They Changed It, Now It Sucks/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Game Shows, in spades.
    • The survey questions asked during Family Feud, progressively since the current version began in 1999 but full-blown during the Steve Harvey era that began in 2010. The point of contention was pedestrian questions such as "Name something that a clown takes off after his show ends" becoming "Name something a woman would take off a clown before having sex with him." While outrageous answers have always been possible with even the most mundane questions, they are regular occurrences on virtually every episode of the Harvey era.
    • A recent season of American Ninja Warrior got a lot of flack from fans due to changing the format of the third round elimination from eliminating based on performance to a more typical reality TV-based elimination (complete with teams and voting), believing that it goes against all that Ninja Warrior is about. The idea of boot camp itself, however, is much better received.
    • Fans pretty much touted this once Drew Carey succeeded Bob Barker on The Price Is Right. As one person said, "Those hardcore fans won't be happy with anything unless they go back to the way it was 20-25 years ago." The same cry rang out as Season 37 (the first after Roger Dobkowitz was kicked out) progressed, which to be fair was justified.
    • A lot of fans decided they hated Mock the Week when Frankie Boyle left. On the official Facebook page for the show, comments are still in the vein of "OMG WHERES FRANKIE IT SUX WITHOUT HIM".
    • Some say this happened to Whose Line Is It Anyway? when it moved from British to American TV. Common reasons given include the changing of hosts from Clive Anderson to Drew Carey, the appearance of more celebrity guests (especially Richard Simmons), and the fact that Colin and Ryan were in every single episode (and Wayne was in most of them as well) instead of taking more risks and shuffling the cast around more, as they did in the earlier British seasons.
  • This happened to Doctor Who as the new series was in production. Fans found lots of things to complain about, one of the most infamous being the enlarged TARDIS windows. The series itself eventually made fun of this point, with a character commenting that the TARDIS can't be a real police box, because "the windows are too big".
    • It happened all the time with the old series, too -- remember, this is a series that's had nine complete turnovers in the regular cast and over a dozen different showrunners with wildly varying approaches. Years before the new series debuted, there was a running joke on one of the online discussion groups that the series was Ruined FOREVER when they added the time-travelling alien to a perfectly good show about a policeman walking through the fog and hearing a strange noise.
    • A decent number of fans are now complaining about all the changes happening for the coming 2010 season. New Doctor, new companion, new TARDIS exterior AND interior, new sonic screwdriver, new showrunners. Apparently, despite the show going through constant change practically every other season since 2005 since 1963, all of this together is just too much, and the show is ruined.
    • Matt Smith has received a fair amount of hate just for not being David Tennant. Go figure.
    • There's also the hate over the increasingly romantic and sexual nature of the Doctor's relationships with his female companions. The subjects of Martha vs. Rose and Rose vs. River are definitely sore spots in the community. This is to be expected since the fanbase is so large that getting any of them to agree exactly on anything is completely impossible.
    • For example: fat hunchback plastic day glow colored Daleks! And they actually declare the previous models inferior and blow them up.
    • And then there's the theme song. When it became very orchestrated from 2005 on, many fans decried that it had lost its original electronic feel. Then Murray Gold added a new melody to it for the fifth series. Hoo boy.
  • Many fans of Skins hated the second generation cast. Your mileage may vary on that one, as the second generation is still beloved my many. Then there's the third generation...
  • Downton Abbey fans general responses to the second season. Some elements of the series are altered drastically with the advent of World War One, although a great deal remains the same, which, in turn, has spawned an outcry from other portions of the fandom, who protest that the narrative glosses over or speeds by too many major global events to be considered realistic. An unfortunate but unavoidable side-effect of setting a drama series during a time of extreme social and political upheaval
  • Knight Rider fans have a bad habit of becoming homicidally enraged at any changes from the original source material in the various Revival attempts of the series, even such changes as would be necessary to compensate for the fact that (a) it's no longer 1982 and (b) the Pontiac Trans Am has been out of production for several years. A new revival premiered in February, 2008, and, months before, fans have already taken note of several dozen reasons it is sure to suck. Of course, it did eventually turn out to suck anyway, but that doesn't make it right.
