- American Idol:
- This
Deadspin article, analyzing the show's decline over the course of its run, points to a number of events in the earlier, popular seasons that foreshadowed how, in later seasons, the show and its voters would increasingly fall out of step with the pop music mainstream. The Shocking Elimination of Jennifer Hudson very early in season 3 (and her going on to have the biggest career out of anyone that season) is regarded as the first crack, especially given the allegations that her elimination was due to racial bias (Hudson being a black R&B singer), but the true tipping point was the victory of Taylor Hicks in season 5. Hicks, a soul singer whose style couldn't have been more different from contemporary pop music trends, won largely due to the show's older voters who rejected said modern pop, and sure enough, he ended up swiftly fading from popular culture after his one post-Idol hit.
From then on, singers with modern pop or R&B sensibilities found it harder to stay in the game as the show's graying core voter base favored "white guys with guitars", i.e. young, attractive, non-threatening white guys (often from the Bible Beltnote ) with soft vocals who performed acoustic ballads in the vein of Jason Mraz or John Mayer. Such artists usually left no presence on the pop charts; season 10 winner Scotty McCreary having success in Country Music but no pop crossover hits, and season 11 winner Phillip Phillips becoming a One-Hit Wonder with "Home", was about the best they ever realistically hoped for. The jump-the-shark moment in season 8, when Kris Allen won a surprising (and controversial) victory over Adam Lambert, was merely the moment at which this became readily apparent even to the show's fans. The pop music world abandoned the show, sponsors followed suit, and ratings (especially in the key 18-49 demographic) plunged, leading to a growing number of gimmicks and stunt-cast judges in an attempt to keep the show relevant against competitors like The Voice. Eventually, it was announced that season 15 in 2016 would be the last. - Another factor that bedeviled Idol during its run, one that was closely linked to the above, was the fact that its boom years coincided with the rise of the internet, which the show's creators never really figured out how to properly interact with. In the first couple of seasons, when most households only had dial-up (if anything) and the World Wide Web was still barely a blip on the radar, this wasn't a problem, but Idol continued to ignore the internet at its peril, allowing snark blogs to become the face of the show's "fandom" online. The most infamous such site was Vote for the Worst, which was one of the first places to notice the aforementioned trend in the show favoring pop-unfriendly singers — and proceeded to try and reinforce that trend, in the hopes of sabotaging a show that it saw as a blight on the pop culture landscape. The site burst into public consciousness in season 6 when it gave its endorsement to Sanjaya Malakar, and thanks to their efforts and those of others (such as Howard Stern, who promoted the site and interviewed its creator on his show), the Giftedly Bad and otherwise hopeless contestant Malakar made it all the way to the Top 7 before he was eliminated.
When Vote for the Worst bowed out in 2013, its creator stated outright
- This
- American Horror Story: Asylum:
- The series has the infamous "Name Game" sequence, a silly and jovial musical number in Sister Jude's head, smack dab in the middle of an incredibly bleak episode. It was so effective not just because it came completely out of left field, but also because it demonstrated how far Jude had fallen and how absolutely broken her mental state was at the time. Later seasons of American Horror Story seemed to forget the second part and started throwing in musical numbers at random to try to replicate the success Asylum had. It wasn't too bad with Coven, where Stevie Nicks' cameo only lasted one episode and played on real-life urban legends about her being a witch. Freak Show, however, had five major musical numbers and a main character who was a singer for no particular reason, leading the season to be criticized for taking precious time away from properly serving its major characters, something at which Asylum excelled. Hotel, however, seems to have reversed this; while Lady Gaga (a pop singer by trade) does play one of the main characters, there are no musical numbers, and the season by and large is seen by many fans as (so far) a return to form after the divisive reception to Coven and Freak Show.
- Asylum also made an effort to streamline its plot arc by killing of supporting antagonists in the preantepenultimate Dr. arden and the possessed Sister Eunice and antepenultimate Bloodyface episodes, leaving the last two episodes as one giant, meticulously-paced biopic for the three main characters, all to much acclaim. Coven actually waited until its penultimate episode to dispense with its ancillary plot arcs by killing off Marie, Delphine, and the Axeman. Unfortunately, people didn't find the main plot nearly as interesting as the side ones and became irate at the amount of plot holes and contradictory world building left behind when everything was wrapped up.
