"You've nearly warmed this cold, cold heart of mine"
Alternate title: the shows that pulled a Fonz and jumped the shark
We all know those TV shows that take a season or so to settle into their themes and characters—“Beverly Hills, 90210,” “Sex and the City,” “Parks and Rec”—even “Schitt’s Creek” takes a few episodes to really get going.
But that’s not what I want to cover today.
No, today, we’re covering the shows that are birthed from their creator(s), cast, and crew fully formed—the ones that immediately have an identifiable tone, clear character definition, and a strong story arc. The shows with (nearly) perfect first seasons that then make us wonder, “what happened?” during subsequent seasons.
The criteria I’m using for this list is pretty simple and completely arbitrary:
There must be noticeable decline in the quality of subsequent seasons. So, a show like “Breaking Bad” is not included for obvious reasons even though its first season is, of course, excellent.
A show must have more than two seasons. Two seasons isn’t long enough to judge whether or not a show’s quality truly drops off.
You’ll also notice that many of these shows are a bit older. That might be because…I’m a bit older and nostalgia plays into this quite a bit? Or it might be because when shows were beholden to ratings, they often had to shape up faster. There was no long-term Netflix contract no matter how many people didn’t watch, nope. You had to hit those numbers back in the day to have any hope of staying on the air. (This is another topic for another day, and this theory may not even hold water given some of the shows I mentioned above.)
That said, here are my picks:
The O.C.
“The O.C.” is white, privileged, decidedly unwoke—and the first season is fully incredible. I didn’t watch this when it aired because I was always at swim practice and my family didn’t have TiVo, but I binged the DVDs freshman year of college and quickly became obsessed. This is the kind of soapy teen drama I live for. There is inexplicably a party in every episode, there are scantily clad teenagers who are clearly actually in their 20s, and there’s a hot dad.
And don’t get me started on the music. I was decidedly not emo in high school and college but the music made me think I was. And although no one in 2022 would call this show “woke,” the central theme actually is one of class; the wealthy Cohen family adopts Ryan Atwood after the Cohen patriarch is Ryan’s public defender. Ryan has to adapt to living in a wealthy enclave of California and (of course) quickly becomes embroiled in a dramatic relationship with the most popular girl in school. Ryan’s friendship with Seth Cohen is one for the ages, and Rachel Bilson’s performance as Summer often steals the show. Lest I forget Oliver, what is a teen nighttime soap without the resident mentally ill character who gets obsessed with the girl. Worth a rewatch if you haven’t in awhile.
Veronica Mars
The 2000s’ answer to Nancy Drew (and the source of this article’s title quote). God, the first season is incredible. Never mind that it quickly dropped off in season 2 and I can’t even talk about season 3 (the college year), but season 1—what a triumph. The season follows 16-year-old Veronica Mars as she tries to discover who really killed her best friend Lily. She’s the unofficial intern/assistant/teen detective at her dad’s PI firm, and in addition to the season-long mystery of who killed Lily Kane, each episode contains little mini mysteries as Veronica helps her classmates discover who kidnapped their dog and who cheated on a test, among other escapades. Like “The O.C.,” it explores class differences (with a slightly defter hand tbh), and Kristen Bell strikes just the right balance between acerbic and loveable. And, god, the finale still makes me tense as hell, even though I know who killed Lily Kane. Lastly, is there a better fictional father-daughter relationship than Keith and Veronica? No there is not.
Revenge
This show is straight-up ridiculous. So ridiculous that you might be wondering why it’s included. Imagine you’re the show’s creator and you pitch this: socialite Emily Thorne moves to the Hamptons—next door to the wealthy Grayson family—and begins dating the heir to the Grayson fortune. But Emily is actually Amanda Clarke, and the Graysons framed her father for treason when Amanda was a child. Amanda spent much of her youth in a juvenile correctional facility, and her father was murdered in prison just before Amanda’s 18th birthday. Amanda has now returned to the Hamptons with a new name in order to exact revenge and ruin the lives of everyone who helped frame her father.
I mean…it’s wild. And yet the first season is so utterly bingeable that I couldn’t not include it. Despite the fact that Emily VanCamp’s acting is fairly wooden and Connor Paolo’s Long Island accent is not good, I couldn’t stop watching it. It gets even harder to suspend disbelief in subsequent seasons but the first one is a truly wild, (van)campy ride.
Scandal
I know, I was just ripping apart “Inventing Anna” which was also brought to us by Shonda, but hear me out—“Scandal” season 1 is actually really, really good. Olivia Pope and her merry band of fast-talking fixers are protecting madams and dictators, and then—we realize Olivia Pope is having an affair with none other than married President Tony Goldwyn! DRAMZ! Olivia and Co. are also investigating Amanda Tanner’s involvement with the White House when she asserts that she had an affair with the President Fitz. This first season is also only 7 episodes, which I think contributes to its high quality. And it ends with a compelling cliffhanger about who Quinn really is. Season 2 (its first “full” season) is also quite strong.
“Scandal” didn’t really start to get bananas until after the kidnapping—which is when I stopped watching when the show was actually on the air (but then of course I binged the whole series in 2020 because I had nothing else to do). The B6-13 shit really hits the fan in the last few seasons—which is reflects in the show’s ratings.