  • Similarly, the 2003 "re-imagining" of Battlestar Galactica, generally considered excellent Adaptation Distillation and Darker and Edgier done right, was met with a lot of backlash by fans of the 1978 original, and even by one cast member, Dirk Benedict, who wrote a rant on how changing his Loveable Rogue character Starbuck into a woman (and thus making the character something other than Han Solo) had somehow destroyed the character and ruined the show forever.
    • Benedict has railed on-record numerous times about the "feminization of TV", and suggested once that if The A-Team were to be made now it would be called The Gay Team. What can be inferred from that combined with his love of very large cigars is debatable.
  • The Dresden Files made a lot of (author approved) changes when it made it to TV. Interestingly, it was the little changes that got lambasted the most. Harry Dresden no longer wore a trenchcoat (they didn't want him looking like an Angel ripoff) and didn't drive the same car (while it might look good in text a 6+ foot man cannot drive a compact. It just doesn't work).
    • AND they changed his staff to a hockey stick to try and "hide" the fact that he's a wizard (kind of strange for someone who advertises in the yellow pages). At that point, griped the whiny fans, it's not a cosmetic change, it's a completely different character with the same name. Because... hockey stick!
    • Interestingly, the people who complained about the car change the most were invariably the people who had lampshaded that difficulty the most in bookverse fanfiction.
    • Some of the complaints were downright silly, notably the brunette actress who played Murphy; she'd actually read the books before the audition, which made her more familiar with the series than the directors' first choice for Murphy.
      • Though there are claims that Race Lift for Murphy and Susan was entirely because the producers felt that each actress worked better as the other character.
    • Unfortunately, this has also caused some bookfans to be prejudiced against the graphic novels, even though Jim Butcher wrote the script for one and was heavily consulted on the script for their adaptation of Storm Front.
    • One of the biggest points of contention is of course Bob. A perverted chattering skull-carving that was never human in the books, a somewhat debonair human ghost inhabiting his own cursed skull in the TV series. The showmakers did do screentests with a skull-only Bob, but found that much like a very large man in a very small car, it just wouldn't work for television. Plus, as is shown in some of the earlier episodes of the show where Bob's personality is much closer to the book's, the super-smug, overwhelmingly perverted, completely amoral personality can get grating really fast when you're subjected to it for long stretches of time.
  • Stargate Atlantis is currently experiencing a fandom that is divided between froth-at-the-mouth fans who enjoy the show and froth-at-the-mouth ex-fans that decry all of the advances made in Season Four. Stargate forums aren't happy places to be anymore...
    • The fanbase currently has people who like or simply don't mind the new direction Stargate Universe is taking. Then the people who, at seemingly every new mention of Universe, are ready with "This isn't the stargate I grew to love!" or "I want Atlantis back!" Of course there's also 'OH GOD! That's it! I'm not watching it." But, of course, they will. Because while it's not necessary to watch a show to complain about it, it does help. This isn't the same show as SG-1 or Atlantis, nor it is supposed to be, but there are people who will hate it for not being SG-1 or Atlantis.
    • Speaking of Stargate, the ninth season of Stargate SG-1 got a lot of flak at the beginning for even continuing on after the Goa'uld were defeated at the end of the previous season, and coming up with a new main villain -- not to mention O'Neill leaving the show and Mitchell joining as the new leader of SG-1. Carter being temporarily absent from the show for the first five episodes didn't help matters either. The changes were so extensive that the Powers That Be had actually considered changing the show's title to "Stargate Command" and treating season 9 as the first season of a new show -- it's possible that if they'd done that, the changes might have actually been better received.
  • Anything from Super Sentai ported to Power Rangers that isn't 100% true to source is grounds for gasping and fist-shaking. Admittedly, some of it is worthy of decrying, but... getting in a tussle because the heroes don't say "Henshin"? Or that they don't have the same morphers? Check out Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, and you'll have numerous people hating it because it's not Japanese.
