TV Shows That Were Ruined After They Moved Networks
The television industry works a bit differently than feature films. For starters, you spend a lot more time investing in the characters, usually over the course of anywhere from six to 22 episodes per season. With the advent of streaming, TV isn't just a cable or network thing anymore, and with so much television content out there, it's sometimes hard to keep up. One strange thing that occasionally occurs in the TV world is when a show hops from one network or service to another.
Not counting syndication (which is an entirely different sort of network hopping), this phenomenon usually occurs when a show is canceled or on the chopping block, only to be shopped around and taken over by a new network or streamer. This can also happen when networks merge — such as The WB and UPN when they became The CW — but more often than not it involves a show being canceled and then saved. There are countless shows out there that have hopped networks over the years, but sometimes, shows get ruined by their new lease on life.
Here, we're tackling the best TV shows that were never quite the same after moving from one network to another, and just how they failed to capture what made the show's original run great. Of course, a lot of this is subjective, but there's a reason many of these shows were canceled again not long after making the big switch.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (The WB to UPN)
Based on the movie of the same name, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" sparked new life into the character and is undoubtedly the more recognizable version. Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy, the show ran for five seasons on the WB before being canceled, with Buffy plummeting to her death for the second time on screen. Although the first three seasons are pretty unanimously loved, the fourth and fifth seasons were a little more mixed, but still retained a strong audience and fanbase. So when The WB dropped "Buffy" after Season 5, ending with her death, fans were heartbroken.
Turns out, the network refused to pay 20th Century Fox Television's $44 million ultimatum to license the next season, so instead, "Buffy" jumped ship and moved to UPN, an already struggling network. But our favorite Slayer didn't last long on UPN either, only producing two more seasons before Joss Whedon and company decided to end the show with a bang. Aside from fan-favorite episodes like "Once More, With Feeling," Season 6 struggled to find its feet with uncompelling big bads and a questionable romance between Buffy and Spike (James Marsters).
Admittedly, Season 7 mostly works, learning from the mistakes from the previous year just in time for Gellar to jump ship. "Buffy, in this incarnation, is over," she told Entertainment Weekly in 2003 just before leaving her role as the Slayer behind for good.
Veronica Mars (The CW to Hulu)
"Veronica Mars" is arguably the best show to come out of UPN. The first two seasons of this high school mystery drama put Kristen Bell on the Hollywood map as the titular heroine, pushing the teen drama genre into an entirely new format. Veronica's spunky attitude, complex romances, and vigorous persistence are part of why fans fell in love with the character, so when UPN was announced to be going away in favor of the CW, fans were elated when the show was renewed for a third season. Unfortunately, it didn't see a fourth — at least not a traditional one.
After a successful (and excellent) revival film in 2014, "Veronica Mars" returned in 2019, now on Hulu, for an official fourth season ... and it was pretty underwhelming. With only eight episodes, the fourth season already felt short. Despite taking the show back to its "hardcore So-Cal noir" roots, as creator Rob Thomas told TV Line, Season 4 failed to live up to our expectations. Fan-favorite supporting cast members were either pushed to the wayside, stripped of their complex character arcs, or flat-out missing (see ya, Mac), and the finale in which Logan (Jason Dohring) is unceremoniously killed on his and Veronica's wedding day is ... well, horrible, in more ways than one.
Though Season 4 was received well by critics, fans unanimously hated the revival season. No wonder Veronica hasn't returned to Hulu (or television) since.
Community (NBC to Yahoo! Screen)
"Six seasons and a movie!" That has been "Community's" long-running motto ever since Season 2's "Paradigms of Human Memory," when Abed (Danny Pudi) claims that NBC's short-lived "The Cape" would last "six seasons and a movie," despite Jeff's (Joel McHale) cries that it won't last more than a week. Well, after the show's fourth season, Chevy Chase was expelled from the cast, and Donald Glover left only a few episodes into Season 5. So when NBC canceled the cult-favorite, fans rallied around the "#sixseasonsandamovie" tagline as creator Dan Harmon shopped the show to other networks and streamers, most notably Netflix and Hulu.
But no one was interested in a sixth season of "Community" — no one except Yahoo! Screen, a streaming service that was still struggling to find its footing. But Season 6 wasn't anything like the "Community" we knew before. Not only were Pierce (Chase) and Troy (Glover) gone for good, but Shirley (Yvette Nichole Brown) was written off the show after Brown had to care for her ailing father, appearing in only two episodes. As a result, side characters were promoted to higher status, and new characters were introduced to fill the void. Unfortunately, without three of the show's seven leads (and the resulting relationship dynamics they inspired), "Community" just didn't work.
