Thread 150378086

ITT: "patient zero" episodes that would later ruin an entire series

>>150378086 (OP)
Also standardized the tendency of revival seasons to feel more like various smaller standalone stories mushed together instead of one cohesive plot

Everything went downhill after this

>>150378086 (OP)
I say this as someone that loves this episode as a standalone and considers it one of the best episodes in the whole series. The lessons the writers took away from making it were a huge stain on the show through the Scully years and influenced the tone and characters of the series in future seasons in an extremely negative way.

>What if we took a normal ass 11 minute episode and treated it like a once in a lifetime special event
Even as a kid I didn't get why this needed a 24 hour marathon. From this point the series dropped hard in quality and Nick kept overhyping the fuck out of every new episode

>>150378247
The end of season 3 was kind of a harbinger for this kind of stuff, picture very related which I'd classify as the actual patient zero for what you described. Nick promoted the fuck out of this and it's easily one of the weakest episodes of the season if not golden age spongebob period.

>>150378133
For me, it's "The Simpsons Spinoff Showcase" from season 8. Yes, I know the skits were noncanon, mostly funny, and not to be taken so seriously, but it's hard not to look back and see it as a prototype of the lazy nonsensical plots that would characterize the Scully years.

>>150378114
Tranny universe was garbage from day one

>>150378114
>woman writers
lel

>>150378247
>>150378301
Why did they promote those episodes specifically?

>>150378301
It was weird they made that a half-hour special to begin with. I always forget it exists and then when I remember it I don't remember it not being 11 minutes.

>>150378376
Probably because both episodes had big musical moments- the former was a musical while the latter rode the hype of the movie and wrote an entire episode around one song.

>>150378351
Wrong

>>150378376
>Sponge Who Could Fly
Technically a special even though it doesn't feel like one
>Best Day Ever
It... has a song I guess

>>150378535
>>150378247
What makes this episode even more funny to me is the fact that the Best Day Ever song wasn’t even made for the episode. It was a song made for the SpongeBob Movie soundtrack that nobody even heard because it was the last song in the end credits.
So they just pulled a very lazy move and tried to make a whole episode about it.

>>150378612
Proof?

>>150378530
Fuck off Dev.

>>150379300
Probably the fact that it's on the Spongebob movie soundtrack and appears as the last song in the credits. Just a hunch.

https://youtu.be/rkARkDanrqM?si=EhWeaDvASWWcMH6q&t=362

>>150378346
For me patient zero would be the first episode that wasn't funny. Even way into like season 15, each episode had at least one good joke. At some point ever that one good joke stops happening, and that's when the Simpsons died.

>>150378114
Which episode was this again? The one with the forge-lady?

>>150379437
Fuck you talkin abou?

When You Dish Upon a Star

>>150380617
No

Batdad

>>150378247
The song is catchy tho I liked it for it.

>>150378133
>>150378346
Simpsons should have ended with Behind the Laughter, as intended

>>150378086 (OP)
The door episode from Adventure Time

>>150378247
>That Atlantis Episode with David Bowie
>He didn't get to sing
Was everyone at Nick on meth during this time?

>>150385356
>That Atlantis Episode with David Bowie
Man this may genuinely have been one of the biggest SpongeBob disappointments imaginable at the time. It was a mediocre episode and I usually love musical episodes but it just didn't deliver on an entertaining time.

>>150378247
The song was nice at least

>>150378301
I genuinely thought this was a season 4 episode for the longest time

>>150378612
I heard the song in the credits and I had the album with the song, so I recognized it all when it aired.

>>150378086 (OP)
Gumball has at least two: The Shell and The Choices.

>>150378114
No way, this is far too late
SU's patient zero was either the episode when the Cluster plot stop to celebrate Steven's birthday or that episode focused on Onion's friends. Whichever came first

Special mention goes to the episode where Steven beats the cluster by talking to it, and the episode where the mayor runs for reelection after Steven returns from space.

>>150378133
I feel like people tend to mischaracterize this episode. The episode itself was funny and one of my favorites. The problem is that it highlighted how extravagant the show had become almost as a self parody, but they chose to not learn anything from the idea. A lot of the writing staff cite Marge vs the Monorail as the first episode where the show really stopped being grounded in reality. Then Homer went to space.