- Many fans believe - as does series star Adam West - that the first season of the 1960s Batman series was the best one. Then, after the theatrical movie (which was released between the first and second seasons), the series increasingly became bogged down by broadly farcical or surreal humor, desperate pop-culture references, and way too many characters (Yvonne Craig's Batgirl in particular arguably the final nail in the show's coffinnote ). But all those elements had been present in the show from (or almost from) the beginning; it's just that there was more of a balance of comedy and drama during the first season.
- Some of the major events that most polarized the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom in seasons 6 and 7, including Buffy and Spike hooking up in a relationship and Willow's witch powers spiraling out of control following her relationship ending, are (coincidentally or not) foreshadowed in the season 4 episode "Something Blue", to the point of the whole episode seeming Harsher in Hindsight. Heck, it even brought Amy back! (Albeit for only two seconds on-screen.)
- Community has the Inspector Spacetime gag, a fairly obvious Captain Ersatz to Doctor Who. When it first cropped up in Season 3, it got some good response from Whovians. This led to it being used more and more, running the joke completely thin. Its overuse also ended up suggesting that the creators hadn't actually seen Doctor Who. This caused the Whovians to abandon the joke, leaving only the people who found Whovians obnoxious... just in time for the fourth season, which beat the joke to death.
- Before Season Three's "In Name and Blood", Criminal Minds never revealed to the audience who the UnSub was before the team figured out who the UnSub was (besides "The Last Word", although that one still had one UnSub to be revealed at the end). Later episodes, including some hailed as classic episodes such as "Normal" and "The Uncanny Valley", would use this early reveal to good effect, illuminating some aspect of the UnSub that couldn't be brought out unless it was directly shown (such as the effects Norman Hill's wife's belittling had on Norman). However, as the series moved on the writers fell in love with the idea too much dragging it to the point where it is now where virtually every UnSub, even those who had no storytelling reason to be revealed, are revealed early to the audience, making the episode an exercise (sometimes painful) in watching the team try to catch the UnSub before it's too late. Fans often complain that this early reveal robs the show of what once made it good — the guessing game of who the UnSub was as a person — since now the audience now already knows the puzzle before it's finished.
- Deadwood:
- Later seasons were criticized for having many secondary characters in the camp, to the point that they were seen as padding that took away from the stories of Bullock and Swearengen. However, these camp personalities were also present in the first season, albeit in a less-obvious fashion. The padding then could be excused by the fact that it was an ensemble show, but this grew less believable as time went on.
- The show's trademark swearing and derogatives were seen as hilarious in the first season, but eventually became so dense and complex that viewers had trouble understand what any of the characters were saying.
- Doctor Who:
- Much of the criticism of the Graham Williams era (Seasons 15-17) is actually visible by Season 14. As early as "The Hand of Fear", Tom Baker is more obviously keen on performing even dull exposition scenes with surreal physical comedy for the sake of it, openly Corpsing at actors Chewing the Scenery, and communicating feeling to the audiences via Aside Glances. By now he's also expecting to ad lib a lot of his own dialogue, and so his talking style becomes more flippant and silly; Baker's dislike of the character being violent also means that he gets more villain defeats where he mocks and annoys them until they make crucial mistakes. By "The Face of Evil", the Jelly Babies, unseen since Season 12, make a comeback and stick around; and the Doctor also receives a new companion who isn't a modern-day Earth human for the first time since the 60s. All of this is funny, exciting and a new lease of life for the character at first, but, as the series grows Lighter and Softer, the antics get more extreme and don't have dark Gothic Horror plotlines to contrast against, turning the show into a wacky comedy where Tom Baker can upstage everyone else. Leela is a refreshing companion with the Doctor's slightly uncomfortable relationship with her a good reminder of his alienness; but the Fourth Doctor doesn't get an 'everyhuman' companion again until Tegan's appearance in his final story, and Leela's sexualisation and continual belittling by the Doctor is something that Romana also has to contend with.
- All the problems with the original series in the mid-eighties — Author Tracts, useless companions, unintentionally inappropriate music, Camp, Chewing the Scenery, hilarious Special Effects Failure — were all present in the seventies. But in the eighties they became highly prominent and common, and had few good plots or characters to balance them out, leading to viewership dropping like flies, a brief hiatus, and then another one that lasted for 16 years. (Ironically, the second hiatus was implemented just as those elements had been mostly stripped.)
