From awesome to crap in one move

[Eamar]

Another vote for Heroes.

I'd actually forgotten about how much I adored that show in season 1. In fact, I'd pretty much forgotten all about it. This thread has made me sad now

 

[shrekfan246]

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.

The entirety of the post movie spongebob episodes.

For live action TV, the seventh season of Deep Space Nine. While it was still good, it was very rushed, since it had to create an entirely new character arc for Ezri, Dukat went from a complex villain to Skeletor evil, and even Sisko and the Dominion became less complex and more transparent.

Yeah, Spongebob really tanked in quality after the movie came out. They changed the dynamic of the characters completely and essentially turned them into caricatures of themselves; Which, considering their already one-dimensional nature is a pretty bad thing.

Also, as far as DS9 goes, I agree that the final season was still pretty good but obviously rushed. The reason I actually quoted Soviet Heavy is because I wanted to say that Gul Dukat is one of my favorite fictional villains ever.

Even if he did go cartoonishly evil in season 7, the writers did at least try to justify it with the whole "He goes crazy because of his daughter's murder" thing from season 6. Before that, he was almost certainly one of the best written and acted villains I've ever seen.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

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.

The entirety of the post movie spongebob episodes.

For live action TV, the seventh season of Deep Space Nine. While it was still good, it was very rushed, since it had to create an entirely new character arc for Ezri, Dukat went from a complex villain to Skeletor evil, and even Sisko and the Dominion became less complex and more transparent.

Yeah, Spongebob really tanked in quality after the movie came out. They changed the dynamic of the characters completely and essentially turned them into caricatures of themselves; Which, considering their already one-dimensional nature is a pretty bad thing.

Also, as far as DS9 goes, I agree that the final season was still pretty good but obviously rushed. The reason I actually quoted Soviet Heavy is because I wanted to say that Gul Dukat is one of my favorite fictional villains ever.

Even if he did go cartoonishly evil in season 7, the writers did at least try to justify it with the whole "He goes crazy because of his daughter's murder" thing from season 6. Before that, he was almost certainly one of the best written and acted villains I've ever seen.

Except that Dukat coming to terms with his own insanity in the episode Waltz would have been a perfect end to his character. That episode was flipping dark, and it delved into why Dukat was the way he was, and how he wasn't really "evil" as much as he was the Cardassian's equivalent of Sisko. He was so utterly driven by his conviction and his belief in Cardassia's role as a super power and its responsibility to rule over those less developed.

He wasn't evil, but in an insanely twisted way, you can see why he would think the way he did.

 

[shrekfan246]

Except that Dukat coming to terms with his own insanity in the episode Waltz would have been a perfect end to his character. That episode was flipping dark, and it delved into why Dukat was the way he was, and how he wasn't really "evil" as much as he was the Cardassian's equivalent of Sisko. He was so utterly driven by his conviction and his belief in Cardassia's role as a super power and its responsibility to rule over those less developed.

He wasn't evil, but in an insanely twisted way, you can see why he would think the way he did.

Well, that's why I said that up until the seventh season he was one of the best written and acted villains I've ever seen.

I don't know why they didn't let his character depart after that. Maybe they wanted a well-established villain for the final season and they didn't think Weyoun could carry it by himself.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Except that Dukat coming to terms with his own insanity in the episode Waltz would have been a perfect end to his character. That episode was flipping dark, and it delved into why Dukat was the way he was, and how he wasn't really "evil" as much as he was the Cardassian's equivalent of Sisko. He was so utterly driven by his conviction and his belief in Cardassia's role as a super power and its responsibility to rule over those less developed.

He wasn't evil, but in an insanely twisted way, you can see why he would think the way he did.

Well, that's why I said that up until the seventh season he was one of the best written and acted villains I've ever seen.

I don't know why they didn't let his character depart after that. Maybe they wanted a well-established villain for the final season and they didn't think Weyoun could carry it by himself.

I don't think they wanted to let go of him, which was a shame. They already had the Female Shapeshifter to play the genocidal maniac role, and Weyoun was just Weyoun. The Breen were introduced, and Dumar had already developed into a more complex character that he couldn't just be a Dukat replacement.

 

[Lugbzurg]

Sonic the Hedgehog

Let's take out the physics and replace them with a cheap boost!

 

[Pickles]

This isn't an exact fit, but the Naruto series does something similar.

Any episodes based on the manga are basically guaranteed to be incredible, but any of the filler arcs that are anime-only are always complete shit.

