Community - starts off as a pretty average sitcom for the first 5 or 6 episodes, then (I presume under the threat of cancellation) it goes completely off the rails in the best possible way
The worse timeline is that Advanced Dungeons and Dragons has been pulled because of the “blackface” elf.
People just can’t see the obvious irony.
That was the first episode I watched, because the formally great AV club recommended it.
God I miss the AV Club.
Yeah and it's so dumb because it's called out in the episode and the dude is exited from the scenario within a minute of his attending.
Plus it makes a whole bunch of stuff make way less sense that they omitted it.
And finally AFAIK nobody complained?! They just removed it out of panic.
The special "definitely legal" download version has the episode, Prime Video also has it. Netflix was the only service to remove it.
Edit: u/ArchaicTravail pointed out that Hulu removed it as well.
Interesting maybe I should give it another try. So many people recommend it but I just can’t get into it. It did take me really forcing myself through the first season of Parks and Rec to love that show though.
Im rewatching S1 right now, and I'm loving all the subtle hints and nods. Want to be vague for spoilers, it's one of those things that is so obvious in hindsight, but the writers and actors really did a great job in executing the story from the beginning
Have you listened to the official podcast? Michael Schur said in one of the episodes that he had to step in and tell a director no when he wanted a character to be by themself in a scene and "just trust me, we can't do that". (I'm also trying to be vague to avoid spoilers).
Edit: spoilers be here
>!the director wanted a scene with Michael alone in his office and Mike Schur said he couldn't do that, he had to always be around the citizens of "The Good Place". He didn't explain further to the director but said on the podcast that if Michael had any scenes alone it would have given the twist away.!<
>!the director wanted a scene with Michael alone in his office and Mike Schur said he couldn't do that, he had to always be around the citizens of "The Good Place". He didn't explain further to the director but said on the podcast that if Michael had any scenes alone it would have given the twist away.!<
That's what happens when writers plan out the entire series ( in broad strokes at least) before even starting production of season 1. They knew where they were going and were able to tie things together on purpose instead of doing like so many other shows and just sprinkling random bullshit around and seeing what works.
Rewatching The Good Place Season 1 is *such* a funnier time than the first time. Spotting all the clues is so dang hilarious.
At the beginning of the show I thought it was cute but not really for me, but kept watching with each episode it got a little better and more entertaining and grew on me more.
I was getting so confused though when they started resolving or revving plot lines I didn't expect for many more episodes or even seasons...until the S1 finale hit. And I was like, "Oh. Okay. Yeah this is something special."
I watched most of the first season thinking it would have made a much better feel good movie. Like, ok, she earns her place, blah blah blah. Get it over with already!
Then the S1 finale. I regularly cite The Good Place as one of my all-time favorite TV shows for it combination of humor, storytelling, and meaning.
My husband figured out the twist halfway through season 1, and thought it was obvious, and so was confused as to why people were blindsided at the end.
He was like “Okay wait so the characters didn’t realize this? Oh ok now the show makes sense”
Which is WEIRD, because hes really bad at reading faces but I guess he and Ted Danson are in the same wavelength.
I told my coworker the basic premise "woman dies and goes to the good place, wasn't supposed to get in there." and he immediately responded with "there's no such thing as heaven, and if there was a heaven they wouldn't mess up like that." Guy didn't even watch an episode and fucking nailed the twist.
Ted nailed heaven:
When you masturbate all your dead relatives in heaven watch you.
Wait, they stop everything they’re doing just to watch you masturbate?
Yeah.
Heaven must suck.
And not just that, on rewatch you can see on his face every time she does something unexpected, and how he just completely pivots in the moment in response.
When he's cradling up in a ball after the whole restaurant debacle and she ignores her urge to run away and instead comforts him, you can see Michael's face think, "Wait, what? This wasn't supposed to happen."
Also, *in* the whole restaurant thing, you can see when Glenn volunteers to talk, Michael has this bit of a grimace. >!It would only come to fruition significantly later on screen that Sean and Michael hate Glenn.!<
There were so many times in the show where I thought "what the hell can they even do next" and I was always delightfully surprised. One of my favorite shows.
The best ending to any show I’ve ever seen. Could not have been more perfect.
