone episodes, with a few recuring elements (i.e. Guile's love interest). The second season has several character arcs through its episodes(i.e. Blanka's accidental further mutation, a growing rivalry between Ken and Ryu, Cammy's brainwashing, and Bison's aquisition of an ancient healing statue that, over the course of the season, drives him to world-destroying insanity). All this and Final Fight, too!
The Backyardigans from season two onwards; the character designs become cleaner and the animation is much smoother. Even the songs get better.
SpongeBob SquarePants in the second and third season with consistent episode plots, improved humor and art styles, and lots of Character Development of the main cast and characters.
KaBlam! was less random and fleshed out the characters more in season two.
Most Phineas and Ferb fans consider the episode "Dude, we're getting the band back together!" the episode that made them love the series. After that, the animation got better, there was more character development on even the minor characters, and the show started adding more Parental Bonus and Continuity Nods.
Some of the rest, consider the episode just before it, Its about time! for getting truly genre savvy in regards to Doof's and Perry' dynamic. There is also You scream , I scream in which the writers show you just how self-aware the show is (Plus the Fanservice in B.U.S.T.E.D started quite a trend).
Johnny Bravo became wittier, funnier and easier to relate to in its second season. It also introduced the characters Carl and Pops which opened the door for more stories besides the standard "Johnny likes women" plot while Suzy evolved from a just a cute little girl with a crush on Johnny to someone more developed and mature and Bunny evolved from the standard mother figure to a louder, more actioney type character.
Of course, this is debatable since the changes devolved Johnny himself from a social retard to a literal one.
In another Cartoon Network example, I Am Weasel's focus strayed away from just "I.R. will never be as good as Weasel" to a wider array of storytelling which may have helped latch it off of Cow and Chicken and into its own show.
Really, the fact that Weasel was even able to stray away from being an apendage on C&C and establish itself as an independant show in itself is growing the beard.
Cartoon Network strikes again! The second season of Dexter's Laboratory boasts the most focus balance between the show itself and the Monkey and Justice Friends spin offs and even offered the most easily relatable stories in the show which also helped introduce more inventions that Dexter would invent to make his life easier resulting in the most versitile season of the series.
Rocko's Modern Life spent most of its first season focusing on just Rocko himself (Not that he's a boring or unlikable character). Things picked up starting in season 2 when Filburt evolved from a background character to a third friend and the series fleshed out the perspectives of the other characters as well and not just Rocko's. We witness Filburt and Hutchinson get married and have children, Heffer become a cop only to get arrested himself, Mr. Bighead evolves beyond a standard butt monkey to a more easily relatable character and even gains an artist for a son. Heck, Season 3's Wacky Deli is considered the best episode of the show (At least by Murray himself).
Regular Show also began to tone down the focus on its main protagonists. Whether this is beard growth or a shark jump, however, depends entirely on the viewer.
Drawn Together became more versitile with its characters and storyline in season 2 and didn't put as much emphasis on its reality show theme. DT's first season was good. But its second season not only pushed the limits of taste, but also how good the show could possibly be.
Sitting Ducks was much better in its second season than it was in its first. The slow atmosphere of the series disappeared and the characterization improved. Bill evolves into a suprisingly braver duck, Ed, Oly and Waddle gain more episodes dedicated to them and they even did better storytelling with Aldo fighting his craving for ducks.
The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes introduced the main characters in a disjointed manner (the first five episodes having premiered online in the form of 20 shorts). The show started improving after the founding of the Avengers, and seemed to really hit a stride in the second half of the first season. By that point, the show started focusing less on finding new Avengers, and more on developing the eight they had, while still expanding their universe.
The fandom mostly agrees that at some point My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic grew the beard. When exactly is debated, but generally it is believed to be sometime near the middle of season one, though some believe that it didn't fully grow the beard until season two.
It's difficult to remember now, but...there was a time that the Miami Heat basketball team was flatly atrocious. Then they went out and got a certain coach named Riley. It would be several years before a title, but the team became a contender almost immediately. A few years after their title, they did this AGAIN by signing LeBron James and still having enough salary cap room for the rest of the team.
Hiring coach Bill Parcells in almost any capacity is an automatic grown beard for almost any team.
Hiring Billy Martin to manage was arguably the baseball equivalent of growing a beard. Besides his notoriously five separate stints with the New York Yankees (with back to back American League pennants in 1976-77 and the World Championship in the latter), Martin took three other teams (the 1969 Minnesota Twins, the 1972 Detroit Tigers, and the 1981 Oakland Athletics) to the playoffs. Martin even helped the 1974 Texas Rangers to an 84-76 record (good for second place) after they had two consecutive 100+ loss seasons. Martin's greatest weakness however besides his combative personality and alcoholism, was his tendancy to burn out young pitchers.
The signing of NHL legend Mark Messier by the New York Rangers in 1991 signaled that the Rangers were serious about winning.