- While a very popular season that many fans consider a creative high point of the show, Season 18 introduces a lot of the problems that would cause the Dork Age. The Doctor has gone from wearing an Unlimited Wardrobe of multiple articles of clothing based around a Byronic style to a Limited Wardrobe with a rather loud colour scheme, and his hair's gone from the soft and natural Quirky Curls of the 70s to a tamed and rather hard 80s perm, anticipating the controversial 'uniforms' of later 80s Doctors and especially the problems with the Sixth Doctor's costume. The new production team is mostly staffed with Promoted Fanboys who want to be making gritty science fiction, so the tone gets drastically Darker and Edgier, the Doctor's characterisation suddenly shifts in a disturbing and unhinged direction, and the Camp elements are either played absolutely straight or removed while Fan Wank ideas begin to influence plots - which is Revisiting the Roots at first but seeds the Continuity Lockout, Character Derailment, Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy and Angst? What Angst? that will plague the 80s. The current producer is a gifted editor and the team is trying more than ever to make things look and feel expensive to fight back criticism that previous seasons had got a bit too Panto, which allows the actors to do more intense, cinematic acting and leads to a dramatic Special Effects Evolution - but eventually resulted in wooden, soapy acting and overambitious attempts to do expensive effects-led SF action movies with no money and terrible effects, moving away from the series' 60s/70s strategy of 'theatrical' sets and Shakespearean Actors where it didn't matter if the effects or performances looked unrealistic if they worked aesthetically. Tom Baker isn't allowed to redo unscripted business to the camera any more, which is usually considered a good thing as his antics had been arguably derailing the show, but also means that from here on the most interesting character played by the strongest actor in the cast receives less focus than the less well-performed and more thinly characterised companions. A 'continuity advisor' unofficially joins the team, which at first helps build a strong mythos for those who care about continuity, but later leads to obnoxious Continuity Porn. This season is also where we first see hints that the Doctor is not just an intergalactic Nightmare Fetishist doing what he does for fun, but something more akin to a Wizard Classic Drifter, which imparts a mythological feel the series previously lacked but also leads directly into the posturingly powerful Doctors, Messianic Archetype symbolism and often hamfisted attempts at epics associated with Doctors from the Seventh onwards, with most fans preferring the 'intergalactic bumbler' overall.
- "Earthshock", on its first broadcast in 1982 — and even today — was a hugely popular story thanks to its action, gritty and mature feel, and the return of a classic villain. However, attempts to recapture all of these elements in future stories would play a major part in driving the series into the ground in the mid-1980s. The continuity aspects were emphasized to such an extent that it led to major Continuity Lockout. This is well-shown by the Cybermen's next major story, "Attack of the Cybermen", which is very continuity-heavy, incomprehensible without a good knowledge of Cyber-History, and incredibly violent.
- The Doctor and Rose's Implied Love Interest status started out with Rose helping to heal the emotionally damaged Doctor and him ending up effectively sacrificing himself for her, with their relationship slowly developing in the background. However it got to the point where the narrative kept presenting her as the Doctor's One True Love, to the point that even a lot of fans who liked her started viewing her as a Creator's Pet, and much of the praise of her started sounding like Informed Attribute, while Rose began acting like a Clingy Jealous Girl to any woman who so much as talked to the Doctor. This got worse when she re-appeared in Series 4, undermining what a lot of fans felt was a satisfying and emotional departure, Rose continuing to be bitchy to other characters and overall feeling unnecessary to the story. The companions having romantic interactions with the Doctor is also accused of this, including a bizarre scene in "Flesh and Stone" where Amy Pond sexually assaults the clearly unwilling 11th Doctor the night before her wedding. Peter Capaldi even asked for there to be no flirting between 12 and his companions, feeling it would be inappropriate and the writers obliged, writing into his very first lines that The Doctor had made a mistake by acting like Clara Oswald's boyfriend in his previous incarnation.
- The moral debate over the Doctor's actions, particularly with the Daleks, started as an interesting (though controversial) departure from the original series, with the Doctor wracked with guilt over his actions and always uncertain about whether he's doing the right thing. After this point, it was alternately ignored or given such disproportionate focus (sometimes the Doctor would wipe out a species without any moral conundrum, sometimes he'd waver back and forth on killing an Always Chaotic Evil species that's about to kill a bunch of innocent people) that it lost any sort of impact, and something that started as a way to explore the Doctor's morality was repeatedly used as a way for the Doctor to lord his moral superiority over everyone else (like Harriet Jones or Handy). Eventually this aspect was dropped completely, returning to the times of killing villains no questions asked (which started its own Broken Base), only for it to come back from the dead for season 8, making just as little sense; killing villains by yourself is justifiable, but killing them with a Cyberman army is bad? Huh?
