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Seasonal Rot in Western Animation.


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  • Adventure Time:
    • While "rot" might be a strong term, it's a common agreement that Season 5 (especially the second half) is weaker than the rest of the series quality-wise (this was around the time Rebecca Sugar, one of the show's most acclaimed writers, left to create Steven Universe). Featuring the breaking up of Finn and Flame Princess, the increased involvement of the increasingly creepy Lemongrabs in plots, Princess Bubblegum's moral ambiguity beginning to border on full-blown sociopathy and possible villainy, and Finn, of all people had Taken a Level in Jerkass, with his immaturity being played up to ridiculous levels. Thankfully, the season did recover during the last episodes with the debut of Betty and the reveal that Finn's father is still alive.
    • Season 6 gets criticism for the lack of focus on its plotlines and ending in a fairly big anti-climax. It's also the point where many fans believe the show had lost sight of what made it so much fun in the first place, with the whimsical nature of early seasons giving way to more somber, introspective episodes like "Astral Plane" and "Something Big." The two-part season premiere, though, was well-received, if only for advancing the plot, Ron Perlman's sinister and chilling speech, and, after much foreshadowing, Finn losing his arm (although his arm is temporarily restored in "Breezy" only 4 episodes later).
    • The final season, especially after Seasons 7 and 8 brought back those who abandoned the series. While it has a share of good episodes, some criticize episodes like "Always BMO Closing", "Ring of Fire" and "Blenanas" for being unnecessary and pointless, the half-assed conclusion to Jake's shapeshifter plot and Gumbald being a not very interesting villain compared to the Lich. The finale, while well received, also got some flak for feeling rushednote , leaving several loose ends unresolved, Finn being reduced to a secondary character and not giving him a romantic closure with Flame Princess or Huntress Wizard.note 
  • While the show itself is pretty divisive to begin with, most fans of All Grown Up! say that it declined after Season 2 due to more drama and less comedy, Flanderization, an Art Shift, and more unrealistic plots.
  • Although many fans believe that American Dad! holds up better than Seth MacFarlane's other shows The Cleveland Show and Family Guy, the series has been said to have suffered a decline in the later seasons:
    • Many fans dislike Season 7 (the 2011-2012 season) for having less comedy and more drama as well as some characters' traits becoming more exaggerated (especially Roger, who becomes more and more of a Jerkass and an extremely blatant Hate Sink with each passing season). It's also disliked for having boring plots with glacier-slow pacing (including the multiple and repetitive Stan vs. Roger plots which would become cliche by the show's final FOX season, especially if said episode had them start conflicting with each other over the most minor and petty things), lack of central screentime for any of the main characters whose names weren't Stan or Roger and having most of the actual comedy reduced to over-the-top gore and bizarre big lipped alligator moments that you'd expect on Family Guy.
    • While Season 8 (the 2012-13 season) was seen as a slight improvement over the previous, what makes this season stick out to warrant its own entry was how many agreed that this was the season where Roger was Flanderized to the point where his psychopathic behavior could no longer be considered funny thus entering him into Scrappydom. The two episodes that most people point to for why they feel this way are "Love A.D. Style" & "Naked to the Limit, One More Time". Besides that, starting with this season several of the show's writers that were around since the beginning are either starting to leave or be laid off and replaced by more inexperienced first-time writers who likely view the show as the Family Guy clone that it did initially start off as thus continuing to emulate that show (even going as far as to have cutaway gags in "Naked to the Limit, One More Time") with episodes like "The Boring Identity" often being viewed as an episode of Family Guy just with the Smiths in place of the Griffins.
    • The TBS seasons tend to get this a fair bit, with frequent complaints including the Comedic Sociopathy getting amped up too far from its already high levels (with the infamous "The Mural of the Story" getting the most flack), sloppier and overly wacky storytelling compared to the more focused and intricate plotlines of previous seasons, and a general sense that the show's Family Guy influence is creeping in more and more and affecting the show negatively. However, many fans agree that "American Fung" was abysmal compared to the other TBS episodes of the series as that episode was criticized by many fans for having weak repetitive jokes, a complete absence of a plot, and the fact that Stan uncharacteristically puts Francine in an insane asylum because he forgot their anniversary. That said, the TBS seasons do still have their fans and are home to some acclaimed, well-loved episodes like "Rabbit Ears," "Persona Assistant," "The Unincludeds," and "The Two Hundred."
  • Amphibia:
    • While 'rot' may be a strong term, Season 3A is seen as the weakest part of the show. While it did introduce several fan favorite characters like Mr X., the IT girls Ally and Jess, and Mr and Mrs Boonchuy, it was also criticized for following up the rather serious final moments of prior season with a return to a Half-Arc Season format akin to Season 1, filled with lighthearted comedy episodes, heavily undermining much of the dramatic tension that had just been established; especially given that Anne's friends and everyone in Amphibia were now in the midst of a brewing war, while Anne and the Plantars are in relative safety. It's telling that this half-season's two best received episodes - "Turning Point" and "Olivia and Yunan", are ones that more directly deal with the fallout of Season 2's ending.
    • Season 3B had problems of its own: despite returning to its original setting of Amphibia, some were dissatisfied with the Four Lines, All Waiting nature of these episodes, with most focusing primarily on recruiting old characters - some who were only in a single episode prior - for the upcoming battle against King Andrias and Darcy. "Mother of Olms" and "Sprivy" are both what many fans consider' the only real duds in Season 3; the former is disliked by many for being an out of place grossout episode that wasted months of build-up and a talented guest star (Whoopi Goldberg). The latter is often disliked because of Sprig and Ivy spending the entire episode as Sickeningly Sweethearts while in the middle of a war, despite the two never acting this way in previous episodes, as well as being overdramatic at the very idea of splitting up even if it's just for 5 minutes. Some fans even say that this episode ruined or permanently killed the Sprivy ship for them. There were also issues with episodes such as “The Core And The King” in which Andrias’ backstory despite being compelling and tragic, had fans feel like the episode was rushed due to it being a half length episode instead of full length for such an important character. That said, the three-part Grand Finale is seen as an immensely satisfying sendoff that makes it generally accepted in spite of its flaws.
  • The third and final season of The Animals of Farthing Wood is not well-regarded by fans of the show, due to its lighter tone, the changed animation style and the greater emphasis on slapstick comedy over drama, possibly as a result of the European censorship getting a lot stricter.
  • Animaniacs has always been considered a great show but many fans consider the show to have weakened after the Channel Hop from Fox Kids to Kids' WB! beginning with the third season, as not only did the writing seem to take a nosedive (most noticeably in the Warner Siblings' segments, which often stretched thinner premises over longer runtimes), but so did the animation, which went to weaker studios for the most part (even Wang Film Productions, once considered among the show's best studios, was beginning to decline in quality; TMS Entertainment and StarToons were hardly used at all). The "spark" that made the Fox Kids era episodes so special just didn't seem to be there to make many of the Kids' WB era episodes as entertaining. They also lost Pinky and the Brain due to it being spun off into a standalone series, which didn't help matters.
  • Fans of Aqua Teen Hunger Force often considered the first two seasons of the show as the best in the series' history. Some point the rot as happening early as Seasons 3 and 4, when the humor started getting darker and more inappropriate, but they were nonetheless still watchable. However, everything after The Movie is quite polarizing.
    • Season 5 was largely after the writers were given free rein content-wise, meaning we got a ton of overtly gross-out storylines with rotting corpses, bestiality, and Master Shake microwaving a kitten. The zany absurdism of the earlier seasons gets phased out in favor of cramming as much gratuitous shock humor in as possible, which is never really what ATHF was about in the first place. Not helping matters was the fact that the episode "Boston" was pulled by [adult swim] to avoid controversies surrounding the 2007 Boston Bomb Scare caused by the aforementioned movie.
    • Season 6 was just as bad if not worse. Many episodes lacked the bite that the first 4 seasons had and there were some rather infamous episodes with the most notable being "Fry Legs" (where Frylock of all people grabs the Jerkass Ball in his attempts to hook up with a beautiful woman, going as far as murdering her boyfriend) and "Last Last One Forever and Ever" (for being a very bizarre Series Fauxnale where most of the episode is in live-action and involving a live-action version of Shake trying to write a script). The latter has gotten more of a pass, but fans seem to be in agreement that the former was terrible. Fans consider Season 7 and onward to be a step in the right direction, though whether or not they live up to the earlier seasons is up for debate.
  • Archer gets accused of rot, although fans tend to disagree on what seasons are worse, or if the show is still good:
    • Season 5 (subtitled Vice) shook up the premise by shutting down ISIS and having the main characters become cocaine dealers. It also was the first season to have a season-long story arc. This was obviously polarizing to begin with, and it only caught more flack due to turning the fan-favorite Pam into The Scrappy by having her become addicted to cocaine, become extremely irritating, and constantly screw up the characters' plans. It also suffered from Failure Is the Only Option, since everything the main characters tried to do ended in failure. The season finale was very well received, however.
    • Season 6, which reinstated ISIS (although the name was dropped due to being associated with a real-life terrorist group) is generally seen as a return to form, but it still caught criticism for Malory being Out of Focus and placing more emphasis on Lana and Archer's relationship.
    • Season 7 once again shook up the show's premise by having the characters become private detectives. Although this was less polarizing than Vice, the season caught flack for centering around Veronica Deane, a dull Flat Character, and for a plot that never really went anywhere and left a great deal of loose ends hanging. Unlike Seasons 4 and 5, which got better as they progressed, Season 7 started off well but ultimately got worse as it progressed.
    • Season 8, (subtitled Dreamland) takes place in Sterling Archer's coma dream, where he is a Film Noir detective in the 1940s trying to investigate the death of his partner, Woodhouse. This season turned into a major case of divisiveness, due to the esoteric premise, being less comedic than previous seasons and for the fact that the cast tended to be separated for much of it, with Lana in particular being Out of Focus. The finale was also divisive — although it wrapped up better than the previous season, it still had a number of controversial elements, not least of which was the fact that Archer didn't wake up at the end. The short length didn't do it any favors.
    • Season 9 (subtitled Danger Island), another dream season which changed the setting to that of the 1930s where Archer is a seaplane pilot in the Pacific, had received an even more polarizing reception. While many appreciated its lighter, more comedic tone after the relative seriousness of Dreamland, it was criticized by many for dragging the coma dream conceit past its expiration date, and for spending too much time setting up the new setting and character dynamics which caused the narrative to meander (it's not until the third episode that the season's major story thread is established). Add to that an ending which only served as set-up for yet another dream season, this one set in space, the majority of the cast outside of Pam and Archer being left Out of Focus and accusations of the show's trademark humor growing stale and it's no wonder fans are starting to compare Archer to other shows that ran too long for their own good.
    • The post-coma seasons have their fair share of detractors. Season 11 was praised by critics but the audience reaction was more mixed, mostly due to Adam Reed not being involved in the show anymore. Seasons 12 and 13 were considered okay at best and unremarkable at worst. The final season, Season 14, is loathed by fans due to the low-quality writing and for introducing the character of Zara.
  • Arthur:
    • Season 5 is considered a low point by many longtime fans, primarily for having what many consider a large amount of weak and forgettable episodes, with quite a few plots feeling really forced — for instance, there's one that focuses entirely on Buster being unable to sleep, and there's another where Muffy attempts to hang out with teenagers. The one most audiences really hate, however, is "Nerves of Steal", which ends with an all-out Downer Ending. The fact it was the first season produced without Joe Fallon (the creative driving force behind the show's first four seasons, which are considered popular classics to this day) on the writing staff didn't exactly help matters. Season 6 is also considered by some of the other longtime fans to be this instead of Season 5, or sometimes both of them, due to the prevalence of episodes written by Dietrich Smith, this being the first time Arthur's VA is replaced, and just being fairly weak overall in a similar vein to 5.
    • Season 9 to 14 could also be another candidate, considering this was the beginning of what some fans refer to as Arthur's "reverse puberty", as his voice continually grew higher, softer, and more childlike (which it had been starting to in Season 6 or 7, depending on which version of the latter you saw), and is also debated as where the show really started having too many generic plots. Also Season 12 to 15 had choppy background animation due to being animated by a different company.
