Flip the Script: 10 Drastic Changes That Kept TV Series Alive

We like to imagine that our favorite television shows are following a meticulous, infallible blueprint that leads to an utterly satisfying ending. TV viewers have developed outrageous expectations in recent years; if a show fails to deliver the meticulous Rube Goldberg machine of Game of Thrones or the inevitable downhill velocity of Breaking Bad, then the showrunner has failed us. If a series finale doesn't deliver something totally unexpected that was hiding in plain sight the entire time, we develop personal vendettas carried out through snarky memes. Wrapped up in our obsession with precision, we forget that sometimes the best thing a show can do isn’t something inevitable, but something totally out of the blue.

Watching a series pull a sharp left turn and stick the landing is one of the most rewarding moments of television viewership. There's nothing quite like the realization that in doing something that seems batshit crazy, a show is actually being true to itself. Yes, more often than not, moves like this fail, but that’s what makes the successes all the more memorable. Here are 10 drastic changes that kept TV series alive.

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Broadcast television is a notoriously tough place to work. One of the most difficult parts about going network is that getting a show on the air and creating a sustainable premise that can lead you to the syndication promised land are two very different things. Cougar Town had no trouble getting on the air. An ex-Friend plus a zeitgeist-y title equals a no-brainer executive green light. The problem is that watching a woman chase after younger men quickly becomes repetitive, tacky, and even a little sad.

Before the end of season one, Cougar Town was evolving into a show that could sustain itself over the long haul. It wasn't going to be about cougars on the prowl, but rather about that point in life when some nights you'd rather just stay in your den and drink a box of wine. As time went on, Cougar Town eased its way into something comfortable and durable—almost a middle-aged version of Friends. Though the show in its later form probably would never have been picked up by a network as a pilot, it was something that people not only wanted to watch, but deeply connected with.

Next to Full House, Family Matters is the best remembered sitcom of the T.G.I.F. era (with all due respect to Boy Meets World). Steve Urkel was a cultural phenomenon; the character got commercials, talking dolls, and everything else that comes with pop culture ubiquity.

The show was supposed to be a sitcom about a working class African-American family trying to get by, or, as advertisers might put it, quickly cancelled. The wacky neighbor became a fan favorite as wacky neighbors sometimes do, and that fan favorite became a phenomenon. Though Urkel remains one of the most annoying characters in television history, if Family Matters hadn't shifted focus, the show would've likely suffered a fate worse than Step By Step.

Archer may deliver the most jokes per minute of any show currently on television. Community and 30 Rock are the only other shows in recent memory with a similar clip. Unlike these shows, the lion's share of the responsibility for Archer falls on one man: creator Adam Reed.

After four seasons of making every spy joke you could possibly imagine, Reed wasn't out of jokes, but he was bored. At the top of season five, it's revealed that ISIS has been operating illegally, more Blackwater than CIA, and they're being forced out of the secret agent business. By the end of the premiere, the ex-agents have a plan, and it's the kind of plan that only these characters would attempt: they're going to make Cheryl a country star and sell a ton of cocaine.

Though there's still the usual amount of boobs and guns we're used to from Archer, season five has a fresh absurdity that had been missing. The series recently ended its season on a high note, and it looks like Archer could keep going strong as long as there's still cocaine and country music.

Writing an enduring teen drama is one of the hardest TV feats to pull off. Right around season three or four, as the series leads are supposed to graduate, these shows usually stumble. The degree of difficulty on Smallville was even higher. How do you graduate your main character into a cape and tights instead of some unnamed Ivy League school? The answer ended up being rather complicated. The series pushed some canonical events to the forefront while leaving others for later in the series. One of the smartest moves the series made was having Clark leave the town of Smallville for Metropolis at the end of season two.

It's unusual to leave your titular locale so soon—imagine The Office outside the office or Cheers outside the bar. The creators understood that they if the show was going to enjoy a long run, they had to show audiences that the man who would be Superman was on his way to his destiny, that the show was going to bridge the gap between boyhood and Superman-hood. Forcing the march towards becoming Superman built up the good will that allowed Smallville to take eight more years to complete the journey.

The first two seasons of Sons of Anarchy barreled at you like a freight train. The series was moving furiously towards an inevitable stepfather-son conflict for the soul of SAMRCO. Or so it seemed. Instead of bringing us the long-awaited Clay-Jax confrontation, the show brought us to Ireland, then to Mexico, and back to Charming, and still Clay lived.

It's hard to blame creator Kurt Sutter for keeping a talent like Ron Perlman around as long as he did, but when a show holds story, it shows. No matter how many explosions and cartel shoot-outs you work into the scripts, it still feels like you're treading water. Though we've only had a couple episodes since Clay bit the dust, you can already feel the show picking up speed, as it ramps up to its final act. Now that the evil father figure has been dispatched, we can see if Jax will back up his high-minded talk or simply settle for filling Clay's boots.

