History StatusQuoIsGod / LiveActionTV

** Season 12 ends on what looks like a NothingIsTheSameAnymore, with Charlie and the Waitress finally getting together (but with Charlie being the one annoyed) and Dennis leaving the gang to live with his son he never knew he had. For Season 13, the show advertises the replacement member of the gang, Cindy, a [[TwoferTokenMinority savvy, female minority member]] [[ContrastingReplacementCharacte for the predominantly white main cast]]. Season 13's first episode shows the gang is starting to be a bit more successful and stable with Dennis gone, but ultimately they can't move on from Dennis's departure. The episode ends with the Waitress breaking up with Charlie, who now wants her back again, and Dennis coming back as if nothing ever happened and shooing Cindy away, who is never seen again.

** Season 12 ends on what looks like a NothingIsTheSameAnymore, with Dennis leaving the gang to live with the son he never knew he had and Charlie finally banging the Waitress and in a relationship, but with Charlie losing interest in the Waitress. For Season 13, the show advertises the replacement member of the gang, Cindy, [[ContrastingReplacementCharacter the new savvy, female minority]] of the predominantly white main cast. Season 13's first episode has the gang try to come in terms with Dennis being gone and go with Cindy's more modern and less self-degrading ideas, but by the end of the episode, the Waitress breaks up with Charlie and makes him want her back again, and Dennis comes back as if nothing ever happened and shoos Cindy away, who is never seen again.

** Season 12 ends with Dennis leaving the gang to live with the son he never knew he had and Charlie finally banging the Waitress and in a relationship, but with Charlie losing interest in the Waitress. For Season 13, the show advertises the replacement member of the gang, Cindy, [[ContrastingReplacementCharacter the new savvy, female minority]] of the predominantly white main cast. Season 13's first episode has the gang try to come in terms with Dennis being gone and go with Cindy's more modern and less self-degrading ideas, but by the end of the episode, the Waitress breaks up with Charlie and makes him want her back again, and Dennis comes back as if nothing ever happened and shoos Cindy away, never to be seen again.

** The [[WordOfGod head writers]] consider in hindsight this trope the biggest problem with the award-winning episode "The Inner Light": An alien probe zaps Picard which results in him in experiencing decades of living on an alien world, while in reality only hours pass. However, in later episodes there are no indications that this experience had any lasting effect on Picard, beyond teaching him to play the flute.

* ''Series/{{Merlin 2008}}''. It wasn't so apparent in series one, because nothing terribly earth-shattering happened, but then it looks like things were finally going to get shaken up a little, only to reverse it all at the start of series two - Merlin is forced to go back on his vow not to speak to the dragon again; Morgana finds out for certain about her magic, freaks out, and runs away, but at the end of the episode she's back and things are more or less exactly as they were; Gwen and Arthur start to fall in love, only to agree that it wouldn't work out; Merlin gets a girlfriend and vows to run away with her, but by the end of the episode she's dead, and the chances are he'll be over it by next week, And then worst of all, Arthur finds out the truth about his birth and ''tries to kill his father'', only to be persuaded it was all a lie and go back to his 'all magic is evil' attitude. However, it looks like this may possibly change soon - [[spoiler: at some point this series, the dragon is going to be released]]. However, while there were certain changes during the show's run, other parts of the format were frustratingly entrenched, to the point that Arthur doesn't find out about Merlin's magic until ''the last episode''.

** However, the show went to great lengths to protect Jane's relationship with Lisbon as the series progressed. After Jane had moved to the FBI, Jane pulled several strings just so that Lisbon moves with him to the FBI. This despite the fact Lisbon didn't even want to make the move in the first place.

* ''Series/BurnNotice''. Whatever happens and whatever Mike does, he's going to stay in Miami. The change is in how Mike deals with it, and by the middle of season three, he's reconciled himself to giving up figuring out who burned him.
** Lampshaded when Mike returns at the beginning of Season Four, only to find Sam and Fi are already embroiled in a case-of-the-week as if he had not disappeared into a secret prison for several weeks. He protests this, and Fiona reveals [[spoiler: they'd taken a client out of respect to him and his memory]].
** The Burn Notice is eventually more or less lifted - right around the time the show gets renewed for several series - only for circumstances to keep Mike mostly in Miami. Part of the reason is that as a burned spy with a penchant for do-gooding, the CIA can use Mike for jobs and have plausible deniability.

