8 TV Shows That Were Damaged By Their Own Fans
Turns out it's possible to like something too much...
When a show begins, audiences gather round their television (or more frequently, their computer screen) to check it out and see what all the fuss is about. Those uninterested move on, whereas those who like what they see continue watching, and overtime become fans of the show.
This process is important because fans are what keep TV programmes sustainable. If there aren't enough of them, shows get cancelled. But fans can also be extremely damaging, too. The more passionate they become the more vocal they are about their opinion.
In a best case scenario, writers ignore this and tell the story they want to tell. More often than not, however, this simply doesn't happen. And at the end of the day, writers desperately need their fans to keep watching, even if this means changing their vision because of it.
From a series that literally began using fan ideas to a programme that ended abruptly due to fan stupidity, here are eight TV shows that were damaged by their own fans.
8. Community Started Focusing On The Wackiness (And Pandered To Shippers, Too)
In general, the stranger a show is the more vocal its fan base. There are a bunch of reasons for this: niche fan bases tend to make up for their size through their passion, and the weirder something is the easier it is for fans to form a stronger, more personal connection. Community is the perfect example of this phenomenon. When showrunner Dan Harmon was fired following season three, fans were outraged, petitioning and protesting for his return.
Amazingly, this actually happened before the show's fifth season. Harmon was rehired as showrunner, and all was seemingly well. Despite the fact that Community maintained its quality in the last two seasons in a way that the vast majority of shows don't, certain aspects were irrevocably damaged by vocal fan feedback. The enormous praise and subsequent perpetual pitching of concept episodes lead the show to begin rolling them out on an almost bi-weekly basis, and even the more "grounded" episodes pandered the show's perceived "wackiness".
Some characters suffered too. The huge portion of the fanbase enamoured by the relationship between Jeff and Annie kept that particular ball rolling round and round in circles for literal seasons, and the love of certain character's catchphrases pushed the writers dangerously close to serious flanderization (the Dean puns and the Chang puns spring immediately to mind).