    • Season 16 might as well be another candidate, what with the changing of production houses to 9 Story, the switch to Flash animation (to the point where petitions were made to change the animation), the addition of Ladonna, and the episode "So Funny I Forgot to Laugh," where Arthur uncharacteristically bullies Sue Ellen.
  • As Told by Ginger's third season is slightly divisive as, while still well regarded, it contained one of the show's most controversial episodes - "Wicked Game", in which Dodie and Macie inexplicably decide to split Darren and Ginger up, with the show going on to forget this ever happened despite otherwise having very good continuity. It also has a Series Fauxnale in which the characters graduate from middle school...and then several episodes following them in high school. Due to the change in character designs, it feels like watching a spin-off within the same season - as well as Darren taking a level in jerkass to break up with Ginger for another girl, after spending so long in the previous season building to their Relationship Upgrade (and it all being undone by the finale anyway). Macie is Out of Focus for most of the high school episodes, with Courtney and Miranda being Demoted to Extra. That being said, the Grand Finale "The Wedding Frame" is regarded as a worthy ending for the series.
  • While The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes has several great episodes in its second season, it also suffers from having more filler than the first, especially after Jeph Loeb and Man of Action Studios came on as executive producer and creative consultants, respectively. They created so much filler that subplots the original writers set up earlier went unresolved and/or unexplored by the time the show ended. Their run also saw most of the Avengers get pushed Out of Focus, and Out of Character Moments became more frequent. Plus, the animation in this season sometimes seems cheaper, and the awesome theme song permanently got ditched in favor of recaps of old episodes and a promo for the Avengers movie.
  • When Batman: The Animated Series was retooled as The New Batman Adventures, the character designs and visual style were altered to fit in with the emerging DC Animated Universe (particularly Superman: The Animated Series). Much of the hand-drawn charm and film noir flair were lost. The writing staff also lost Randy Rogel, Michael Reaves, and Brynne Stephens, and Alan Burnett only contributed one episode. While the final season still had several classic episodes, the writing was rather hit-or-miss.
  • Batman: The Brave and the Bold ended with its third season due to the show's creators wanting to avoid decay. That being said, the third season is still considered to have taints of this trope, due to contention about the quality of the plots.
  • Each entry in the Ben 10 franchise has its own seasonal rot:
  • Betty Boop went into a steep decline around 1934; first the Hays Office neutered the series' raunchier elements (downplaying Betty's sexual qualities and prompting the abandonment of her dog boyfriend, Bimbo), and then Max and Dave Fleischer began to incorporate ill-advised changes to the series to cuten it up, namely introducing rather dull characters such as the ever-cloying Pudgy, Betty's pet dog (who would often headline episodes by himself along with being a co star to Betty), and Fearless Fred, her one-note heroic boyfriend, and downplaying the series' once-wild animation and gags into much blander, down-to-earth premises. The series ran on fumes a few more years, and it was finally ended in 1939.
  • Some would say Big Hero 6: The Series fell into this after the "City Of Monsters" two-parter in Season 2, mainly due to the unengaging arc involving the team becoming fugitives, the team (excluding Hiro and Baymax) having rather minimal character development, and underwhelming, poorly executed plot lines involving characters like Trina. Season 3 is held in even worse regard, being a truncated season that switched to Quarter Hour Short format and placed far more emphasis on comedy.
  • Blue's Clues: While Season 5, the season that introduced Joe is polarizing due to it being the first season without Steve, the sixth and final season tends to be considered where seasonal rot really started to set in for fans. This season introduced the Blue's Room segment before it was spun-off into its own show, and the idea of Blue being able to talk in her own special room with a bunch of new characters who are puppets alienated many longtime viewers of the show. As a result of this segment being added, this caused the Blue's Clues theme song to be cut down to a shorter length and the "So Long Song" to be replaced with the shorter "The Goodbye Song". Another unpopular change in this season were the clues drawing themselves in Joe's notebook, as well as being sentient and singing a song after being drawn.
  • Bob's Burgers: Season 10 is seen as disappointing by a number of fans when compared to the earlier seasons. While every other season, including Season 1, has an audience score on Rotten Tomatoes of 80 percent or higher, Season 10 sits at a more modest 73 percent. A lack of standout episodesnote  and a larger number of episodes that place the focus on Gene and/or Linda (who were divisive characters to begin with and only grew more divisive throughout the season) are generally seen as the reasons for the decline. Season 11 is also seen as a continuation of the decline (due to an increase in cringe-inducing momentsnote , and more episodes that generally blend in morenote .
  • Although not exactly a rot, the 5th season of BoJack Horseman didn't start off very well. The season premiere drew some flak due to BoJack being forced by Flip McVicker to do a lewd scene in the Philbert script, while the A-plot of "BoJack the Feminist" relies on contrivances and characters being dumbed down for the episode to progress. Thankfully, the remaining 2/3 of the season improved from this.
  • The fourth and final season of The Boondocks is seen as having suffered a severe drop in quality from the first three seasons, largely because Aaron McGruder left the series to produce Black Jesus with television writer Angela Nissel taking his place who obviously had no idea how to write the characters, with Sarah being a perfect examplenote , several characters' voice actors leaving the show (like Ed the Third, Gin Rummy, and Thugnificent) causing them to be omitted entirely, Ruckus getting flanderized to the point where he isn't funny anymorenote , the increased focus on Grandad (which was already a criticism from Season 3) and the season having an overarching plot (the Freeman family being in debt due to Grandad falling for an obvious Internet scam) rather than standalone storiesnote . In general, it felt less like it was a show about black people, by black people, for black peoplenote  (that other people were welcome to watch, of course) and more like a generic sitcom with occasional bouts of commentary on life for African-American people.
  • The Brak Show suffered rot near the end of Season 2 after the Brakstreet episode. The writing continued to deteriorate in Season 3 with impossible-to-follow plots, Thundercleese being turned into an utter buffoon, Mom just wandering around, Dad becoming more of a jerk than before and somewhat of a Creator's Pet, and Zorak appearing sporadically, leading to the show's cancellation and having the show be aware of it.
  • Even among fans, the third and final season of Captain N: The Game Master is the least regarded. Due to the budget cuts that NBC made, the animation, especially the designs of most of the existing characters took a major step down and the show's running time was cut from twenty-two minutes to eleven so that it could be paired with Super Mario World (1991). Additionally, everyone other than Kevin was used less often.note  The writing also suffered a lot, particularly in the Flanderization of Kevin's character. Previously Kevin had been a gamer who liked a challenge but mostly a decent guy who did the right thing in the end. The last season made him into a jealous asshole in several of its episodes.
  • Season 3 of Castlevania has been criticized for its incredibly slow paced progression that lasts until the ninth episode out of ten as well as the increased depressing moments that ended up being Too Bleak, Stopped Caring, sudden Ass Pull moments near the end, and cruel treatment of certain characters that made people wish the show would focus on another Belmont already.
  • The second and especially third season of Chowder are often criticized by fans thanks to Flanderization of a number of characters (such as Chowder's lack of an indoor voice and smarts, Panini's stalker tendencies reaching disturbing levels, etc.), the Fourth Wall gags becoming overused, and in general just not being nearly as clever as the earlier episodes.
  • Clarence: Mostly for the back half of the first season, has some fans that were divided with one having to enjoy the first half (the ones that were made with Skyler Page) than the second half (the ones that were made after Skyler left), as they complained how the second half had caused the series to undergo from realistic, down-to-earth, and character-focused to unrealistic and imaginative, with a lack of any character development focuses, and filled with episodes that were lackluster or mixed. But however the series was meant to look as it focuses on a kid with an overactive imagination and a bizarre way of looking at the world, although that didn't help with one that doesn't seem to satisfy enough to those who want the series to focus on being realistic, until it was rectified in Season 2 that brought back what the first half had.
  • Code Lyoko fans consider Seasons 3 and 4 (or if not that, just Season 3) to be inferior to the first two story-wise (though far superior stylistically). While Season 2 involved and ended with an exploration into the computer's past and the progression of the major story arcs, the next two seasons shunted that to the side in favor of episodic filler, which was more often than not dedicated to the increasingly-unfunny escapades of the comic relief characters, particularly Jim.
  • Ctrl+Alt+Del: The Animated Series was near universally hated to begin with, but most people will admit that the second season makes the first look like The Lion King by comparison. The animation lost all shading and any scant traces of fluidity, animation errors became more and more common, and the episodes became considerably longer, leading to great heaping amounts of Padding.
  • Cyberchase: Most longtime fans consider this to have gradually overtaken the series since the end of Season 5, when Nelvana left the show's production and WNET-13 took over completely. Starting with Season 6, the animation was done entirely in Adobe Flash in lieu of being mostly hand-drawn like before (likely due to WNET's budget constraints), and many viewers see it as a serious downgrade due to the much more lifeless tweened movements and rather Off-Model vectorized versions of the characters. Season 9, in contravention of the show's entire original purpose, completely stopped discussing mathematics, and it alongside subsequent seasons instead elect to focus on other subjects such as environmental problems and stock edutainment morals. The sudden complete change in subject matter coupled with recent episodes' much more stripped-down basic writing is a serious letdown for much of the fanbase.
    • Also, the later "For Real" segments. Harley failed to appear at all and Harry's Character Development was completely undone, but also Bianca returned only to share segments with Harry and have her signature childishness be drastically toned down. Starting in Season 12, Harry, Bianca, and their recurring friends (Harley, Kelly, etc.) were all dropped completely, with the segments now being hosted by much younger children. The newer segments are also much more of a lecture than the usual story-driven segments of previous season, leaving little to no character development for the new hosts.
  • Fans of Dan Vs. consider Season 2 to be weak, due to too much focus on Elise, a lack of Black Comedy, and making Dan into a Failure Hero (when one of the best parts of the show was watching him succeed). Season 3 is considered an improvement, but not by much, which is why the show didn't get renewed after that.
  • Season 3 of Danny Phantom suffered due to Executive Meddling. Nickelodeon ordered the series to be cancelled with the third season, abruptly fired all the original writers after the second season finale, and ordered only 12 episodes for the third season, compared to the first season's 20 and the second season's 17. This resulted in incredibly inferior writing, boring villains, a rushed plot with a rushed finale, and Danny and Sam falling in love without any development. Due to these issues, a large portion of the fanbase prefers to ignore anything from just the finale to the entirety of that season.
  • Daria: Fans are divided on when the rot took place.
    • Season 3 was somewhat scrutinized, particularly for the episodes "Depth Takes a Holiday" and "Daria!" (the former being significantly more infamous) tarnishing the show's realism. Then there's "Jane's Addition" which introduced the infamous Tom Sloane.
    • Season 5 as well for its poor character development as well as giving the fashion club an imprudent amount of screen time to the point where it seemed like Daria and Jane were almost afterthoughts (although the final episode, "Boxing Daria," is generally considered to be among the series' best).
  • The third and fourth seasons of Dexter's Laboratory were made after Genndy Tartakovsky left for Samurai Jack. While some of the writing was still pretty good (with minor exceptions, such as "A Third Dad Cartoon"), the art (particularly the character designs) was standardized into a simplified, blander style, the animation became less dynamic, and the production values in general felt rather cheap note . Several characters also suffered major Flanderization (especially Mandark, who went from simply Dexter's rival to a full-on villain), the "Dial M for Monkey" and "Justice Friends" segments were removed (with the characters from their respective segments being Demoted to Extra or disappearing entirely), and the show became more focused on Slice of Life plots, with the titular lab barely being a major location in most of the episodes. Also not helping matters was Christine Cavanaugh retiring from voicing Dexter after only a handful of Season 3 episodes, and whilst her replacement Candi Milo does a good job emulating the character, many viewers missed her presence.
  • There seems to be a consensus among fans of The Dragon Prince that season 4, which came out after a long hiatus due to Covid-19, was inferior to the others due to too much time being spend on childish humor and setting up future events. While season 5 is seen as an improvement, there are people who don't exactly see it as a return to form.
  • While Drawn Together was a highly divisive show to begin with, even fans would not defend the first half of Season 3, when the show became too dark for its own good and constantly gave Captain Hero screen time (a trend started since the middle of Season 2). This, combined with an erratic airing schedule, resulted in the show dying an early death.