** Season VI episode "Emohawk: Polymorph II" has a particularly egregious example of this. Rimmer has all of his bitterness sucked out by the Emohawk and gets turned into a version of [[TheAce Ace Rimmer]]. He openly admits he doesn't want to go back to being [[IHatePastMe his usual self]] and it's unlikely the [[VitriolicBestBuds rest of the crew]] would want the old Rimmer back. The episode ends with them planning to restore his bitterness and, sure enough, the character is back to normal by the next episode.
** PlayedForLaughs in "Timeslides", where various TimeTravel antics cause Rimmer to inexplicably come back to life - until he puts his fists through two crates of explosives.

* As irritating as this trope can be in light-hearted series, it's even more so in serious drama. ''Series/{{Spooks}}'' has managed to hit both this trope and AnyoneCanDie, the latter for [[spoiler: destroying half of south-east England, murdering the Royal Family, killing the parliament and leaving one of their main cast on death's door, before revealing the whole thing was a training exercise]].

** In fairness, the creators [[WhatMightHaveBeen fully intended there to be later seasons,]] but the series was CutShort. And the Galactica ''did'' reach Earth if you count ''Series/Galactica1980,'' but [[FanonDiscontinuity almost no one does.]]
** According to producer Ron Moore, ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'' makes a conscious effort to ''avert'' this trope, the idea being to introduce irrevocable change on a regular basis so the show doesn't stagnate and become the same episode over and over again. Some viewers naturally experience [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks possible side-effects.]] This was explicitly a reaction to how status quo was god over on ''Star Trek: Voyager'', criticized for resorting to the "reset button" all the time (i.e. they must have a "shuttle factory" for all the ones that get destroyed during that series).
*** One of the basic points they made is that they ''do not'' have replicators like ''Star Trek'', and as a single ship on the run without a homeworld anymore, they physically do not have the industrial capacity to replace complex machine parts anymore. They can fudge it a bit by cobbling together spare parts stripped from other ships, but fundamentally, ''Galactica'' doesn't have a Starfighter factory on board. When a ''Viper'' fighter gets damaged beyond repair, that's it - the overall number of Vipers they have can't increase (except when they had ''Pegasus'', but not for long).
*** When ''Galactica'' takes a severe pounding during the battle over New Caprica, it ''stays half-crippled'' for the rest of the TV series. They don't have a home planet with orbital drydocks to repair it in. Even a half-wrecked battlestar can put up a good deal of a fight, however, though from that point on the ship's mechanics are really facing a losing battle to keep it running.
*** On the other hand, Ron Moore openly picked the "Final Five Cylons" based on ''shock value'', what would disrupt the status quo, rather than based on what made sense within the plot. This included openly breaking their own story rules, and not even setting up the reveal with plausible explanations - i.e. one character even had a child, and the one cardinal rule they had about Cylons was that they're sterile. Moore bluntly admitted that this was indeed simply breaking his own rules, and openly made a ham-fisted retcon to explain that it wasn't really his child. Viewers and critics were not amused.

** Of note is Harm returning to flying duty in the fifth season. One multi-episode story arc later, and his commander advises him to transfer back to JAG, because he can do more good there than in the cockpit[[note]]He ended up acting as legal council for a junior pilot who mistakenly attacked friendly peacekeepers who he mistook for a Serbian unit on the verge of attacking refugees. Harm got him cleared of charges [[OffOnATechnicality because the peacekeepers did not check in to update their position as required]], and then had the pilot [[ReassignedToAntarctica transferred to a non-flying billet]].[[/note]]

* ''Series/SevenDays'' has essentially no character development. Frank and Olga never get their relationship past the flirting phase. Donovan never gets to backstep (or do much of anything else). Ramsey still hates Frank's guts all throughout the series even though Frank stuck out his neck to protect him on multiple occasions.

