It's not something too uncommon, when a TV show loses steam it adds new characters to an already established cast to spice things up. What shows and characters did the job right and what ones did it out of pure desperation?
For me, I have to say South Park does it pretty well for example, new kids like Butters and Timmy really flourished and made a place for themselves in the South Park world.
As for bad ones, I don't want to start more Family Guy bashing but I can't stand Herbert, Ali Williams, That middle-eastern guy and so many other one-shot character-with the same joke-coming back over and over and over again.
Toph is actually the best character in Avatar, and Edward Wong Allthosemiddlenames The Third was a hilarious midseries addition to the Bebop crew. One Piece is generally strong introducing new characters as well.
Good: Aqualad, Speedy, Bumblebee, Mas Y Menos, and way too many to count.
Some had focus when they first showed up, like Aqua-, Bumble-, and Speedy starring with one of the primary Titans in their debut, while others started off as ensemble cast, like the M-Twins, or others as glorified cameos, like Hotstreak (or is it Hotspot?), who later get a good episode.
Bad: Doom Patrol and some of the S5 Guest Stars
SOME of the guest stars were great or were in great episodes, or both, like the kids Raven babysat in that one episode. But then you have guys like the Doom Patrol showing up, setting up the plot, and then vanishing, not to even show up in the final battle
Grey: Terra
Started off as a great character, and YES, I AM including her plot twist later on. But she's starts to go OOC in the final battle in S2, since
She was fine with trying to kill the Titans, but then acts astonished they're pissed and are fighting back.
Overall, it seemed to be a way of adapting the comic, while trying to redeem her at the same time, but instead ofbeing one person, seemed to have two personalities, one her show self, the other the comic, duking it out, since the writers didn't set up her guilt in a believeable way.
Hmmmm, another example of adding a character is one that happened in the comic strips, and while happen later in TV. That would be Ceaser from THE BOONDOCKS.
The character himself was NOT bad.....at first. He agreed with Huey with on alot of things, but disagreed on others, and was alot more balanced than Huey was, wanting to fight for their causes, without buying Huey's conspiracy theories about Santa Claus.
It was ONLY when Aaron McGruder turned the comic strip from a combination of humor, racial issues, drama, with some politics, to mostly politics that was debatably funny, that Ceaser turned into a Yes-Man for Huey.
Since Aaron McGruder knows that most people think of Ceaser's later version rather than his early form, he's waiting to put him in S3, after hooking people into the show, and while probably have him as the early version, someone who could be Huey's equal who disagreed occassionally, rather than nodding sidekick.
The good ones: Ducktales - Fenton/Gizmoduck was a great funny cool character for the cast for Scrooge & company. Darkwing Duck - Morgana,Neptunia,& Stegmutt were great new characters to add to the whole Justice Ducks cast. Avatar - Toph was a cool new character for the group who's changed from mean jerk to sweet funny girl with awesome Earthbending powers. South Park - Butters,Dougie/General Disarray,Timmy & Jimmy were really funny cool new characters for the cast. Samurai Jack - The Scotsman was a funny great new character when him & Jack work as a team against the bad guys. Ren & Stimpy - Haggis Mc.Haggis & Sven Hoek were hilarious new characters to the cast which I wish Sven had more episodes though. Xiaolin Showdown - Jermaine was a cool addition to the monks when he helps fight against Jack Spicer but didn't know about Chase's evilness. One Piece - Vivi,Chopper & Robin were a great new addition to the cast along with other new characters like
Franky & Brooke.
Naruto - Sai is a great new character to the cast with a cool new jutsu and that he's looks Gothic-like due to his new appearance.
The bad ones: Family Guy - Herbert is such a bad character who needs to get killed off which he's not funny, but so lame which I hope Stewie kills him like those Vaudeville guys. South Park - Butters' parents totally need a severe beating one day which they're lousy,terrible parents. Static Shock - SheBang, I never liked her, but I find her an annoying pain-in-the-butt witch for poor Virgil which I wanna punch her so hard.
I think the problem is new characters can sometimes lack the same feel. There's alot of characters The Simpsons have added in recent years that fall under this for me, like Lindsey Nagel. That character for example feels like a one note joke on executives to me. Even worse are when you can tell the character was added to address some perceived underrepresented demographic.
Rich Texan works fine as a rarely seen background character. I'm not sure why he's gotten so much focus lately. He's more of a Sarcastic Man or Pimple Faced Teen type.
And let's not forget Franky. He's my favorite character to join the crew since Usopp. And mayhaps Brooke the skelliton will join up as well. I hope.