  • The Dreamstone's first season is often better-regarded due to its darker plotlines and character designs which are more loyal to Mike Jupp's original concept (along with suffering less from Executive Meddling forcing more side characters). The later seasons, however, do get credit for aspects such as more fluid animation and remedying some of the earlier episodes' flaws (e.g. giving the heroes more focus and downplaying their Unintentionally Unsympathetic facets against the Urpneys).
  • The second season of DOTA: Dragon's Blood tend to be seen as the worst of the three due to it's extremely rushed pacing and a convoluted plot with Mirana that was barely set up in season 1 getting the lion share of screentime while a bunch of characters get thrown aside unceremoniously.
  • Duck Dodgers was originally supposed to run for only two seasons, with the finale having Mars sign a peace treaty with Earth and the Martian Queen Tyr'ahnee getting together with Commander X2 after learning that he loves her. The third season chose to abruptly restore the status quo by having Tyr'ahnee dump X2 at their wedding after deciding that she still has feelings for Duck Dodgers and she even revokes Mars' treaty with Earth when Dodgers continues rejecting her. To make things really aggravating, the final episode was just a faux-documentary with various characters being interviewed over how they felt about Dodgers rather than a proper Grand Finale.
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy:
    • Season 5 split the fandom in regards to this trope because of the sudden shift in the show's formula: instead of focusing on the Eds as they came up with creative, imaginative ways to scam their neighbours, most episodes centered around the children as they dealt with mundane problems at school. Some also disliked this season due to its over-reliance on the Eds' Butt-Monkey status or the Flanderization of the rest of the cast. Others, however, enjoyed the changes to the status quo and felt the writing held up pretty well (even if they still don't think it's as strong as in previous seasons).
    • Some argue the rot started to begin as early as late Season 3 and Season 4. While there are still a lot of great and iconic episodes in them, it was also when the humor of the show started to become more actively malicious towards the title characters, with Ed and Double D suffering repercussions for things they had no part in and Eddy suffering Disproportionate Retribution for some of his more minor scams. The most infamous examples from these seasons are "If It Smells Like An Ed" and "Your Ed Here", which are single-handedly responsible for turning Jimmy and Kevin into The Scrappy for many, respectively. This was also around the time the characters started to become more flanderized, and the Eds (especially Eddy) started to lose more of their redeeming qualities.

    F-L 
  • Family Guy:
  • The early Famous Studios cartoons are generally agreed to have been quite good (if not up to the caliber of its predecessor), but they began to deteriorate in quality by the late 40s and really became apparent by the mid 50s due to becoming increasingly formulaic. The introduction of Herman and Katnip (blatant clones of Tom and Jerry) didn’t help. Even their more popular series (namely Popeye, detailed below) suffered pretty big hits in quality. Shamus Culhane arrived in the studio's twilight years and improved things somewhat, but he quit and was replaced by Ralph Bakshi, only for the studio to shutter for good before Bakshi could do anything.
  • Fleischer Studios was known for producing the most popular non-Disney cartoons of the early 1930s and was revered for its surreal qualities, but not unlike some of its contemporaries, by 1934 they began to simply emulate Disney thanks to both Executive Meddling from Paramount and the Hayes Office growing its claws, with Betty Boop (detailed above) being one of the biggest victims. Their Popeye cartoons were the only ones that managed to avoid this. While they regained their footing in the 1940s with the Superman Theatrical Cartoons and Mr. Bug Goes to Town, it was too late, and they were replaced by Famous Studios.
  • For The Flintstones, there are generally considered to be two instances of the trope coming into play, but the one that's deemed to be the bigger instance is a subject of debate. Some consider the introduction of Pebbles at the end of Season 3 to be the show's downfall as the series became much more childish with the introduction of an infant into the cast. For others, the final season's addition of the Great Gazoo is what pulled the show down, with its putting a goofy alien trickster into a show that was originally intended to be akin to a prehistoric version of The Honeymooners.
  • Futurama: Most viewers trace the show's rot to its Channel Hop from Fox to Comedy Central. It turned into a cleaner version of South Park — a little more nauseating, heavy Flanderization, and lampooning current political issues where it's clear where the writers stand. Exhibit A is "Proposition Infinity", a clear allegory for gay rights. But the quality was more uneven than anything else; these seasons still had their share of highly regarded episodes, like "Lethal Inspection", "The Late Phillip J. Fry", and the Grand Finale "Meanwhile".
  • Garfield and Friends: Fans tend to give this to the show starting in season 6. The writing and plots became more bizarre, almost every episode was filled to the brim with fourth wall jokes (especially for a franchise well-known for its insanely meta humor), and any recurring character that wasn't Floyd or Nermal was getting retired. It doesn't help that the new intros for this and season 7 (especially the rap intro) weren't well received and the show was experiencing budget cuts. While these seasons got decent reviews, it was clear the show was losing its audience - coincidentally around the time that Saturday morning cartoons were going extinct.
  • Gargoyles fell into rot after Michael and Brynne Chandler Reaves — who had written and/or story edited virtually all of show's best episodes — left at the start of Season 3. Producer/Director Frank Paur was also a key loss, as was director Dennis J. Woodyard. As well, producer Greg Weisman only stuck around for one episode, "The Journey", before being let go. The result? The formerly-nuanced Xanatos and Fox become full good guys and nearly every villain is a Card-Carrying Villain with little to no depth. Not helping matters is that the season's Big Bad is suspiciously similar to Demona, but while her reasons for descending into villainy were understandable, fleshed out and sympathetic, this guy's reason for turning evil is entirely selfish on his end, runs on Insane Troll Logic, and doesn't get nearly as much detail as Demona's Start of Darkness did. The show's visual look is also noticably compromised, due to a change in directors and animation studios. The 2006 comic continuation by Weisman ignores the third season, besides loosely re-telling its first episode (the only one Weisman was involved in) in its first two issues.
  • The post-movie seasons of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, which changed animation studios, writers, and replaced almost all of the voice actors from the Sunbow seasons with ones from Vancouver. The animation's budget was much lower than Sunbow, and the plots became even sillier than the early episodes.
  • The 80s revivals of The Jetsons and Jonny Quest are considered to be weaker than the original 60s runs by many. Hanna-Barbera's golden age had ended a long time before their revival, which becomes very noticeable when the 80s episodes are placed alongside the originals. For the former, the introduction of Orbitty is a major source of gripes, while the latter sees an extreme tone-down of the violence and upping of the "kid-friendliness".
  • Many Jimmy Two-Shoes fans believe the second season suffers from a downgrade in animation quality (as the change from Toon Boom to Adobe Flash meant a change of animation studios) and writing quality, with many feeling that the show lost its original Black Comedy charm and poorly handled its characters (especially Ensemble Darkhorses like Heloise and Saffi). That said, Season 2 is still said to have its perks, namely the new intro and theme song.
  • Johnny Test: The show is infamous for its extreme unpopularity, but the first season is generally seen as decent. After it finished its run, the show changed producers from Warner Bros. Animation to Cookie Jar Entertainment, which led to the entire production staff working on the show being replaced and consequently the show's animation changing from traditional to Flash. It is generally agreed that the second and third seasons, while taking a hit in animation quality, are still at least watchable, but when the show was revived for a fourth season, everything went to hell. The animation went from "mediocre but passable" to "more suited for internet than television", the sound effects became cheaper (the infamous whipcrack noises were never used in the first season), and Flanderization ran rampant to the point where most of the characters were barely likable. It's quite easy to see why the show is universally hated when one compares Season 1's quality with Season 6.
  • Season 4 of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous is universally considered by the fandom as the weakest point of the series (whatever they considered good or not) it started as a Tough Act to Follow given it gave a Happy Ending Override to the much more beloved Season 3 which was considered the highlight of the show, got a rather weak antagonist, downplayed the dinosaurs in comparisons to the BRAD's, wasted the return of the Spinosaurus, a rather weak and anticlimatic Season Finale and to top it all an excessive focus on the poorly-received pairing of Kenji and Brooklynn. The weaker pacing also did not help either.
  • During the third and fourth seasons of KaBlam!, the production company for Sniz & Fondue went bankrupt and more one-shot shorts were produced, with mixed to negative receptions among the fandom, though the remaining regular shorts were claimed to be even better that season.
  • Kaeloo:
    • A lot of fans think that the show's third season wasn't as good as the other ones, due to the sadistic humor being turned down, Mr. Cat being nicer, and the lack of cynicism.
    • The show's controversial fifth season was seen as weaker than the ones before it by many fans, mostly because of the secondary characters getting too much attention compared to the main characters. This was further exacerbated by the fact that Pretty, the most hated character among the fandom, was given more roles than any other secondary character.
  • Many King of the Hill fans consider Season 9 the show's nadir, due in large part to the massive retcon of Peggy in the premiere "A Rover Runs Through It" and the widely-disliked Lucky becoming a regular cast member ("Care-Takin' Care of Business"), the latter of which led to a sub-plot where he effectively contributed to Luanne reverting a great deal of Character Development she had from the first seasons. These along with ongoing Flanderization (especially of Luanne) and a lack of well-regarded episodes make it a season few fans stick up for. While Season 10 is not considered much better (it consisted mostly of holdovers from Season 9's production cycle), the show is said to have recovered afterwards for its final few seasons, although fans argue how much.
  • While Book 1 of The Legend of Korra was divisive but has its fans, Book 2 is more widely criticized. From Studio Pierrot animating most of the first half instead of Studio Mir, the wasting of potential storylines with the Grey-and-Gray Morality political intrigue of the first half's civil war plot being cast aside in favor of a generic "save the world" plot, the Big Bad being derailed from a Visionary Villain who actually raised several valid points about the Water Tribe to a generic Evil Overlord, the reduced role of Asami, the constant abuse of Bolin, and the increased focus on Mako to the brink of being a Creator's Pet on top of another love triangle plot involving Mako over Asami or Korra. There's also the two-part origin story for the Avatar as a whole that, while originally considered to be a fantastic addition to the franchise, later became increasingly contested for apparent continuity errors. Book 2 wasn't a complete loss, as it produced many fan favorite characters such as Varrick, and had strong character arcs for Tenzin and Korra that greatly improved fan opinion of them, but the flaws worked heavily against the rest and ultimately tainted the general opinion of the series as a whole to the point that there's a Broken Base over whether the much better Books 3 and 4 manage to make up for all this season's shortcomings since some people weren't watching anymore.
  • Looney Tunes:
    • While fans have varying opinions on when the cartoons began to lose steam, most will say the series suffered a major hit in quality in late 1964, when DePatie-Freleng Enterprises took over after the Termite Terrace shut down. These shorts had Limited Animation, Flanderized versions of Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales hogging the spotlight (with some Rudy Larriva-directed Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner shorts on the side, and those are similarly considered inferior to the shorts directed by Chuck Jones, who was working on Tom and Jerry at the time), a bizarre rendition of "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down", and weaker gags. It didn't help that most of the classic-era characters were missing (yes, even Bugs Bunny).
    • Others say that the cartoons began going downhill as soon as late 1962, which is when Chuck Jones was fired for violating his exclusive contract and Milt Franklyn died of a heart attack while scoring The Jet Cage (with his successor, Bill Lava, being a divisive figure among Looney Tunes fans for his atonal scores). Rehashes and Clip Shows also became more common during this time. That being said, this era did have a few well-received shorts like Now Hear This, Transylvania 6-5000, and False Hare.
    • The DePatie-Freleng era was succeeded by the Seven Arts-era in 1967, which is considered even worse. Alex Lovy joined the crew and created new characters like Cool Cat, Merlin the Magic Mouse, and Bunny and Claude, who were all hated by fans (though it didn't stop the former from cameoing in every episode of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries). On top of using a rendition of "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" even odder than the aforementioned one, the declining animation quality made the shorts resemble late 50s/early 60s Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Meanwhile, Daffy and Speedy were still co-starring in cartoons, culminating in the much-maligned "See Ya Later Gladiator". More shorts were planned beyond 1969, but the unpopularity of this era forced the studio to shutdown shortly after "Injun Trouble (1969)" was released. While Robert McKimson's return to the studio did improve things somewhat, it wasn't enough to save the studio.
    • The shorts made immediately after Harman and Ising left the studio (late 1933 to early 1935) are also considered blatantly inferior to those before it (which themselves are pretty base-breaking). Because the studio lost the rights to Bosko, they cooked up a new star, Buddy. Buddy was impossibly bland, and the cartoons’ general saccharine tone didn’t help. The studio would recover after the introduction of Porky Pig in 1935.