** Looks set to be played straight again in Season 2 with Ward's character: [[spoiler:after deciding not to kill him off as planned at the end of Season 1 and having Brett Dalton renew his contract as main cast for Season 2, the writers now need to find a way to get him out of jail and back in with the team, despite him now being a known enemy. Except they don't; he ends up working with HYDRA instead. Fans worried that he would have some sort of redemption arc, the closest he comes is when he rescues Skye from some bonds, expecting her to team up with him to escape, and she promptly shoots him and leaves]].

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'': Prior to ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' (and arguably ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''), this was the standard procedure. Likewise for the ''Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse'' novels, to not interfere with any of the shows or movies.

** During the writing proccess of the sixth season episode "Second Chances", the writers toyed with the idea of killing off Will Riker and replacing him with his "transporter-accident twin", Tom Riker. However, this was deemed to risky and the idea was scrapped.

-->'''{{Website/SFDebris}}''': What would it have hurt to make changes to Seven - to have her grow even a little - half a dozen episodes before the end of the series, after you've been teasing it for years? Then again, this is a show about getting home that ''[[NoEnding cut to the credits]]'' before they reached it. So for all we know, ''Voyager'' got hit by an asteroid before it reached Earth, and [[Film/StarTrekNemesis Janeway was the only survivor.]]

** Deep Space Nine had the rare in-universe example of this. The Cardassians have "Repetitive Epics" (such as the aptly named ''Never Ending Sacrifice'') where multiple generations keep acting the same way as their prior generations serving the Cardassian state. Bashir complained it was boring, but Garak found beauty in the endless cycles. One wonders if this was a quiet nod from the writers on the nature of Star Trek.

* ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}''

** Subverted in "Crime and Witch-demeanors" where [[spoiler:Phoebe is stripped of her powers, not regaining her premonition until the next season]].

** In fairness, the creators [[WhatMightHaveBeen fully intended there to be later seasons,]] but the [[TooGoodToLast series was cut short.]] And the Galactica ''did'' reach Earth if you count ''Series/Galactica1980,'' but [[FanonDiscontinuity almost no one does.]]

* A fairly common sitcom example is the main characters trying some get-rich-quick scheme which, after going through all sorts of trials and tribulations, results in them giving up after they barely end up breaking even, or, in some cases, with a token profit that they use to pay someone else to deal with the resultant mess.

* Series/{{The Fugitive}}: No matter how many times Kimble saves Gerard’s life, it doesn’t change anything. Gerard will keep trying to capture him. Lampshaded by Kimble in the episode “Corner of Hell”.

* ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'': Over time, the jokes about [[AmbiguouslyGay Mac's sexuality]] [[TransparentCloset become more explicit]], but [[ArmoredClosetGay he'll either deny it]] or [[ResetButton backtrack later]]. By the time of "Hero or Hate Crime?" the rest of the cast is GenreSavvy enough to anticipate this when an arbiter decides he'd be entitled to a reward if he claimed to be gay. [[spoiler:Then after signing a document agreeing to the ruling, Mac catches them off-guard, [[WhamLine deciding he's fine with being openly gay]].]]

*** "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky": At the start of the episode we learn that [=McCoy=] has a rare incurable disease which will kill him within a year. He plans to retire from Starfleet so he can spend what time he has left enjoying life. Wouldn't you know it, the new civilization the Enterprise encounters in the episode has advanced medical knowledge which just happens to include a cure for that very disease.

** Two especially blatant instances of shoving things back into status quo in the original series can be found in the episodes "Operation - Annihilate!" and "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky". In the former, Spock is afflicted by an alien parasite, and it is discovered that extremely bright light can kill it without harming the host. Well, except for rendering Spock permanently blind. Mere minutes from the end Spock suddenly turns up on the bridge with his eyesight restored, and it is handwaved by explaining that Vulcans have a secondary inner eyelid which protected him from permanent blindness. Said physical feature was never mentioned before, and never brought up again until late in ''Enterprise''. In the beginning of "For the World is Hollow...", we learn that [=McCoy=] has a rare incurable disease which will kill him within a year. Wouldn't you know it, the new civilization the Enterprise encounters in the episode has advanced medical knowledge which just happens to include a cure for that very disease.