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Can you name some shows that changed one of their main characters for a new season or whatever it may be. Did it make it better or worse?
I will start with "That 70's Show", when they first changed the sister Lorie. The original sister fit that role perfect and the new sister was...well not great. Then they changed Eric from Topher to whoever the other guy was and the show sucked as soon as that happened.
one of my favorite shows when it was out was NYPD blue, they did it multiple times. when Jimmy Smits replaced David Caruso after the 1st season, the show didn't miss a beat.
but later on when the show was trying to hang on, they changed out almost everyone, and it just got ridiculous.
A Different World made one of the most dramatic changes.
The show was originally a spin off from the Cosby Show, and was about Denise Huxtable going to college. It was a silly sit com with moronic-but-politically-correct plots of the sort that were pretty common in 80s sit coms. The dopiest character was "Whitley", who played this rich girl/princess cliche complete with her own lady in waiting.
The show made a major change for the better after Lisa Bonet and Marisa Tomei left the show (yes, Marisa Tomei was Denises's white roommate on a show about a black college. She was too old to play a freshman in college, plus the writers never seemed to want her to go to class or act like a college kid. Mostly she seemed to go on dates, buy funky room decorations, and be ever present in the dorm room to have chats with Denise. Like I said, the characters in the first season were dopey.)
The second season was much more dramatic, and focused on little vignettes about what it was like to attend an all-black college. Since this was a show about a black college, the directors finally got smart and made most of the characters black (the first season had more of a "rainbow" student population). There were a lot more plots that were about college life in general, and considerably more scenes set in class rooms, as well as computer labs, the library, the dean's office, and fraternities. Whitley became the leading character. Since she was now the lead they had to make her much more believable. That meant her weird "lady in waiting" character (Millie) disappeared, and her character became less of a one dimensional "princess". She was changed into a pampered girl learning about life, taking classes that were challenging, and also trying to figure out how to use an art history major in the real world. Several new characters were added, and they seemed like much more believable college students.
The show also had an abrupt change in purpose. During the first season, ADW was intended as a spin off. It then made a dramatic shift, and was changed into an alter ego show for Cosby--in other words, A Different World deliberately addressed issues that were avoided by The Cosby Show writers, such as racial fights, alcoholism, spousal abuse, class relations, sexual harassment, the 1982 election, etc. Most famously it was one of the first American network television episodes to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and I believe also the first to have an episode about the Los Angeles riots.
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Bewitched -- Darren changed from Dick York to Dick Sargeant. And Samantha never noticed....
Two and a half men.
