From awesome to crap in one move

[Hollyday]

After rewatching Twin Peaks recently I want to know of some more TV shows whose amazing first series/season was completely undermined by a crappy, lazy, or just plain awful second.

My main offender (apart from the aforementioned one, the first series of which I still think is the best thing I've ever seen on telly. I refuse to recognise the existence of the second.) is Greenwing, an underrated British sitcom along the same lines as Scrubs. The first series made me laugh until my drink came out of my nose.


The second was just... well.... painful.

 

[Jonluw]

Death note.

The first season is so awesome. So brilliantly thrilling and just great in almost every way.

Spoiler

Then the whole businesspeople arc comes along, and everything goes to shit.
And Mello...
And Near...
Don't get me started on that fucking guy.

It's still worth watching though, if only for the sake of the first season.
Incidentally, I spoiled the ending to the series for a guy just yesterday.

 

[Agent Larkin]

Battlestar Galactica ( the recent one)

Up till Crossroads pt2 I loved it. After that I became a chore to watch.

Also from Doctor Who, River Song. When she was first introduced the idea was awesome. When she got introduced proper however I found her so damn annoying.

 

[DoPo]

Death note.

The first season is so awesome. So brilliantly thrilling and just great in almost every way.

Spoiler

Then the whole businesspeople arc comes along, and everything goes to shit.
And Mello...
And Near...
Don't get me started on that fucking guy.

It's still worth watching though, if only for the sake of the first season.

Yes, I agree. Well, to be fair, not all of the first season was top notch but enough of it was. And I don't think there was anything as bad as the second season there.

A better (-ish?) example - Heroes. The first season was good, then it went downhill. And I don't remember if it was then or the third one when all characters apparently underwent lobotomy - offscreen and unmentioned.

On and inb4 Code Geass. The second season really drops the ball there. I still enjoyed it but damn.

 

[Jonluw]

On and inb4 Code Geass. The second season really drops the ball there. I still enjoyed it but damn.

In regards to Code geass, I think it started going downhill late in the first season.
Then the second season came with the whole "flying country" shit and the stuff with China and everything, and it was all pretty crap. But I think it really started salvaging itself after that dip. At some point during the second season, it got better.

 

[370999]

Death note.

The first season is so awesome. So brilliantly thrilling and just great in almost every way.

Spoiler

Then the whole businesspeople arc comes along, and everything goes to shit.
And Mello...
And Near...
Don't get me started on that fucking guy.

It's still worth watching though, if only for the sake of the first season.

Yes, I agree. Well, to be fair, not all of the first season was top notch but enough of it was. And I don't think there was anything as bad as the second season there.

A better (-ish?) example - Heroes. The first season was good, then it went downhill. And I don't remember if it was then or the third one when all characters apparently underwent lobotomy - offscreen and unmentioned.

On and inb4 Code Geass. The second season really drops the ball there. I still enjoyed it but damn.

Yes on all three accounts. God how much R2 disappointed me.

I'll throw one out for Bakemonotagari to Nishimonotagari.

Both fan-service heavy but Nishi really pushed it for me. Watching a brother and sister having what is pretty much a sex act between the two was really uncomfortable.

 

[DoPo]

On and inb4 Code Geass. The second season really drops the ball there. I still enjoyed it but damn.

In regards to Code geass, I think it started going downhill late in the first season.
Then the second season came with the whole "flying country" shit and the stuff with China and everything, and it was all pretty crap. But I think it really started salvaging itself after that dip. At some point during the second season, it got better.

Well, that is true. But the difference between the first season finale and the second season start is drastic.

It sort of started going downhill for me when everybody started talking about Geass. It was a name Lelouch came up for his power and it made sense - it places compulsion on a person, much like a geas. However, everybody has a Geass even, though it was a term coined seriously recently and, furthermore, it didn't apply to any of the other powers. Dunno, that broke it for me. It was an OK show after but nothing more than that.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

I'm going to say Heroes, although honestly the second season wasn't crap, just underwhelming compared to the first. It was the third that really dropped the ball.

 

[DrgoFx]

I'm gonna be lame and say Loonatics: Unleashed. For starters, it was a brilliant idea, placing the Looney Toons in the future and giving them an xmen backstory and theme. The characters all easily resembled their "Ancestors" and also giving their own personality, while their powers also reflected them nicely. For such a comedic show, it could get dark and threatening pretty easily and not once did the humor feel forced to me, or the plot.