In the years before prestige drama, characters didn't often die. To this day, cast members are still rarely culled from sitcoms. One of the things that made Cheers great was that the show never shied away from a harsh dose of reality. A lesser show would've replaced the late Nicholas Colosanto with another older actor or simply declined to reference the empty spot behind the bar in season four.

After Colosanto's passing, showrunner James Burrows said, "We're a realistic show, and we will deal with what happened to the coach in a realistic manner." True to his word, Burrows brought in Woody Harrelson to play a different role that was in the spirit of Coach; he wasn't a replacement, he was just a new employee. Prior to introducing Woody, the show made it clear that the Coach had died and showed the cast coming to terms with that.

Coach's death and Woody's casting didn't save the show; by that point Cheers was a hit and didn't need saving. But, the move showed viewers what made the show unique. The dark edges of the series are what make it timeless. In real life, bars have regulars, but people move, they stop hanging around, and sometimes they die. Live-action shows don't often run for 11 seasons. With the way Cheers handled Coach's passing, the show discovered how it would effectively present the departures of Shelly Long and the addition of Kelsey Grammar as Frasier Crane—how it could exist for the long haul. Unlike most sitcoms, Cheers understood that just because life goes on doesn't mean that it doesn't change—and the writers understood that that's one of the most wonderful and painful things about life.

Though Alias never again reached its early heights in seasons three through five, you can never say it didn't try. The show executed a daring move at the end of season two by moving the show two years into the future. Way back in 2002, Alias understood something that Sons of Anarchy and Homelandis just now be learning: you don't hold story. If the series is about bringing down SD-6, have the characters bring down SD-6, then find a new story to tell.

Though audiences didn't connect with subsequent seasons quite like they did with the first two, seasons three through five would've been a lot worse if the writers opted to retread ground they had already covered. If the early seasons of Alias hadn't driven furiously towards that blow-up moment, we probably wouldn't remember them half as fondly as we do today.

We won't do it here, but if you'd like to read a full-throated defense of Sex and the City, we recommend Emily Nussbaum's wonderful "Difficult Women: How Sex and the City Lost Its Good Name" which ran last year in the New Yorker. What we will say is that Sex and the City remains the most progressive female-driven sitcom we've ever had, at least in the way the show portrays relationships. There isn't the traditional will-they-won't-they tension between Big and Carrie because in the first season they do —and then they break up. Once the show got that out of the way, it was free to explore a more realistic, less clean version of will-they-won't-they. Rather than holding our lovers apart, the show flings them together, apart, together, and apart again.

Anyone who has ever gotten back together with an ex or tried to work things out after a rough spot in a relationship can surely relate. Life in the real world isn't a straight line to your destiny of wedded bliss. People disappear from our lives for a season or two sometimes; sometimes we're with the person we've loved most in our lives one day, and the next day they're gone forever. Sure, New Girl and Girls are progressive in their own ways. But, it's a safe bet that we won't go entire seasons without seeing Nick or Adam any time soon.

Many viewers complain about the back half of Battlestar Galactica. After two seasons of space battles and political intrigue, season three began with the Cylon occupation of a demoralized insurgency. Though the last two seasons of Battlestar operated at a different pace, they were true to the promise of the show's earlier episodes. The keeping of that promise began with the occupation of New Caprica. Ron Moore's goal from the beginning of BSG was to create something that was more than cowboys and Indians in space. He aimed to explore lives of the last members of the human race with all the desperation, fear, and pain that would come with it.

Through the first two seasons, we want to believe that if the crew of the Galactica could just find a new planet, the crew and the civilians they protect could start a new life. In the back of our minds, however, we know that could never be. From the moment they landed on New Caprica, we know that any peace will be temporary and end poorly. It's easy to get upset by the aimless and hopeless elements of the later episodes of Battlestar. It's hard to watch some characters cling to spirituality or love or anger while others get lost in despair. But, in the later seasons of the show, Moore delivers the message of the series: fighting for survival is easy until you survive long enough to ask yourself if it's worth it.

Later seasons of teen dramas are incredibly difficult to pull off. Either you keep the kids in high school beyond their expiration date or you follow them to college. Neither move usually goes well. Friday Night Lights, of course, is about the coach (Kyle Chandler) first and the kids second; this focus helped the show avoid the usual teen drama pitfalls. Coach Taylor had done all he could do in Dillon. It was time for him to face a coup and be sent into exile. Smartly, the writers only sent coach as far as the next town over. That way, we could keep tabs on his old players as they slouch their way into adulthood while we watched a new batch of players learn that clear eyes and full hearts are an unbeatable combination.

Rather than repeating itself, Friday Night Lights made the first three seasons of the series the first act in a larger show. Sure, Coach Taylor had won championships, but the real journey of the series had just begun. Before the lights went out in Dillon, Texas, Eric Taylor had to figure out what he was besides the man in the blue baseball cap.