  • Same vein as Kamen Rider, Kamen Rider Hibiki was Ruined FOREVER in the eyes of execs due to the fact it had a FEMALE rider on TV (Femme was officially the first female rider, but Shuki was the first to appear on TV), something that is considered "taboo" with Kamen Rider (most females who had to transform had to rely on an anybody can use Transformation Trinket or is a rubber monster). Needless to say, the exec associated the failure of the later season of Hibiki with a female rider being one of them.
  • Kamen Rider has a parody in the comedic net movies for the 40th anniversary movie. Kamen Rider 1 delivers a speech in which he says that the younger Riders who aren't "real" Kamen Riders because they aren't tragic cyborgs and none of them (save Hibiki) has undergone Training from Hell, unlike the classic Riders.
  • Speaking of Power Rangers, they just started to re-air the first one. Of course, they changed it, adding cheesy comic book effects and such ala 1960s Batman.
  • The Discworld TV adaptations. Many fans loved them, but in a classic example of Unpleasable Fanbase, there were some criticisms that Teatime should have been more obviously insane and less obviously insane in the same discussion. But Hogfather got off lightly compared to Colour of Magic, where, in addition to Rincewind being "too old", the creators committed the ultimate sin of getting rid of the aeroplane scene (a totally unnecessary sequence in which most of the comedy occurs inside Rincewind's head in any case). The fact that Terry Pratchett had approved these changes was claimed as evidence he doesn't understand his own books.
  • Legend of the Seeker got oodles of this from fans who object to, among many other things: changes to Richard's relationship with Zedd, moving Richard's father's death to after he meets Kahlan, and changing the main villain's hair color. Indeed, it got so much of this that the outcry and negative press from the They Changed It, Now It Sucks crowd is sometimes blamed for killing the TV show after the second season.
    • What fans fail to realize is that airing the show in a format truly faithful to the books would have been nearly impossible on network television. Many complaints, like the overall Hercules or Xena tone of the show and others, are perfectly valid. But when you're adapting a series as filled with violence and adult situations as Sword of Truth for basic cable, a Pragmatic Adaptation is the best you're going to get.
  • MST3K was accused of this with every cast change, especially when Joel left.
    • One story told in their Amazing Colossal Episode Guide was about a viewer who sent in a yards-long, computer-printed banner reading "I HATE TOM SERVO'S NEW VOICE", after Josh Weinstein left and Kevin Murphy took over Tom's controls in the second season. The crew hung the banner up in their offices, amused more than anything at the idea that somebody went to the trouble and expense of producing this massive missive instead of just sending a letter. Who knew that in these days, ventriloquism could be such Serious Business?
  • Because of copyright issues, Iron Chef had to change the music. Some people now refuse to watch the show because 'it's not the same without the Backdraft music'.
  • CBS Evening News post-Walter Cronkite, particularly as Dan Rather's tenure coincided with increasing ratings declines.
    • Cranked Up to Eleven with the further declines under Katie Couric.
  • Star Trek with each new project.
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation dared to have new characters, because the universe wasn't big enough for a captain not named Kirk.
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is about staying in one place? Oh... it relied on its characters and a coherent story instead of the weekly Negative Space Wedgie.
    • Star Trek: Voyager ...admittedly, the premise of Voyager was well received. The complaints about the show are internal to its writing and not to the franchise as a whole.
    • Star Trek: Enterprise got this in regards to Fanon. Among this was somehow believing Spock was the typical Vulcan personality despite him, his father Sarek and Tuvok of Voyager being about the only noble (and well acted) Vulcans in the franchise. Otherwise most other Vulcans encountered had all of the arrogance and nothing to back it up.
      • Some fans that were angry that it contradicted the "fact" that Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet. Since obviously no Vulcan joined Starfleet between the founding of the Federation to Spock, and the all-Vulcan ship crew from TOS must have all joined after Spock. Yes.
