Eric F

I’m streaming Buck Rogers on NBC right now (looks amazing in HD) and just made it to the 2nd season. The whole show turned to crap, it’s so thematically different from the 1st season which was light and fun, now it’s turned to a low-rent Star Trek. Total garbage that makes no sense.

I know there are other shows that retooled their second seasons but can’t really think of any. Can we list some of them?

Paff

The Facts of Life

cut the large cast of students (~8, including Molly Ringwald) down to 3 and added one new character (Nancy McKeon's), dumped the adults except Charlotte Rae, took Tootie off roller skates.

Martial Law

A martial arts cop drama in the late 90s starring Sammo Hung. Second season they dumped most of the cast and added Arsenio Hall to make it a "Black/Asian buddy cop" show, obviously trying to cash in on the theatrical success of Rush Hour

windom

Happy Days had a a somewhat gradual revamp early on. It started as a single camera show, but became a mutli-cam sitcom by season 3. Fonzie was initially a minor character who eventually became the focus of the show. Also, Chuck Cunningham was never seen or mentioned after season 2. Of course it continued to change over its entire run with various cast changes.

Laverne and Shirley moved the entire setting of the show from Milwaukee to California, but that wasn't until season 6.

majorjoe23

The first season of Sledge Hammer! ended with a nuclear bomb destroying the city, because everyone assumed it would get canceled.

When the show got a surprise renewal, they just continued on like normal and said the episodes took place 5 years before the first season.

Michael Corvin

The big one on this forum that always gets brought up is Human Target... I mean if it had a second season it would qualify for this thread.

Paff

Two Guys and a Girl and a Pizza Place got rid of the Pizza Place and added three characters (including one played by Nathan Fillion). So it became about six 20-somethings, three men, three women in a large East Coast city. Can't think of any other show at the time like that...

DJariya

Ughh, you had to bring up Human Target. The 1st season was so good.

The "2nd season" was a disaster.

emachine12

Wonder Woman ‘76 jumped from World War II in season one to the 1970s in season two. Weirdly, the 2017 movie takes place during World War I then jumps to the 1980s for the 2020 sequel.

Scrubs dropped the storyline that the Janitor was a hallucination by JD after it got a second season.

Not exactly the second seasons but when Syfy made the shift to darker tones/stories on the network, all the shows changed to match that.

fujishig

Parks and Rec didn't overhaul their whole cast but getting rid of Blandanowicz and eventually replacing him with Adam Scott and Rob Lowe, along with dumbing down Chris Pratt and making him less hatable and moving away from being an Office clone really changed the show for the better.

It's like one of the few shows that actually benefited from the writers strike (the only other one that I can think of is Breaking Bad)

Good Morning, Miss Bliss was completely retooled into Saved By the Bell to the point that when the latter became popular, they reaired it with Mark-Paul Gosselaar doing newly shot intros to each episode and it being called SBTB the Junior Years.

In Japan, the first of the "Ultra" series was Ultra Q, which was more of a Twilight Zone type show with a focus on kaiju/monsters and humans investigating them. The follow-up show, Ultraman, focused more on the superheroic alien in a rubber suit who fought the kaiju.

DJariya

I watched Martial Law when it aired 21 years ago and own the complete series on DVD.

The 1st season was a fun fish out of water cop procedural with Sammo and it enjoyable. It ended on a major cliffhanger and afterwards the original showrunner Carlton Cuse left. They brought in 2 new guys who really had no clue what the fuck they were doing and retconned most of the 1st season. The cliffhanger was really never resolved on screen. They also dropped several cast members. Arsenio's character in the 1st season was an LAPD PR person. They retconned that and made him into a full fledged cop and made him Sammo's partner. As you said, they turned season 2 into a Rush Hour rip off.

and I recall Sammo was very unhappy with the scripts.

Decker

One of my favorites Murder One fired their lead Daniel Benzali, kept most of the supporting cast, hired Anthony LaPlagia as the new lead, and changed the show format from a single season-long case to three eight episode cases.
Didn’t help. Show was originally opposite the first season of ER, got destroyed in the ratings and was canceled during the third story of the second season.

Shannon Nutt

The most famous (infamous? ) one has to be Battlestar Galactica, which revamped into Galactica: 1980.