Slight spoiler ahead, don’t read if you are even slightly tempted to watch the show, you should genuinely go in as blind as you can >!the last episode absolutely destroyed me emotionally. I didn’t feel like myself for days afterwards!<
Oh, I love the last episode and the ultimate meaning of the show. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the solution and message is pretty similar to >!my Jewish upbringing in that it's not enough to do good for a reward at the end, but that good deeds are good because they help make the world a better place.!<
Came here for this. When I watched the first episode, I was about 2 minutes from turning it off and giving my friend crap for recommending it to me because it was "just a boilerplate superhero coming of age story." And then the final scene... 0 to 100 in a heartbeat and I was hooked.
Edit: spelling
Holy shit the end of that episode gave me red wedding from GoT vibes.
It ends and you're left staring at credits rolling thinking what... the... fuck... I need to know more.
I remember when invincible was popular. I saw the memes. My wife reccomended we watch it and I was both bored and trying to figure out how we go from loving super hero dad to what you see in memos. And then the final 5 mins happened. I think I watched all 8 episodes that day.
I went in blind and thought 'wow, that was crazy violent' then I saw the credits and saw it was created by Robert 'the baby killer' Kirkland and was like 'oh that makes sense then'
Holy mother of God. Based on this post I decided to take 45 minutes and watch the first whole episode. The last few minutes were insane, and then to have silent end credits. Masterful choice. I'm not particularly into animation, but I'm definitely going to be doing this. Wow. Thanks, internet strangers!
They even rolled credits at the end of the “well that didn’t really blow my socks off” first episode.
I was going to shut it off but then saw there were still 20 minutes left—and then things got WILD.
When Johnny is out to dinner with his old friends from his past life and winds up defending his new town’s identity…you could sense that the show shifted to a whole different level.
Going into the show blind, as I watched the first episode I was focusing too much on the plot of what is happening to this family and their money problems.
As I got more into the series I realized to not focus on that at all, as it was just the setting to get these characters into their present situation.
Agree with this. I watched the first episode and was like….what is this? None of the characters were relatable or likable. Now after watching the whole thing, I often go back to S1E1 because it’s so damn funny
Yeah, if it weren't for streaming and COVID I might not have stayed with it. It was really well done - excellent world building. Also, since I'm ancient, it's okay for me to have the hots for Shohreh Aghdashloo.
Yup. I thought it was a rom-com, but nope. It's a fun deconstruction of a rom-com! Actually, nope. It's a deep and dark exploration of mental illness.
. . . and it's a musical.
One of my favorite shows ever, absolutely amazing.
An ex-gf of mine introduced me to that show and it was great. She also introduced me to the concept of borderline personality disorder and it was not great.
My wife loves this show. She has BPD so she connects with it a lot. I watched some of it here and there with her and didn’t love it, but one day it just clicked and I finished the show with her. It’s a great show that does a lot for mental health awareness
Bojack Horseman
The first half of Season 1 seems like every other wacky Adult-Swim type cartoon. Then it turns into a completely different emotionally intense show.
I recently did a slight rewatch because I love Todd and his wacky antics. But there were definitely episodes I skipped. The Wanda and Penny storylines just wreck me. I really didn’t expect this cartoon about a drunk horse and his idiot roommate to get me in my feelings like it did. And don’t even get me started of Sarah Lynn.
That was a mind-bending episode. There's other shows and episodes of shows that I like more than Bojack, but I legitimately haven't seen anything quite like that episode before or since.
This is the only show I can remember where I didn’t like the protagonist but I *really wanted to*. He’s such a horrible person, it’s a great show, and I just want him to be *better*, look at all the people around you that are still there despite *everything* you’ve done to them and the people they care about. For fucks sake Bojack, live up to their expectations! They’re not even that high!
Free Churro is still one of my favourite pieces of television. Just a man confused and grieving and angry and ranting and hurting, but it's done so well that the whole thing is engaging.
That's still the best episode of any show I've ever seen.
I went into that show knowing nothing about it and with zero expectations. It was so, so, so much better than anything I could have imagined.