- "Journey's End" in many ways is a good example of the aspects of the RTD era overused and done badly. Author Favouritism for Rose? Very much so. The moral debate about the Doctor's actions, such as killing Daleks, being inconsistent and not making much sense? Yes. A ridiculous Deus ex Machina? On multiple occasions. A cop-out on a major character dying? Certainly.
- The criticisms of Steven Moffat's run of the revival series are largely present back in the episodes he wrote for the series when Russell T Davies was in charge, including convoluted plots, Soap Opera-level interactions between the cast, female characters who revolve entirely around the Doctor, and Everybody Lives endings via flimsy Deus ex Machina. For individual episodes his style worked marvelously, especially as it contrasted with the rest of the episodes at the time, with "Blink" still regarded as one of the best (and scariest) episodes in Who history. But when Moffat graduated to showrunner this stuff took over the show so that plot intricacy became alienating incoherence, the once-creepy elements (the Weeping Angels, the use of repeated phrases etc) were overused to the point of Narm,and Rory's repeated deaths, while dramatic in Series 5 as they only happened twice, ended up becoming a joke; in his last episode he dies three times.
- Series 8 was criticised by some fans for giving the companion more focus than the Doctor. However this has been an element of the new series since its first episode which focused on Rose entirely with the Doctor in the background for most of it. This might have been a result of reintroducing the companion's home life as a major part of the series something the Moffat era strayed away from but was a big part of the RTD era.
- "The Pandorica Opens" and "A Good Man Goes to War" are regularly cited as two of the best Eleventh Doctor episodes—but in hindsight, they also include many elements of the Moffat era that would later be heavily criticized. Both of them consist almost entirely of buildup for Twist Endings, and both of them could be justly accused of leaning too hard on "style over substance", preferring elaborate action scenes to creative storytelling. Then again, there's a reason that they're both highly regarded: The Reveal that the Doctor was the "monster" imprisoned in the Pandorica was a pretty damn clever twist, as was The Reveal that River Song was Rory and Amy's daughter from the future. Likewise, the new cinematic feel of the show was a refreshing change of pace from the comparatively low production values of the Davies era, and the action sequences felt like well-deserved payoff for season-spanning plot arcs, even if they ultimately boiled down to fairly simple "Good Guys vs. Bad Guys" clashes. note But over time, both of those things got stale in many fans' eyes: the revelation about the Silence's origins was widely derided as nonsensical and needlessly complex, several fans guessed way in advance that Missy was the Master, some people complained that the Time War sequences in "Day of the Doctor" robbed the formerly Great Offscreen War of its mystery, and the Cyberman invasion in "Death in Heaven" was criticized as a generic action climax following a twist that failed to shock.
- A common criticism of Moffat's run as head writer is his tendency to build entire seasons around long-term story arcs at the expense of writing good standalone episodes that can work on their own merits. This tendency was reasonably in check during Series 5 and Series 6, where it was forgivable because the Pandorica arc and the Silence arc actually built up to memorable Grand Finales that made them seem worthwhile. But it started to get a bit out of hand with the much less well-received Series 7, where the season finale "The Name of the Doctor" was widely considered an unsatisfactory resolution to the mystery behind Clara Oswald—giving many viewers the impression that Moffat didn't know where the storyline was going when he first started writing it. After much buildup about Clara being "The Impossible Girl" who was "born to save the Doctor", it turned out that she just jumped into a time-warp to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, and the details behind how she saved the Doctor were quickly glossed over. With a finale that just couldn't live up to the hype, Clara's earlier episodes—where she shows up in multiple time periods under multiple aliases—ended up feeling like a waste of time.
- The finale to Series 1 has Rose becoming a Physical God through looking into the heart of the TARDIS and The Reveal that she sent the "Bad Wolf" message back through time to remind her she could do this, which is still well-regarded. However, after Rose nearly all the main companions had a large storyline built around them turning into someone else except for Martha, whose awesome moment only comes from actions she performed in the two-part finale. With River Song and Clara, lots of people find their storylines annoying and claim that they're plot devices disguised as characters.