>>150378376
Spongebob stopped airing regular episodes and no longer had a regular release schedule, so to make sure people would watch the new stuff they were putting out, they advertised a LOT of regular episodes as specials.

>>150389952
SU was such a shit show. I know it was the last season so the show was already ruined but, a gay wedding just before the invasion of the fucking alien overlords? They knew it was going to happen and instead of making a plan, preparing some weapons or alerting the people on the town they had a wedding.

>>150380617
>>150381706
Absolutely one of the worst. This was one of the first episodes where hollywood celebrities played themselves as main characters, which started a horrible trend for the series. Yeah you had shit like Homer and Apu with James Woods, but he wasn't a main character, or Burns Baby Burns where Dangerfield played a parody of himself, but it was never "OMG celebrity, what are you doing in springfield??? let's go on an adventure!"

>>150383664
What Was Missing? What was wrong with it aside from the fact that this is where bubblegum and marceline shipping started

>>150378086 (OP)
Post OG run Futurama seems to be influenced by that cynicism that Family Guy began to popularize.

>>150378086 (OP)
Is this the one with the oddly attractive dogs?

>>150390148
You answered yourself

>>150390448
no, that was bender's game

For Regular Show it has to be Steak Me Amadeus or Yes Dude Yes because that's when Mordecai's love shit began

>>150378247
For a microsecond I tought it was TRUTH OR SQUARE, so infamous for being a mediocre bait and switch troll episode filled with cringe live action skits with no one's favorite character Patchy, that the episode was repackaged as a regular mediocre episode with an alternate title, Stuck in the Freezer.

It was THAT, BAD.

I know that the joke of SpongeBob specials is that they overhype mediocre or mundane episodes but this one backfired badly, remember the whole point of THE LOST EPISODE.

It was a terrible episode based on a scrap script from S1 that got scraped because it sucked.

>>150390148
Most of the episodes ITT aren't bad on their own, they just introduced ideas that ended up hurting their shows later on. Hence them being patient zero.

>>150378133
Also, after this episode, they started retconning shit about The Simpsons (Itchy and Scratchy having another creator, Ned being a mental patient, Skinner being an imposter, etc.)

>>150378133
For me it was the Maud death episode.

>>150390081
This. It was just a dirty marketing stunt to cover the fact the show run its course after S3 and the movie got released 2 years after the show was over, but because of Nickelodeon not allowing a series to actually had a proper series finale that let kids know, "this is the end of the story", why? cause they wanted to keep airing the series and out of order, it's why they sometimes hold episodes of shows hostages for years like with "As told by Ginger" or splitting single deal 20 episodes series into seasons.

>>150385356
I thought it was just okay.
>He didn't get to sing
Not a problem if you're an 8 year old who had no idea who the hell David Bowie is lol

>>150383647
It should have ended with Mother Simpson

UNIRONICALLY

>>150391007
>member when SpongeBob already was cancelled again before Season 9 so they spliced that season FOR YEARS to trick audiences until they convinced Hillenburg to come back?

>>150391052
>Not a problem if you're an 8 year old who had no idea who the hell David Bowie is lol
Then why cast him at all!?

>>150391124
A lot of guest stars on spongebob were people that no child would recognize. Probably not even adults at the time. I guarantee you my parents don't know who Ernest Borgnine is.

>>150378086 (OP)
Fred Fredburger

>>150392163
He's was fine in Keeper of the Reaper, but subsequent episodes and being made the mascot of cartoon network for a year was were it got out of hand.

>>150392163
>>150392367
What makes the Fred shilling so interesting is it happened when Billy and Mandy was on its last legs too. Fred started appearing in the last two years of the show.

>>150389023
how about The Void?

>>150379476
I already thought Best Day Ever sounded like a Beach Boys homage, but didn't realize until now that it was written by Andy Paley, who worked directly with Brian Wilson multiple times. Pretty neat

The Enchiridion

>>150378133
The fact that it's the last episode of season 8 means the writers expected the show to end and decided to do so by highlighting how far the show had strayed from its original concept. Too bad FOX couldn't take the hint.

>>150393077
How?

>>150378086 (OP)
I considered listing them and why, but that would take too long. From a quick and not fully researched count, South Park had at least over 10 patient zero episodes. The Return of Chef is the biggest one.
>inb4 someone calls me a rightoid for not thinking the new season is kino
They could do 100 episodes making fun of liberals and I would still turn it off and just go watch the pre-Chef death episodes. Even most PC Principal episodes are ones you watch once and never again. Nu Park isn't as bad as Nuventure Time or Numily Guy, but that's because it had a much stronger start imo. The quality drop in comparison was higher and the fact South Parkfags and the show's creators try to gaslight you more than offsite Nuventure Timefags that it is better never made sense.

