My go-to example for this is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Season one is overall quite rough, however s01e19 “Duet” (second-to-last episode of the season) is IMO the first episode that shows true glimmers of promise. In season two the series starts to find its footing, by season three it’s proven itself to be Star Trek gold, and then the series manages to maintain its quality through to its seventh and final season.
Season 1 of DS9 was rough? Cries in TNG… 🤣
It is rough compared to the later stuff but, man, it got off to a WAY better start than TNG did… I mean, Riker had to grow a beard for the show to get good!
Sisko’s beard also improved DS9
Very true!
He also had reverse Samson syndrome, had to lose his hair to gain power.
IMO DS9’s s1 is way worse than TNG’s, but that might be because TNG has a nostalgia factor for me from watching random episodes as a kid, and so by the time I did a full start-to-finish watch-thru I already knew the characters well and understood that the series would get better, whereas I was an adult when I first watched DS9 and went into it completely blind (after watching the first two-parter episode I nearly cried, because I was on a mission to watch all of the 20th century Star Treks, and there were seven seasons of this to slog through!? And now it’s my favorite Star Trek series of all time.)
BoJack Horseman. I don’t have an exact episode for you, but the first few seem to be mostly world building and introducing a few themes that will come back later. Later half of s1 is where it starts to get good, and with s2 the show “properly” starts.
I think the comedy and overall quality of the early episodes is pretty solid, making those not bad episodes per se but rather deceptive ones. I personally enjoyed how the series takes its time in settling into its drama, and suspect it was an intentional metaphor for how the surface glitz and glamour of Hollywood obscures its dark underbelly.
Hmmm, that would make another good asklemmy thread: series with deceptive beginnings that obscure their true genre…
Yeah, there are some solid jokes in the early episodes, such as the paparazzi being unable to blackmail Bojack, because he’s too nihilistic, depressed, and numb to care.
And I also like the more subtle ones, such as Diane having one decent sibling, and he’s literally the black sheep of the family.
Must have been after I lost interest. I had always heard great things, but only made it a few episodes in.
I tried the first episode and it just felt depressing, not funny at all. Never looked back.
It’s depressing in a good way. It handles the telling of depression as a central theme really well. But holy fuck does “The View from Halfway Down” (towards the end of the series) really make it uncomfortable in this regard. Do not watch it unless you’re prepared for an overload of self reflection and existential dread.
The Good Place really takes off at the end of the first season.
Personally I consider The Good Place one of the rare shows that is solid all the way through without a single bad or weak episode, however the end of season one is certainly where it goes from great to fantastic.
For me, the twist at the end of season one retroactively makes the rest of season one better
alsimoneau figured it out? That’s a new low…
Ted Danson’s reaction to that scene is too perfect… That one hurts
No way. Episode one was a banger.
American Dad is a fantastically funny show, but season 1 is basically unwatchable. Season 2 is a mixed bag. I’d recommend people just start watching from season 3 onward and only check out the earlier episodes as a curiosity.
I remember watching American Dad’s premiere and being excited for the concept but disappointed by the execution. You can tell there’s aspiration to be a good parody of the contemporary political climate in the first episode, but iirc it’s undermined by its crassness.
The Orville also struggled to get its footing in the early episodes; maybe Seth MacFarlane just does better once his series gets established?
I think they struggled early on for different reasons.
American Dad was too laser focused on being a political satire show and I just don’t think the writers were equipped to write a good political show. It just comes off as angry and with unlikable characters. Once it loosened up a little bit, having that political satire premise as a foundation gives the characters a baseline to work from and they all feel distinct because of it.
The Orville feels like Seth didn’t want to make a comedy. It feels to me like he just wanted to make Star Trek, but because he’s “a comedy guy” a lot of the humor, especially early on felt like it was put in to meet some expectation of Fox that a Seth show be a comedy.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Starts like the average random magical girl anime until episode 3, then suddenly deconstructs everything giving you an amazing whiplash. I had to beg a friend of mine to watch until ep3 because he absolutely could not stomach the first episode. He thanked me later
Every one I have forced to sit through the first 3 episodes of Red Dwarf has gone on to watch every episode and now incorporates quotes from the show in normal conversation.