  • The Loud House:
    • After the first two seasons were well-received and gathered a decent fanbase, Season 3 saw a somewhat mixed response among the fandom. While certain episodes such as "Roadie to Nowhere," "Head Poet's Anxiety," and "Really Loud Music" have received near-universal praise for their Character Development, others are more polarizing, with certain fans accusing them of recycling plots from earlier episodes ("Scales of Justice" having been compared to Season 2's "Frog Wild," for instance) and just not being as entertaining or creative as those from earlier seasons. This is likely due to the firing of the series' creator and showrunner Chris Savino, as other instances of this trope happened due to the creators having little or no input like they did before. That said, some fans still consider it as good as the first two seasons.
    • Season 4 has come under criticism from some fans, who think that Lincoln's character has undergone Flanderization, accentuating his most negative characteristics and making him more selfish and clumsy, and more likely to attract bad consequences for himself and those close to him (citing "Kings of the Con" and "Stall Monitor" as examples). Like with Season 3, some have also made claims of plots being recycled, such as "The Last Loud on Earth" being compared to "The Price of Admission". And that's without going to mention the fact that the season dedicated its first five episodes (with nine segments) to a Poorly Disguised Pilot of The Casagrandes before said Spin-Off series premiered properly, an act largely hated by many for deviating from the show's main core focus.
    • Season 5 and beyond had an even bigger polarizing reception by the fanbase. In spite of playing Nothing Is the Same Anymore by having the characters age up by a year (after numerous complaints from viewers over the cast remaining the same age between several annual special episodes like the Halloween or April Fools ones), many fans have claimed the show officially went downhill as soon as the season's premiere special "Schooled!" aired, with the main criticisms being that the flanderizations kicked in even harder and there were many more rehashed plots. A few also complained about some plots being less grounded in reality than past seasons via the addition of fantastical elements that they perceive as breaking the show's slice-of-life flow.
    • However, with second half of season 6 onwards, fans have noted that said flanderization has has been dialed back and the more outlandish elements are being used more sparingly, and that while the show hasn't quite won back the crowd, they feel that it's at least a step in the right direction.

    M-R 
  • Due to the show's Merchandise-Driven nature, the second season of M.A.S.K. switched formats from "heroic M.A.S.K. agents vs. evil VENOM terrorists" to "M.A.S.K. and VENOM as rival racing teams." Many fans were turned off by the sheer illogic of the change.
  • While hardly bad, Season 3 is often considered the weak point of Metalocalypse, due to a rather severe Myth Arc stall and the series not being allowed to use its traditional Gorn due to the network fearing it would be perceived as too similar to Superjail!. The gap that the lack of bloody violence left was filled with a noticeable increase in Vulgar Humor. Season 4 was much more in the spirit of the first two seasons. The episodes were also twice as long (half-hour instead of quarter-hour), which while a good idea in theory, resulted in very noticeable pacing issues. Along with that the Charles Ofdensen fans weren't too happy about his severe lack of appearance.
  • While Season 2 of Milo Murphy's Law isn't seen as terrible, a number of fans deem it inferior to Season 1. The integration of Phineas and Ferb characters like Dr. Doofenshmirtz came off to some as a Spotlight Stealing Crutch (while also throwing away a good deal of the character development they made in their own series), which was not helped by the feeling that the main characters (particularly Milo himself) were becoming underdeveloped to the point of being secondary characters in their own show and that the jokes were becoming excessively self-referential (notably an increase in fourth-wall jokes) or annoyingly random (like Recurring Raccoon).
  • Most fans of Miraculous Ladybug agree that Season 2 is when the show started to go downhill; not only did the animation noticeably drop in quality and continue to decline throughout later seasons, it became clear that there was no meaningful Character Development under way and that the love square that had been in the works since the beginning was still frustratingly stagnant. As the status quo grew increasingly stale, the characters' flaws became more prominent, leading to lots of Unintentionally Unsympathetic moments and increasingly contrived excuses to enforce Status Quo Is God. Season 3 continued this trend and wound up airing two of the most hated episodes in the whole series, with plots that relied heavily on most of the cast holding the Idiot Ball. The writers tried to address this starting in Season 4 by implementing Character Development and significantly progressing the plot and love square while throwing in some reveals to justify earlier events. While this is generally regarded as a good thing, fans are divided on whether the show has actually improved as a result.
  • While many wouldn't call it bad, Season 3 of My Life as a Teenage Robot isn't looked upon as fondly as its predecessors, with this season being Denser and Wackier and more episodic than the ones that preceded it, many episodes being rather forgettable and the only noteworthy ones picking up on character threads established by the last two seasons. A big part of it is also because Season 3 comes off the "Escape From Cluster Prime" special, a grandiose Series Fauxnale and almost universally considered the series' best episode.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Ninjago: Many fans considered the show to be undergoing this after the release of Seasosn 11 and 12, which saw a decrease in writing quality. Aside from the Channel Hop from Wil Film Ap S to WildBrain and the episode runtime being shorted to 11 minutes, Season 11 was criticized for being a rehash of Seasons 3 and 4, with unneccessary Filler episodes focusing on the side characters being thrown in, as well as many fans finding Aspheera annoying due to her repetitive goal of wanting revenge, which she quotes constantly. Season 12 was also criticized for taking the Denser and Wackier status out of hand by having the Ninja venture into a video game, with - once again - unnecessary Filler episodes focusing on the other characters being shoehorned in. Thankfully, the show returned to form in Season 13, and many fans consider the last three seasons to be among the show's best.
  • Phineas and Ferb remained popular to the end, but there are some fans that believed that the series started to decline in its later seasons.
    • There are many people who think that the show's quality went downhill during Season 3. More accurately, the episodes from the middle of the third season just aren't as good as episodes from the second season and the first half of the third. That said, the show remained quite good - it just seems to have peaked in quality sometime around the Big Damn Movie, Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension.
    • Some people cite the downfall of the show as far back as Season 2, due to more emphasis on formula and redundant jokes as opposed to the show's first season, which was a Slice of Life show mixed with comedy. In other words, it was Family Guy meets Hey Arnold! in its first season.
    • A few fans felt the show got stale around the time Season 3 came around due to more emphasis on the formula and the writers had stopped developing the characters. Coincidentally around this time, many of the show's original writers left to work on Regular Show and Adventure Time.
    • In addition, the Phineas and Ferb plotline started to become more and more the B-story, with more of the original plot lines going to the Doof and Perry plots. This is very evident in the episodes titled after the Doof and Perry plots ("Sidetracked", "Road to Danville", "Doof Side of the Moon", "Primal Perry", "Live and Let Drive", etc.). Some saw this as an improvement, considering the relative dullness of the two main characters, while others preferred the original premise of kids building cool things in Summer.
  • Popeye:
    • By the mid-1940s, the Popeye shorts became increasingly formulaic and stale, and the timing and animation took a hit in quality. By the '50s, the series went through such a clear budget crunch that they were forced to make an excessive amount of Clip Show episodes or remakes of older shorts. Roughly 17% of all Popeye theatrical cartoons from both Fleischer and Famous Studios were either remakes, semi-remakes or clip shows; that's roughly 38 cartoons in all! However, roughly only 3% (4 total) of the Fleischer cartoons qualify, whereas a whopping 28% (roughly 34) qualify for Famous Studios.
    • The post-Famous Studios shorts (mainly directed by Al Brodax) were not much of an improvement. Granted, there were far fewer clip shows and some halfway decent shorts squeaked by, but in most cases the timing and animation were even worse than Famous Studios at their very worst, with most shorts being painfully slow and the animation either looking stiff and static even for the time or flat-out sloppy and unpolished.
  • The Powerpuff Girls:
    • While it is still well-regarded as a worthy successor to the first season, some fans feel that the second season is the weakest of the first four seasons. While this season was home to some fan-favorite episodes such as "Beat Your Greens", fans feel like some of the episodes was diving into Sadist Show territory; the most prominent examples of this are "A Very Special Blossom" (for Blossom uncharacteristically stealing a set of expensive golf clubs for the Professor, blaming her theft on Mojo Jojo, and the Downer Ending of her having to do community service) and "Daylight Savings" (for Ms. Keane and the Professor enforcing a curfew on the girls due to their crime fighting affecting their sleep, despite the fact that earlier episodes establish that saving the world is important for them). Season 3 was seen as an improvement, though there are still some sore thumbs that pop up, such as the reviled "Moral Decay" (where Buttercup enters Villain Protagonist territory) and "Town and Out" (where most of the episode has the Town of Citiesville treating the girls horribly, which was seen as an attempt to bring the girls into a more "realistic" setting).
    • However, the true rot began in Seasons 5 and 6, the post-movie seasons. Due to Craig McCracken heading off to make Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, the show was handed off to Chris Savino, who previously led production on the final two seasons of Dexter's Laboratory, and fans saw this as a notable drop in quality. Numerous characters were flanderized (the Mayor, for instance, went from just a Scatterbrained Senior to a full-blown Manchild), the show became a cheap gag comedy and more emphasis was put on gross-out and Toilet Humour. Fans also saw these seasons jumping into its Sadist Show aspects even more, with episodes such as "Sweet n' Sour" (for the girls' poor treatment from the citizens of Townsville for trying to stop a trio of cute animal criminals) and the despised "Sun Scream" (for being 11 minutes of Gross-Up Close-Ups, painfully long gags, and the ending of the girls' skin peeling off) as shining examples.
    • But of course, this is merely harmless compared to the 2016 reboot, which took a lot of the problems from the final two seasons of the original series and made them worse. Following in the footsteps of Teen Titans Go!, the Flanderization kicked in even harder (Blossom became a Neat Freak, Bubbles became Cute and Psycho, Buttercup became a complete Jerkass, the Professor became a Bumbling Dad, and Mojo Jojo underwent severe Badass Decay and Villain Decay), the original actors for the girls were replaced due to being "too old", most of the original villains were Demoted to Extra in favor of less memorable antagonists, fan-favorite character Ms. Bellum was Put on a Bus (the creators thought that she wasn't representative of the message they were trying to say), the Narrator was removed almost entirely, the violence was toned down in favor of becoming a Slice of Life comedy, there are a lot of animation errors and meme references in futile attempts at relevancy, and the gross-out and Toilet Humor were ramped up significantly. Tellingly, the show was bashed relentlessly by both critics and fans of the original, and only lasted three seasons.
  • The retooling of The Real Ghostbusters into "Slimer! and the Real Ghostbusters" (third and fourth season) was almost universally panned, being perceived as too childish and cartoonish. The Executive Meddling by Bill Murray which got Lorenzo Music kicked off the show (complaining that Peter sounded too much like Garfield, which is ironic given later developments) only helped towards the downward spiral.
  • The last season of Recess is often criticized for being too Anvilicious.
  • Regular Show:
    • Season 4 suffers from recycled and/or dull plots, the Romantic Plot Tumor of Mordecai and Margaret, and Muscle Man becoming a one-man Spotlight-Stealing Squad. Season 5 did resolve most of the issues from Season 4 by restarting a new romance plot with CJ from Season 3, removing all Muscle Man centered episodes to give him only one or two episodes like "Tower Power", and using most new plots and giving some more character development for lots of main characters.
    • Season 6 has several new issues; while it had only a few recycled plots, it also had infamous plots that bothered people, like removing Thomas from the show, Benson and Audrey breaking up for seemingly no reason, and a pointless Love Triangle from Seasons 4 and 5 that many say ruined the show for them, as well as the second holiday special painfully shoehorned in to have the Love Triangle.
    • The eighth and final season where the cast went into space was accused of its problems as well, particularly for how it borrowed heavily from other animated sci-fi comedies like Futurama and Rick and Morty when the show was previously more original. Fortunately, the series had regained its edge as it built up to its Grand Finale, which fans hail as a suitably epic and emotional send off. Lampshaded in the final season's episode "Meet The Seer" where the gang meet the eponymous character and she discusses the aforementioned tumors that plagued the show and the recent Halloween specials becoming weaker and diluted. While she's upset that she'll miss Regular Show, it's best to end the show with a bang than drag on as a rotting zombie.
