Should the First Season Suck?
I experienced the joy of streaming Netflix over my Xbox 360 last weekend.
I watched the entire first season of 30 Rock, which I didn’t catch the first time around.
Then I tried to watch the second season of Weeds. I loved the first season of Weeds, but I didn’t get to see the second or third seasons. When we got Showtime a while back, I was so excited to be able to watch Weeds again, but the fourth season was awful. No Conrad, no Heylia, Mary Louise Parker sinking into depths of bad motherhood that apalled me, and very little funny stuff. Because it was so awful, it ruined season 2 for me.
That made me think about other shows that had awesome first seasons:
- Chuck–continues to get better and better
- Big Love–totally meh since season 1
- Veronica Mars–continued to be awesome, but season 1 was definitely the best.
- Heroes–they keep promising me that it will get good again, but it has been disappointing since the anti-climactic season 1 finale
- Friday Night Lights–stuttered a bit in season 2, but definitely back on track with season 3
- Supernatural–same as FNL, had some issues in season 2, but they worked through them and it remains a solid show.
I also thought about shows I didn’t watch in their first season:
- Seinfeld
- Friends
- Gilmore Girls
These are three of my favorite shows of all time. Maybe the key to a show’s longevity and continued artistic growth is for me to only begin watching in season 2. Or at least for me to not really care about the show after season 1.
Really, I think the key is the premise. Gilmore Girls explored family relationships, and Seinfeld and Friends explored the relationships among groups of Friends as they tried to make lives for themselves. The other shows I mentioned didn’t have a premise that was sustainable.
Veronica Mars had a compelling overarching mystery that was hard to top in subsequent seasons. Supernatural was slightly less reliant on its overarching mystery the first season, but it struggled to find something as strong as the boys working to find their father in the second season. Thankfully, the CW gave them a season 3, and the show has gotten stronger since then. Heroes keeps trying to cover the same ground over and over again. (I mean seriously, think before you kill off a character with a useful power. Giving Isaac’s power to paint the future to Parkman is just tacky.) Friday Night Lights suffered from network interference during its second season.
But, Chuck is my star. I didn’t think its premise was sustainable, but they continue to put him in situations that work while keeping true to the character’s roots. Other showrunners could take a lesson from this show.
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Chuck, Friday Night Lights, Heroes, big love, supernatural, veronica mars | Jennifer C. Rodland | 
February 24, 2009 11:00 am
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By Anonymous, February 24, 2009 @ 5:28 pm
You’ve mentioned before that you are a huge fan of Twin Peaks. How did you forget to mention Twin Peaks, master of the unsustainable premise, in this post? It had the biggest drop-off in quality and viewership from S1 to S2 that I can remember.
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By Jennifer Roland, February 24, 2009 @ 5:59 pm
Oh. My. God. I can’t believe I forgot Twin Peaks. Perhaps my excuse is that I completely. blocked everything after Laura’s killer was revealed.
I did think of another omission: Grey’s Anatomy. I love the show in S1, but it quickly became unwatchable. I quit watching when Meredith fell in the water and I realized I didn’t actually care if she died.
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