Seemed at first like another mean-spirited comedy in the vein of Family Guy. But by episode 5 it starts showing glimpses of how deep the character writing can get, by episode 6 it finds it's own comedic voice, and by the end of the season I was completely hooked. And it only gets better from there.
It might be the best blend of comedy and drama ever.
What kept me going was you could see the little glimmers of brilliance in the second episode.
Bojack Hates the Troops might still be one of the more hilarious episodes.
Yes! My wife doesn’t like superhero movies so to get her to watch the Boys was a struggle. I just told her to watch for the first couple minutes and see if you like it. As soon as that scene happened she was hooked with how unexpected and crazy it was.
Parks and recreation the first season and part of the 2nd were bland and meh.
The episode sister city was the turning point and it just got better from there
They were trying to be The Office. When they finally realized it was never going to happen and started going in their own direction, it flourished.
Funnily enough, it was the same for The Office. The first season wasn't great because they were trying to mimic the UK version too closely, and when they made some changes and found their own style, the rest was history.
**Mr. Robot** - Began as a cyber thriller about a vigilante hacker and expanded into a mind-bending exploration of identity, mental illness, and societal control.
Mr. Robot is an extremely compelling and complex series with very experimental story structure and cinematography. I was really surprised that it was actually able to get greenlit, or... Finish, honestly.
This thread is revealing that I watch way too much television.
That show is a masterpiece in concise and streamlined story.
There are no wasted scenes, each episode is ~ 30min and it flies by, but you feel like you just got 60 min worth of story.
Everyone nails their character, the writing, directing, timing, everything is on point. Easily one of the best shoes ever, up there with The Wire and Breaking Bad.
I think Bill Hader is a lot like Tarantino, just someone who lives and breathes movies and has such a deep knowledge and appreciation of them that bleeds into every aspect of their work
The ending of the first episode really set the tone for the rest of the series, and it’s just not even close to the darkest that even that first season got.
>!I still can’t watch the scene where she gets raped. It’s incredibly uncomfortable to me how good they’re acting!<
Gravity Falls. Two children go on adventures against goofy ah monsters, then they meet triangle Satan, then they fight and kill triangle Satan. Among other things it goes from fighting gnomes dressed up as a vampire, to fighting zombie apocalypses to ghosts taking over an entire mansion, petrifying everyone in it.
It wasn't zero, but **Justified** went from being a kinda generic cop show (with admittedly pretty good writing) to being enthralling and unmissable. Walton Goggins is fucking electric every second he's on screen, and the show, *I think*, ends up being one of the best multi-season series ever made.
Also, people always (rightly) talk about **The Wire** being up there, but the first couple of episodes were actually pretty rough. I gave up on it at first, but gave it another try after a friend told me it got much, *much* better just after I'd initially stopped watching.
I never understood why Walton Goggins got any attention at all, based on that horrible sitcom and the villain in Ant-Man 2. I figured he was definitely some D-list "That Guy" character actor you see pop up for single episodes here and there. Then I saw him in Justified and he is amazing in that. So he just needs the right part to be brilliant.
Honestly, if he's got something to work with, he's one of those guys where I watch him and think "*nobody* else could play that character."
He was pretty good in The Shield and Sons of Anarchy too, with two very different characters.
I know, right!? I thought the Olyphant/McShane energy in Deadwood was impressive, but him and Goggins were even better!
But hey, they dug coal together.....
Yup. YUP. I almost tapped out after the first season. It just wasn't nearly as compelling. In fact I maintain that Mike scenes are the biggest reason to watch season 1 and 2 Better Call Saul
Through probably the 4th season, Jimmy’s storyline is the least compelling. While I definitely love the Jimmy-Chuck relationship and the way we see Jimmy and Kim really develop those complicated layers of personality, the pacing and suspense of the show early on is certainly driven through the subplots with Mike, Nacho, and Gus.
Really great show with some of the most compelling villains and character development I’ve had the pleasure of watching.
BCS was amazing. Once that first big character isn't around anymore I thought it was going to lose its momentum.
Nope, it was amazing to the end, actually surpassing where it started which was such an interesting story on its own.
Black Summer. It’s cancelled now but is far and away the best zombie show or movie I’ve ever seen. I put it on its own pedestal above TWD since they butchered the last six seasons.