Unsurprisingly, Yahoo! Screen was dismantled after only a few years, and Harmon began reworking "Community" into a feature film project reuniting most of the original cast. Hopefully, he learns from Season 6.
Last Man Standing (ABC to Fox)
The long-running Tim Allen sitcom "Last Man Standing" certainly had a devoted fan following. After being canceled by ABC, audiences rallied around the show until it found a new home on Fox, where it lasted another three seasons, bringing its total to an impressive nine. On the surface, the basic idea behind the show didn't change after switching networks. Mike Baxter (Allen) was still the conservative father of three young girls who managed an outdoor recreation store in Colorado. But the premise aside, the show changed drastically in its final three seasons, and not for the better.
Fan-favorite Molly Ephraim was replaced as the middle child Mandy Baxter by Molly McCook who, while a fine actress, feels like a completely different character. Her chemistry with Kyle (Christoph Sanders) is just not quite there, making it hard for long-running fans to stay interested. This wasn't the first re-cast the series suffered (oldest daughter Kristin was recast after the first season), but it was the most drastic, and a tough pill to swallow so late in the series. Additionally, Kaitlyn Dever only returned as Eve Baxter on a recurring basis due to the actress's film career, another massive blow that didn't feel quite right.
Other dynamics shifted too, including Mike hardly seeing his own grandson anymore (Boyd doesn't even show up in the final season). Though fans were excited about the show's return, maybe "Last Man Standing" should've stayed away.
Arrested Development (Fox to Netflix)
The Bluth family of "Arrested Development" are some of the most lovable and dysfunctional characters to watch on screen. For three seasons, the strange and irreverent sitcom ran on Fox between 2003 and 2006, with the Bluth family ultimately being canceled due to low ratings. But over the years, the show garnered a cult following, and eventually, Netflix picked up on it. "After a long hiatus, I'm dying to finally get back to the narrator's microphone," said executive producer (and narrator) Ron Howard to Entertainment Weekly after the show was revived by the streaming giant. "Everyone, ourselves included, seems to feel like the Bluths left the party a bit too soon."
Howard was right about one thing: Just about everybody wanted the Bluths to return. "Arrested Development" was undoubtedly hysterical, and there hasn't quite been a comedy like it since. Unfortunately, Season 4 of "Arrested Development" fell flat on its face. The odd structure of the season paired with its seeming inability to get everyone in the same room together made for an off-putting revival, and it's no wonder that audiences didn't respond as well. Because of the poor response, it didn't seem like the Bluths would ever return again.
But then creator Mark Hurwitz reworked Season 4 into a remix titled "Fateful Consequences," which fixed many of these issues. The streamer soon greenlit a fifth season, which has proven to be its last.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Fox to NBC)
As one of Fox's most successful breakout comedies, "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" was a hit with audiences and critics everywhere. The Michael Schur/Dan Goor sitcom starred Andy Samberg and a host of other excellent actors who made "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" a lot more than just another cop show. Unfortunately, by the show's fifth season, the ratings had dropped to the point of cancelation, and Fox let the show go into the ether. Thankfully, it was picked up by NBC for another three seasons — that is, until ratings dropped all over again.
The final three seasons of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" have some great moments, but the show's initial cancelation, followed by a network shift, didn't do the show any favors. Chelsia Peretti, who played Gina, left the show after only four episodes into the sixth season (returning only twice more before the series ended). "It's been going downhill the last couple of seasons," u/DMPunk wrote under a thread questioning why nobody cared when "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" just fizzled off the airways (via Reddit). "It's really disheartening to watch it fail after its early seasons were just so strong."
Many considered the show's final season — itself a direct response to the police brutality highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic — to be incredibly preachy and one-sided, which was an issue some had with the show for a number of years. Thankfully, the "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" crew still got their mostly happy ending, even if the show fell out of popularity along the way.
Scrubs (NBC to ABC)
Although often forgotten about today compared to sitcoms like "Seinfeld," "The Office," and "Parks and Recreation," "Scrubs" had an impressive run in the early 2000s, with seven seasons on NBC until the network axed the show. The seventh season was already half the size of its previous counterparts due to the 2007-08 writer's strike, so the cancellation wasn't a surprise. Still, creator Bill Lawrence wanted to finish off the story, and the show was soon picked up by ABC for an eighth season.