  • The Ren & Stimpy Show:
    • The show is said to have lost much of its luster after John Kricfalusi's dismissal and his animation studio Spumco was replaced by Games Animation (later known as Nickelodeon Animation Studios) for Season 3 onwards. While the new showrunners made a valiant effort to preserve the gross and bizarre humor that characterized John K's run, the show completely lost its edge by the time Season 5 rolled around, resulting in its cancellation.
    • Of course, this is nothing compared to the hatred for the show's revival by Spike TV in 2003 as Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon". Due to a combination of Executive Meddling and John K. receiving greater freedom in writing (there are conflicting reports on just what went on behind the scenes between creator and network), the show became far too gross and vulgar for its own good and began indulging in over-the-top violence and Toilet Humour well beyond that of the original series. It also saw the Flanderization of its main characters, particularly Ren, who became abusive and psychopathic compared to his previous hot-tempered character in the original series. These factors led to the show's cancellation after only three episodes were aired, although all six produced episodes later showed up on the Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes DVD.
  • Rick and Morty: Fans near-unanimously regard the first two seasons as some of the best tv airing at the time (in spite of a few lesser episodes in the second season, like "Interdimensional Cable 2" and "Get Schwifty") but have wildly varying opinions on the ones that come after.
    • Despite critical acclaim and the series moving from cult status into mainstream popularity, Season 3 is quite divisive among fans: some consider it the best one yet for its character development and darker turn (especially where Morty is concerned), while others consider it the worst, due to contrived drama, Beth and Jerry remaining a drain on the show despite having divorced, and an increase in gross-out humor. In particular, episodes 2-4 of the season, "Rickmancing the Stone," "Pickle Rick," and "Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender" are polarizing among fans, some of whom dislike them for their gimmicks, the imbalances between the A and the B Plot, and the darker tone, while others like it for just that same reason. The season is generally considered to have improved afterwards, with "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy", "Rest and Ricklaxation," and "The Ricklantis Mixup" receiving near-universal acclaim as some of the best and most insightful episodes of the series, with "The Ricklantis Mixup" in particular a contender for the best episode of the series. Sadly, the season finale, "The Rickchurian Mortydate," had torn down much of the goodwill the season had built up for many, as it served as a rushed and unsatisfying Status Quo Is God ending to the season's Story Arc.
    • After a two-year wait, Season 4 would prove similarly divisive. While the 'back to basics' approach (alluded to at the end of the previous season) managed to win back several fans who were disappointed with Season 3, some have criticized this batch of episodes for its over-reliance on meta humor ("Never Ricking Morty" being the biggest offender in this regard), and episodes that relied heavily on repeating a single joke for their duration and revisiting ideas already explored in Seasons 1 and 2, causing some to fear the series is running out of steam. The five-month long hiatus between the season's first and second-half, on top of the already long wait for the first five episodes certainly didn't help, only making its flaws stand out more. That being said, the season finale, "Star Mort: Rickturn of the Jerri", which unexpectedly featured Call Backs to Seasons 2 and 3, is widely regarded as a far stronger payoff than the previous season finale.
    • After a strong start, both fans and critics seem to consider Season 5 a dip in quality, due to Rick, the 'smartest man in the universe,' having been taking down a peg, frequently being outsmarted and overpowered which is at odds with his near god-like competence in previous seasons, and the infamous episode "Rickdependence Spray," which quickly became the most hated episode in the show's history due to the show's boundary pushing crossing the realm into the gross and uncomfortable culminating in the birth of Naruto Smith, Morty and Summer's giant incest baby, as well as many other episodes relying on randomness and pop-culture references at the expense of the creative premises that characterized the series prior. Justin Roiland would later attribute the season's flaws to the loss of producer J Michael Mendel, who died in 2019. That said, the season is said to have gotten back on track with the eighth episode, "Rickternal Friendshine of the Rickless Mort", which revealed some shocking truths about Rick and the Smiths, leading into a mind-blowing 2-Part finale that ended the Season on a high note.
  • Robotboy: Seasons 3 and 4 (collectively known as series 2) where Bob Camp of The Ren & Stimpy Show fame and Heath Kenny took over as director are considered weaker then the first (partially Season 4) for several reasons. Weaker and simpler animation (Superactivated Robotboy was mostly drawn without the lines on his arms and legs), a Retool that can be described as going from an action show with comedy elements to a Denser and Wackier comedy show with action elements, considerably weaker writing, less action (fight scenes usually didn’t last long and mostly were lower in stakes), more gross-out humour and less superactivation.
  • Robot Chicken has three fan-noted cases: Season 2, which is considered weaker than the sublime first season (though fan opinion of it has gotten better over time) and the infamous Season 5, which saw the show's usually witty humor go completely out the window in favor of gorn for gorn's sake and crude Toilet Humour. Apparently either the writers were listening or replaced, because Season 6 took a sharp turn in the other direction, much to the delight of the fans. Season 9 would later be seen as another step back for the series due to many of its sketches coming off as unimpressive and/or having too much heavy-handed political satire.
  • When people say Rugrats (1991) went through seasonal rot, it leads to a Broken Base. Most people say it's either after they added Dil or Kimi, due to retconning certain events, such as the babies' first meeting and when Angelica first learned to walk, and recycling plots from earlier seasons to incorporate the new characters. Some people say after it got Un-Canceled, due to more emphasis on Toilet Humour due to Arlene Klasky not letting Paul Germain (the showrunner of the first three seasons) know that the show was coming back and the show lacking his influence.

    S 
  • Sabrina: The Animated Series was a successful Animated Adaptation of the live-action sitcom that's still well liked to this day. Unfortunately, it got its own sequel series Sabrina's Secret Life once DiC separated from Disney - meaning the entire voice cast were replaced with inferior substitutes. The worst offender came in the form of Britt McKillip voicing Sabrina herself - whose performance made a once beloved Plucky Girl come across as an obnoxious spoilt brat. Several fan-favourite characters from the previous series - Gem, Pi, Chloe - were Put on a Bus. While Gem's replacement Cassandra was considered a decent enough addition (still The Rival to Sabrina but this time a fellow witch student), Chloe's was a recycled character model with her skin lightened to become a Latina called Maritza who had very little characterization outside of being the token non-white friend (when Chloe had an important role as Sabrina's Secret-Keeper and had many adventures too). The writing went downhill, with a more blatantly educational tone; resulting in Sabrina becoming nastier and more idiotic to set her up learning An Aesop. The very first episode had her conspiring with her rival to humiliate her best friend, something the previous two versions of Sabrina wouldn't even dream of doing, and another has her easily believing nasty rumors about her other best friend. Few fans like to acknowledge this season's existence, either preferring to think the parent series' "The Bat Pack" finale was the true end or the Pilot Movie for Secret Life - which at least avoided many of the characterization issues even if the voice cast already changed.
  • Schoolhouse Rock!: Earth marked the first time in seven years that the crew released new songs. Unfortunately, almost none of them, if any, hold up against the classic songs; Disney+'s SHR roster stops right before Earth. When counting only the seasons that aired on ABC, Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips would get deemed the weakest, leading to the crew not releasing any more songs until "Busy Prepositions" and "The Tale of Mr Morton," nine years after the last episode of this season aired. It didn't even get a home video release until Disney started releasing Schoolhouse Rock songs on DVD.
  • Among Scooby-Doo fans, the general consensus is that two series fit this trope:
    • The Richie Rich/Scooby-Doo Hour, which made the bold move of completely changing the show's premise and in doing so fell flat on its face. Fred, Daphne, and Velma were inexplicably gone, the series was switched to a Three Shorts format, and the mystery-solving plots and "Scooby-Doo" Hoax were jettisoned in favor of slapstick chase scenes featuring Scooby, Shaggy, and Scrappy running away from real monsters for five straight minutes (the real monsters, incidentally, don't seem to have been part of the problem, as later installments featuring real ghouls were received much better).
    • Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue!, which not only tossed out the mystery premise and Fred, Daphne, and Velma 'again, but also got rid of the distinctive Hanna-Barbera art-style and horror elements entirely in favor of a spy thriller.
    • Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo sometimes gets lumped in there too for introducing... well, guess.
  • Sealab 2021, with the second half of its third season and fourth seasons. One major culprit of the show's decline was the removal of Captain Murphy (due to the death of his voice actor), who was seen by many fans to be the heart and soul of the show's Golden Age. Without Murphy anchoring the episodes, the writing turned cruder, the character interactions didn't work anywhere near as well, and the writing significantly ramped up the amount of Take That, Audience! jokes, particularly at anime fans. The show openly acknowledged the decline in quality by the time the final episode aired.
  • The Simpsons: Most fans of the show consider the first eight seasons to be the best, but they have wildly varying opinions on the later seasons. In many respects, a decline of some kind was inevitable, due to the large turnover in writers and creators over the course of the seventh through twelfth seasons, and the team's belief that the show was going to run out of ideas any day now, which can't be good for motivation.
    • Season 9, the first with Mike Scully as showrunner, is usually seen as the point where things started to go off the rails, thanks to generally flimsier storylines and humor and overly mean-spirited episodes like "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace", and the infamous "The Principal and the Pauper". The latter episode is generally held as a particularly abrupt low point, thanks to the nonsensical and Continuity Snarl-heavy twist that Principal Skinner was an imposter the entire time and that his real name was "Armin Tamzarian". Most of the staff hated the episode and it was declared non-canon the second after it aired, but the damage was done. It's also where Flanderization started creeping in more obvious ways and Homer in particular started to become more and more of an outright Jerkass, though it wasn't too noticeable by this point. That said, the season as a whole is still usually considered to be good in spite of its flaws, and many fans will still consider it as part of the show's "golden age."
      • Some fans take it a step further and consider Season 8 to have laid the groundwork for later seasons' rot ( "The Principal and the Pauper" was after all a leftover from that season) by taking a Denser and Wackier tone and exaggerating characters' personality traits, such as Homer's stupidity. Nevertheless, Season 8 is usually considered to be the series' last consistently good season.
    • Season 10 is where the flaws of Season 9 became a lot more obvious. While it's similarly not considered bad, it's still frequently thought to be where the show's golden age ended. The aforementioned mean-spirited humor went into overdrive far more frequently, "Jerkass Homer" became Homer's default mode of operation, celebrity cameos became massively overused and started to turn into guest-star shilling, the episode quality became really hit or miss, and in general its where the show's Denser and Wackier shift started to go overboard with bizarre, over-the-top storylines present throughout.
    • No matter what your opinion is of Seasons 8-10, most agree that Season 11 was a turning point for the series. It is the least grounded and realistic season to date, adding to the problems of Seasons 9 and 10 with outlandish plots and nonsensical Twist Endings. Among the things they did — they killed off Maude Flanders for real, had Barney give up drinking, resolved Apu and Manjula's fertility struggles by giving them octuplets, and indulged in whimsically self-referential episodes like "Saddlesore Galactica", "Missionary: Impossible", and (the admittedly well-loved) "Behind the Laughter". While Season 12 is a slight improvement by some fans, it tends to get a lot of flak for having one of the most despised scenes in the history of the show - namely, the infamous panda rape scene in "Homer vs. Dignity." It was at this point that most fans of the original Simpsons stopped watching.
    • Season 13 saw Al Jean return as a showrunner, and it was a partial return to the classic, less wacky Simpsons era. But it was also the point at which the show became a Franchise Zombie, with labored plots, Recycled Scripts, weaker jokes, and Flanderization of virtually the entire cast (most of whom had already been Flanderized at some point). This was quite disheartening for fans to see; while Seasons 9-12 were tonally off and unfunny, Season 13 showed that the Original Flavor was running dry and the showrunners were having a hard time staying motivated. Opinions vary as to whether Seasons 13-15 are actually an improvement on Seasons 9-12. Most fans agree that there was a steady decline by Season 16 as the show firmly entrenched itself as a Franchise Zombie; the only real high point was the Season 18 release of The Simpsons Movie.
    • However, since Season 32, there’s been a light at the end of the tunnel, with fresher episodes that explored new character dynamics (even if people still don't find them nearly as funny as those from early seasons).