Considering episodes 136 to TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY of the first series were filler...holy shit did it get terrible. The worst offenders were the one-episode fillers. Ugh.

Something that did this as bad as or worse than naruto was bleach. Their fillers were godawful. They actually had one filler near the end that was pretty good, but they wrapped up the story with about 10 weeks left before the main started again, so just stretched out an already finished story. Also, fillers about all powerful death gods playing soccer or cooking with humans are cringe-worthy.

Something else I found that I thought was pretty interesting - some guy calculated that on average a third of every naruto episode is flashback. I love the show but dammnnn thats a bit much.

 

[Pickles]

OT:Bleach, it started out great but the moment a foot was stepped into Soul Society it just morphed into a ball of rancid shit and has been rolling around gaining size and momentum like a snowball ever since.

Really? I would have said it was good up until the end of the soul society arc. I reckon most of the interesting characters aren't introduced then. Fair enough though, its the kind of show that people can get sick of for a lot of reasons

Edit: Didn't mean to double post, refreshed after the first one and saw another comment I wanted to reply to..

 

[Riff Moonraker]

Whoops, my bad. From your title, I thought you were going to talk about Mass Effect 3.

 

[Archl]

It wasn't so much the second season that ruined shows for me, but the actual ending

Soul Eater: I thought this show was actually really excellent, sort of a cross between a condensed version of the action/battles of DBZ and the humor of FMA. And then the ending, that last episode....god is it horrible. At least to me

Spoiler

Makka like goes unconscious, and we discover that she's, in fact, a Meister/Weapon hybrid, which is actually quite awesome and something they should have expanded upon. But she gets her ass kicked by the big bad guy Kishen. Then she remembers that her mother sent her a postcard with the word "bravery" and suddenly she just magically wins. And then it stops. That's it. That's literally the last episode

Claymore: Somewhat the same sort of thing as Soul Eater, there's a big battle with the main bad guy which leads up to the final episode

Spoiler

The last episode comes from Claire not being able to control her Yoshi powers and defeats the main villain all within the first five minutes. Then as she's about to Awaken (become a demon) all her friends come together and help her regain control and they all just say "Welp...see ya!" and head their separate ways

They were both just a little too deus ex machina for my taste. And there was no closure, no nothing. They both just sort of...stopped

Both of these shows were made into an anime while the manga was still ongoing. So after a while the animators have to produce the episodes without anything to base it on... So I guess it's logical that the ending are slightly weird. Doesn't fix the show, but makes it slightly better understandable.

 

[RyoScar]

The ending to the film Knowing did this for me, I was enjoying it, then the cop out ending happened.

 

[Thistlehart]

Firefly.

Seriously, the second season was a tragedy.

 

[Jmurray21]

are we limited to tv? because i was going to mention The Avengers movie. literally every scene in that movie is awesome... until Captain America steps in. seriously. any scene is going great and he just steps in and single-highhandedly ruins it.

Blasphemy!!!!

Captain America was great in that movie. He was my absolute favourite.

 

[Cry Wolf]

I can't think of any shows that took such an abrupt turn between the first and second seasons; but between season two and three Andromeda went from a flawed-but-promising science fiction series to fuck knows what that pile of shit was.

The same is true of Being Human (the proper British one, fools!) between season three and season four. Words cannot describe how horrible that was.

It's also true of Supernatural, which went from pretty cool still in season four to a steaming pile of shit in season five - and it only gets worse every season. That show needs to be put out of it's misery.

Wait! I remember some season one to season two drops:

Dark Angel. I actually thought that was pretty cool until the horendous second season

Walking Dead. Fuck that second season was boring. I'm glad the third has more promise.

 

[Johann610]

I seem to remember that X-Men, the Sat-AM cartoon series, extended to something like 5 seasons. The last season:
--Changed some voice actors
--Shifted the art to garish colors which were noticeably lighter and softer
--Brought back a major villain that the series had just established (last season) was gone for good, in a single "dark ritual".
The art shift--the first change--must have been that one move. Those changes lasted 5-ish episodes before the series was canceled.

 

[Imper1um]

To be honest, although I love Firefly (the series), the movie really messes up things for me. When they killed the monk (the most interesting character in the series), and Wash, it really, really annoyed me.

Heck, it was centered around the least interesting characters in the show, and brought a light to the things that was the "boogey man" in the series.

If I could use a neutralizer to remove something from my brain, it would be the entirety of Serenity (the movie).