re: Great Characters that were "Flanderized"

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McNulty on The Wire. Every season became them trying to one up from the previous one how he self-destructs and what illegal tricks he’s going to pull to solve the case. It was damn good television but I still had to roll my eyes at the shite he was doing

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It was all logical and organic until Season 5, IMHO. Then, "crazy train" bullshite. Worse, he get Lester to go along.

The biggest wart on an otherwise GOAT candidate show.

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I love the show but pretty much every character in Always Sunny.

At this point the characteds are all so retarded that the business wouldve burnt down or fallen apart years ago

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Haven't they said that they have done this on purpose?

That senator from the Wire who said "shiiiiiiiiit" all the time

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It was all logical and organic until Season 5, IMHO. Then, "crazy train" bullshite. Worse, he get Lester to go along.

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Honestly, I never even finished the 5th season. It became a bit much.

Kramer

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Kramer

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Have to agree, but even as a caricature he was pretty funny.

Came here to say the K-man. His initial character was subdued. George, however, was a weasel and a-hole from day 1.

The big 2 that immediatley came to mind for me are kevin from the office and eric matthews, both of which were answered quickly.

Joey from Friends is a good one too that I agree with. Early on he was a suave if a bit dull ladies man who became almost retarded.

Kramer? Eeeeehhhhhhh I don't know. Early and I mean EARLY on he's more subdued but I think that could just be chalked up to feeling out the character and not relaly knowing what to do with him quite yet. Early in season 2 is when Kramer pretends to be cop and enters that cleaners apartment who they think stole that statue, that whole seen was pretty over the top and slapstick-y like we come to know from Kramer and that was fairly early. Season 3 kramer has morphed into mostly the version taht we come to associate with him. Your'e talking about probably 75% of the show kramer being "kramer"...so personally I don't know if he necessarily got flanderized, although of course some of his sotrylines did get pretty out there but you could say that for the entire show. After 9 seasons they've gotta come up with something to write about ha.

Steve Urkel (and Family Matters in general) is a great historical example of this. When Urkel first starts appearing he's just a nerdy, annoying kid who lives next door, but over the course of the series gets smarter (and more annoying) to the point that he's a super genius capable of time travel, cloning, shrinking people and whatever else the writers could come up with. Family Matters as a whole started off as a very grounded show for the first few seasons before getting more and more cartoonish to the point that it was completely unrecognizable by the end. Here's a good Key and Peele sketch on it.

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Fonzie

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Another great historical example. Fonzie starts the show as the local "cool guy hood" and slowly becomes a super hero capable of being the best in the world at anything and everything he tries (including water skiing, which led to one of the most infamously panned moments in television history. An act so heinous that it spawned a meme term so ubiquitous that people understand what it means even if they're completely unaware of the scene that it references).

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Chang from Community. He was much better early on as an eccentric a-hole. When they made him completely nuts, he became boring.

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Change suffered from the same thing that Andy Bernard did on The Office. Both were fine characters when they were smaller parts of a larger ensemble, but then The Hangover blew up and became one of the biggest comedies of the decade and NBC increased their roles and the characters weren't nearly strong enough to handle it. Both shows suffered for it.

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I know you're trying to be an edgelord, but just so you are informed, a recent archeological discovery shows that the earliest Christians believed he was indeed God. Which most serious folks have always understood and knew.

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You know, when I read his (Corinthians) post, I thought "Jesus" was just him using emphasis and was then wracking my brain to remember an episode where Flanders tells people to not wash their hands.