...Now let's get to the second season and all the serious tone is thrown out and the humor is replaced with short cameos of other Loonies. It wasn't THAT bad, but it was much worse than the first season.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm gonna have to go with Twin Peaks, too.

Absolutely phenomenal up to the point where the killer gets revealed. After that it takes a fucking nose dive.

 

[Limecake]

After rewatching Twin Peaks recently I want to know of some more TV shows whose amazing first series/season was completely undermined by a crappy, lazy, or just plain awful second.

from what I remember, twin peaks had really taken off in popularity. The TV execs were pressuring the writers to reveal the killer way ahead of schedule (that's why it's shown half-way through the second season and almost completely shoe-horned in) it's a shame because I enjoyed the first season (damn good coffee!) but the second season was horrible.

A better (-ish?) example - Heroes. The first season was good, then it went downhill. And I don't remember if it was then or the third one when all characters apparently underwent lobotomy - offscreen and unmentioned.

God that was terrible, I thought the first season of Heroes was great! but the second season was over-flowing with heroes (I thought they were 'rare'?) and I just couldn't get into it despite the fact I really really wanted to enjoy it.

I know it doesn't count as a 'second season' but when they brought Family Guy back from being cancelled it stopped being funny after a couple episodes. They completely lost what made it great in the first place.

 

[IamQ]

Death note.

The first season is so awesome. So brilliantly thrilling and just great in almost every way.

Spoiler

Then the whole businesspeople arc comes along, and everything goes to shit.
And Mello...
And Near...
Don't get me started on that fucking guy.

It's still worth watching though, if only for the sake of the first season.
Incidentally, I spoiled the ending to the series for a guy just yesterday.

Yeah, I didn't like the second season either.

Spoiler

It stopped being a rivaliry, started getting too complicated (At the end of the manga, when near shows the death note and tells Light how he tricked him, there was just too much information for me to handle.). I also didn't like how in control N was. While L was in control quite a bit, he still made misstakes and got foiled at times. Hell, he himself says that it was a desperate measure to go to Light's high school. It was the ultimate gamble for him.

N never makes any sacrifice. He just sits there being pretentious, and you know nothing exiting will happen to him, because he is too damn perfect to make misstakes.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I'm going to say Heroes, although honestly the second season wasn't crap, just underwhelming compared to the first. It was the third that really dropped the ball.

theres a reason for that, most of the original cast were planned to be killed off in the s1 finale. So we could get a new bunch.

Not to mention they changed writing process.

s1 writers were given characters and told to write plots for them and interact with other teams as needed.

s2 it was all round-table.

I had hopes for that show.

I was wondering why the second season played out like a (really bad) sci-fi 2-parter in terms of pacing, while the first played more like an episodic comic book.

And I liked the first season, only to wonder what the hell they were snorting when season 2 rolled around because the pacing....arrrgh!

 

[hermes]

I'm going to say Heroes, although honestly the second season wasn't crap, just underwhelming compared to the first. It was the third that really dropped the ball.

Ninja'd. Heroes was also my example of a series that jumped the shark between seasons.

Another example: Babylon 5. Although there are contractual reasons behind it, the jump from season 4 to 5 felt like a different series.

 

[SckizoBoy]

hnnnnngghh

Don't know which one was worse, the anime or the manga... such a massive let-down post-L in both.

I'll throw one out for Bakemonotagari to Nishimonotagari.

Both fan-service heavy but Nishi really pushed it for me. Watching a brother and sister having what is pretty much a sex act between the two was really uncomfortable.

Yeah, watched that recently, and at least the first one had some basis in Japanese folklore, but the second series was pretty much pure pandering.

Though I quite liked R2... :/

OT: Dare I mentioned the Matrix trilogy... *uneasy grin*

Still, keeping on the anime theme: Gunslinger Girl, and never mind the visual style, the retelling from the manga was rather dry and the voice acting (for all it was a higher profile cast than the first series) was decidedly worse...

 

[wooty]

I know I'll get abuse for this comment but.....Top Gear.

From about halfway through the "new style" of TG its just become too stupid to handle. I think I gave up on it about 4 years ago because it was either silly or very repetitive.


Doctor Who(Tennants tenure) would also get a nodded vote from me in this category too.

 

[SilverBullets000]

I'm going to be lame here and say Spongebob. After the gay scandal hit, they stopped relying on wit and pretty much turned their characters from likeable albeit annoying to annoyingly homoerotic sadists.

There's also Gantz, who's anime ended in the worst way possible (read: Filler-ending). I guess it wasn't all that great even at first, but the interesting ideas in it kept me watching.