In 2010, San Francisco Giants closer Brian Wilson has done this literally and figuratively. His growth of a full beard has coincided with his evolution from a pitcher who would give Giants fans heart attacks every 9th inning into one of baseball's elite closers.
Buffalo Bills QB Ryan Fitzpatrick stepped in as a starter last season and was mediocre. This year, he grew a sweet beard and he has been one of the top Fantasy Football quarterbacks, even if his team isn't winning.
The Immaculate reception is generally considered the Growing the Beard moment among Pittsburgh Steelers fans. Prior to this, the Steelers were considered a joke, with only five winning seasons in 40 years. After the reception, the Steelers have gone on to appear in seven a record Eight Super Bowls, winning six of them, and are now considered one of sports greatest franchises.
Similarly, Dwight Clark's "The Catch" was the moment the San Francisco 49ers went from plucky underdog to dominant team of the 1980s and 1990s.
The Washington Capitals hockey team, there have been times in recent history when the team just sucks, even with star player Alexander Ovechkin. But then, in the middle of the 2007-08 season, when they seemed to be heading for another disappointing season, they fired then coach Glen Hanlon and hired Bruce Boudreau. Then suddenly, the Capitals managed to make a huge turnaround and ended up winning their division and reach the playoff in that same season. Since then, they had continued to dominate their division and are one of the big contenders to win the Stanley Cup. They even managed to win the franchise's very first President's Trophy (Given to the team with the best regular season record in the league) in the 2009-10 season.
A slower Growing the Beard took place for the UFC. In the early days, it was very nearly fights with no rules, had no weight classes, and saw fighters going through many fights in one night during tournaments. Starting at UFC 12, weight classes were introduced, and more rules were adopted up to UFC 28, which was the first sanctioned event.
There were arguably two distinct beard-growing moments. The first was when Zuffa took control of the organisation. The second was the legendary bout between Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar at the end of the first season of The Ultimate Fighter.
Tennis. Before the 80's tennis was a boring, dull sport to both play and watch. The very strict rules and coaches did not help. Then came the 80's. Antipatic and borderly insane players such as John Mc Enroe and Ivan Lendl arrived. They threw their rackets, insulted and defied the coaches (to the point that the coaches were scared of them), and wore short pants. The quality and ratings of the sport increased inmeasurably.
Theatre
A Very Potter Sequel was significantly more technically sophisticated than its predecessor. Whether or not it was better overall is up for debate.
Stephen Sondheim was clean shaven for most of his early career, and though he produced good music and lyrics, his signature style didn't appear until the mid 1970s, with "Company" when he literally grew a beard, which he has kept ever since.
Real Life
When a male is able to grow a beard, regardless of actual age, they are considered more mature in general. This is why teenage boys cultivate and keep the few hairs on their lip or chin - they know it probably looks bad, but they feel more mature for being able to grow them.
Brutally subverted, however, if he starts to look immaturely unkempt instead of rugged. The lion's share of heterosexual teenage girls will take more notice to a trimmed Perma Stubble over a patchy, tangled, potato-chip filled neckbeard any day.
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 an eleven-year-old girl wrote him a letter saying that he would look better with a beard. And, admittedly, he did.
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 arguably a trope example (one that resets each year) as 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. If you prefer the shootouts, that's another example of Growing The Beard.)
While we're at it, a basketball example: for years Kevin Garnett was a super talented player who never managed to win big. Then he got himself traded from Minnesota to Boston, grew a devilish beard, and became the on- and off-court leader of the toughest defense in the league. Needless to say, it brought him his first ever championship ring.
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. The reason of this was the strict rules the Yankees have for its players regarding facial hair and general appearence.
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.
Before he stopped shaving, only Bishōnen obsessed fangirls took Leonardo DiCaprio seriously (despite an Oscar nomination for What's Eating Gilbert Grape). Then he literally grew a beard, now even his former detractors admit he's a great actor.
Martin Scorsese deserves a lot of credit for that; his belief that not only was DiCaprio a talented actor, but an actor talented enough to go toe to toe with Daniel Day-Lewis and Jack Nicholson seemed to surprise everyone when it was validated.
After losing The Tonight Show, Conan O'Brien grew a beard and went on an awesome nationwide comedy tour. He had it on his new show from 11/08/2010-05/02/2011.
Amish men grow a beard when they marry, as a symbol that they have truly become adults.
An aversion: Charles Dickens usually had a beard, but he was clean-shaven when he wrote David Copperfield, considered by many to be his magnum opus.
DreamWorks Animation has been Growing the Beard with their more recent films. Earlier on, they were mostly known as the studio that took whatever Disney film was popular at the time and gave them wise-cracking characters that made pop cultural references. However, starting with Shrek, they moved away from that and started making Darker and Edgier movies featuring unconventional, "misfit" protagonists and deeper, more story-centered movies such as Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon. These traits have all played a hand in helping DreamWorks Animation establish their identity as a studio, helping them grow the beard.
