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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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I’m kind of a serial monogamist with television–but I’m the really annoying kind who plays the field looking for the replacement lover while still with the other lover. I started watching Supernatural when it first came on because it came on right after Gilmore Girls, starred Rory’s best boyfriend ever (Jared Padalecki), and could possibly help me fill the hole left by the long decline and eventual end of the X-Files. Plus I thought my then-boyfriend (now hubby) would enjoy watching it with me while we talked on the phone in our long-distance-relationship days. He liked it so much that he started recording it for us to watch together on the weekends when we were at his place. So, when it made the move to the timeslot of death (9pm Thursday against the ratings juggernaut that is CSI), it didn’t matter to me because we watched it every other weekend anyway.
When in season 2, every good show was moved to 9pm Thursday (and when I say good show, I don’t mean CSI, which I would rather die than watch, but The O.C. and Grey’s Anatomy), I will admit that I forgot about my Winchester boys. DH still recorded Supernatural on the downstairs DVR, but I almost always forgot to make time to watch it. (I spent most of my time upstairs watching tv with the dog.) So I missed at least half of the season.
I watched the first episode of Season 3, as it premiered one week before The Office began, but no other eps–until the writer’s strike took The Office off the air. With my Thursday nights free once again, I went on a binge of SPN DVDs and reruns sure to make me completely obsessed with everything Winchester. Now that I’ve watched all of Seasons 1 and 2 and gotten caught up on Season 3, I’m floundering a little. I’m looking for the next great thing as I long for the new episode of Supernatural that they will play this Thursday.
Which is a really long way of saying that I had a mini-Friday Night Lights marathon last night when I couldn’t sleep. The joy of seeing the episode that guest starred Logan from Gilmore Girls (Matt Czuchry) AND Weevil from Veronica Mars (Francis Capra) was almost more than a little insomniac tv fan could stand. I know that the overly dramatic storylines that are being interspersed this season are not fan favorites, but I am willing to overlook them for the joy that is the rest of the show. I don’t know how the writers and actors manage it, but everything is so real. The way that the teens interact with one another is achingly realistic, and the way that the Coach and Tami interact as husband and wife is so understated and human.
So, if you haven’t seen this wonderful show before, do us all a favor and pick up the DVD os S1, find a way to get caught up on S2, and start watching this show regularly. Then convert all of your friends and family members. (Yes, I am relying on Sprint’s marketing tactics from the late 80s and early 90s. Or was it MCI?)
If FNL is not to your taste, then perhaps you will enjoy my other potential new love: Chuck. Geeky electronics store employee becomes clandestine CIA/NSA supercomputer. What’s not to love?
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big love, Chuck, Friday Night Lights, Heroes, supernatural, veronica mars | Jennifer Roland | 
February 24, 2009 11:00 am | 
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