Desperate Housewives
I watched all of “Desperate Housewives” in 2020, and let me tell you—this show is absolutely unhinged. There is truly no other word for it. I jumped off the Wisteria Lane train in season 3 or 4 back when it was airing, but upon watching it all—each season really is wilder than the next. (It was also abundantly obvious which episodes aired around sweeps.) (Do you guys remember sweeps?)
Anyway. The first season is perfect because, like “Veronica Mars,” there is a season-long mystery (what happened to Mary Alice????) with a lot of drama and hijinks. And who doesn’t love an omniscient narrator speaking to us from the beyond? We have every trope represented in the neighborhood: the workaholic with the husband who doesn’t help, the hapless divorcee, the trophy wife, the Stepford Wife, the sexpot, and the weird widower. (I know Teri Hatcher was the most well-known of the cast at the time, but Susan Mayer is annoying af and I will die on that hill.) (And we love a “Melrose Place” reunion with Doug Savant and Marcia Cross!) I like a show that gets right into the drama with a strong hook and easily understood characters, and the first season of “Desperate Housewives” does that, with lots of twists and turns along the way.
Lost
Talk about a show that really…lost…the plot. I haven’t watched “Lost” in years but I remember the first season fondly. (The rest of the show? Not so much.) What a concept: a plane crashes on a seemingly deserted island. How do these people survive? What do they do? While the first season is long (hello, network TV in 2004), it brilliantly gives us a peek at the characters’ lives before the plane crash, showing how they each came to be on the ill-fated flight. And then. We get the conspiracies. The time-travel. The questions that were never really answered and the mysteries that were never really solved. The first season was great while it lasted, though.
Superstore
This is a newer sitcom that my boyfriend and I somehow stumbled upon via Hulu recently. We sped through it last fall and, we probably watched more than we should have in hopes that it would return to the glory of season 1. Set in the backdrop of Cloud 9, a Walmart-like superstore, the show focuses on the store’s employees, many of whom have worked there for years, some of whom are brand new, and all of whom are tired of dealing with customers’ bullshit. The show deals with class, teen pregnancy, union organizing, marriage—with some of the funniest jokes I’d heard in awhile. Subsequent seasons are still pretty funny but the first season is a seriously excellent sitcom. I recommend watching season 1 and then skipping straight to season 5 which somehow finds a way to bring humor to COVID.
Shows I almost included but their subsequent seasons aren’t bad enough
“Friday Night Lights”: there is a noticeable decline in season 2, but I they course-corrected enough in subsequent seasons and I can’t say it truly jumped the shark. This list initially started as just “perfect first seasons” (no jumping the shark required), and Friday Night Lights is that. (Here’s an embarrassing fact about me: for a short time in my 20s, my Bumble bio read, “looking for the Coach to my Tami.” Needless to say, it did not say that when I met my boyfriend.) (But really, is there a better TV marriage?)
“Gossip Girl”: another Josh Schwartz and co. show that has incredibly well-defined characters right off the bat. Although some of the subsequent seasons got a little weird (spoiler alert: Bart Bass returns!), I don’t consider them nutty enough to truly have “jumped the shark.” (The fashion! The music! The Fashion’s Night Out plot! What a specific time in our lives. I think of this show every time I hear a Jason DeRulo song, which is more often than you might think.)
Shows that probably deserve to be on this list but I haven’t watched every season
“Dexter”: I know what you’re thinking: “one of these things is not like the other.” And that’s true. This show is not necessarily my usual fare. But I succumbed to peer pressure from my boyfriend and embarked upon this show recently and, wow. What a great first season. It aired in fall 2006 on Showtime, and it’s a tight 12 episodes. In what is clearly a common theme here, there is a season-long mystery (who is the Ice Truck Killer?) and episodic mysteries and/or murders along the way. Plus, Michael C. Hall’s portrayal of a psychopath is brilliant.
“Homeland”: A CIA agent becomes convinced that returning POW is actually a spy? The plot is golden. But I stopped watching at some point after season 2 or so (I forget exactly when) because the plotlines were really grasping at straws. (And yes, this is coming from the only person who has actually watched all of “Revenge,” so that says a lot.) Maybe I’ll do a season 1 rewatch at some point because it did win the Emmy! It broke “Mad Men’s” streak!
This list is in no way comprehensive as, believe it or not, I have not watched every show. So, I’d love to hear what you think is missing: what are your perfect first seasons? What should I add to my list?
Another great read!
For me personally, “You” would be on that list, too. Great first season, second one was ok, the third one was so boring that I stopped after the third episode.
Great list! (I am nostalgic for The OC's S1 vibe).
I would also add:
- Killing Eve S1 (really starts to go off the rails in S2-3) but my god S1 is stunning
- The Handmaid's Tale. Having committed to at least 4 seasons, it was better when it was very open-ended about June leaving (dare I say, hopeful).
- The Crown. I think they're actually hurting themselves getting closer to modern times. (It's easier to cover 1940s/50s when so much of that time has been covered in biographies/confirmed information). Plus the current RF is just ... I can't care anymore.
- Jessica Jones. The first season is a meditation on depression and leaving an abusive relationship (with someone who happens to be a super-powered villain). It really covers some serious emotional topics that are not covered in the superhero world, and it loses its storytelling zest when that first major conflict is over in S1.
Remains to be seen:
- The Great: The show is delightfully off the rails. The stakes felt high in S1 but it was funny. S2 is more serious and kind of a downer.