    • And then there's the "remastered" Star Trek TOS. Better special effects (with extreme pains taken to make sure no actual events are altered) that sometimes fit the original script better than the original version (due to problems the original faced like "low budget" and "it being the 60s") are an unforgivable sin, apparently. Despite the fact that one can watch the original unedited versions ON the Blu-ray if one so desires.
  • Pick a Game Show. Any game show. Chances are that any set revamps, rule changes, and new hosts (whether it's justified or not) will be hated by a lot of the fans. If a series is by Fremantle Media, and especially if it's a revival, this trope will be justified approximately 99% of the time.
  • Saturday Night Live has been accused of sucking because of its small-scale and large-scale changes in cast and crew. Due to the show's cyclical nature, the cast has been rotating ever since the first season (when Chevy Chase was replaced by Bill Murray). The accusations still exist today, ironically with fans claiming that the show needs a cast and crew overhaul, only this time, with more talented people — whatever that means to them. While most of these accusations can be chalked up to Unpleasable Fanbase, some are a definite Base Breaker within the fanbase (like the near-universally panned 1980-81 season, which resulted in most of the cast being fired and the 1994-95 season, which was hit hard by Phil Hartman's departure, backstage tensions between writers and cast members, thin, humorless sketches that were heavily based on Ho Yay, Refuge in Vulgarity, OverlyLongGags, and the O.J. Simpson trial, and cast members that didn't gel well with others). Step into any online thread discussing the show (or better yet, read some of the show's complaints on any comment section on NBC's SNL web page or on Jump the Shark.com) today, and you'll usually find someone complaining about how the show was "better five years ago" or "hasn't been funny since [insert former cast member's name here] was on the show."
    • In the same genre, SCTV (the Canadian equivalent of SNL) drew fire from viewers when, for its fourth season, the show moved from its Sunday night slot on NBC (where it was competing against SNL) to the Cinemax pay cable channel for its final season. The show petered out amid criticism of most of the cast having left (along with most of the most memorable characters) - never mind that the entire reason this move happened was because of Executive Meddling on the part of NBC.
  • When Degrassi the Next Generation changes seasons, they change the opening credits theme. No matter how they change the opening credits Fans decree its wrong. When for the most part the themes aren't that separated from one another (same words, different singers/melody). With the exception of two seasons that completely draw away from the standard opening set-up, they are mostly the same but each season starts with a fan outcry to begin World War III over it.
  • When they replaced Linda Hamilton's character Catherine in the CBS-TV series Beauty and the Beast, some fans didn't take lightly to that.
  • The television adaptations of Agatha Christie's Poirot and Miss Marple can receive this treatment. In particular, the Marple adaptations starring Geraldine McEwan have been known to take great liberties with the original source material, adding in plots and characters which were not present in the originals. Conversely, the Poirot adaptations starring David Suchet have generally remained faithful to the novels, but they have also made certain changes in style, setting and approach (the stories all take place in a general Genteel Interbellum Setting rather than across the period of 1916–1970 as with the originals) that have come under criticism. In particular, the adaptation of The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd came under fire for this; the original does, however, hinge on a narrative technique that is rather more difficult to replicate in live action.
  • When The ABC chose to hire a new host for the popular gaming show Good Game, it meant they had to farewell longtime host Jeremy "Junglist" Ray. Fans erupted with emphatic disdain, spamming the forum with hate for the new host, Stephanie "Hex" Bendixsen, and crying that they would never watch Good Game again, or until Junglist came back. They started a Facebook page (now renamed with its cause given up) and a Web site (formerly at savejunglist.com, but it's now been bought out by one of those spam search engine or domain parking sites). The cause was forgotten little more than a fortnight later. That doesn't stop the Fan Dumb whining about how bad the show has become during every week's feedback board on their forum.
  • Human Target added two new main characters and changed the dynamic of the show in the second season. This is not universally loved. At all.
  • So far, all signs point to the live-action adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire as being an excellent Adaptation Distillation. But that hasn't stopped people complaining about how the deaths of two Red Shirts in the prologue and first chapter were switched.