>>150393065
they even had fred in that jellystone crossover special.

>>150378612
I knew of it, but because when I was a kid I just had the CD with the movie soundtrack on it

>>150390529
>he doesn't like Patchy
Faggot.

>>150393101
Stfu

>>150393811
you know that's the truth

>>150393911
Nope

>>150393921
die adventurepedo.

>>150393077
The Void is irrelevant. The Shell ruined penny.

>>150379476
I was wondering why I never associated that song with that special

>>150391124
Because he was cheap and desperate enough.

>>150393065
B&M was still doing good in ratings. The show probably would have gone on longer if Stuart Snyder didn't go nuclear and cancel every show when the Invasion thing failed

>>150394624
He did it for his kids. You think fucking David Bowie was desperate for money then?

>>150394708
Fred aside, the show did start to suck. The characters got flanderized badly and the humor was more random, loud and gross than horror,

>>150393943
Stop projecting tranny

>>150395636
It is you, retarded zoomer. Stop spamming the board again.

>>150385356
Had he been diagnosed with cancer at that point?

>>150390148
That WAS the problem. It was a super popular episode, so every other writer wanted to do what Rebecca Sugar was doing and make episodes focused on characters' feelings.

I'd also cite I Remember You for similar reasons. Except that one ruined the Ice King for every later writer, so they were all stuck using him as a confused grandpa instead of an easy inciting incident.

>>150390748
>Skinner being an imposter
That whole episode was a tongue-in-cheek meta joke about how people complained about retcons every time something new was revealed about a character's past. That's why the episode is more about Springfield gossiping about how much they hate the change than the actual character. It was intentionally written to be stupid, forced, and nonsensical, then ended with all of Springfield promising this episode would never matter again.

>>150393112
>the writers expected the show to end and decided to do so by highlighting how far the show had strayed from its original concept.
Not sure how true this is, but I do recall someone from the show's staff saying that Homer's Enemy was them basically lampooning how much Homer had "devolved" since the early seasons, from a potentially realistic caricature of a dimwitted yet well-intentioned father, to a completely comical farce of an angry retard whom no sensible human would tolerate.

The transition to "Jerkass Homer" began around season 4. It's honestly when all the characters began to get "Flanderized" (kek) because the show shifted from trying to be a comedic, animated family drama to just being full-on comedy.

>>150396151
No that wasn't until much later, and nobody knew about it in the public until after he died. He was literally recording his final album while aware he was dying of cancer and it was a huge inspiration for its lyrics and tone so it's not like it hurt his singing ability.

People say it died when Roiland was fired but the truth is that pic rel would lead to the downfall of the series that it will never recover from

>>150394196
>The Shell ruined penny.
How?

>>150378086 (OP)
The Comedy Central era is way overhated, some of the best episodes of the show are from those seasons, and frankly I don't see the same decline in quality from Fox as other people do.
Though the TV movies themselves were pretty lame if you ask me.

>>150378114
>>150389952
The show started going to shit the moment Sardonyx showed up. So much of the symptoms that plagued the show started showing up there. Contrived melodrama because the showrunners were convinced that's what the audience wanted, the show treating what Pearl did with Garnet as an allegory for fucking rape, Peridot is just there. FFS if the title screen didn't clue you in that things were going south fast, I don't know what would.

>>150397925
you sound really gay

>>150396942
CC era was a decline but a tolerable one. Hulurama is downright zombie mode.
At least the gap between the Fox run and the first movie is only about 4 years. Hulu era started a decade after its second cancellation

>>150378133
I completely agree and while this episode is easily rewatchable I've never understood why anyone cared so much about it and it probably for the reasons you said.

>>150378612
The live action SpongeBob musical actually uses the song in a clever way since it highlights SpongeBob as a pure optimist even when he thinks the world is ending

>>150398066
He's not you

>>150395885
Suck my dick you projecting faggot

>>150397925
I was wondering why the director of Jumanji was writing a Steven Universe episode but it's not the same guy.

>>150393101
>not magical mystery cure
one job