- Look back at the first two seasons of Dexter and you'll find everything that annoys viewers about the later seasons: sloppiness from both Dex and the cops; Debra being needy and grating; too much time spent on the secondary characters' problems; love interests you wish Dex would kill already; fumbled endings to plotlines. This was all easier to forgive when the show's premise was still brand new and exciting. Another common complaint about later seasons was Dexter being unsympathetic. This was still true in the early seasons - he was a serial killer, after all. The difference was that later seasons kept insisting he'd changed and was a good person now, when he simply hadn't. He was every bit as callous, murderous, and self-centered in the first season, it's just that now we were being told he was a hero for it.
- Full House is now held up as a good example of what happens when fan reaction is taken too far by people behind the scenes. When the show began, Michelle's childlike one-liners were seen as absolutely adorable and she easily became the most popular character on the show, with merchandise featuring her easily outselling all others. However, the executives saw this, and as the Olsen twins got older and were able to handle more difficult scenes and dialogue, Michelle was pushed to the front of the show hard. Her status as the Creator's Pet meant she was featured heavily in later episodes and was often not held accountable for her behavior (often when she did misbehave, the blame instead fell on DJ and Stephanie for mistreating her, Danny for neglecting her, etc.) Because of this, Michelle nosedived from a fan favorite to easily the most despised character on the show.
- Game of Thrones:
- Two of the most heavily criticized scenes for their use of Gratuitous Rape are a scene in season 4 where Jaime and Cersei have sex right next to the body of Joffrey with a Flip-Flop of God on whether or not it was rape when the scene was fully consensual in the book, and then the season 5 brutalization of Sansa Stark at the hands of Ramsay Snow but signs of this could be seen all the way back in the first episode, where the wedding night of Khal Drogo and Daenerys was changed from the book version where he arouses her until she consents (albeit with Questionable Consent due to her age and the circumstances) contrary to her expectations to him straight up invoking the Marital Rape License on her in the show. While criticized at the time, this first change wasn't seen as being as much of a problem as the later ones.
- Many of the expanded character focus moments which weren't available in the POV format of the books have led to massive Character Exaggeration(s) on the show, which has derailed the moral ambiguity of the books in favor of creating more straight heroic/villainous archetypes. This helps things like making Tyrion a more likable character and giving others like Olenna Tyrell more depth, along with giving an extra scene to the relatively minor character Yoren which adds more depth to him, even if he does get killed off early in Season 2. However the character focus has over time led to many important plot points being pushed out so fan-favorites like Margaery Tyrell and the villainous Petyr Baelish can have more scenes, which, even if enjoyable to watch, don't really add much to the overall plot and feel like they're just there so the actors can be displayed more. This tendency finally came to a head in S5, where the events of 2 books were crammed into one season. The expanded character roles has also led to a lot of the complex characterisation being dropped and has led to major character changes in certain characters, such as Stannis Baratheon, who undergoes Adaptational Villainy and turns from a pragmatic but ultimately honorable man who just wants to perform his duty to a more ruthless and brutal zealot who is ignominiously killed at the end of S5 by Brienne, who has also undergone change from the kind-hearted figure of the books to a more brutal Jerk Ass and hypocrite who the writers still intend us to see as the clear hero.
- The series has always teetered on the line of Torture Porn due to the depiction of brutal executions and punishments and the Gratuitous Rape mentioned above, including a man in the first season who was forced to walk naked behind Daenerys' rider column until he collapsed after trying to assassinate her, but many critics thought the show really crossed the line with the treatment of both Ros, who's brutally killed offscreen by Joffrey and gets a gratuitous camera pan up their mostly naked and dead body and then Theon at the hands of the aforementioned Ramsay Snow, including his brutal castration and emasculation in season 3, the latter of which happened offscreen in the books.
- The tendency for the show to take a subplot given to a female character in the books and either cut it or reduce its importance in favor of some of the other, male characters, often by killing her off or putting her in a Damsel in Distress situation. While the shift of focus from Catelyn Stark to her son Robb in the first few seasons was more understandable due to the shift from the POV format of the books she was still given plenty to do, but later seasons saw the removal or altering of several important subplots such as the almost complete removal of Selyse Baratheon, eventually resulting in her death by her own hand in season 5, killing off Talisa Stark in the Red Wedding in season 3 while her book counterpart survives, the complete removal of Lady Stoneheart, which, unless the show decides to use the resurrection spells in a different manner leaves the whole Beric Dondarrion subplot hanging, gratuitously killing off Ros at the hands of Joffrey as mentioned above, and shifting Sansa Stark's story arc from becoming Littlefinger's Bastard Understudy to that of her friend Jeyne Poole from the books, which results in the above mentioned rape by Ramsay Snow.
