Seasonal Rot

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Bart: Dad, how come they're taking The Cosby Show off the air?

Homer: Because Mr. [Bill] Cosby wanted to stop before the quality suffered.

Bart: Quality, schmality! If I had a TV show, I'd run that sucker into the ground!

Homer: Amen, boy. Amen.

—Homer and Bart Simpson, from an April 30, 1992 rerun of the Simpsons episode "Three Men and a Comic Book"

Seasonal rot in a nutshell.

Seasonal rot is a phrase used for any long running franchise that experiences from a gradual drop in quality after several seasons, to either later becoming really bad or not as good as originally and before, even though the show can still make good episodes and stories, even if they are gone from grace, or just not make as much good episodes and make more duds/bad episodes and stories as possible. This trope became more frequent since 2010s.

Background

There are many great shows now and again. However, if a show runs long enough, seasonal rot always sets in and writers should always think of the right moment to either end the show (good way or bad way) or bring it back on track while it's still good, or the show can just start a new writing team to improve the series and make everything better in the future.

Sometimes it's a temporary dip from which the series recovers by bringing in new writers (ones that either hardly know anything about the source material at all, or are very bad) or make the choice by ignoring all of the past events of the inferior or best seasons. Other times, it can be irreversible and grows with each new season at the point when the series has "jumped the shark" or lost its charm.

This can include flanderization of really lovable characters (characters becoming out of character), make a few or a heck-load of filler/bad episodes, animation changes (even though, the animation would still be good, but could also turn to the ugly), come up with really stupid and inexcusable plots, take gross-out jokes gone horribly wrong, make the characters take a step too far, make episodes that don't even try, drag on everything for far too long, overuse the unfunny/poor comedy and jokes, make up poor attempts to go in a new direction and declining production values, throw in the three strike formulas used in every episode to make it as bad as possible, make the characters never learn their lesson, and also make the episodes use the same story repeated every episode.

There are some ways to avoid (or end) seasonal rot. One way is to temporarily postpone the series and come up with more ideas at a slow pace, keep the show as fresh and strong as possible, or just come up with new inspirations.

Making a seasonal rot worse is if the creator of the show is still heavily involved.

