Conducting a survey.

[hannah]

The topic of skippable first seasons of TV came up recently. It's a common one in fandom - "you only need these four episodes", "grit your teeth and get through it," "just start on season two." Whatever the given entertainment or narrative value of those seasons that varies from person to person, there's general agreement that they're nowhere near as good as what comes after.

It's got me wondering: what TV shows have genuinely good first seasons? I don't mean one-season wonders like Wonderfalls or Freaks and Geeks, and I don't mean premium cable shows like Deadwood and Six Feet Under. I don't mean shows that had wonderful pilots and then never realized that promise. I mean stuff that ran on ordinary networks for at least two seasons.

What first seasons of TV are fully and enjoyably watchable all the way through?

The first thing which comes to mind for me is Scrubs - a little shaky and still steady on its feet, funny where it wanted to be funny and serious when it was supposed to be serious. petra suggested Slings & Arrows, which is a show that never got worse than "amazingly good."

I'm curious what someone else might come up with.

Comments

[ruuger]

A lot of people say that S1 of The Mentalist is the best one, though I personally disagree (I think whether you think S1 is good depends on if you prefer Jane as the basic light-hearted jerk-with-aheart-of-gold procedural protagonist or the much darker character he becomes in later seasons).

For me, skipping seasons to get into a show rarely works, because I need to like the characters (or premise) at least in some way to like a show, and if they change so much that my opinion would be completely different if I started from another point, then goes against my need for consistent character development. The seed of what I would like in season X must already be present in the beginning. And this is why my road to being fannish about something usually starts with hating the thing but plowing on anyway :D

(case in point: The Mandalorian, which I didn't originally like when I first watched it until suddenly I did)