People Are Naming TV Shows That Got Better After Going Off The Rails, And Gotham Isn't The Only One I Agree With

Too often, TV shows retool characters and storylines in detrimental ways, and without ever finding their way back to supremacy. But every so often, those changes compound and multiply in unpredictable ways that actually work to a series’ advantage, giving a more positive connotation to the phrase “going off the rails.”

Over on Reddit, the question was posed to the TV community to name shows that managed to actually get better after swerving completely away from whatever their starting points were. I went into it with the hopeful expectation that someone would namecheck Fox’s lunacy-encouraging Batman prequel Gotham. And I didn’t have to go far at all before that wonderfully zany show came up. But more on that shortly.

First, we have the suggested answer from the OP, which I cannot deny is something of a textbook definition for the concept. As they put it:

As someone else noted, there's no conceivable way that someone can watch the first episode of Search Party and be able to guess how it all ends. Or that the middle of it would involve Cole Escola holding Alia Shawkat's Dory hostage in a fake basement apartment meant to look like her own. It's hard to tell where that show is going from one line to the next, and even when it was technically off the rails, it was still firmly squared in.

Now let's take a look at what other shows were being subggested by commenters. (And I swear this top one isn't me, even though I fully agree with it.)

• Gotham. S1 is a typical police procedural that takes place in Gotham City with villains of the week and an overarching plot surrounding the Maroni and Falcone crime families. Starting in S2 it becomes a full-on Batman series without Batman featuring Penguin, Riddler, Azrael, Clayface, Mad Hatter, Ra's al Ghul, Bane, Joker (though they never actually refer to him as Joker in the series), and a whole assortment of Batman's rogues gallery.
• iZombie. Rob Thomas, the guy from Veronica Mars, not the one from Matchbox 20, has an escalation issue. And nowhere is this more clear than iZombie. IZombie is probably the best example of what you are looking for here. This show starts as police / mystery type procedural and becomes a global crisis World War Z affair in five seasons. It works, it flows, but man I would have enjoyed 100 episodes of the procedural.
• American Dad! The entire "Bigoted Reaganite CIA man overreacting to a post 9-11 reality" concept has been pretty much totally abandoned at this point, and the show's centrally-defining "style of humor" has changed at least twice. But it's still going strong, and although it's a different kind of funny, it's as funny as ever. 'Zooka Shaaa-uuuurks!
• Legends of Tomorrow is the perfect answer for this. that show started as discount Avengers with time travel and just said screw it we're gonna be a live action cartoon. the Beebo episode alone is proof they knew exactly what they were doing and some network exec was probably having a panic attack watching the dailies. The fact that they got John Noble to literally play a version of himself doing ADR for a demon cult is the kind of thing you can't even pitch with a straight face.

I may love Gotham more than others on this list, and I still miss it or a ton of reasons (including that nutty flash-forward finale), but it is hard to deny the other suggestions noted above. Legends of Tomorrow was so firmly on the rails in Season 1 that even light adjustments for Season 2 felt refreshing, and it only got better and wackier from there. (All hail Beebo!)

Fellow CW comic book drama IZombie was a similar case where the earliest episodes were easily the most straightforward and arguably boring in comparison to everything that came later.

Meanwhile, American Dad's opening title sequence remains a reminder of the animated comedy's relatively simple origins of "conservative father vs. liberal daughter," even though the episodes themselves became far less political early on in its run. If they hadn't, we might never have seen the Golden Turd Saga conclude (or did it?) in Episode 300.

Here are some more examples mentioned that sound pretty good to me.

• Person of Interest beginning as a police procedural and ending as an AI war is a pretty big swing.
• Riverdale was always kind of off the wall but it got categorically insane by the end and I loved it
• LOST with the whole time travel, island moving, whatever else.
• Doctor Who is probably the ultimate. The character was so different and it was intended to be educational. And the format was so different, a season was several twenty five minute, multi-part unrelated episodes as opposed to the forty five minute blend of monster of the week and series arc structure.
• Showing my age but Moonlighting (Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd) started out a basic comedy procedural but later on there was a medieval episode and a musical episode and other weirdness. I loved it at the time. Felt like no other show. Haven’t rewatched since though so I can’t say if it’s aged well.
• Melrose Place is the epitome of this. It started off as a quiet drama about various residents of a Los Angeles apartment complex, and achieved success after becoming an absolutely bonkers soap opera.
• Archer. The first ...I don't know maybe 5 seasons it's a spy comedy show and a brilliant one too, then their agency gets disbanded ( or bankrupt?) and things become wild....later on archer falls into a coma and 3 or 4 seasons are his coma dreams and even more wild. 10/10 would recommend, 11/10 with rice.

I'd almost argue that Archer took an intentional trip off the rails with its later seasons, given creator Adam Reed was in charge througout, but he never could have predicted the ISIS situation.

That said, everything else on there fits the assignment in my mind. Riverdale and Lost are two shows where Square One was already missing a rail, and I'm not sure how many fans truly think Lost only got better as it got crazier, but still.

Doctor Who's journey is so unique that nothing else even compares, but I'm sure there will come a day when Sesame Street gets some kind of gritty reboot where Big Bird goes back in time to stop Mr. Hooper from dying, and then Kimberly blows up his store. Wait, some Melrose Place is crossing over here.

What do you guys think? Are there any A+ examples that weren't mentioned above for shows that got better as they went off the rails?