- Glee:
- The first-season episode "Theatricallity" still remains one of the most contentious episodes in the series. While it was not the first Gay Aesop of the series, it was the first that had viewers questioning if it was actually effective. Because the episode got the writers praise from critics, this would become a reoccurring trend that would plague the series.
- "Acafellas" has its share of detractors for jamming several unrelated, distracting and immediately-forgotten story lines together. Something which, even during the first season, became a chronic issue for the show and remains a primary cause for criticism.
- "The Power of Madonna", another season 1 episode, was the very first tribute episode to a specific artist. They performed a replication of Madonna's Vogue Music Video, which quickly went viral and the episode itself garnered high acclaim. In the following seasons, Glee would produce more and more tribute episodes to dwindling success until it reach the point that they would be sharply criticized for them.
- The original Jump the Shark moment was merely the point at which Happy Days completely Flanderized Fonzie and lost track of its Fifties motif, both trends that had been present for a long time by that point.
- Heroes:
- The series was derided in its later seasons for having long-term myth arcs that went nowhere or were squandered, stringing the audience along by cutting away from important action scenes or big moments, and featuring extraneous characters who did nothing to further the plot. The first season did all of this, but it was excused at the time because it was new and the premise still hadn't been fleshed out. Characters like Hana Gitelman show up and disappear for little reason (besides having more characterization and appearances in tie-in online comics), the big fight scenes in the heavily-touted 'future episode' either cut away for most of the action or are heard from behind a door, and the final battle (which was hyped all season long) is underwhelming and looks like it was hastily filmed in a single night. By the second season, as this episode
- At the same time, there was the character of Sylar. Thanks to his "average Joe gone bad" origin story and Zachary Quinto's great performance, he became an Ensemble Darkhorse as the villain of season one — and much like Michelle on Full House, this eventually turned against the show once the writers started pandering to Sylar's fans. In doing so, they stripped him of everything that made him interesting and muddled his motivations to the point where he was acting strictly out of plot convenience rather than any coherent characterization, while also constantly giving him New Powers as the Plot Demands. The fans who loved Sylar early on turned against him, and then the show as a whole.
- The series was derided in its later seasons for having long-term myth arcs that went nowhere or were squandered, stringing the audience along by cutting away from important action scenes or big moments, and featuring extraneous characters who did nothing to further the plot. The first season did all of this, but it was excused at the time because it was new and the premise still hadn't been fleshed out. Characters like Hana Gitelman show up and disappear for little reason (besides having more characterization and appearances in tie-in online comics), the big fight scenes in the heavily-touted 'future episode' either cut away for most of the action or are heard from behind a door, and the final battle (which was hyped all season long) is underwhelming and looks like it was hastily filmed in a single night. By the second season, as this episode
- The History Channel:
- The network has become something of a laughingstock in recent years for its focus on paranormal-based programming and reality series instead of actual history. The former, at least, was present even in the History Channel's heyday with shows like History's Mysteries, Incredible But True?, [UFO]s: Then and Now?, and Vanishings, many of which are still rerun on H2 today.
- Similarly, the network is often accused of pandering to Christian audiences with its abundance of Biblical-themed programs that have little basis in actual history. Even in its early days, there were always some documentaries on religious history, like Who Wrote the Bible?, The Ten Commandments, and the occasional episode of Ancient Mysteries; though obviously not everyone's cup of tea, they could at least be tolerated by a general audience because they made an effort to examine Christianity through a scholarly lens. That was before we started getting hour-long dramatizations of the Book of Revelation, miniseries about the Seven Deadly Sins, documentaries claiming that the Bible predicted human history, and—eventually—Biblical dramas that dropped the "documentary" pretense.
- Jeopardy!:
- The show frequently used categories with Punny Names or Theme Naming, but starting in the 1997-98 season, almost every category has some sort of pun or theme, almost to the level of Win Ben Stein's Money.