    • The Halloween Treehouse of Horror Three Shorts specials, a mainstay since Season 2, started out as witty comic adaptations of famous horror and Twilight Zone-style sci-fi stories, mixed with clever original plots putting familiar horror tropes in the Simpsons setting. But one segment of Season 11, "Desperately Xeeking Xena", though well-regarded at the time, is more a parody of a superhero Saturday-Morning Cartoon. From this point on the specials have had fewer horror sendups in favor of Shallow Parodies of whatever was popular at the time and/or just plots the writers felt were too fantastical to consider for canon episodes, even as they were now doing non-canonical Three Shorts episodes for other themes. The nadir is Season 23's "Treehouse of Horror XXII", reviled for Homer communicating by farting in a parody of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and a two years late spoof of Avatar.
    • Occurs In-Universe in "Holidays of Future Passed", when Bart tries to show Krusty the Clown to his sons, who have never heard of him. He turns the show on, only to find that it's no longer funny and instead just depressing. Bart groans and Facepalms.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM): Season 2 is commended for its more developed continuity-based plot, but has multiple story criticisms compared to Season 1, often concerning both Sonic and Robotnik's increased incompetence, overabundance of cheesy comic relief, the inexplicable introduction of Dulcy The Dragon and the show ending on a sour note. Also, Season 2 was written near entirely by Ben Hurst, making for a more consistent dynamic, albeit to the point of being streamlined greatly, with Hurst's preferred characters and interpretations taking over (eg. Sally and Antoine were prominent in every episode, and were simplified to their positive and negative traits respectively, while fan favorites such as Rotor and Bunnie were demoted to extras).
  • South Park:
    • Season 2, while not disliked by fans anywhere near as much as it is by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, is still considered the weakest of the show's early seasons due to Trey and Matt's lesser involvement while they were working on Baseketball (and later South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut), resulting in it being unusually long (it remains as the show's longest season to date), many episodes being Whole Plot References to other works (including two being lifted wholesale from Star Trek: The Original Series alone), and a lot of the other episodes just being generally forgettable. It also faced severe backlash early on due to the episode "Terrance and Phillip in Not Without My Anus", which was aired in place of the much-hyped follow-up to "Cartman's Mom Is a Dirty Slut" as April Fools' Day, leading to the actual follow-up "Cartman's Mom Is Still a Dirty Slut" airing earlier than slated.note  However, despite it being initially expected to lead the show to its cancellation, the season actually laid a fair bit of the groundwork for Bigger, Longer & Uncut and also gave rise to a lot of the show's best-remembered memes (Mr. Mackey's "Drugs are bad, m'kay?", the Chewbacca Defense, the entirety of the episodes "Chickenlover" note  and "Gnomes",note  etc.), which helps it in retrospect.
    • Season 6 suffered from a backlash against Parker and Stone retiring Kenny and their plans for Butters being the new Butt-Monkey and taking up Kenny's slot being changed by Comedy Central. Needless to say, ever since that season, Parker and Stone have openly threatened to quit production of the show (to the point that Parker almost bailed entirely midway through Season 8). Fan opinion of it has warmed up a bit after time (with episodes such as "Asspen", "Child Abduction Is Not Funny", and "The Death Camp of Tolerance" being considered as among the greatest in the show's history), but it's still considered one of the weakest "golden age" seasons.
    • Season 9 was considered by some as the end of South Park's golden age, as the show's pacing started to become a lot slower and the plots were a lot more uneventful. Many episodes from here on, tended to be very devoid of substance and would usually draw out certain scenes/jokes for long periods of time. This was also when the show started to rely too much on shock humor and gross-out jokes, especially in such episodes as "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina", "Erection Day", and "Bloody Mary". Another common criticism Season 9 onward tends to get is how many episodes tend to drift away from the four main boys (or really any of the show's actual characters) and instead divulge lots of time to making the main plot all about whatever celebrity or politician they're making fun of. Additionally, this season also had the episode "Trapped in the Closet", which, while not considered itself bad, became controversial for leading to Chef's voice actor Isaac Hayes departure from the show due to its mockery of Scientology, Hayes being a Scientologist himself. As a result, Chef, after he had long since been a beloved fan favorite and a staple of the series (despite having been Out of Focus for some time), was Killed Off for Real in the Season 10 premiere "The Return of Chef".
    • Season 11, on top of being the first completely Chef-less season, was also when Randy started turning into the Creator's Pet and started hogging the focus of several episodes, such as "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson", "The Fantastic Easter Special", and "More Crap". He became such a go-to character, that he would even take up a lot of screentime for episodes that weren't focused on him, such as "Night of the Living Homeless" and "Guitar Queer-O".
    • Seasons 15 onwards are attacked by many fans for changing the characters' personalities, becoming more political and almost feeling like an entirely different show to the point where some people actually hate everything after Season 4.
    • Season 17 is criticized for its short length, bad characterization (especially in regards to characters such as Cartman, Kyle, and Stan), and overly topical plots and humor. The only thing generally liked about it is the "Black Friday" 3-parter, but even that has its open detractors. Season 18 was criticized for the exact same reasons, though the Story Arc and better attempts at continuity got it a little praise.
    • Season 19. Some love it for its emphasis on its Story Arc and its topicality (specifically, its jabs at political correctness), while others hate it for the exact same reasons.
    • Season 20, the third of the serialized seasons, has an unusually complex and topical Story Arc with tons of rotating protagonists: Gerald becoming an online troll, Cartman becoming more "sensitive" to woo a girl, Mr. Garrison's presidential campaign, the Nostalgia Filter-inducing Member Berries, and a brewing war between Denmark and the rest of the world are the main storylines. It was already proving hard for the show to juggle all of this in just ten episodes before Donald Trump, whom Mr. Garrison was the SP Universe's Expy of, was elected President of the United States. As Parker and Stone hadn't prepared for that possibility, the remaining four episodes of the season had to be rethought on the fly to remain topical, culminating in a Season Finale that leaves major plot threads unresolved and several key characters suddenly Out of Focus. As a result, many fans have since labeled this season as one of the lowest points in the series' history.
    • Season 21, which downplays the serialization of the past three seasons in favor of returning to the show's original episodic format, is seen as a partial return to form for long time fans, but still caught some flack for maintaining the heavy topicality which plagued the aforementioned seasons (despite Parker and Stone originally claiming that they wouldn't even bring up Garrison/President Trump; it's possible they thought he and American society would settle down once he was in office but again thought wrong), as well as the subplot revolving around Cartman and Heidi which quickly wore out its welcome.
    • While Season 22 fixed a few issues by lessening the serialization even further and removing the Trump jokes, it replaced them with new problems: The first few episodes of the season rely on repeating one joke for the whole episode, while later episodes rely more on "clapter" (straight-up making statements on hot button issues, assuming the audiences shares their point of view) than actual jokes, and are completely lost on fans who are unfamiliar with the topics. The ManBearPig two-parter, while better received than most episodes of the season, has a rather jarring case of the creators backtracking on their past mistakes which feels very out of place. Lastly, the show seemed intent on cramming in as many 2018 references as they could into each episode, making many feel like cluttered messes as opposed to having a straightforward plotline.
    • Season 23 makes the popular Tegridy Farms subplot from the previous season, and by extension Randy Marsh, the center of the show for the first six episodes, causing major Arc Fatigue. The next three episodes were welcomed for breaking away from it and giving the kids more to do, only for Tegridy Farms to return to the forefront for the season-ending Christmas Episode, and to remain central to the series to this day.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: It is widely believed that the show has never been the same after the first movie. note  During these seasons, the show became much more grotesque compared to the earlier seasons — these seasons have Vulgar Humor, massive flanderization of various characters (with some being flanderized into ditzes and designated heroes), occasional dark humor, creepy Nausea Fuel and overall less charm.
    • The general consensus is that Season 4 started the decline, although this season has since been Vindicated by History to a number of fans.
    • Season 5, while not too bad, is polarizing among fans. While there are a handful of well received episodes, the bad episodes include some of the most reviled episodes of the show.note 
    • Seasons 6-8 in particular were a turning point for the series. This is where many of the problems from Seasons 4 and 5 got worse, and a lot more apparent. The animation quality also took a drop, as it became much duller and more restricted with a washed-out color scheme compared to other seasons.
      • Season 6 is a major offender for many, as the Grossout Show status the show began to develop reached its peak and (along with Seasons 7-8) being the season where Patrick's jerkassery reached its high point. Prime examples of this in action include "The Splinter" (for being 11 minutes of Nausea Fuel with scenes of Patrick being a Jerkass shoehorned in), "Choir Boys" (where SpongeBob intentionally torments Squidward when the latter just wants to join a choir and gets away with it), "Shuffleboarding" (for being one of the worst examples of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot), "Gone" (for having one of the worst Cruel Twist Endings of the series), "Truth or Square" (for being the most infamous Ratings Stunt in Nickelodeon history), and "House Fancy" (for the infamous scene of SpongeBob accidentally tearing off Squidward's toenail while attempting to move the latter's couch). The Season is also the only season that went worse as time went on. Also the grossout animation and Squidward torture episodes were taken up to 11 in this season.
      • Season 7 is often considered to be a particular low point of the series, with the main reason being Mr. Krabs's Jerkass qualities being amped Up to Eleven and the poorly-handled drama turning the Jerkass Ball into a hot potato. Some episodes that made this season so reviled include "One Coarse Meal" (for Mr. Krabs driving Plankton into a suicidal depression and getting away with it), "A Pal for Gary" (SpongeBob firmly grasps both the Idiot Ball and the Jerkass Ball throughout the episode, even after Gary saves his life), "Stuck in the Wringer" (where Patrick acts like a selfish Jerkass and ultimately victim blames SpongeBob, with everyone else agreeing with him), "Someone's in the Kitchen With Sandy" (for rehashing the plot of "Imitation Krabs" and being outright sadistic towards Sandy), "Yours, Mine and Mine" (for Patrick's exceedingly selfish behavior and becoming a total Hypocrite in the end), and "A Day Without Tears" (SpongeBob's Prone to Tears status - which had already become more prominent through his flanderization - becoming full-blown Wangst). However, most of the horrible episodes were at the first half.
      • While Season 8 is considered to be a slight improvement over Seasons 6 and 7 with a closer to mixed reception among fans, it is still yet another offender, with the flanderization and gross-out humor continuing, as well as such reviled episodes as "Demolition Doofus", "Are You Happy Now?", "Pet Sitter Pat", and "Face Freeze!".
    • In turn, most people agree that Season 9 is a major improvement on Seasons 6-8, with most of the episodes being praised, especially after the release of the second movie when creator Stephen Hillenburg returned along with many of the original writers. The exceptions being "SpongeBob You're Fired", "Squid Baby", and "Little Yellow Book" which are all in the first half of the season. Fans often consider the episodes produced before the second movie to be "Season 9A" and the episodes produced afterwards to be "Season 9B".
    • Seasons 10 and 11 likewise continue to be pretty well-regarded by the fanbase as well and has a number of new fan favorite episodes such as "My Leg!," "Moving Bubble Bass", and especially the fan-favorite "Mimic Madness", viewed as one of the show's best episodes period. However, the slight Art Shift to a more Denser and Wackier artstyle that these seasons employ onwards has a bit of a Broken Base among viewers and there is still the occasional stinker (such as "Cuddle E. Hugs" and the infamous "Ink Lemonade").
    • Seasons 12 and onward appears to be the era where the writers have started to experiment with the franchise a lot more than before. As a result of this, the overall reception on this era is the most mixed among fans yet.
      • On one hand, there are some fans who believe that this era is even worse than the first post-movie era, often citing the frequent, sloppy use of references to older episodes and memes, the frequent use of slapstick and surrealism for its humor, Squidward's Butt-Monkey status being more prevalent once again as seen in episodes such as "Pineapple RV", "Jolly Lodgers", and "Squid's on a Bus", episode plots being incredibly similar to those from previous seasons, and the promotions of spin-off shows such as Kamp Koral or The Patrick Star Show in Season 13 as common complaints. The fact this era happened to start around the time Stephen Hillenberg died (thus ending his work on the show), rumors spreading about Hillenburg not wanting the recently announced spin-off series to be madenote , and the fact there was a brief slowdown for new episodes in favor of the aforementioned spin-off shows during the beginning of Season 13, after the release of some of its weaker episodes, didn't help matters to these fans.
