Worst Shows With The Best First Episodes

[caj]

Some bad TV shows start off with amazing first episodes, but they can't follow it up.

https://www.cbr.com/worst-shows-grea.../#resurrection

10. Resurrection
09. Last Resort
08. Touch
07. Under The Dome
06. Riverdale
05. Designated Survivor
04. Heroes
03. The Black Donnellys
02. Revolution
01. Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip

[AndrewCrossett]

I thought the whole first season of Heroes was very good. And I liked Studio 60, though I can understand why many people didn't.

[Kirby101]

I thought the whole first season of Heroes was very good. And I liked Studio 60, though I can understand why many people didn't.

This. Heroes Season one was great and showed so much promise, it went downhill after that. "My name is Hiro Nakamura. I'm from the future..."
I also liked Studio 60.

For me it's Lost with the biggest disappointment. But again, that is later seasons not after the first episode.

[Jokerz79]

It's not a technical 1st episode but the 2 V Miniseries in the 80's were great V & V the Final Conflict and had a great end. They tried to do a full series that only lasted one season and the series while not awful was also never as good as the 2 miniseries that preceded it.

Also Battlestar Galactica was great but was followed by one of the worst tv shows ever Galactica 80.

[caj]

Also Battlestar Galactica was great but was followed by one of the worst tv shows ever Galactica 80.

Agree. And Kent McCord (Adam 12) was one of my favorite actors at the time but not even he could save Galactica 80.

[Vakanai]

This. Heroes Season one was great and showed so much promise, it went downhill after that. "My name is Hiro Nakamura. I'm from the future..."
I also liked Studio 60.

For me it's Lost with the biggest disappointment. But again, that is later seasons not after the first episode.

I was gonna say Lost. First season was great, but it just kept getting more confusing and complicated as it refused to answer mysteries and Lost just lost me as a viewer.

[Powerboy]

I was gonna say Lost. First season was great, but it just kept getting more confusing and complicated as it refused to answer mysteries and Lost just lost me as a viewer.

Same here. I binged it after several seasons had been made but I lost interest during the second season because it kept heaping on mysteries and never explaining any of them and it was obvious they could never explain what was going on in any satisfying way that didn't feel like a total cheat. More importantly, I got tired of the endless flashbacks. These characters were basket cases heaped on basket cases. I didn't really want to see what was going on in Los Angeles or NYC. I wanted to see the island.

[Kirby101]

That's because even the writers didn't have answers.

[Zero Hunter]

I thought the whole first season of Heroes was very good. And I liked Studio 60, though I can understand why many people didn't.

One good season does not make up for the 3 very bad season that followed it though

[Nate Grey]

Surprised to see Resurrection on that list. I thought the entire first season was good. The second was meh.

I thought ALL of Last Resort was good, its just it set up storylines it thought it would deal with in a season 2. It got cancelled and was allowed to have a proper finale.

[Sutekh]

I thought the whole first season of Heroes was very good. And I liked Studio 60, though I can understand why many people didn't.

The writers wrote themselves into a corner with Hiro (and Peter). Once they established that he could go back in time and 'fix' stuff, it became a running theme of why he suddenly *couldn't* fix this season's big drama. Oh, confidence issues. Oh, he's lost his powers this season. Oh, everyone's powers are wonky. Just excuse after excuse, when they could have nipped that in the bud by making it clear that he couldn't do that one specific (plot-wrecking) thing.

I see this crop up in comics, fantasy/sci-fi stories and shows all the time, a writer (or writers) who introduce abilities (or tech) that limit their plot options, and rather than craft challenges for people with access to those abilities (or tech), they just come up with reason after reason after reason why their powers (or tech) aren't working this week. Which could be fine, if it happened rarely. But if three episodes in a row have novel ways in which someone's telepathy or time travel or transporters are conveniently not working, then perhaps that writer just shouldn't be writing about people with access to telepathy or time travel or transporters?

Hiro could have had more than enough whiz-bang cool factor with just the time-slowing power that allowed him to do stuff at normal speed while everyone else is stuck in super-slow motion.

If your entire show revolves weekly around why X's powers don't work, then perhaps you shouldn't have given X those powers.

[FFJamie94]

Heroes Season One is great, I watched it during lockdown and found it to be a great Season of TV.
Even Season Two wasn't... terrible. It had some cool moments, but a lot of it feels like "this is what happened after Season One" instead of just being Season Two of a long running show.
I gave up half way through Season Three. It's sad as I think it could have been good, they just didn't know what to do with a lot of the Characters. Sylar was just manipulated into be another Son, which was a pretty poor plot point in on itself. Peter and Nathan really didn't have much to do, even through it was a family driven plot.
The rest of the Characters just kind of existed. It really needed to be the Volume where they form their own Avengers group used to tackle the Heroes "Masters of Evil" group they had going.
I will say however, the episode where Sylar toys with them in the Building and its filmed more like a horror movie, probably one of the best in the whole series.

I remember enjoying the rest of the Show as a kid, but I really don't know how I would feel about it now. Maybe I'll just watch it all again and see if my opinion still stands. I do think that Heroes helped jump the popularity in Super Hero media. They were already pretty popular before with Spider-Man, X-Men and Batman, but I think with Heroes they were able to see that People like the more diverse powerset and having a range of different Characters. It does feel like the last of its era however, like after that we got Iron Man and the Dark Knight which kickstarted off the second "Phrase" of this era of Super Hero fiction. But that's a story for another time...

[AndrewCrossett]

Yea, season 2 of Heroes was a step down from season 1 but the show didn't really go off the rails until season 3, and then it went hard. I did like Kristen Bell's character, but the writers totally blew it with her.

If I'd been in charge I would have retired Sylar as the Big Bad, despite Zachary Quinto's great job and the character's popularity, or at least held him back to pop out again in some later season. Season 2 would have been about some big existential threat that was also unleashed by the mysterious Eclipse, and all the heroes coming together as a real team to confront it. (Hiro would recommend costumes, of course.)

I think Studio 60 would have succeeded if Sorkin had leaned harder into the funny, and hired some writing partners who could write decent sketch comedy... not just for the show-within-a-show but for some of the backstage stuff as well.

[Gaastra]

Agree Heroes season 1 was great. "Save the cheerleader, save the world!" Rest of the seasons were a let down.

100 lives of black jack savage had a great pilot. Rest was a letdown.

[Scott Taylor]

Friday the 13th the series had a really interesting premise and great first episode. Much of the first season was good, but honestly it was hit and miss. Then at the end, that one guy got turned into a baby and the show went way off the rails in the second season with his replacement.

Eerie Indiana was fun at first, but became pretty repetitive and boring after the first few episodes.

V (the remake) had a very promising start and great first few episodes. But it turned into a bad show pretty quickly after that. I think its main problem was that no one watched or cared. So the writers kept trying to do new things to gain viewers. And they lost the existing viewers in the process.