Idk how much audience feedback played a role in these, but Community was way more Jeff centric in the first few episodes before it became more of an ensemble cast show. 30 Rock was similar - as they developed the characters they still had Liz and Jack as an anchor but all the others played a more active role and the show was better for it.
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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Man the second season of Carnival Row was real rough. The weird "Communists don't really believe anything, it's all a front for their directionless murderous rage, and the only group of anti racists in the setting are secretly bad" subplot really put a damper on it for me.
Star Trek TNG?
The Orville?
Did The Orville get better in response to the viewership's criticisms or was it that Seth McFarlane was allowed the freedom to shift away from "Family Guy" run he was stuck in?
DS9 Seasons 1 and 2 Had some stinkers as well but it got better and better with every season
I was thinking both of those, which both got better as they went along.
Always Sunny? It had a pretty cold reception for its first season, then Danny Devito got involved and it became the longest running live action sitcom ever.
I think there's more than a few shows that get better as they find their stride. I think that's different from a show changing course because of feedback. I can think of some times audience reaction affects which characters get brought back or are given prominence, Its harder to think of where they otherwise change the show's direction, and it ends up working.
Parks and Rec? I think.
It feels like most TV shows/movies, and I specifically mean TV shows not meant for children, meat one of these failure points:
- are being written for viewers who've only seen one or two TV shows before in their lives
- are dry riding an interesting tagline or source material's popularity and do not give af about respecting it
- most episodes, if not all, usually not the pilot and finale, feel like they were planned and written at the last-minute in isolation by roving bands of ghost writers whose job description is to write filler content and constantly switch between random IPs they have no previous knowledge of.
- are Marvelizing
- get canceled while considered good and popularity is hot and rising.
- get offered no budget while generic stuff gets insane budgets.
- get passed over while unnecessary remakes and reboots take their place
- remakes/reboots pretending they are sequels (e.g. Star Wars 7)
My wild hunch is that (many) decades ago in the pre-digital era - there surely must be examples where letter writing campaigns worked and made a show better. And - of course - this was an era where sending a message to a network required the effort of (hand) writing a letter and the cost of a stamp.
Of course every show is responding to feedback. They’re being produced by businesses, and they’re paying attention to ratings, critics, chatter, etc. So pretty much any show that’s had a bad season followed by bounce back would’ve been responding to criticism. What you’re talking about are the specific cases where the criticism becomes part of the zeitgeist and the changes in response are so blatant. And yeah, that never pans out well because that’s almost always a case of over correction.
Hoping the Lord of the Rings show can do something because that first season was God awful.
Really can't imagine it will tho
you couldn't make me not enjoy something that upset so many people, I kept telling dorks online that of course it's different from the written canon, this show is fun, LotR isn't supposed to be fun :)
Yeah, it's definitely fodder for some trolling.
I followed some LOTR YouTubers, and I got enjoyment from watching them half-heartedly pretending to like it.
One of them even made a new channel just so he could talk about Andor lmao. Imagine getting the first LOTR project in decades and then jumping ship to a new franchise because it just sucks so bad lmao
Star Trek: TNG possibly? I’m not sure if it was fan feedback or what, but they mixed things up after a bad season 1 and things greatly improved
True Detective maybe
a tv show that got better later
almost can't even think of an example of that
the wire, sopranos
I'm too young to have seen those lol.
good God
idk I liked all of those except the later seasons of GoT
Frankly, I can only think of shows that got worse.
Lost