I used to catch Sports Night on Comedy Central sometimes, and I liked it.  Some people complain that it replaces wit with fast dialog, but if you pay close attention, you see that it actually replaces wit with fast wit.  Because I only saw it haphazardly, though, I missed a lot of the continuing story.  Now, thanks to the joys of DVD collections, I've been watching the whole thing in order.  The first season is absolutely brilliant, but immediately in the second season, I've detected tinkering.

I know that the show struggled to get the ratings that make the network suits happy (just like in the second season's plotline.  Hmm...), and it seems that they tried playing with the formula to make it more marketable.  While I've still been enjoying it, so far I think the first season was better.  I'm curious if this tinkering (I think they call it "retooling") ever actually works, because every time I see it, it breaks something.

Arrested Development was genius from the first episode.  The first few episodes of any show are usually pretty rough until the cast and crew haven't hit their stride yet, but AD was hilarious right out of the gate.  Now in its third season, with cancellation looming despite a loyal following and critical acclaim, the tinkering has begun.  Immediately you can see changes, starting with the opening credits.  The show is witty enough to mock the process, but I can't help wondering whether the show, even if saved from cancellation, will be transformed into something unrecognizable in the process.

News Radio was another great comedy that struggled with ratings, and by the end was so mangled that cancelling it was a mercy killing.  True, the loss of Phil Hartman wasn't the network's fault, and that rocked the show pretty hard, but I believe that it could have found it's feet again if given the opportunity.

The Tomb Raider series has become a joke in the gaming community, but the first game was really, really good.  A lot of idiots complained that there was too little combat, though, so in Tomb Raider 2, the whole lonely exploration aspect was jettisoned to make way for a bunch of shootouts.  The combat engine in the TR games was not great.  It was never supposed to be heavily used.  The game was about exploring huge areas, making precision leaps, solving platform puzzles, and only punctuated occasionally with combat.  They took what was great about the first game and threw it away, and then kept tinkering, making each iteration sink deeper into mediocrity.

Is there a special school that people go to to learn to break things professionally?  I mean, it seems like a whole discipline exists aimed at taking a working product and driving it into the ground.  Took a working show and lost the critical acclaim it had enjoyed?  Job well done!  Took a funny show and turned it into cookie-cutter dreck in only 6 episodes?  Have a 6-figure bonus! 

How do the people that ruin working products ever find work again?  If I pay a guy to put a new roof on my house and he creates a big hole in the ground filled with rubble, I'm not exactly going to give him glowing references.  Maybe if networks listened to the talent that created the show and gave them the wad of cash they spend on consultants and "retooling," the show might actually improve instead of degrade.  That is the intention, I assume--or am I missing the point?