Well, the Simpsons is always adding new characters just to exploit one note jokes. Even older characters that were introduced as gags have become just that. Even when they have a character developement episode (last year's Christmas special where Gil moves in) the characters are too flat to do anything. I've said tome and again, a lot of characters are just on for a cheap laugh at their accents or odd speach impediments. The worst character addition would have to be the Costington boss. It's just a warmed over Mr. Spacely Jowls joke. They even tried to make him a character. There was someone else they tried to make a character... I think it was the "yes! I like to chew." guy from the episode Marge got breast augmentation. That was terrible.
Would adding Venus DiMilo to TMNT count? Cause she really killed the show for me. And as far as the animated oldschool TMNT goes, I never liked Dregg or Mung at the end of the series. They just weren't fun villains. They were totally generic.
Johnny Bravo comes to mind. Not only did they add new characters (Pops and Carl) but they had new animation and sometimes a show loses it's luster once it changes the animation around (American Dragon: Jake Long).
I liked Carl and Pops myself. I read somewhere that Van Partible (Johnny Bravo's creator) hated the Kirk Tingblad/Russel Clabrese JB season with a passion, which is why he didn't include the characters of Pops and Carl to be used in the shows' 3rd and final season (Carl did turn up in a couple of very brief cameos, though).
X-Men: Evolution: Beast, Angel, Iceman, Scarlet Witch and Gambit were all characters introduced in the second season (the very end for the last two) who were great.
Family Guy: Yeah, it's got some really bad ones like Herbert, but there were also good characters added later on. Especially in the second and third seasons.
Justice League/Unlimited: Green Arrow and Question were the highlights of the show, imho.
Detective Conan/Case Closed: Hattori/Harley is one of the best characters in the show, imho. And the show introduces a lot of other new characters later on.
Pocket Monsters: Haruka is one of the shows greatest characters, Shuu was a great rival, and even Hikari is ok
One Piece: Most of the later characters are just as good as the earlier ones, Robin aside.
I also liked them, and I'm not sure why they got flack from a lot of people.
It was bad in Rugrats when Dil and Kimi were added. The movies were alright though. I didn't watch Rugrats when they got Susie so I can't speak for her.
Susie at least added an ethnic element to the show, even if she mostly functioned as a rival for Angelica and protector of the babies. Dil, on the other hand, contributed nothing. His only "job" was to be as disgusting as possible. I stopped watching Rugrats before Kimi was introduced, so I can't comment on her.
Everybody seems to be going on characters that were good, where are the bad ones?
Scrappy Doo, That's always been # 1 on my list of most Hated characters
Hewy, Duey, and Louy almost make it on the bad list when with Donald, but they shine in Duck Tales.
Dil Pickles from Rugrats. Sure it provided a good topic for the movie but I mean it's already a cartoon about babies, and Tommy was a year old but why wouldn't he be able to talk with his brother when Tommy technically talk to his parents himself. Kim somehow was ok because it added to the nice girl list of characters.
Carl and Pops from Johnny Bravo were really bad too because they're nothing like Van Partible's original thought of the cartoon. I'm kinda glad they brought the show to a good finish.
Mandark's parents from the last seasons of Dextar's lab. They totally didn't fit in with what the show had introduced us to previously and we lost Mandark's sister in the process. Plus it gave us a side of Mandark that really brought down his character.
Serpentor. Serpentor *fing* (excuse me for the swear) ruined G.I.Joe for making G.I.Joe supernatural and soft. (contributed from a friend)
Silver the Hedgehog, after all this BS with Shadow who is supposed to be a nega version of Sonic, they add another hedgehog to the mix with a bizzar storyline and powers. If he wasn't a hedghog and they hadn't done it already with Shadow the idea of having a psychic character would've worked for Sega but after that it was just over kill with new characters (you can only introduce new rivals to the main hero so many times). This should also include Shadow, Jet, Storm, Wave, and I guess Big the cat for some of you who really don't like fishing (those other one time characters don't count because they havn't used them in other games to bump up the sales).
Some weird ones are Elmyra when they put her with Pinky and the Brain, but that's under the bad crossover list.
Armen Tanzarian is Princible Skinner's "true" identity but he's still the same person even though he's not really Skinner.
New characters are a necessity; otherwise a show can't grow. The trick when you're trying new things, though, is the instinct to realize when something is working and when something isn't. Some cartoon creators have that instinct, and some painfully do not.
Not necessarily. Ed, Edd 'N' Eddy went through it's entire run without introducing a single new character to it's cast. Not even any one episode characters.
Also, Bean Bunny was added to the cast of Jim Henson's Muppet Babies after the 3rd season or so, and he added nothing to the show whatsoever.
I never believed in the practice of bringing in new characters just for the sake of doing so. New characters should only be added when or if they serve a purpose, when it's artistically valid to do so. Otherwise, it's perfectly fine to leave the cast just as it is (my opinion).
Silver, I thought was the futuristic version of Shadow and a certain white bat. Other than that, he was just added to Sonic's World to celebrate his anniversary. If it wasn't Sonic's birthday, we probably wouldn't have seen him here.