  • Smallville was this to the Superman mythos. No matter what they did, it was inevitable that some faction of the notoriously Unpleasable Fanbase would be infuriated by the writers' interpretations of the Superman comics. Inevitably, fans would accuse the writers of "not being true to the source material"...never mind the fact that the comics themselves have changed continuities/canon drastically over and over again. In general, the Smallville writers seemed to be going for a sort of mixture of ideas from all eras/versions of the Superman mythos (Lex living in Smallville was from the Silver Age, the Fortress of Solitude design from the Chris Reeve films, Brainiac being from Krypton was borrowed from Superman: The Animated Series, etc.). The thing is, fans of one era/version of the mythos would always be angered when another era/version was used as inspiration.
  • Heroes Season 3 was regarded as a pretty good season...except for the fact that they killed off two universally popular characters in Daphne and Elle. Season 4 looked like it would have an example of changing something for the better by bringing back previously killed character Charlie but proceeded to mess it up immensely
  • iCarly and its change in focus from comedy to a five-part romantic arc for the Sam/Freddie pairing has been called this. The horrible ratings (bottom 5 out of 40 episodes with ratings information) for the 3rd episode (it was beaten by Victorious) would seem to confirm the wider audience thinks so as well.
  • Eli forbids Xena: Warrior Princess and Gabrielle to love each other, so they genocide the Gods, the Centaurs, the Amazons etc until Dahak and Ares are the only Powers in the Universe.
  • Survivor has suffered a LOT of this at the hands of fans.
    • First, there are certain fans who automatically dismiss ANY season that took place after season seven(the season before All Stars, which many of them said made the show Jump the Shark). This is due to the shift in editing on the producers part, where after season seven they started to focus more and more on the strategy of the players and "shocking" twists at the expense of everything else. According to these purists, everything from production values to the intro credits to just plain storytelling ability has gone down the toilet since then.
    • In particular, the final three has been argued as not working the way it was intended to. Instead of making it harder for a dominant player to take another unlikable player to the finals and win the game easily, not only have TWO dominant players managed to drag along goats and win that way with a final three anyhow, giving the jury a third option on who to vote for has been said to give the jury the option of voting for players who could basically sit pretty and do nothing the entire game(as opposed to the moral dilemma usually faced by final two juries).
    • Even people who enjoy the newer seasons have been turned off by host Jeff Probst's favoritism towards certain players from the most recent seasons, like Coach, Russell Hantz, and Boston Rob just to name a few.
  • Has been the attitude of quite a few CSI fans since Grissom left and was replaced by Ray Langston. Now it's being inverted in the eyes of some, who feel that Ted Danson's arrival made things a lot better.
  • Highlander the Series got this big time after Richie's death.
  • Due South got accused of this by some after the switch of the Rays.
  • Bones, post Season 6. Some fans started the Ruined FOREVER cries after Booth/Brennan happened onscreen and Brennan got pregnant.
  • It is quite a bit premature, but the more details CBS is releasing about its new series Elementary, the more the potential fans are boycotting it. It is to be a modernized retelling of Sherlock Holmes. Set in New York City. With a former Scotland Yard consultant, fresh out of rehab Sherlock. And a female Watson. Who's not a ex-army doctor, but an ex-surgeon who lost her license after a patient died. Suffice it to say, the changes being made to the story of Sherlock Holmes make people's fears understandable.
    • Well, to be fair, most/some of the hate is coming from the Sherlock fans, due to it's similarity.
  • Supernatural, Season 4, saw a lot of this in the fandom with the introduction of Castiel and the angels. It happened again in reverse in Season 7 when they were taken out of the picture.
  • Any time anything or anyone was added to or removed from the premise of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the show lost support from a corner of it's viewing audience.
  • True Blood's fourth season went through an enormous initial backlash by the fanbase, for the unbelievable changes they made to the series' setting. For one, Bill Compton had killed one of the most popular characters, Sophie-Anne, and taken her place as monarch of Louisiana. To say the least, fans were none too pleased, as most had already grown quite weary with Bill midway through season two.

Pam: I am so over Sookie and her precious fairy vagina! *breaks down and cries*

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