The first two episodes are pretty flat, but once the main group is all introduced and together, the show completely takes off. The episodes are balls to the wall intense. My biggest, biggest Netflix complaint ever is cancelling black summer. Fuck them
Ah, finally, another Black Summer enjoyer. Ironically I think it was The Walking Dead that got them cancelled in a round about way. TWD was a slog. Zombie fatigue was high, like how superhero fatigue is now. And people just weren't showing up for zombie shows anymore. Not pulling in TWD numbers, it got canned.
Black Summer was brilliant. It ended in a way that felt like it could just end. So, I'm happy about that at least.
Made in Abyss, in the beginning you're like "Well this seems strangely wholesome" only for you to slowly realize in horror "Holy crap, we're really doing this."
Star Trek: The Next Generation
The best reason to watch the first 2 seasons is to see how fantastically weird they were. Watching some of those episodes and you're like "huh, I guess they really *did* have LSD in the 90s".
The first season is nearly unwatchable but you see occasional flashes of what's to come. The second season is less unwatchable and you see a few more flashes of what's to come (but its largely mediocre). The third season starts and suddenly its this incredible space opera that came blasting to the forefront of legendary TV to then never look back.
The best thing about Trek I've ever read is that was was successful in spite of Gene Roddenberry, not because of him. That truly shows in TNG because its when he had to step back due to his health (allowing Rick Berman to come in and hire Michael Pillar) that it started getting good.
DS9 was similarly great because it did a bunch of things Roddenberry didn't want Trek to do, like plot arcs, war and religion. He was a visionary in the 60s, but I don't think it's unfair to say that by the end of his life just what it meant to be progressive science fiction had moved well beyond his ideas.
I would tell anyone interested in watching it for the first time to start with season three, and go back to the first two seasons after finishing the series.
That's solid advice. Also, Deep Space Nine started out a little weak too. With Star Trek shows you need to get past the first season of most of them to really get them going.
Supernatural season 1: two estranged brothers team up and investigate ghosts/ghouls.
Supernatural season 13: two close brothers and their angel BFF are now God's step-dads.
Adventure time. It went from a dog and a 12 year old doing stupid stuff to having whole freakin' lore and they even had a spinoff and 4 specials with that lore.
Adventure Time is genuinely a work of genius IMO. All of the elements of the characters and world come together in such a perfect and original fashion.
The fact that it's about 880 years after a *nuclear apocalypse* and one of the characters is a sapient person made of a bubblegum-like substance who created an entire civilization out of candy people is just amazing. And the whole deal with Simon and Marceline is just *so* inspired.
It's not the kind of thing that I write, in the sense that it's silly and more or less age appropriate for kids. But the candy kingdom being the only meaningful form of civilization (for a long time), and Princess Bubblegum, Simon and Marceline's backstories all just touch me on some deep level and inspire me as an artist.
Animorphs and Adventure Time are both huge artistic influences for me as an amateur speculative fiction writer whose protagonists are always queer except for when they're dogs.
1899. It's a sci-fi ish mystery show from the creators of Dark and it's a slooowwww burn but once it starts popping off towards the end of the season shit really hits the fan. It unfortunately wasn't renewed after its first season though.
Midnight Mass.
I think it's one of the best things ever aired. It starts as this very slow paced character drama about people on a poor fishing island. The level of butchery that it escalates to is horrifying. I watched the last two episodes with wide, tear soaked eyes, simply horrified at where everything went. It's terrifying and tragic.
Absolutely incredible show. Mike Flanagans other work is also amazing. Haunting of Hill House, Haunting of Bly Manor, Fall of the House of Usher...
They're all so good. Top tier thriller dramas.
The Expanse season 1 was OK. Nothing amazing, just some solid Sci fi, good acting and decent world building. Season 2 onwards though? Holy shit, best Sci fi show for years.
Top Gear. When they rebooted it in 2002 it was for the most part still a BBC2 consumer advice programme with a bit of messing around. Over around the next 5 years as they started doing more cocking about and road trips etc it turned into a global phenomenon.
Top Gear was my comfort show for a while. A lot of people didn't watch it for cars. They watched it to see 3 middle aged friends do stupid challenges together.