Notable Offenders

• The Simpsons (seasons 11-31): The one that started this trope. Although not as bad as Family Guy and South Park, it's still hit-or-miss with most of the cast becoming flanderized and more gross-out humor.
• Family Guy (seasons 8-present): Also known as the king of seasonal rots; the show went massively downhill since season 8's "Peter ass-ment" and has not recovered due to heavy flanderization, terrible and hurtful morals, tons of mean-spirited moments and overuse of even more cutaway gags that are not funny anymore, and gross-out humor. In addition, in a desperate and shallow ratings grab, the show killed off Brian in "Life of Brian" only to bring him back three weeks later in "Christmas Guy".
• South Park (season 20): While season 20 is the most controversial season, however, starting in season 20, the show not only flanderizes the characters, but also adds more mean-spirited moments and overuse of even more inappropriate humor than the previous seasons. Since Season 23, Randy Marsh gets way too much screen time than the main boys. While season 21 onwards are slight improvements over season 20, these seasons still share the same issues as Season 20 as the Tegridy Weed plot is a sure sign that the show is now going through the same fate of The Simpsons and Family Guy.
• SpongeBob SquarePants (seasons 6-8): There was a massive amount of flanderizaton for most of the characters, the characters became more and more mean-spirited, the animation became cheaper and there was much more gross-out humor compared to the first five seasons.
• The Fairly OddParents (seasons 9 & 10): It completely ran out of ideas altogether, filled to the brim with bad episodes, completely abandoned continuity, suffered from lazier, generic, and unoriginal writing primarily because of it often rehashing older plots, and the characters themselves have all either been dumbed down to their stereotypes or demoted to extras. Aside from all that, Season 9 introduced a pointless new main character, Sparky, but due to negative reception, he was removed without explanation in Season 10, only to be replaced with yet another new main character, Chloe Carmichael, who was even worse. The show's budget was also slashed, forcing Frederator to switch animation studios from South Korea to Canada. This saw the shift to low-quality flash animation in the last seven episodes of Season 10. Overall, the failure of these seasons as a result of executive meddling and the declining talent among the writing team, even series creator Butch Hartman himself, ended up getting the series cancelled.
• Johnny Test (2005) (seasons 4-6): The animation became much more choppier looking, and episodes mainly started becoming very repetitive and not to mention how a bunch of the characters were also exaggerated and flanderized as the show went on too and the annoying overuse of the infamous whip crack sound effect.
• Bunk'd (seasons 3-7): Season 3 removed Xander, Jorge, Tiffany, Hazel (who has later returned in the Season 4 episode, “Inn Trouble”) and Griff from the show have been replaced by three new characters, Matteo, Finn and Destiny. What’s worse is that Season 4 also removed Emma (who returned in the season 5 episode, "Lou Still The Boss But Now There's A Ross"), Ravi and Zuri from the show as well, getting them replaced with Gwen, Ava and Noah. Season 5 removed Gwen (she returned in the episode "Crushin' It") from the show and replaced her with Parker Preston. Finally, Season 6 removed Ava, Matteo and Finn (who returned in the season 6 episode "Finn It To Win It") making them replaced with Winnie, Jake and Bill. Which makes this show barely a Jessie spin-off.
• The Loud House (seasons 4-present): Major flanderization of characters like Lincoln and Leni Loud, and the plots becoming a lot more nonsensical over time. However, the show did show some recovery in late-season 6 onwards after Leni gets her driver's license.
• Miraculous Ladybug (seasons 3-present): These seasons added lots of pointless characters such as Zoe Lee (despite being likable), Felix and Tomoe, the animation feels choppier and dull-looking, season 3 being filled fanservice only to make the fans which slows a lot of the plot, ruined the lore of the first two seasons, characters being flanderized and some of them acting out of place for plot inconvenience, and season 5 trying to appeal to the LGBTQ community by revealing Ms. Bustier and Zoe Lee to be lesbians. The season 5 finale also ended the series on a cliffhanger. Luckily the theatrical film released in 2023 is an huge improvement over these seasons.
• Cyberchase (seasons 9-present): Was once a show about teaching math, now about one teaching about the environment, the animation becoming worse as it went on, the characters (both new and old) became pretty bland and uninteresting and completely forgetting about the cure for Motherboard's virus. While there are some people who still like these seasons and find them to be average, many fans can agree that their still not as good as seasons 1-5 or to a lesser extent, seasons 6-8.
• Odd Squad (season 3): By the time Season 3 premiered either older fans had stopped watching the show entirely, or newer fans would watch and be more attracted to the past two seasons and its characters. It didn't help that the show got a Retool, with the main setting being changed and characters being swapped out for new ones. While there are a few fans both young and old who still enjoy it, a majority of people dislike the season because of the massive changes, although there are fans who enjoy the season prior to Opal's departure.
• Fireman Sam (seasons 6-present): Switched from beautifully crafted stop-motion animation to cheap and ugly CGI animation, flanderizing most of the characters, most notably Norman, having absolutely no connection with it's previous 5 seasons, and horrendously trying to modernize the franchise. These seasons were panned by fans of the original 5 seasons and agree that the show will probably never be as good as it once was, even if it started to improve a little bit, it's still to late.
• Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn (seasons 3 & 4): TBA
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil (seasons 3 & 4): TBA
• The Boondocks (season 4): The final season, was made without McGruder, and as a result, was poorly-received due to Granddad getting too much focus, a poor overarching plot, the elimination of several popular characters such as Gin Rummy, Thugnificent and Cindy McPhearson, poor plots, the fact the season was aired out-of-order, Uncle Ruckus undergoing a crapload of Flanderization and the plots being unfunny in general.
• Winx Club (2011 revival) (seasons 5-8): After being revived by Nickelodeon in 2011, the fans didn't take kindly to these seasons. As a result the revival was critically panned thanks to it's bad switch to flash animation, the use of CGI scenes, childish storylines, flanderization of the characters and lacking the charm the previous four seasons had.
• Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil (season 2): The second season greatly reduced the numbers of stunts, adventures and action and focused more on Buttowski family slice of life instead of what the show intended to be, as well the flanderization of the titular character, Buttowski family members and Kendall Perkins.
• The Next Step (seasons 4 and 5): Season 4 received a particularly negative reception, with many fans considering it to be the low point of the series. Much criticism was aimed at the increasingly absurd storylines, overuse of older characters, underdevelopment of newer characters and the 40-episode length. A particular storyline that was panned was a love triangle between the characters of James, Riley and Alfie, as this storyline had already been done in the show's second season between James, Riley and Beth. While season 5 was considered an improvement over Season 4, has contrarily criticized for the short length of 20 episodes. Another criticism was the recycling of the rivalry between the characters of Emily and Michelle, which had previous been resolved, other problems that season 5A is the flanderization of both Emily and Michelle, the plot of TNS East, and West drags the storyline which wasn't needed. Thankfully Season 5B was a improvement over the first half.
• SMG4 (seasons 8-present): When Saiko debuted in the episode, "Doki Doki Mario Club", things started to go downhill for SMG4. OC characters (such as Meggy and Melony) started to steal the spotlight from certain characters who aren't Mario, SMG4, Luigi, Meggy, Bob, Fishy Boopkins, Chris and Swagmaster (since Mario's Prison Escape), SMG3 (since the YouTube Arc) and Shroomy (though to lesser extents) such as the Mario recolors (X, FM, etc.), Toad, Bowser, Steve, Sonic the Hedgehog, the Old Man, Wizard Rock, Toast Guy, The Teletubbies and many classic others. Garry's Mod was overrused way more than Project 64 to the point where they feel like GMOD videos than Super Mario 64 Bloopers (And argubly still is). The humor had also been dialed all the way down to 0 in order to avoid demonetization (for example: censoring out the F, S and now recently, the B*tch words. Not even stronger words such as R@pe and the N word are safe). And many classic series such as If Mario Was In..., Stupid Mario, The Wacky Wario Bros. and Sonic the Derphog were barely focused at all. But things seem to have been going in the right Direction starting about season 13.
• Turbo F.A.S.T (season 3) - TBA
• Rick and Morty (season 5) - This season had lots of incest jokes, characters being flanderized, weak plot, etc, luckily the series got back on track since season 6.