- "Celebrity Jeopardy" games started in the 1992-93 season as an amusing diversion for viewers occurring once per season. But by the 2000s, the celebrity games had become scenery-chewing, laid-back nightmares that led to less than half the board even being played. And later seasons have since seen more celebrity games per season, right down to a celebrity tournament that went on throughout the 2009-10 season.
- The original sin in the BBC's Robin Hood was the moment that the writers became more interested in Guy of Gisborne (and specifically, his volatile relationship with Maid Marian) than with every single other character on the show. This led to more and more screen-time being devoted to Guy and Marian as a potential couple, until the point where the writers (presumably) realized that they'd gone too far with it, and needed to derail it pronto. Their solution was for Guy to stab Marian to death in a jealous rage at the end of season 2. There are plenty of reasons why Season Three is considered terrible, but it's mainly because that without Marian, the story had absolutely no emotional center. There was simply nothing left to care about, or to look forward to.
- The second and final season of Rome gets a lot of its criticism for its absurdly compressed timespan, attempting to chronicle around 17 years of Roman history in ten episodes. It's easy to miss, but Season 1—which is quite a bit more highly regarded—also had a pretty compressed timespan, chronicling eight years of Roman history in twelve episodes. Though this was arguably a major flaw of the series from the beginning, it was forgivable in the first season because the pacing was a bit more reasonable, and personal drama always took precedence over grand historical spectacle. Pullo and Vorenus developed organically as characters, and Caesar, Brutus, Attia and Octavian went through enough Character Development that the actual historical events surrounding them didn't seem rushed. But by the time the quickened pace was taken Up to Eleven by Season 2, the compression became impossible to ignore. Pullo and Vorenus had some reasonably compelling arcs, but they ultimately stayed oddly static after nearly two decades. And as historical events took center-stage, it became harder to forgive the writers for failing to utilize promising storylines involving the plot against King Herod, the war against Brutus and Cassius, and Cleopatra's court. note
- The production methodology that Saturday Night Live has had from the beginning (six days to come up with around an hour of comedy material minus musical guest segments and commercials) guarantees that the show will be inconsistent even on its best days. This also ties in with Web commenters who rip guest hosts and cast members for reading from cue cards and not memorizing their lines. Sketches are rewritten practically up to air time, with frequent changes in the 90 minutes between the dress rehearsal and the live broadcast, so everyone is forced to use cue cards. Some people are just better at not making it obvious.
- Much as he alleged that Snoopy ruined Peanuts (see "Comic Books" on the main page), Kotaku's Kevin Wong said the same
- For Sherlock, many fans felt that, in the third season, the elements used successfully in the first and second seasons (cleverness, twists, extreme personalities) become a problem for the show.
- Sleepy Hollow took a severe hit in ratings in its second season, which was chalked up to the newfound emphasis on Abraham von Brunt, Henry Parish, and Katrina Crane, which sapped time away from more the popular characters and threatened to boil down the End of Days to the hurt feelings of a scorned lover and a petulant man-child. Thing is, the reveal of the Horsemen's true identities and Katrina's importance as the motivation (as a mother/ex-fiancée) to at least two of the show's Dragons was already present in the first season (and heavily criticized there as well). While it was blown out of all proportion in season 2, the seeds of the show's downfall were already an intrinsic part of season one.
- The Season 2 episode of Sliders, "Invasion", introduced the Kromaggs, a xenophobic species bent on dominating every Alternate Universe where humans were the dominant species on Earth. Most agree the episode wasn't that bad in and of itself. It was actually an interesting concept, until the Kromaggs became the sole focus of the series starting in Season 4 (after a season-long absence, no less).
- Star Trek:
- Most of the things Trekkies hate about Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise were already very present in the much-lauded middle seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and some can even be found in the Original Series; things like the anomaly of the week, the malfunctioning holodeck, the evil versions of regular characters, the shuttle crash plots, and the B-plots that feel like a soap opera. But it wasn't until later in the franchise that they really started to grate on viewers, since it finally started to seem like the same thing over and over again.
- The Cliffhanger ending of TNG's "The Best of Both Worlds" was written with no idea of how anything would be resolved. It worked out amazingly well, but it unfortunately encouraged the crew to keep doing this across the whole franchise, with increasingly diminishing returns.