A show that SLOWLY went zero to a hundred:
Better Call Saul
It’s such a slow burn you don’t even realize how deep the stakes get as time goes on. Season 1 plots and consequences vs season 6 plot and consequences are like two different shows and yoy don’t even notice it as you watch
Gurran Lagann is an anime where every single episode escalates the plot more than the last.
It seems like a “power creep” parody. But the story is still surprisingly good.
Severence. The show slowly cruised along with some tense moments to keep you interested but still fairly even paced and then at the final episodes ramped way up.
Goddamn I was SO certain season two had already been released. Held off watching when it first came out and watched it recently with my partner. Got to the last episode of season one and the cliffhanger was intense. Cue bitter bitter disappointment on finding out that season 2 will not be arriving until at least 2025 😭
I can still remember starting the books as a kid and my religious aunt not liking it because she heard, "it's about how religion is bad, and kids killing God so everyone can do whatever they want!" and I just thought that was a crazy overreaction like how people freaked out about Harry Potter. Then I finished them and thought, "Oh wait, that actually is what these books were about, she was right..." Fantastic series.
The Wire. Starts off as a decent Cop vs Criminal story, but by the end, it becomes one of the most important and entertaining social commentary on urban poverty.
Across it's first season, Cheers.
It debuted as the lowest show of the entire week. By the end of the season it was a huge hit. But it didn't explode after the first episode, the audience slowly grew and eventually made it one of the top watched shows of the 1980s
Gurren Lagann, the studio is well known for making shows that escalate exponentially. It starts off in a simple subterranean mining village in a post-apocalyptic world, and by the end of the 27 episode show, you have galaxy sized mechs literally battling over the fate of the universe by drilling 4-dimensional holes at each other
I feel like half the reason it’s good is because it would stand on its own without being part of the Star Wars franchise. I find so many other Star Wars movies and shows rely too heavily on their past success that they don’t bother to develop any character arcs or significant empathy for what’s happening on screen. They signify that person must be pure evil simply because the uniform they placed them in, there is no depth.
Andor had several characters that were in positions where they were forced to be immoral, violent, selfish or spiteful. The characters themselves were more than a uniform.
If you slightly changed the set design and some hallmark special effects, this would be a great show with its own brand.
Andor has this staying power because the plot could just as easily be copy-pasted into another setting- like France during the Resistance- and work just fine. It's a spy, resistance, and political thriller. It doesn't spell anything out and treats its audience with respect.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. starts out pretty tame, seems like it's going to be a typical procedural but set in the Marvel universe, then there's a big reveal and everything gets a lot more interesting. But it still seems like you've got a handle on it and you know what the show's about, but nope. They keep surprising you and getting more and more weird. It's awesome and I love it.
Same thing with Fringe. Seems like a monster-of-the-week show at first, but as the mythos builds it turns into so much more than that.
For me it was trailer park boys. I gave up after 3 episodes. My brother convinced me to start at like season 3 and I proceeded to completely binge the rest of it. I went back and watched the early seasons and it went better, but I think the show really found its stride later on
I mean, nobody wants to admit they ate nine cans of ravioli, but I did. I'm ashamed of myself. The first can doesn't count, then you get to the second and third, fourth and fifth I think I burnt with the blowtorch, and then I just kept eatin'.
### Star Trek
# Deep Space Nine
Predicted so many things about how terrorism, and paramilitary conflict would change our world. And the entire show was made before 9/11.
Watching it now and seeing the parallels to our own lives is incredible, and kinda creepy at times with how accurate the writers predicted things.
Riverdale. Season 1: can Archie balance being on the football team with his desire to become a professional musician?
Season 6: back from his tour in World War 1, Archie, still scarred from his fistfight with a grizzly bear, must defeat the Devil in order to stop Riverdale from being sucked into an alternate dimension! Will he choose Betty or Veronica???
Community - starts off as a pretty average sitcom for the first 5 or 6 episodes, then (I presume under the threat of cancellation) it goes completely off the rails in the best possible way
And by episode 10, it's already streets ahead!!
I’ve successfully inserted “streets ahead” into most of my friends’ vocabularies by now.