Minor

• Family Guy (seasons 6 & 7)
• Dexter's Laboratory (seasons 3 & 4) - Were completely unnecessary revivals due to the film "Ego Trip" being an already great finale for the series. Additionally it has a continuity error where it reveals that the rival between Dexter and Mandark started all because Dexter made fun of his name, and Mandark's name (which was Ivan Astronomovich in the previous seasons) being changed to Susan, along with him being rissen by a bunch of hippies and his sister Olga is missing. However despite all of these problems, these seasons are still regarded as good.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy (seasons 5 & 6)
• The Fairly OddParents (seasons 5b-8)
• Cyberchase (seasons 6-8) - Switched to Flash animation.
• SpongeBob SquarePants (seasons 4 & 5, 13 & 14)
• iCarly (seasons 4-6): Like many popular Nickelodeon shows at the time, the show wasn’t safe from losing quality in its final 3 seasons. But at least it didn’t get as bad as SpongeBob (during its dark age) and The Fairly OddParents did.
  • Season 4, while still good, is weaker than the first 3 seasons, since it has less episodes, making the plots feel a little rushed (especially iSell Penny-Tees), romance started to pop up in small amounts, and the end of the season started the "Seddie arc" in "iOMG".
  • Season 5, while not terrible, is considered the weakest season, as it focused more on romantic relationships than its original purpose: comedy, thus the humor was drastically watered down, and it also had a few bad episodes in the form of the "Seddie" arc (iLost My Mind, iDate Sam & Freddie, iCan't Take It, and iLove You), which started the season on a sour note. Thankfully, Season 6 improved the issues and got the show back to its comedy goodness again.
  • While season 6 is better than seasons 4 and 5, it’s still weaker than the first 3 seasons since while the comedy has improved, romance still popped up every now and then, & Sam's flanderization started to slowly kick in.
• The Saddle Club (season 3): While not a bad season overall, did have it's share of problems that weren't present in the first two seasons. All of the original cast members from the first two seasons were not invited back to this season due to them getting too old so they ended up recasting all of the cast members. It also jumped the shark by completely removing some of the characters from the first two seasons without any explanation. Some of the characters have been flanderized. Overall this season was completely unnecessary and many fans ignore this season.
• Kickin' It (seasons 3 & 4): Fans criticized Season 3 for the characters' lack of personality as well as Eddie's abrupt departure (for which there was no apparent replacement) and no explanation as to where he went. Even worse due to Kim's departure and characters like Rudy and Phil becoming immature (one episode featured Rudy donning an inflatable muscle suit to fool a man into thinking he was stronger) along with many weak episodes, season 4's reception was even worse than season 3. Either way, these seasons are still good on their own.
• Danny Phantom (season 3) - Hartman went overbudget in this season which explains the smaller amount of episodes and the finale was a cliffhanger, however this season still has its own fans.

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