That’s because there are no bad episodes of Red Dwarf
Idk they had me from episode 1. Best episode though imo is tikka to ride
They’re all dead
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had to vamp for too long before “Turn, Turn, Turn” but it got better and better the loopier it got, and the farther from the canon universe. And yet it’s worth watching the early eps because things are set in place that the show runners fulfill later. In some cases much much later, and in some very satisfying ways.
I loved the second half of season 1 of that show, but then I hated season 2 so much that I refused to watch any more of it.
You should try Season 3, see if you still hate it
Perhaps someday, I will introspect to find that the name Daisy Johnson no longer makes me break out in hives.
Letterkenny, I think it gets good around the end of season 1 or beginning of 2. You still have to watch the first episodes to get an idea of who everyone is and their relationships though. Might have to do with just how strange the characters are in this random small town in Canada. It’s pretty tough at first, but once you get to the end of the first season, something clicks and the show becomes pretty hilarious.
I was hooked from the first episode
Technically a streaming series rather than a TV series, but the second campaign of Critical Role (Mighty Nein). I started watching the series after seeing how popular Critical Role was online and that Mighty Nein was recommended for CR beginners, but I really didn’t get it at first; it seemed so boring and slow. Still I stuck with it (listening to it in the background while I did other stuff), and I remember there were two specific moments where I finally understood its popularity:
spoiler
episode 7 “Hush” when Nott kills the manticore baby (which was my first “holy shit they did what” moment), and episode 12 “Midnight Espionage” during the hospital heist (I could not stop laughing at the debacle and completely lost it at Nott’s negative charisma roll). In other words, thanks Sam Riegel for making me a fan!
It didn’t help that the first campaign was already underway when the show started, and for a long time their audio was pretty terrible
I haven’t seen campaign one (since I started with two), but I’ve heard it has a rough start. I’d be curious what episode people think campaign one started turning around on, since obviously Vox Machina became quite popular in its own right, even if Might Nein is the campaign that cinched CR’s mainstream fame.
It is really good once they kicked that douchebag Orion out of the campaign. So start at episode 28 to avoid him, he made the show worse and was an asshole to everyone and makes the other players feel uncomfortable with his sexual remarks so you probably don’t want to watch anything with him in it. I think at one point Laura/Vex does something in game and he literally said his character gets hard from it, Travis looked like he was ready to throw hands.
Campaign one is probably the funniest campaign and also the one I cried the most in. The ending is amazing and heart wrenching.
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Huh. I never made it through season one because I just couldn’t stand every character, and didn’t want to keep spending time with them.
Braking Bad, after 5th or 6th episode.
Season 2 was such a drag though. I love the Vince universe but I almost dropped it after spending months to get through S2. Then it actually got good and Better Call Saul is one of my favourite shows of all time now.
Took me a few times to get into BCS, even after loving Breaking Bad. Eventually, it did take the top spot between the two, but it’s such a slow burn. Plus all the stuff with his brother just annoyed the hell out of me.
Michael McKean kept me on board. He played it so perfectly.
Steins;Gate season 2. Almost at the end.
What happens at that moment onwards signifies everything prior and even elevates the previous season even more (which is crazy cuz Steins;Gate S1 es perfect as is).
You beat me to it, such a banging series! I found for myself and told others by episodes 12 of S1 (*if my memory serves right) is where it picks up.
Seriously?! I tried SO many times with this show, that everybody raved about. Ok, looks like I’m jumping back in.
When I switched from the One Piece Anime to the One Piece Manga. I am sorry, but the Toei adaptation is a fancy power point presentation. So. Many. Static. Shots.
I’ve heard One Pace is good, but I’ve never compared it to one piece
It’s a very fair comparison :3
Jericho only lasted 29 episodes, and while I enjoyed them all (plus the graphic novels that continued the story), I will admit it had a shaky start.
It was a mid-2000s CBS show, so it had to appeal to a wide audience, the kind who’d tune in to CBS of all networks during primetime. The show’s overall premise had me hooked, but some of the side plots and characters are… distracting, early on.
Most people agree that the show picks up steam partway through the first season, though I haven’t seen a consensus about a particular episode. My pick though, episode 7, “Long Live the Mayor”.
I came here to say Jericho, second last episode of S1.
Prophecy Girl
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, season 1 of Buffy is pretty meh, but Prophecy Girl gives us the first example of what the series becomes, with the balance of humor and drama and horror.
