The Walking Dead finally ended its 11-season run, and many fans find themselves breathing with a sigh of relief. The show had become an altogether different beast from what it had once started as. Of course, that sort of longevity (and controversy) makes change inevitable.
While there’s no predicting if a show’s going to be amazing or disappointing in the long run, the one thing that shows are guaranteed to have is change. Sometimes though, that change is so massive that the show doesn’t even feel like the same story anymore, be it because of genre shifts or plain bad writing.
10 The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead started as an intimate survival horror drama, where both the Walkers and other survivors were terrifying sources of tension. Around the time Frank Darabont and his writing team left, the show started its shift to what was an action-packed zombie soap opera. Unsurprisingly, this did not sit well with fans who were around from the start.
An anonymous Redditor summed up their feelings on these changes, “Season 1 is basically a 6-episode pilot. It was made in isolation, and they were going for a slower prestige kinda thing, vs. the shock value action horror we got later on.” The fact that the finale had less than a quarter of its original cast is telling of the literal fracturing of the show.
9 Moral Orel
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Moral Orel was one of many controversial Adult Swim shows of the 2000s, and, at first, it seemed like any of the shock humor shows prevalent from that era. However, when Adult Swim gave show creator Dino Stamatopoulos the go-ahead to “be as dark as he possibly can,” he did just that, and the show got canceled for it.
Uniquely, the show did manage to subtly foreshadow its changes, but it didn’t make them any less shocking. u/ghostpiratesyar had a pretty simple explanation, saying “To be honest, season 1 of Moral Orel is more shock humor than anything else, and even then it’s kind of dated now. The show doesn’t get heavy until the end of season 2.”
8 Prison Break
Prison Break used to be very honest about the show’s premise from its title alone. Prison Break was originally about an architect who wanted to break his brother out of prison by using his in-depth knowledge of the prison he helped build. Most people thought that a show about breaking out of prison would end when they, presumably, broke out of prison. A prison break, so to speak.
Instead, they got sent to a worse prison, and after that, became government agents forced to steal important MacGuffins from terrorists. u/NotEnoughGun lamented about this, stating “From the third season onwards, it’s all downhill. The story got way too convoluted & ridiculous as it went on, past those first two seasons.”
7 Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: The Next Generation had all the growing pains of a show trying to escape its predecessor’s massive shadow. While the show was still about space exploration, the budget, writing, and characterization were so jarring compared to the best episodes of later TNG. The jump in quality was so clear that the fanbase had a well-known signifier for it. Riker’s beard.
u/psimwork explained succinctly by saying “Season 2 (when Riker got his beard) still wasn’t fantastic, but it was a DRAMATIC improvement over season 1 (i.e. the season where they basically re-used a lot of scripts that were written for “Star Trek: Phase 2” which was going to be made in the ’70s before they decided to scrap it and go with a movie).”
6 Archer
Archer started as a parody of spy thrillers, complete with a suave James Bond archetype who sounded like a man who owned a burger joint. For a good few seasons, this was what Archer was about. Then, suddenly, they shifted gears to become a drug cartel crime show of all things, rechristening themselves Archer Vice.
Archer became a detective noir after season 1, a jungle island adventure, and a space opera, before eventually returning to the spy setting. Of course, creator Adam Reed was well known for this, as explained by u/Praxis8, who said “Adam Reed is awesome, and he’s done this before with Frisky Dingo. Season 1 was about a supervillain and superhero, In Season 2 they were running for president. It sounds like jumping the shark, but it was fucking hilarious.”
5 The Office (US)
It’s a well-known fact at this point that The Office (US) was a very different show from what it would become. Ironically, that’s because the show was trying to be exactly like the source material it was adapting, The Office (UK). So much of the original characterization and comedy just don’t work in the American sitcom style.
Thankfully, the series shifted gears and went on to become one of the most successful sitcoms of all time (for about six seasons at least). The dry humor and recycled scripts were thrown away, replaced with absurd, fast-paced comedy and surprisingly emotional character arcs. u/MoragineSwann33 excitedly exclaimed when asked if the show gets better after S1 “It gets MUCH better! Keep watching! Michael improves and the stories get good.”
4 Breaking Bad
With how many critical accolades the series has got at this point because of its later seasons, it’s easy to forget that Breaking Bad wasn’t always a modern Shakespearean tragedy. It started out as more of a black comedy (though that in itself was pretty Shakespearean). The very premise of a chemistry teacher becoming a meth dealer was comical at a glance.
However, much of the first season’s lightheartedness made way for increasingly heavier themes and story arcs, though, of course, with some sprinkles of pitch-black comedy spread throughout. An anonymous Redditor stated, “The humor is still there but we have become so emotionally involved with the characters and their journeys that we are sometimes blind to it.”
3 Atlanta
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When Atlanta first started, the premise was simple. A young man named Earn became the manager for his drug dealer cousin, Al, who aspired to be a rapper for profit. The show was a rather grounded social commentary on the African-American experience, and how much of it remained an unsolved issue, other than a few surreal scenes here and there.
However, each season got progressively more Lynchian, and the third and fourth seasons were outright supernatural anthologies. u/NineteenAD9 cleverly elaborated on this by saying “Atlanta is great because they zig when people want them to zag. They don’t opt for a consistent genre. They blend different styles together while highlighting different people and still having a consistent message.”
2 Lost
Lost was famously convoluted, and that’s in no part thanks to the showrunners themselves having no idea what to do. They originally had a plan set out, but when executives dropped money on their laps, they decided to pull out all the stops on their creative vision, with admittedly varying degrees of success.
Funnily enough, Lost had a very simple premise when it first started, well before the Others, the hatch, and all those supernatural elements. u/ShiningConcepts explained “I’ve noticed in retrospect that season 1 is completely different from the rest of the series because of how isolated the characters are, and how sparse the mythology is. The plot is much simpler: people are stuck on an island and learn to survive with one another.”
1 The Simpsons
If ever there was a poster child for straying from its first season, it would be The Simpsons. It could be argued that this was literal, as the show has had a mind-boggling 34 seasons and counting. In its whole run, The Simpsons even developed tropes that helped label other show tropes, the most famous of which was “Flanderization.”
With that kind of longevity, it’s inevitable for shows to change. It’s just that The Simpsons got past that change, and entered a strange limbo of irrelevancy. u/TurboSS lamented this limbo, saying “The new Simpsons seems to just try and throw ridiculousness in your face with no subtlety or creativity behind it. It’s like they try too hard and really push the parts of homer that used to be funny but in an in-your-face way.”
