"Growing the beard" moments

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painted chair4

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For those not in the know, "Growing the beard" is basically the inverse of jumping the shark: i.e., it's that point when a show grows noticeably better. At which point do you think a certain cartoon "grew the beard" and went from bad or average to really good?

As an example, I think The Raccoons grew the beard when it went from simple kiddie-toon plots to a deeper, slightly more serious tone. They axed the flat Sophia Tutu character, and many of the personalities were refined: Cyril became kinder, Cedric more confident, Bert a little less cartoony, et cetera.
 
Futurama arguably grows the beard with "Hell is Other Robots" The song is fantastic, it's writing sets the bar high for later episodes and it's a pretty decent commentary on religion to boot.
 
"Growing the beard"? Never heard that before.

I'll say Jimmy Neutron was a show that "grew the beard". There was not one single moment that changed the show forever; I think that the show improved in quality with the second and third seasons. The first season was full of short stories, little adventures, which, mind you, were quite good; but the latter seasons just seemed a whole lot better. The crew started making episodes that were more "epic" - and by that, I mean, they were full of suspense, danger, and there was actually time enough to present a good story. Like I said, the first season was good, but it was just like any other Nick show - eleven minutes of a small conflict with a few gags thrown in here and there.
 
Whenever I watch the early episodes of The Simpsons and South Park I find them boring. I definitly think they got better after awhile. I can't pick an exact time, but they simply started weak.

Also, I think I'm in the minority here, but I think The Fairly Oddparents got better after Poof was born. Still not as good as the earlier seasons.
 
As far as recent examples, probably "Flapjack". It's still a slapstick-heavy comedy cartoon, but as of late more focus has been shifted to the character interaction between Flapjack and K'Nuckles.
 
The Batman grew the beard twice. The first time was at the end of season one and most of season two, both which had a drastic shift in tone in a lot of the episodes and went from uninspired showdowns to interesting storylines with characters like Clayface, Solomon Grundy, Riddler, and even Joker.

Then, for some reason, it most regressed after the first few episodes of season three, and went back to uninspired takes on characters like Poison Ivy and Gearhead. Once season four came around, however, the show improved greatly in quality again, and quality lasted until after the season premier of season five, where it regressed a second time.

Of course, another way of looking at this is that The Batman has never truly had a "growing the beard" moment, but instead has gone down as one of the most inconsistent shows when it comes to quality. Just when new fans thought it was getting somewhere after seasons two and four, bam, it goes right back into the crapper for the most part. IMO, there were at least a few good episodes in every season, but the odd-numbered seasons never came close to matching the quality of the even numbered seasons.
 
It's a Star Trek: TNG-inspired reference with the belief that TNG got better the season that Riker, played by Jonathan "Xanatos" Frakes, was no longer was a clean-shaven man, but rather a fully-bearded bad-ass worthy of being a co-commander.

Now that that bit of geekery is out of the way, "growing the beard" moments in animation . . . I'll have to get back with you, Charlie.
 
Huh? Season 3 was no Season 2, sure, but Gearhead and especially Poison Ivy were well done in "The Batman". (Ivy moreso than Gearhead; she was excellently written in the spinoff comic series, but Gearhead was good too if only because he introduced a larger audience to the character in general, who is pretty obscure.)

And the end of your post, putting it on level with Seasons 1 and 5...I can't really agree. Again, it wasn't as good as Seasons 2 and 4, but it was pretty solid for the most part. Really, the only people who hated it are the ones who didn't like the character of Batgirl.
 
I think Futurama improved when Fry became fixated on Leela. Up to that point, he was really pretty bland. He wasn't particularly funny and he wasn't a particularly good straight man. The fish-out-of-water aspect of his character wasn't used much by the writers. So when he began pursuing Leela, it made him more sympathetic, gave the show some heart and gave Fry something to do.
 
ReBoot Season 3 and Beast Wars Season 2. Before those, they were mostly typical episodic fluff, but those seasons and beyond amped up the storytelling.
 
The Super Friends franchise got better with each new series.

The Wendy & Marvin episodes were crell, then the Zan & Jayna episodes were a step up from that, then Challenge of the Super Friends was better still, then finally the Super Powers Show/Team episodes were actually pretty good (though the franchise as a whole remained very MST-worthy).
 
Sonic SATAM had an Epic season finale with an interesting cliffhanger, too bad it was canceled...

It was MUCH darker than its week day "Pingas" counterpart, especially with Robotnik. never watched it aside from one time when the video store put the wrong video in my AoStH case but I do know it was a darker show.

Code Lyoko was also a show that never apealed to me until Aelita was brought into the real world. dunno why, the show just seemed like the same thing over and over again until that, and it was now that I think about it! Try to bring Aelita into the real world while dealing with school, Xana, and other troubles.
 
I think The Batman grew the beard when Batgirl came and those Lame detectives left they got my interest. and Poison Ivy was a great modern twists on the character and it gave Batgirl a good nemesis for future stories. Then it got better when Robin came it got darker and added more action (That fight when gearhead smashed those kids had me writhing).
 
Why does everybody hate Season 2 of boondocks I loved it. especially the return of stinkmeiner and the kung fu wolf ***** to me Season 1 was pretty boring aside for some episodes.
 
Season 2 had great episodes, but without the thought provokers of Season 1, it falls short.

Plus "Gangstalicious 2" was terrible. That was the Jump The Shark moment right there.
 
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