"Not like I'm self-aggrandizing, but we'd had the ending of the show amped-up forever," Lawrence revealed to NJ.com, thankful for the show's chance to finish the story. "To finally write that thing that we had outlined three years earlier was really cool." Since Season 8's "My Finale" wrapped up the show so neatly, you're probably wondering why "Scrubs" is even on this list. Well, the show was renewed for a ninth season, subtitled "Med School," where J.D. (Zach Braff) and Turk (Donald Faison) help train up a new cast, and it didn't exactly live up to the hype.
"It very well may suck," Lawrence explained concerning the 13-episode final season. "My pledge is that if it sucks, it's not going to suck in a fizzly way. It's going to suck in a giant, 'Oh my god' kind of way, because we're really swinging for the fences and trying to do some big stuff." He may have been right.
Nashville (ABC to CMT)
After four seasons on ABC, the musical soap drama "Nashville" was surprisingly canceled. Coming off the heels of teasing new material — including naming new showrunners for the next season — fans of the show were worried that they'd never learn what became of Rayna Jaymes (Connie Britton) and Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere). But they were wrong, and soon Country Music Television (CMT) swooped in to nab the country series as their own. In many ways, it was a match made in television heaven, as "Nashville" was the perfect type of show to air on the network.
Unfortunately, just because it sounded good doesn't mean it was. Halfway through CMT's fifth season, Britton left the show, with Rayna dying after a sudden car crash in "If Tomorrow Never Comes." "It was my decision. It was something that, for various reasons, had been percolating for me," the actress revealed to The Hollywood Reporter. "What was really important to me was that it felt like the right time." Britton's departure was certainly shocking to fans, and "Nashville" never quite recovered.
The show ran on CMT for only one more season after that, but many considered the show's final years to be pretty unbearable, a shell of its former musical glory. "The characters used to be happy and have a purpose," Savannah Brock at The Young Folks said. "It's time to stop letting one character's death dictate the rest of the series."
Gilmore Girls (The CW to Netflix)
Often considered one of the greatest shows of all time, with fans citing the show's complex characters and witty dialogue as particular joys, "Gilmore Girls" ran for seven seasons during its original run, with the first six airing on The WB before the network was merged into The CW. Thankfully, the show was a part of the merger deal, and Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory (Alexis Bledel) lived to see their final season as the show came to an end. While many were critical of some of the directions the seventh and final season took, particularly concerning Lorelai's love life, the finale essentially made up for it.
But in an age where nearly every show needs an additional revival season to screw things up, "Gilmore Girls" returned via Netflix for the revival subtitled "A Year In The Life." Consisting of four extended parts, the Netflix season follows our favorite Gilmores over the course of a single year, and it messes everything up. For starters, Rory engages in an affair while also implying that she and Jess (Milo Ventimiglia) will never get back together, and, at the very end, she ends up doing the exact same thing her mother did.
"Maybe, many wonder, it would've been better to not have gotten any new episodes at all," Luke Morton Britton of NME wrote following the final cliffhanger. "The new miniseries ... does a brilliant job of shattering the hopes and dreams of fans."
Designated Survivor (ABC to Netflix)
Remember "Designated Survivor," the show that ran for three seasons about the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development who becomes the President of the United States after a terrorist attack on the Capitol? Starring Kiefer Sutherland as Thomas "Tom" Kirkman, the new inexperienced and unprepared U.S. President, "Designated Survivor" started on ABC before the network canceled it after its second season. Thankfully, Netflix rushed in to pick up the pieces, greenlighting a 10-episode third season.
Unfortunately, the Netflix take-over paved the way for the series to get bogged down by becoming way too "House of Cards" and not living up to its political action thriller roots. Dumping a heavy load full of real-world political issues on what used to be an exciting action-heavy series didn't exactly work. Not to mention, Sutherland, who is best known for his work as Jack Bauer on "24," has action talents that the show never quite expanded upon. And let's not forget about what they did to Maggie Q.
Eventually, "Designated Survivor" was canceled again by Netflix, this time due to having only made one-season contracts with their actors. We may never know what happened to President Kirkman, but thankfully we can always revisit the political thriller.