Why did they drop Ron Friedman as writer and story editor for Season 2? IMO, this was beneficial for the show as Season 2 is better than Season 1. However, I've always wondered why they changed captains midship like that.
shareI don't have the entire information but I want to believe that Friedman was kind of a fall guy (since he was in effect, the show runner) for the poor response that Season 1 received and Marvel felt that it needed to "clean house" so to speak:
https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0376602/?ref_=tt_urv
The overlarge cast of characters did not help Friedman's meandering scripts, which were usually needless complex (the first episode, "And The Sea Shall Give Up It's Dead," is a very good example of this) - and not in an intelligent way, more of a lurching, stumbling way. Crammed to the gills with awful pseudo-science which didn't make a lick of sense, bizarre, out-of-left-field dialogue (the title of this review is one such example, which Tony spontaneously recites while briefing his teammates), and ill-fitting humour that, for the most part, just wasn't funny, about the only thing this show had going for it was the animation, and even that was weaker than other shows on TV at the time. "Iron Man" season one was entirely too 80's to stack up against it's fellow Marvel shows, such as "X-Men" and "Spider-Man."
It's bizarre, because Friedman also wrote the first season of "Iron Man"'s sister show on the Marvel Action Hour, "Fantastic Four," and it was much better. The pseudo-science and humour WORKED on that show, sounding just right coming out of Mr. Fantastic and the Thing - Friedman seems to be a better hand at dealing with outer space fantasy than with the business-and-espionage world of Iron Man. Regrettably, FF was hampered by truly, truly appalling animation, which could have stepped right out of the 70's. To me, however, "Iron Man" was just the show I had to sit through before I could watch "Fantastic Four."