Worst Shows With The Best First Episodes

[Sutekh]

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.

Elle was indeed awesome. Kind of wasted with how she was gotten rid of, IIRC, but fun when she was there. (Plus, as a Legion of Super-Heroes fan, a lightning-user named 'Elle', evocative of Lightning Las, was funny.)

[GamerSlyRatchet]

Thundercats 2011 had a very strong pilot. It was a clever re-imagining of the franchise with gorgeous visuals that added some moral nuance to the base premise in an organic way. Then they completely blew it with unlikable characters, episodic Aesops where no one learned anything, and plot holes that contradicted the show's world-building. I could never get into it the way many people did, but I do feel bad it was canned the way it was.

[Chris Lang]

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

I tend to agree with you on Resurrection. The second season seemed to spin its wheels for a while, with a plotline involving a sickness affecting Returned that ultimately didn't really amount to much. And then an interesting new character showed up to provide a new conflict for the last four episodes. Personally, I think Preacher James should have been introduced a bit earlier.

All in all, it felt like the creators were given a second season they didn't know what to do with, so they were making things up as they went along.

[Powerboy]

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.

A lot of the season 2 Heroes problem was the Writer's strike. I remember the head writer saying the original intention was to have the characters change as the seasons went by, characters having their stories completed and replaced by new characters. Unfortunately, as soon as he said that, it turned into, "No! I want the same characters whose stories have already been told forever and ever" and the network went with that pressure and so you had a lot of the same characters instead of the writer's original intentions and it just turned into stock episodic television.