Early Installment Weirdness

Original Raw and Uncut

Original Raw and Uncut

Two-Headed Starfish
Most shows are significantly different early in their run so I'll give examples

1st season of SpongeBob: cel animation, calmer tone and theme, characters voices sounding different due to different recording equipment, no more needs to be said

Season 1-3 of Family Guy: these seasons had more fluent animation, little to no cutaway gags, characters have different personalities, the plots are more cliche, and so on.

Season 1 of Johnny Test: It was the only season to be traditionally animated, it had unique background music, no whip sound, characters were somewhat likeable, and it had a Saturday-morning cartoon feel

Early episodes of Adventure Time: the older animation was filled with thick outlines, noodle-like character designs, Jake was a perfect oval, nowadays he shapes like a gumdrop, the colors were brighter (Watch a season 1 episode and see how bright and colorful it is, and then watch season 6 to see the muted and dim colors), the background music was peppy and intense instead of eerie and relaxed like in later seasons, Finn was more energetic and happy now he's sad and serious. Episode plots were simple and had no plotholes and so on.

Season 1 of gumball: the animation was wonky, flat and stiff, and filled with cool colors, characters had different personalities, the humor was random and goofy instead of the post-Season 1 4th wall jokes and the scenes where characters whisper random facts for no reason that we have nowadays.
 
As shows go on, they may or may not start adapting new traits that carry though later on down the line, for better or for worse.
 
Grumpy Squidward Guy said:
Season 1 of gumball: the animation was wonky, flat and stiff, and filled with cool colors, characters had different personalities, the humor was random and goofy instead of the post-Season 1 4th wall jokes and the scenes where characters whisper random facts for no reason that we have nowadays.
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:fred:

not troo
 
Season 1 of Parks and Recreation was definitely different than the rest. Leslie came off as more of a female version of Michael Scott, for one thing. Fortunately with season 2 the show grew into its own thing.
 
The Simpsons: Used to be produced by Rugrats' animation studio from seasons 1-3. Also the animation was a lot more active during those seasons as well as seasons 4-? (whichever season stopped being fluid). Homer used to had a different voice. More examples can be found in TV Tropes page of this trope.

Regular Show: Not listed in the Tv Tropes page for some reason. It's already half a decade old so if you compare seasons 1 and 7, you'll notice quite a difference. Mordecai and Rigby were often the focus, the animation was prone to going off-model and had more activity. Benson was an unsympathetic boss with very good reasons to get mad at M&R. Skips used to had no personality besides being the helper. Muscle Man wasn't the main character yet in season 1. Hi Five Ghost didn't spoke too much, and this was because he was jinxed. Also, the most noticeable thing is that the show used to be focused on humor and non-continuity.
 
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