SeaQuest DSV is another, which moved shooting from Los Angeles to Orlando for its second season and shook up/replaced about half its cast (it would morph again in its third season to SeaQuest 2032 with yet another cast shake up (including getting rid of lead Roy Scheider after he asked to be let out of his contract - Michael Ironside took over as the lead).

rw2516

Mannix - first season Joe worked for a big detective agency that used computer to solve cases. Second season he was was independent with his own office and secretary. Peggy. Originally the first season was not syndicated with the rest because it was different format.

Mission Impossible - Steven Hill had the Peter Graves role in first season. The first season was not syndicated with the rest originally because of this. At some point it was decided that international story lines would be dropped and the team would only go up against domestic criminals.

Burke's Law - First two seasons Burke was L.A. chief of detectives. Third season he was made a spy and title changed to Amos Burke Secret Agent.

77 Sunset Strip - Last season Stu Bailey(Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) was made an international spy and the rest of the cast fired.

Last season of Once Upon A Time
Last season of Sleepy Hollow

This one never happened. The third season of Guns of Will Sonnett was to have the three generations of Sonnetts as lawmen of a town. The show got cancelled but the first episode of season three was filmed, where they are reunited. The first episode of season three was used as the finale of second season.

robin2099

Human Target: Season 2: Became the textbook example of how not to do a second season of a well received TV show.

Family Matters: Season 2 became less about the Winslows and started to become the Urkel Show.

Saved by the Bell,,The New Class: Got rid of half the cast of Season 1, changed some of the sets(like Mr. Belding's office) and brought back Screech.

Night Man: Season 1 was more of a super hero crime show, Season 2 went completely to the side of Sci-Fi.

Hang Time: Went from being a comedy-drama about a High School Basketball team, to a Saved by the Bell clone.

The Transporter: Season 2 dropped the cast of Season 1, became more serialized, and never showed Frank Martin in his suit again.

Taken: The entire cast was dropped with the exception of Jennifer Bealls and the lead, and the show became less serialized and more stand alone.

Baywatch Nights: The show went from David Hasselhoff's Mitch Bucannon being a private eye and solving crimes, to Mitch fighting mummies, aliens, alien plagues, and zombies.

DWilson

"Mork and Mindy" was a hit right out of the box, but they changed it up for the second season. Conrad Janis's role as Mindy's dad was diminished, and I believe the grandma was dropped (not sure). The show added Jay Thomas and Gina Hecht, siblings who ran a diner, which became central to the show.

The first season of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E" was in black-and-white and relatively serious in tone, but the second season was in color, and had a much campier style (not quite "Batman", but in the ballpark).

Goat3001

The first season of Parks and Rec was so awful. All the changes they made were for the better. Kudos to them for realizing that the show sucked and making a bunch of changes. It would have been canned after the second season if they didn't.

fujishig

Agreed. I would say a similar thing for the Office, where the first shortened season was basically copying the scripts of the British show, and the second season was them doing their own thing with it which worked (at least for the American audience) a lot better.

spainlinx0

I have watched the series a few times, and while the changes, especially to Leslie Knope, are huge improvements, the first season isn't as bad as I remember. There are still plenty of funny scenes. However, once Rob Lowe and Adam Scott appear, it's the best show ever.

majorjoe23

The Christina Applegate/Will Arnett show Up All Night was announced as going from a single camera format to being filmed live before a studio audience for the end of its second season, but then the show runner and Christina Applegate both quit and the show was just canceled.

And there was talk of Melissa Etheridge playing herself and there being a portal between worlds that only a baby good see.

https://www.vulture.com/2013/03/up-a...-ethridge.html

story

I remember that. It was too bad. As new parents at the time, we really got that show.

cowtown

Strike Back. Season 1 had Chris Ryan's book character John Porter, then it was recast and reset as "based on" Chris Ryan's work. For the better, IMO, and it turned into one of my favorite shows at the time (excluding the recast-yet-again last couple seasons).

morriscroy

The first season on in america (and on dvd/bluray released by cinemax/warner), seemed like several 2 hour movies loosely glued together.

Subsequent seasons seemed to better written, and felt like an actual real show with an ongoing coherent storyline.

mwbmis

Kevin Can F himself....err Kevin Can Wait

devilshalo

Right into King of Queens v. 2

Josh-da-man

The James Cameron/Jessica Alba sci-fi actioner Dark Angel retooled for the second season.

And Dukes of Hazzard was more an adult drama/comedy for the first part of its first season before it essentially became a kids' show.