      • On the other hand, some fans see this era as the show beginning to finally grow the beard after more than 20 years. These fans are keen on many of the show's more recent experimentation with its animation and characters, underutilized characters, and settings being explored and developed more, as well as the franchise as a whole expanding its boundaries, and opening itself to newer ideas. These fans often cite many of the seasons' better episodes like "Dream Hoppers", "Escape from Beneath Glove World", "Spongebob in Randomland", "Karen's Baby", among others. Some even cite these as some of the best episodes in the series.
  • Star vs. the Forces of Evil:
    • The first half of Season 3 note  was received as this. In no small part, this is due to Romantic Plot Tumor and confusing Ship Tease suddenly sinking and teasing random ships, intensifying the already rather large Ship-to-Ship Combat in the fanbase. This was especially true due to the heavily advertised and hyped Eclipsa Arc being put in the back burner in order to make more romance focused episodes, with the titular Eclipsa becoming an Advertised Extra until the better-received second half of the season.
    • Season 4 is lackluster in comparison to its previous seasons for a variety of reasons, starting with the continued ignoring of the Myth Arc in favor of shipping drama being the big one, as the season would repeatedly set up potential plot lines only to abandon them soon after. Add in episodes in which the characters come across as Unintentionally Unsympathetic and/or lacking in common sense, episodes that (even when entertaining) come across as filler in the greater narrative, lackluster writing, the final villain of Mina Loveberry coming across as a Big Bad Wannabe compared to Toffee and Meteora before her, and the polarizing Grand Finale, which has Star solve all her problems by destroying all magic in the multiverse, despite that many needed magic to live and raises more questions than answers, and you have a final season that feels like a total mess. Notably, for Season 4 the show's crew did not receive a week-long grace period to address last minute notes and suggestions from the executives before production like they did for the previous two seasons due to budget constraints, possibly explaining the season's very poor quality at least in part.
  • Steven Universe:
    • Season 4 split the fandom with what is perceived by some as pacing issues. Specific problems include more episodes focused on the humans of the cast (who are generally considered less interesting than the Gem characters), a lack of development with Peridot and Lapis, and the main plot involving Homeworld coming to a hold after "Bubbled" resulting in a Myth Stall. The show was not very fast-paced and had episodes devoted to the humans from the beginning, only that was before the series revealed that it had a greater plot. Once it did, a section of fans generally wish that the series did not return to its roots in that manner. The show's long and frequent hiatuses don't help. Fortunately, the season's second half starting with StevenBomb 5 had managed to regain fans' interest by returning to the main plot and placing the focus back on the central cast.
    • The final Stevenbomb is heavily debated within the fandom. The series' ending is at best considered to be very rushed, with the Diamonds being redeemed almost immediately and with little previous foreshadowing (barring Blue Diamond) despite their horrific intergalactic crimes spanning across thousands of years.
    • The Movie is considered by most to be a return to form and was well received, only for Steven Universe: Future to divide the base all over again, in part due to its jarring change in direction from the original series; it has no major antagonists to speak of and is instead largely meant to wrap up a couple of threads which were still hanging while discussing mental health issues in a frank manner. Some episodes were considered excellent, while others were considered poor. A Very Special Episode is particularly maligned for being little more than a strange Filler episode in an already rushed epilogue series.
  • Superjail!:
    • Season 2 is usually vocally met with scorn and invocations of this, if not just disappointment. Criticisms ranged from the animation being "too fluid", the characters suddenly having backstories revealed, some changes with the characters' personalities, and the story formulas changing. Most notably, the episodes no longer all had wild bloodbath sequences, and some had a pun or a Spoof Aesop tacked on to the ending.
    • While Season 3 is looked at a little more fondly due to the crew attempting to merge the styles of both previous seasons, the change in animation studios (necessitated by Augenblick bowing out to work on Ugly Americans) and the Warden becoming too childish are still subjects of criticism.
  • Of the three of DiC's Super Mario Bros. cartoons, Super Mario World, the final one, is considered to be the worst by many. Most of this is due to the budget cuts NBC made which resulted in the animation quality (which wasn't even all that great in the first place) completely going down the toilet, writing out Toad completely and replacing him with the less memorable Oogtar, and the plots becoming much weaker and running on nonsensical logic compared to those of the first two shows. That said, the show does still have a following for just how ridiculous it gets and spawned a mountain of internet memes (in particular the entirety of "Mama Luigi").
  • The first season of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries lived up to its name by being a legitimate mystery series. The other two, while not terrible, eventually devolved into being regular Sylvester and Tweety cartoons that just happened to have a mystery going on in them.

    T-Z 
  • Teen Titans:
    • In Season 3, they changed the Big Bad from the awesomely-creepy Slade, who was Robin's Arch-Enemy but still had a personal beef with the rest of the Titans, to Brother Blood, who started off perfectly menacing but spiraled into Villain Decay quickly and had limited interaction with any of the Titans besides Cyborg, and having a weak story that only got two episodes and a two-part finale worth of exposure when other arcs usually had one or two more. That said, while its Story Arc has undergone criticism, many of its standalone episodes are considered some of the series' best, including "X," "Haunted," "The Beast Within," "Spellbound," and "Betrothed."
    • And, to a lesser extent, Season 5, due to an influx of both new and returning DC characters that took up a large portion of the season, to the point where the original five heroes were left Out of Focus. It's still generally accepted, though, mainly due to its awesome Grand Finale (the two-part final battle, not the controversial Mind Screw of an actual last episode).
  • Teen Titans Go!:
    • The second half of Season 2 suffers from the Titans' personalities becoming increasingly juvenile, idiotic, and obnoxious as well as the deterioration of the show's writing causing episode plots to become more bizarre with nonsensical and often abrupt endings. note  Even a portion of those who were fans of Season 1 have started to lose faith in the show. The season also contains some of the most controversial episodes such as "Let's Get Serious" note , "Truth, Justice, and What?" note , and the infamous "The Return of Slade" note . The latter of the three was particularly scorned for being both another jab at the show's critics and a shallow and transparent Ratings Stunt that shamelessly lied to its fans, causing many to lose whatever respect they had for the show by that point.
    • Season 3 divided fans with more emphasis being put on the Titans' mean-spirited nature, overuse of ´80s pop-culture references and predictable fourth wall gags, interesting episode plots being wasted for the sake of comedy such as in the episode "Two Parter" note , and the show in general becoming more self aware, with the characters themselves Breaking the Fourth Wall to directly mock the critics of the show like in the episode "The Fourth Wall" and the 5-part "Island Adventure" special.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
    • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): The "Vacation in Europe" side-season proved rather unpopular, having cheap animation and barely fitting in with the series' continuity.
    • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003):
      • Season 6, Fast Forward, is generally considered the weak point of the series, due to being much Lighter and Softer than previous seasons, sending the Turtles to the future for no apparent reason, introducing a supporting cast member in the form of April and Casey's Child Prodigy great-grandson, replacing the original theme song with a generic (and badly sung) techno rap theme, and, oh yeah, the fact that, on the order of the toy company executives, the writers were forced to skip directly from Season 4 to Season 6 due to the executives feeling Season 5 wouldn't sell toys as well. This was particularly painful because Season 5 contained the resolution of the show's Myth Arc. And once Season 5 did finally come out to much acclaim, the executives' orders seemed even more nonsensical; wouldn't characters like the Acolytes, the true forms of the Foot Mystics and Ninja Tribunal, the Tengu and his demonic minions, and the Turtles' dragon forms have made great toys?
      • While the sixth season, despite its weaker quality, does have some fans, the same can't be said about the seventh and final season, Back to the Sewers. Despite returning the show back to its present-day roots and bringing April and Casey back into the picture, it adopted a new art style that turned off many viewers, an unpopular focus on the Turtles going into cyberspace, and whatever seriousness that was still left over in the show from Fast Forward was thrown out altogether to make the show even goofier.
    • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012):
      • The third season is regarded by many as weaker than the first two due to its Arc Fatigue (with the Turtles being stuck at April's farm), the sudden change of Leonardo’s VA, and the Romantic Plot Tumor between Donatello, April, and Casey coming back after it was seemingly resolved at the end of the second season. The show also completely ignores the Kraang invasion plot. Most of the first half of the season is nothing but filler involving the characters in space, almost explicitly ignoring the cliffhanger from Season 2 in favor of largely hated Monster of the Week episodes. Even when the Turtles finally return to New York, the Kraang are barely brought up until the mid-season finale, with the whole resolution coming off as rushed to many. The second half of the season does little better, as while the Turtles again focus on the Shredder, little is done to advance the overarching story until the finale... which puts that on hold for the Turtles to focus on the Triceratons for the following season.
      • The fifth and final season very much feels like a Post-Script Season. Gone is the Story Arc nature of the previous four seasons, in favor of bringing back previous villains for one more appearance. It doesn't help that Splinter and Shredder died last season, giving the series less direction. While Shredder does show up, it's only for the first five episodes, and he's barely relevant. It doesn't help that the (intended) Series Finale is meant to effectively render any continuation of the series nearly impossible.
  • Thomas & Friends
    • Season 8 is often considered to be a step in the wrong direction as it laid the groundwork for the problems found in later seasons. Despite this, it has been Vindicated by History as time went on.
    • Seasons 9-16 get a lot of flak due to the flaws of Season 8 getting worse and becoming much more apparent. These seasons had continuity errors, flanderization, rampant rhyming and alliteration, the narrator Narrating the Obvious, one-off characters being introduced for the sake of merchandising, the most evident amount of railway inaccuracies, and very blatantly poor writing ("His firebox was on fire" comes to mind immediately. Worst of all, it became clear that HiT Entertainment saw the series as nothing more than a marketing machine, and it effectively became a 30-minute toy commercial.
    • However, this got reverted in Seasons 17-21 when Andrew Brenner replaced Sharon Miller as head writer, thus reviving the series’ golden years. Sadly, this didn’t last.
    • Next came the “Big World! Big Adventures!” era from Seasons 22-24, which were poorly received. Edward and Henry being removed from the main cast in favor of Nia and Rebecca, who are comparatively much less well received. The season added faster pacing and nonsensical imagination sequences. The "international" gimmick was disliked for reducing each country to stereotypes, introducing half-baked characters, and forcing lessons downs the audience's throats. To add salt to the wound, these were the final three seasons of the original series, and resulted in a lackluster finale.
  • The reception of the post-Hanna-Barbera Tom and Jerry shorts has varied massively, with fans to this day debating which ones were better, or how they stacked up to the originals.
    • It is generally agreed that Gene Deitch's shorts were a major downgrade. These cartoons wrecked the formula by giving Tom a Jerkass owner who beats the stuffing out of him whenever he slips up, whilst additionally amplifying Jerry's more malicious side to further push Tom into being a needlessly tormented Butt-Monkey. Moreover, it suffered a lot of animation errors, incredibly stiff movement and sparse, tinny background music (all immense comedowns from the fluid animation and lush, vibrant score of the MGM shorts) populated by obnoxious electronic sound effects.note .
    • MGM was quick to catch on and handed the series off to Chuck Jones (who had recently been fired from Warner Bros.) after producing only 13 cartoons under Gene Deitch's team. However, while Chuck Jones' cartoons were better received than Deitch's, there was still contention over the quality of the plots (some of which were recycled from classic Hanna Barbera shorts), as well as changes brought about by Jones' signature style that long-time fans found difficult to come to grips with.note .
    • The Tom and Jerry Show suffers from predictably low-budget animation and the show's main premise of Tom and Jerry (thanks to the omnipresent influence of Moral Guardians during production) becoming friends, which surgically removed both the slapstick and conflict from a series formerly devoted almost entirely to slapstick and conflict, which many fans believe left little more than an empty shell of dull shenanigans in its place.
    • The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show, despite the return of traditional cat-and-mouse formula, tends to be disliked due to each episode reusing the same music and repetitive slapstick. It started the trend of other MGM cartoon characters entering into the franchise, but it seems people think it was better handled later.
    • Even the original Hanna-Barbera shorts are considered by some to have gone downhill in 1955, around the time Fred Quimby stepped down as producer and Hanna and Barbera themselves took his place. Common points of contention are a notable increase in rehashed plots (such as "The Vanishing Duck", which has the same plot as "The Invisible Mouse" a decade earlier), cheaper looking animation/backgrounds, and simplified character designs. Not helping is shorts like Blue Cat Blues (which is extremely controversial among fans for its depressing tone and ending) and the final short, Tot Watchers (which is disowned by fans for being a copy of Busy Buddies two years earlier (itself not especially well-received), the lack of Slapstick, and the mean-spirited ending with Tom and Jerry being accused of baby-napping and arrested).
  • Every Total Drama season following the first has been polarizing, but only three are almost universally loathed:
    • The second season, Action was received quite poorly by its viewers, and half the original fan base of the original Island don't watch it at all. Why? Well, for starters they removed almost half of the original cast, including popular characters (at the time) Cody and Noah, completely flanderized the remaining characters, kicked off most of the fan favorites (again, at the time) such as Gwen and Bridgette (who were also flanderized, though special mention goes to Bridgette and Geoff, as the only joke throughout their first and only episode is that they make out a lot. That's it.) early, over saturated Owen again, and had Chris become such a huge Jerkass that it wasn't even funny anymore. It was considered by many as the black sheep of the franchise prior to All-Stars and it seems that even the creators feel this way since almost all of the plots and characterizations (aside from Gwen and Trent's breakup which was the result of Executive Meddling, Chef's secret alliance with DJ, as well as Geoff's brief derailment into being a Chris clone) have not been referenced since that season ended.
    • Many say that the fifth season, All-Stars was just as bad as (if not worse than) Action making it the new black sheep of the franchise in the eyes of many. Reasons include wasted developments like Gwen and Courtney's friendship (which is suddenly undone over the course of one episode and rendered most of the season pointless), the return of the shortened season length of only thirteen episodes (this time, almost every plot line was dropped after about 2 or 3 episodes) as well as introducing a chopped up version of the theme song that is only about 20 seconds long compared to the full minute long version, inconsistent continuity, characters like Gwen, Heather and Duncan holding the Idiot Ball in order to justify the terms of their eliminationsnote , 3 episodes (one of which being "Sundae Muddy Sundae" which broke up the Gwen and Courtney friendship) were written by first time writer Ed MacDonald who has since become the most hated writer on the show, once again Flanderizing characters such as Lindsay and Sierra, putting center spotlight on Zoey, who is considered by some to be a rather undeveloped character, Duncan's Badass Decay and horrible sendoff, and the finale featuring next to no focus on any of the eliminated contestants who weren't already part of the show's Spotlight-Stealing Squad due to being trapped in fart-filled balloons and left flying off at the sun with no indication if they survived until Word of God said they did, the Big Bad being defeated by pressing a button, and Camp Wawanakwa sinking officially renders the entire season pointless.
    • For the sixth season known as Pahkitew Island, which while some see as an improvement to All-Stars, others called it the worst one yet. The season was produced simultaneously along with All-Stars and you can tell. Criticisms for it include the even higher amount of gross out humor (mostly due to Sugar, who was heavily reviled for essentially being the embodiment of everything that's wrong with the TD franchise), most of the cast being overly gimmicky and barely counting as one-dimensional, the petty, one-sided feud between Ella and Sugar, some of the more interesting characters either being eliminated too early or having plotlines that were either wasted and/or hastily concluded (Scarlett), the plotline of Dave and Sky's ultimately failed romance which concluded in such a way that it rendered most of the season pointless, and once again, its short length.
  • Transformers:
    • Season 2 of Transformers: Prime is generally considered to be the weakest out of the three. Due to the writers combing two seasons of storylines into one, the season came out very cluttered and rushed. Plotlines that were considered interesting (like M.E.C.H, or Bulkhead's near-fatal injuries) were not given enough episodes to properly develop before they were quickly resolved. Several fan-favorite characters were also killed off for the sole reason of proving that Anyone Can Die, even if there were still stories that could be mined from them (in particular Breakdown and Dreadwing). While there was enough stuff that was worth watching, overall the poor pacing really turned a lot of fans off. Season 3 was considered an improvement over Season 2, mostly for the better pacing.
    • Season 3 of Beast Wars is often seen as a drop in quality compared to Season 2. The mostly serious but occasionally healthily zany tone became very inconsistent, with overly dark moments leading straight to corny slapstick gags. A lot of episodes were devoted to introducing new characters or upgrading older ones, leading to pacing problems and no sense of an overarching plot. The season undid Inferno's on-screen death at the end of Season 2, without giving him a reason to continue existing (other than being Flanderized more). Optimus Primal was made too powerful and had to be written out of most episodes, making him come off as a wimp most of the time. A planned dark, story and character-centric episode was even replaced by a humorous yet pointless filler that lead to something of a plot-hole in the series finale. Despite these, and despite many fans thinking that Simon Furman's script for the final episode "missed the mark" on the show's tone, the series finale is still often regarded as one of the best in the franchise, and visually, this season had the best graphics.
  • Van Beuren Studios cartoons are generally considered to have gone downhill in 1934 when Burt Gillett took control of the studio. While the animation improved tenfold, the cartoons themselves became saccharine Disney clones (as was standard in that era), straying away from its surreal Fleischer-esque roots. It didn't really help that Gillett's indecisive and perfectionist nature wreaked havoc on the studio.
  • Depending on who you ask, VeggieTales started to decline either shortly after the first theatrical movie when the episodes became much more self-aware, filled with pop-culture references, focused less and less on Biblical stories and flanderized much of the cast, or around the early 2010s when the animation budget was slashed in half thanks to Big Idea being purchased by DreamWorks SKG and outsourcing the animation to cheaper studios, and many episodes' plots were rehashed from previous episodes. The Denser and Wackier revival series VeggieTales in the House and VeggieTales in the City haven't helped matters.
  • Although still good, the fifth season of The Venture Brothers was considered disappointing by some fans. It was a short season so they didn't really have a chance to flesh out some of the plot points. A part of the reason is also because the show is praised for massive changes and character development, while this season undid some of that and made certain things go back where they started. The Monarch had a smaller role too.
  • Voltron: Legendary Defender:
    • While not nearly as contentious as the below examples, Season 3 is where many started to see cracks in the narrative, with plot threads and hooks established in the previous seasons suddenly dropped completely or given rushed, anticlimactic resolutions, and many seeing the Lion Swap as contradicting the established lore and rules about the Lions. Some people also felt like the characters didn't get much development, with Keith being Put on a Bus for about roughly a season, and Hunk and Lance being reduced to comic relief.
    • Season 7 got a rather cold reception due to a mixture of Bury Your Gays, the Lion Swap returning with a vengeance, and a number of weaker episodes, with many blaming behind-the-scenes trouble and the show's producers taking tighter control.
    • Season 8, the final one, had by far the worst reception of any season, between extremely messy treatment of most of its characters, the deaths of Allura and Lotor (the former for being needlessly depressing and killing one of the few dark-skinned characters on the show, the latter for being needlessly gruesome and killing an Unintentionally Sympathetic character), the poor quality of a number of other episodes, and a Distant Finale that left many baffled. An attempted Author's Saving Throw for the above Bury Your Gays instance largely didn't work, especially in a year that included the positive LGBTQ+ representation in the finale of Adventure Time, the wedding special of Steven Universe, and the premiere of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. There are more than a few accounts of Troubled Production and Executive Meddling, to which few are surprised.
  • The Wild Thornberrys: Season 3 to the final episode began to focus less on the animals and locales. It's really evident when one compares the series premiere, "Flood Warning" which has Eliza interacting with lions in Africa, to "Eliza Unplugged", the final episode of the series, which has the plot revolving around Eliza's crush.
  • Winx Club:
    • Though Season 4 was divisive, Seasons 5 and 6 did not have this benefit and were downright panned. Low points included the retconning of important continuity points (the major one being that Daphne wasn't actually dead but cursed into becoming a spirit), characters having their evolution undone (Stella and Tecna get the worst of this, losing all the Character Development they had gotten over the series) or being flanderized into acting like children (despite having already at this point graduated Alfea College — which, for some reason, they are still attending), unnecessary, jarring, and downright ugly shifts to computer graphics (sure, the movies weren't ever Pixar quality, but it at least didn't look like they came out of the lowest depths of the Uncanny Valley), and, to top it all off, an utterly pathetic villain, Tritannus (essentially, a petulant child having an prolonged temper tantrum yet being built up as a threat to the entire magical universe).
    • Though Season 7 was considered at least better than the previous seasons, it was still considered a mediocre at best season. Characters were still flanderized, the girls are treated like they're 16 year old high school students, and anything set up to the contrary — the graduation, Bloom's engagement — is quietly ignored and forgotten. Butterflix was also not a popular transformation, with fans feeling the outfits were generic, and a boring transformation sequence that used with an overlong dance sequence Once per Episode. Finally, while it wouldn't be official until the next season, this is where fans felt the franchise had become a preschool show.
    • Season 8 started off on the same level as Season 7, but by the end it was as reviled as Seasons 5 and 6. Not only was it where the franchise officially became a preschool show, it suffers from a sudden change in animation style, making them all look really childish despite the fact that at this point, they should all be in their early twenties, and somehow getting Flanderized even more. Plots are also very childish, and worse, many Ass Pull instances, such as the return of Valtor and the Trix despite the former dying back in Season 3, the latter getting sealed away twice which were supposed to be permanent, and then there's the retcon of the Trix's backstory, particularly Icy's. It feels as if the entire season is a giant Retcon itself. The season was so poorly received that it ultimately killed the original continuity, with it later announced that the show would be going through a full on Continuity Reboot.
  • Woody Woodpecker is said to have gone through a steep decline around 1955. The animation became cheaper, Woody himself was toned down from his popular Karmic Trickster persona into a more generic hero, and the humor in general just wasn’t as fast and on point.
  • Season 3 of Xiaolin Showdown is considered weaker than the previous seasons by some, especially Season 2 which is considered the highest point of the series by many. In the last season, all the main villains suffered from Villain Decay once Hannibal Roy Bean was introduced, who was never a very interesting or threatening villain to begin with and ends up being one of the most despised characters in the show. There's also the fact that most of the Shen Gong Wus introduced in this season have rather lame powers by comparison.
  • Season 2 of X-Men: Evolution is derided for its over-focus on romantic side plots, less focus on their battles and less action, though the ending managed to fix that with The Unmasqued World, leading to it Growing the Beard in Season 3.
  • Young Justice:
    • Season 3 is considered much weaker than its previous seasons by most of the viewership. The structure changed dramatically to mimic a live-action show, abandoning its previous recon tone. While Season 2 marked the start of members of the Team being out of focus, it only truly started negatively affecting the quality in Season 3. The Team is Demoted to Extra, while most of the focus shifts to the newcomers recruited into Nightwing's team and the Outsiders, which is considered to be very inefficient, with characters who were given the spotlight all throughout the season still coming off as underdeveloped, such as Impulse, Blue Beetle, and M'gann being Out of Focus. A lot of Fanservice served to hurt the series further. And at some point, the show feels like a parody of itself (i.e., Garfield having Teen Titans Go! hallucinations, or Wally West appearing too frequently in hallucinations for the impact of his death to be maintained). The series also starts handing out the Idiot Ball, with characters making questionable choices, even Batman (i.e. allowing Helga Jace, a civilian who was knowingly doing questionable acts such as tar-ing two of the Markov siblings, to overhear much of the heroes' development, even the compartmentalization plot with none of the Bat-Family detectives figuring out that Jace had been leaking information to The Light).
    • Season 4 attempted to address this criticism by finally giving the founding members of the Team the spotlight they lost in the previous season and dedicating storylines to them again, through the form of an experimental formula where each hero had their own storyline to themselves with an Arc Villain while a major antagonist advanced in the background. However, this did not entirely pan out in the long run and resulted in another season derided by the fandom, as many heroes still faded into the background of their own story arcs, the show's focus on real-world issues (now taking the form of a divisive depression storyline handed to Beast Boy throughout all their storylines) competed for screentime with them, the Light was less relevant to the season (only returning in full force in the finale), and the show's Bloodier and Gorier content was starting to become hollow and insincere due to several characters Faking the Dead. Even the show's focus on minor characters had started to fail in favor of more notable characters, as its introduction of the Legion of Super-Heroes culminated in an adaptation of the General Zod storyline popularized by Superman II that (aside from including non-Superman characters) was barely any different from previous takes on the story (even when the previous season proved the show could pull twists on other famous storylines like The Judas Contract to keep things fresh).

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