Norman Price (seasons 6-present)

Norman Price is a character from the children's TV show Fireman Sam, in the first five seasons of the show, he was a 7 year old boy who often caused mischief and also liked to play harmless tricks on his friends and even the people in the Fire Brigade.

He was good in the first five seasons in the show, but since Season 6, his character got flanderized.

Why He Sucks Now

 * 1) His character has been severely flanderized beyond recognition as he has gone from a mischievous boy who played harmless tricks on his friends into a whiny, loud and bratty jerk who forcefully tries to get what he wants without thinking of others.
 * 2) His voice is extremely annoying and unbearable to listen to (mainly in the UK dub).
 * 3) Nearly every appearance of his character always has to have him do something stupid or ridiculous which always leads him to getting into trouble, and even though he does apologise and promise to never do it again, he forgets that promise the next episode he is in.
 * 4) Alongside doing silly things without realising, he even does some horrible things to others for the pettiest reasons, such as:
 * 5) * Tying James up to a chair for a stunt video in a room covered with flammable liquids, which is considerably dangerous.
 * 6) * Purposely locking James in a swimming pool changing room by literally gluing the door shut, just so he could be the star of a synchronized swimming show.
 * 7) * Stealing Joe Sparkes' rescue submarine and crashing it at bottom of lake, just to try to film some monster that probably isn't even real.
 * 8) * Stealing the batteries from the Floods' smoke alarm to use for his boom box in a magic show.
 * 9) * Convincing James to watch a rescue demonstration from the fire station's pitched roof at its Open Day.
 * 10) * Attempting to get James's plane down from a tree with a unstable piles of logs, resulting in them both stuck in tree.
 * 11) * Manipulating Mandy to set off a flare they found, which Mandy refuses to do. Luckily she gives it to Penny, stuck on the cliffs, instead.
 * 12) * Trying to play with his football inside his mother's shop, all because it was "too windy" outside.
 * 13) ** In addition, when his mother took it away, he deliberately set off the fire alarm just so he could get it back, refusing to own up to it.
 * 14) * Along with his cousin, using fire beaters as oars to go rowing alone and ends up losing them in the river when a grassland fire occurs.
 * 15) Because of all of the terrible stuff he does, he is the cause of the emergencies in most of the episodes he is in.
 * 16) * While in the earlier seasons, he would occasionally make mistakes or doing something silly that would lead to an emergency, in these seasons he does this in nearly every episode.
 * 17) He often gets way too much screen time in these seasons and it feels almost every episode of these seasons always have to add Norman Price, it's like the writers have a new motto: when in doubt, shove Norman Price into the scene.
 * 18) Even when he isn't causing any emergencies, he can still act like a jerk to others around him.
 * 19) * One example of him being cruel in the episode "Going Out with a Bang". In that episode, Sarah and James are both scared because they don't know if their cat Lion is okay, Norman then says that maybe the cat is hiding in Mike's shed (which was on flames when he said this) which is a beyond cruel and traumatic thing to say to Sarah and James.
 * 20) Whenever he is the cause for the emergency, he never learns his lesson or gets properly disciplined like in previous seasons. He just gets a warning from the fire brigade that he immediately forgets in the next episode and nothing else, making him completely one-demensional in these seasons.
 * 21) Due to the fact that he receives little to no comeuppance from the firefighters of Pontypandy for his actions, his character is pretty bad role-model for children and he could encourage kids to do bad things to others.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Despite his flanderization, there are some episodes where he is actually likable and even heroic, like in the special "Fireman Sam: Alien Alert", where he exposes Buck Douglas' scheme. And some episodes, he's innocent or obedient or doesn't cause disasters, like he didn't cause the gas canister explosion and forest fire which Sarah and Mandy caused after disobeying Ellie.
 * 2) Deep down, Norman does care about others around him.
 * 3) Despite his obnoxious voice in the UK, at least his US voice actors, Carter Treneer (US, series 6-10, specials 1-3), and Mark Ricci (US, seasons 11-current, specials 4-current)) did a decent-to-good job voicing him. In fact, his first US voice actor actually had a fitting voice for him, as he was a child-teenager back when he voiced him.
 * 4) At least he apologizes and shows regret for the things he has done.