How could you omit this gem? "Terrible" is usually too strong, but it seems like a fair number of TV shows that become great take time to hit their stride. The first season of Farscape comes to mind, here.
This is a great point. Everyone thinks that everything should be great right out of the gate, and they don't really give things time to become good. Or for the audience to find them. Most all-time great shows took a season or two to become good, never mind great. Seinfeld comes to mind. Same with Firefly... season 2 was so much better than season 1.
I can't believe no one has mentioned The Office yet. During its peak, it was my favorite show of all time. Fell off real quick though once they started to do too much with the plot and the show started to take itself too seriously. If I remember correctly it around like season 5.
Dexter is a show that hit the ground running first episode and was awesome for years, then lost its original showrunner after its unforgettable fourth season (with Lithgow) and just...... died on the fucking vine by the end with rampant stupidity. Whatever was left was a fucking disgrace.
At some point Michael transforms from a bumbling boss into a literal retard. Season 1 isn’t very good either. The stories didn’t bother me. The episode that sticks out in my mind as when they jumped the shark was when Michael’s GPS told him to turn right. And he did. Straight into a pond.
Firefly was.... just okay. If it was so great and popular, where were the viewers to prop up the Nielsen ratings? Not that it was a bad show, its just not quite deserving the praise heaped upon it by the fanbois. (Not saying anyone here is, but you know what I mean).
Confused by the fucked up decisions made by the Fox execs that had no fucking clue what they were doing. Firefly consists of a two-hour pilot and thirteen one-hour episodes (with commercials). The series originally premiered in the United States on Fox in September 2002. The episodes were aired out of the intended order. Although Whedon had designed the show to run for seven years,[117] low ratings resulted in cancellation by Fox in December 2002 after only 11 of the 14 completed episodes had aired in the United States.[118] The three episodes unaired by Fox eventually debuted in 2003 on the Sci Fi Channel in the United Kingdom.[119] Prior to cancellation, some fans, worried about low ratings, formed the Firefly Immediate Assistance campaign whose goal was to support the production of the show by sending in postcards to Fox. After it was canceled, the campaign worked on getting another network such as UPN to pick up the series.[76][77] The campaign was unsuccessful in securing the show's continuation.[5] The A.V. Club cited several actions by the Fox network that contributed to the show's failure, most notably airing the episodes out of sequence, making the plot more difficult to follow.[120] For instance, the double episode "Serenity" was intended as the premiere, and therefore contained most of the character introductions and back-story. However, Fox decided that "Serenity" was unsuitable to open the series, and "The Train Job" was specifically created to act as a new pilot.[13] In addition, Firefly was promoted as an action-comedy rather than the more serious character study it was intended to be, and the showbiz trade paper Variety noted Fox's decision to occasionally preempt the show for sporting events.[118] Fox remastered the complete series in 1080i high-definition for broadcast on Universal HD, which began in April 2008.[121] On March 12, 2009, the series was the winner of the first annual Hulu awards in the category "Shows We'd Bring Back".[122] The Science Channel began airing the series on March 6, 2011.[123] All episodes aired in the intended order, including episodes "Trash", "The Message" and "Heart of Gold", which were not aired in the original Fox series run. Along with each episode, Dr. Michio Kaku provided commentary about the real-life science behind the science fiction of the show.[98]
Interesting. Seems like Fox did that a lot, and really did not know how to handle sci-fi TV shows. They did the same shit to Sliders, including airing episodes out of order. The first two seasons of that show were pure science fiction/adventure and had a steady following. Then Fox producers got more involved and wanted to make it more action-oriented. They pissed off the original creators and cast so much that nearly everyone except Jerry O'Connell and Cleavant Derricks left around the same time. They fucked it up so bad that they had to and cancel and sell it off to Sci-Fi Channel. By then it was so derivative of the original show it was barely recognizable and shit the bed within a season and a half.
Yep... they're fucking morons over there who screwed up a show that was great right out of the gate. If you watch the show as intended by Whedon, it comes off quite differently. It's funny, quirky, and well-written. And a show is pretty well screwed whenever they try and move it around time slots... it makes it next to impossible for a base to form when you're dealing with scheduled, not-on-demand delivery mechanisms. Never mind pre-empting it for football or other sports.
Really makes me wish FX was around back then in the manner it is today. Fox seems to be a little more adventurous with shows on that channel as opposed to their regular non-cable lineup. Perfect example of that is a show like Legion vs. The Gifted. Both set in the X-Men universe, but two totally different styles of show. By the way; if you haven't watched the first season of Legion yet, do it now. It's amazing.
Even SyFy is doing a good job with shows like The Expanse, Killjoys, Dark Matter (until it got cancelled because it started getting lost), etc. I can only imagine that they would have done with Firefly.
Syfy has killed lots of shows that I have loved. After a short run, Dark Matter(haven't watch the end yet...)/Caprica/stargate universe I am sure there are more. Just seems the shows I am really into get cancelled by syfy.
I feel that they're doing a better job recently... but totally agree with Caprica... great premise, but part of me wondered if it was just too expensive to produce back then. Stargate seemed to run forever, and get completely fucked out, so I'm not surprised that it got canned early... I mean, after Rodney in Stargate Atlantis, what was left? Universe was an interesting concept, but it was getting a bit tired after the first season, I thought...
I'd say I miss when television in general was good. Much if what I watch now is things like MASH, Drew Carey Show, Married With Children, etc. Shit, HULU has Quantum Leap, Home Improvement... With the exception of This is Us on NBC, there's very few new shows on that I'm really into on tv.