- Also, Voyager and Enterprise get a lot of flack for the fanservicey catsuits worn by Seven of Nine and T'Pol, respectively, and the characters are accused of only being there for the fanservice. Of course, the first such crew member to wear a sexy outfit instead of the expected uniform was one Deanna Troi - and her version showed a lot of cleavage to boot. Also, while Seven and T'Pol had a great deal of Character Development, A Day in the Limelight was once known as "Good Troi Episode," which is when forgotten or minor characters get the spotlight - Deanna mattering was such an exception to the rule that you name a trope after it and it's still joked by fans that her job was to state the obvious. This is a case where the original sin was greater before, but forgiven because First Installment Wins. note
- The Prime Directive was introduced in the original series as a simple guideline to not mess around with pre-Warp civilizations. It made sense, and it was treated quite reasonably (considering Kirk's Cowboy Cop attitude). In Next Generation, the more by-the-book Picard gave the Directive an upgrade from a guideline to an important principle, and often agonized over violating it, but he still usually put it aside and did the right thing when the situation called for it. Later shows interpreted Picard's reluctance to break the rules to upgrade the Prime Directive into some kind of inviolable code, and showed captains going well out of their way to avoid violating it. Before long, it became loathed by fans as an excuse to make the Captain act like a Jerkass so as to maintain a nebulous space law, and that being treated as a good thing. This led to the episode of Enterprise that showed the origins of the directive, in which the so-called heroes refused to cure a race being ravaged to extinction by disease because it might somehow interfere in the development of another (despite both already being in regular contact with Warp civilizations, even if they didn't have it themselves), becoming one of the most hated episodes in the franchise.
- Supernatural: A major criticism of the show from Season 6 onwards has been that it gets hard to root for Sam, Dean, and Castiel when they seem to just fuck up continuously and most of the major threats they solve are their fault in the first place. This trend originated back in Season 4, firstly with the revelation that Dean selling his soul to save Sam led to his being tortured in Hell for 30 years, then agreeing to end the torture in exchange for spending 10 years torturing people himself, which in turn led to the first seal breaking, making it possible for Lucifer to be freed, and then with Sam killing Lilith, breaking the last seal, and actually freeing Lucifer. The difference was that in early seasons, Sam and Dean tended to acknowledge their mistakes eventually and at least attempt to learn from them. whereas later seasons have them making the exact same mistakes over and over again and continually insisting that they did the right thing the whole time.
- Super Sentai/Power Rangers:
- The Red Ranger always has slightly more powers or upgrades than the rest of the team; such as a better and/or second mecha, a motorcycle, a Super Mode, etc. This is often not a big deal, since the Red Ranger is the leader of the team, so him having Protagonist Powerup Privileges would be logical. However, this sometimes gets more and more out of hand until some seasons give Red such preferential treatment the series turns into 'The Red Ranger and his Incompetent Friends.'
- The use of Stock Superpowers when Disney was adapting Power Rangers. The first season to use them was Ninja Storm, where the Rangers were ninjas-in-training so it made sense that they could use Supernatural Martial Arts even when unmorphed. However, all the following seasons also gave their Rangers gratuitous extra superpowers, to various degrees of justification (the Rangers of Mystic Force and Jungle Fury were wizards or warrior monks-in-training, Dino Thunder and SPD worked them into the plot as having powers was why these guys were selected to be Rangers, and Operation Overdrive and RPM tacked them on because reasons). This eventually wore off over the end of Disney's tenure and the start of Saban's: RPM (the final Disney season) downplayed the powers by making them accessible only as Rangers and not as civilians; and Samurai (Saban's first post-Disney season) used the 'Supernatural Martial Arts-in-training' justification (and had the excuse of it being a holdover from the source footage, Shinkenger). After that, the following seasons just didn't have extra powers outside the Ranger arsenal.
- Torchwood: Torchwood always had a camp, sexual and grim feel. Torchwood: Children of Earth was considered the Growing the Beard moment, there was a dramatic five-episode story arc that is considered by many the best series of Torchwood, along with the shocking death of one of the main cast. However in Torchwood: Miracle Day severe Seasonal Rot set in. The sex scenes were seen as dragging the story out, the brutality became distracting and the deaths were poorly paced and felt like they were there for shock value. Meanwhile the series was 10 episodes, however the effect was the story felt dragged out, with significant pacing problems and a lot of padding, and there was a significant drop in viewers around half-way. "Children of Earth" moved further away from its parent series of "Doctor Who", and as a result many people hate it for being very difficult to fit into contiwhonity.
- True Blood. Since so many people wondered when the show took such a turn for the worse, others were quick to point out that, frankly,