Temperature's Rising started out about a dedicated black doctor in a struggling hospital but by the second season turned into a Paul Lynde comedy.
It lost a lot of its edge. Compare "The Monster From The Tar Pits" with the Tony Curtis episode. It's a long way from a guy using his children as collateral in order to buy a toaster to "Pebbles sure likes grape juice!" "Bam-Bam too!" "So does Dino!" "And Hoppy too!"
BBC News Started as a sober factual and journalistic, reporting important and significant national and international events but became a tedious infotainment gossip machine. See also: every other news show on television and radio.
The View was more skewed to entertainment discussions before it became the mostly political animal it is today.
I don't think this was a recent change. I first was plugged into BBC because Kat whatshername sat in as a talking head and invited guest on many US news roundtables. Then I visited my brother, who lived in Hong Kong at the time, and the only news in English I could stomach was BBC. But it was just terrible and tasteless. All "news" is, now.
Agreed that it's not a recent change but sadly it seems to be becoming even more tabloid in style every day. Despite all that's going on in the world, it's been nothing but Ginge & Whinge on the news here, all week.
Sounds excrutiating. I've managed to remain in the dark about the prince and the Markle, and I'm hoping it stays that way. Ignorance is bliss.
Great example. I agree about the last season, so much so that I sought out season 8 on DVD just to have it to watch once a year. James Spader brought a fresh start to that show. Those episodes that featured Sharon Stone, and the episodes with Patrick Dempsey, Jill Clayburgh and Ed Asner were arguably among the best of the series. Does anyone recall that "Boston Legal" was originally titled "Fleet Street" before the series debuted? The promos that began running during the end of "The Practice" had it titled as that. Not sure what happened to cause the 11th hour name change.
Lenny99 wrote the following as part of a post: Smith was completely believable as a villain in the early episodes, and he got into the position to get on the Ship by being a member of the Military. He came across as someone ice cold who would have no problem killing the Robinson Family. His original task was to sabotage the ship so that it would be destroyed shortly after launch. To that end, he programmed The Robot to activate and then destroy the ship after launch. He was supposed to then leave the ship. But he got trapped on the ship and wasn't able to leave it before launch. Due to that, he had to stop the destruction of the to save his own life. Plus, he reprogrammed The Robot to only respond to his voice and held the Robinsons hostage with it. What saved them was Will was able to take control of The Robot by doing a close enough imitation of Smith to fool The Robot's sensors. To keep Smith on the ship they had to change him to a less-threatening comedic character. As I mentioned in another post, if Smith had remained as he was in the early episodes (a dangerous continuing threat), either John Robinson or Don West would have had to kill Smith to protect the Crew.
Two secret agent spy shows changed after a couple of seasons. Chuck started out being a secret agent, but by the third season everyone on the show knew he was a "secret" agent which made it a lot less fun. Alias started out with a complicated and brilliant premise that a secret CIA operation called SD-6 was not really a CIA operation, but instead run by evil bastards for their own purposes, and everyone who worked for SD-6 (except for our hero and her father) falsely believed they were secretly working for the CIA. The network decided that was too confusing for most viewers, so the CIA took over SD-6 in the second season to make it a much simpler show. At least Sydney Bristow still had to lead a double life, unlike Chuck.
One possible reason for the name change was "Fleet Street" sounds like it is set at a newspaper. I remember the phrase "Fleet Street" being related to newspapers. I just checked Wikipedia and it is a phrase used in England which involves the newspaper trade. A following is a link to the page: Fleet Street .
So, your saying that Smith was a seriously evil character in the early episodes. I didn’t know that was how he was presented. That’s cool.
How about the X-Files. It’s changes were not as drastic, but the show was decidedly different at the end of its run than at the beginning. In the beginning, Scully was a plant to keep an eye on Muller. She was very cynical about anything paranormal. The episodes would end with her reading her typed report to her bosses. As the show progressed, Scully and Muller fall in love, she has a baby, but we’re not sure who’s the father. They have less emphasis on the UFO issues. Finally Muller leaves the Shia and they give Scully a very cynical partner and she morphs into a believer. I really felt they should have stayed on the UFO aspect with Scully still reporting to the bosses. The issue about the government being in with the aliens was a really unusual turn at the time. Slowly, one began to realize the government was more dangerous than the aliens.
I think of the first season as they're paying homage to A Hard Day's Night and the second season to Help!
When I lived in Japan they showed Lou Grant every week (dubbed in Japanese on one stereo channel, with the original English soundtrack on the other channel); Japanese friends I had were surprised when I told them this character had been funny on the MTM.
Correct. Older, less telegenic actors (e.g., Ned Beatty, Jon Polito, Melissa Leo) were cycled out. Attractive, younger actors were brought in (e.g., Reed Diamond, Michelle Forbes, Jon Seda, Callie Thorne). The quality of the writing held up fairly well, though.
The '80s cartoon M.A.S.K. started out as a Mission: Impossible-style action/adventure show but in the second season was turned into a "racing" show where the heroes and villains just entered into car races with other.
1984: 1992: I can't really fault The Cosby Show for adding (or subtracting) the odd cast member -- it happens over 8 years -- but at the very end it was getting silly with "cousin Pam" and her friends dominating the show, along with Raven Symone as a poor substitute for little-Rudy who was by then too old. However, my main issue with the last couple of seasons of this program was that Cliff Huxtable became a bumbling idiot towards the end, with Cosby just mugging his way through a scene or two per episode. In the first few seasons, the show went to pains to present Cliff as a good and competent dad, and as a skilled professional in the medical profession. By the end, he was Mr. Magoo with better vision.
SNL started out with great Writers who wrote very funny stuff Now they have writers who have no clue what's funny
Tell that to Mike Rowe Tell that to Kevin Sorbo Tell that to Laurence Fox Tell that to Gina Carano Tell that.....(the list is too numerous and grows every day)
I don't think you can let SNL off that easy. Comedy movie sequels and comedy TV series almost always decline in quality as they go on. So why SNL is often given this excuse that people are just "aging out" of it seems extremely charitable. There have also been times when the critics did decide to pile on the show and NBC and/or Lorne tried to retool it...the Robert Downey Jr. season and the Janeane Garafolo season. It is true that opinion is divided on it now. It has its fans and it has its detractors. But I'm not sure what the status of its ratings is now. I would assume they've been going steadily down. But it's easy for the network/producers to blame that on the decline in network TV ratings in general while letting the show itself off the hook. At any rate, it seems the audience divide is related to a shift in the kind of comedy the show does. I think if you really measured it, you'd see that the show has tried to rely on more physical comedy and more "shock value" comedy since the mid-90s. And it also seems like it's failed to generate as many well-known characters and quotable catchphrases since then. I also think it's clear watching a sketch now just how often they repeat the same joke over and over, whereas in an older era sketch, you'd get a clear progression of different jokes that build on the premise.