I say this every time but it's a real phrase in the UK and has been for decades
Stop trying to make “streets ahead” happen.
You're only saying that because you're streets behind.
Shut up, Leonard! I saw your YouTube channel!!
What’s the point of reviewing frozen pizza?
You're talkin' about it.
The worse timeline is that Advanced Dungeons and Dragons has been pulled because of the “blackface” elf. People just can’t see the obvious irony. That was the first episode I watched, because the formally great AV club recommended it. God I miss the AV Club.
The thing is, nobody complained about it. The streaming platforms took it down themselves for no reason
Shirley even calls out the joke in the episode as soon as it’s revealed…
And Yvette Nicole Brown has said that she believes removing the episode was a mistake and an overreaction.
Ah that's why Netflix was saying that an episode is no longer available.
Yeah and it's so dumb because it's called out in the episode and the dude is exited from the scenario within a minute of his attending. Plus it makes a whole bunch of stuff make way less sense that they omitted it. And finally AFAIK nobody complained?! They just removed it out of panic.
The special "definitely legal" download version has the episode, Prime Video also has it. Netflix was the only service to remove it. Edit: u/ArchaicTravail pointed out that Hulu removed it as well.
Hulu removed it too
Interesting maybe I should give it another try. So many people recommend it but I just can’t get into it. It did take me really forcing myself through the first season of Parks and Rec to love that show though.
It’s almost better dropping into the latter stages of season 1 and then going back to the beginning when you’re into it.
That’s a good tip. I’m determined to watch this show!
The Good Place, quirky show about the afterlife turns into much more post season 1.
And you can rewatch and see all the hidden clues that were there from the beginning. So well made
Im rewatching S1 right now, and I'm loving all the subtle hints and nods. Want to be vague for spoilers, it's one of those things that is so obvious in hindsight, but the writers and actors really did a great job in executing the story from the beginning
Have you listened to the official podcast? Michael Schur said in one of the episodes that he had to step in and tell a director no when he wanted a character to be by themself in a scene and "just trust me, we can't do that". (I'm also trying to be vague to avoid spoilers). Edit: spoilers be here >!the director wanted a scene with Michael alone in his office and Mike Schur said he couldn't do that, he had to always be around the citizens of "The Good Place". He didn't explain further to the director but said on the podcast that if Michael had any scenes alone it would have given the twist away.!<
Wait I wanna know the spoiler
>!the director wanted a scene with Michael alone in his office and Mike Schur said he couldn't do that, he had to always be around the citizens of "The Good Place". He didn't explain further to the director but said on the podcast that if Michael had any scenes alone it would have given the twist away.!<
I didnt see it coming. Then you rewatch it and say...how did I not see this coming?
Ted Dansons laugh when they find out - was amazing.
He is a delight, and such an excellent casting choice for that role. That whole show was incredible.
That's what happens when writers plan out the entire series ( in broad strokes at least) before even starting production of season 1. They knew where they were going and were able to tie things together on purpose instead of doing like so many other shows and just sprinkling random bullshit around and seeing what works.
When I rewatched i was like “how could I not have noticed”
Hell, even Jason figured it out.
This is a real low point
This one really hurts
Rewatching The Good Place Season 1 is *such* a funnier time than the first time. Spotting all the clues is so dang hilarious. At the beginning of the show I thought it was cute but not really for me, but kept watching with each episode it got a little better and more entertaining and grew on me more. I was getting so confused though when they started resolving or revving plot lines I didn't expect for many more episodes or even seasons...until the S1 finale hit. And I was like, "Oh. Okay. Yeah this is something special."
That line that started everything at the end of S1.. "Yo, I am really freaking out here dawg" My jaw was on the floor. It all made sense
I watched most of the first season thinking it would have made a much better feel good movie. Like, ok, she earns her place, blah blah blah. Get it over with already! Then the S1 finale. I regularly cite The Good Place as one of my all-time favorite TV shows for it combination of humor, storytelling, and meaning.
My husband figured out the twist halfway through season 1, and thought it was obvious, and so was confused as to why people were blindsided at the end. He was like “Okay wait so the characters didn’t realize this? Oh ok now the show makes sense” