Of course it’s The Office season 2. So, episode 7. Although Basketball (episode 6) is also pretty good, it’s definitely more part of the more dreary realistic season 1 feeling.
Black mirror Episode 2 lol
They never managed to recapture the horror of the first episode although a couple of times they got close. Netflix is not even trying though, black mirror used to be the only unbingeable show where you had to let each episode sit with you and think about how you feel about it. Now it’s twee sci-fi with happy endings. I could just watch old star trek for that.
Trailer Park Boys, EP2 or so.
Benidorm, EP3.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
Braking Bad, after 5th or 6th episode.
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.
alsimoneau figured it out? That’s a new low…
Ted Danson’s reaction to that scene is too perfect… That one hurts
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
He also had reverse Samson syndrome, had to lose his hair to gain power.
Very true!
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 to care.
And I also like the more subtle one, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
I’m more of a “it’s an excellent game but it only gets going 5-8 hours in” guy, and the first game that comes to mind in this category is Persona 3 (all versions). I can’t do TV shows unless they’re heavy on the information load/words per minute (The Thick of it, for example), else my mind starts drifting away. 🙃
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.
