I re-watched the first few episodes of The League last night and was (mildly) shocked by how much Andre has changed. When the show started, he knew all the hot fashion brands, the trendy wineries, etc. Of course, the joke was that he was a nerd who looked ridiculous wearing the same clothes that Vin Diesel and Samuel Jackson wear. But now Andre might walk around in a complete steampunk or Sherlock Holmes outfit for no obvious reason, and he's apparently become completely unaware of the gay double entendres the rest of the gang seem to throw at him constantly.

Total Flanderization in my book.

Dexter is an interesting case.



Overall, Dexter's humanization should have been a central theme to the show. It wasn't so it's more likely the writers just sucked and made him dumber.

Didn't that actually happen in an episode?

This was one of the reasons I quit watching The Office. Having seen "unnatural selection" (a process where a person is promoted because of their performance at a lower job, rather than their ability to perform the higher job) occur too many times (and still seeing it today), I thought Michael's struggles with being "the boss" were entertaining -- funny and sometimes even heartwarming. This was a nice contrast from the original where David Brent had a similar personality disorder, but was oblivious to his own behavior to the point of being irredeemable.

As the (American) series continued Michael simply became a buffoon and I lost interest. It was about the time he had an affair with his boss. This had some heartfelt moments, but resulted in utter garbage in the aftermath. It was no longer the intelligent comedy it started out as.

Yes.

I don't recall Kevin being all that bright from the beginning. As you are probably aware his character was based on a similar character from the BBC series (Keith), and he was pretty dim-witted as well, so it's not like Kevin was ever meant to be "normal."

Besides, Kevin has one of my favorite lines in the series:

My worst breakup was with Stacy. It was a Sunday morning. We were reading the paper and I said, "Oh, my God, I think the Eagles could clinch the NFC East." And she said that we're done.

Also Kevin would occasionally show signs of hidden smarts, like when he revealed that he had won a World Series of Poker bracelet.

Kevin was always pretty dim-witted yes but as the series went on he got a lot more dumb it seems like to me. He went from being the oddball that was a bit off to being pretty close to actually being mentally challenged by the end of the series.

The fact that the entire office started wondering if he was handicapped in a later season was when it was clear they went too far with his idiocy.

On the flipside, Kramer's unintentional "handicap" was brilliantly handled and extremely funny on Seinfeld.

Frasier once speculated to Diane that Sam may actually be smart but pretending to be dumb. Diane was aghast and wondered how brilliant someone would have to be to pretend to be that dumb.

I always thought that was a nod to the viewers that Sam was much brighter than he pretended to be for the sake of his minions/customers.