8 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).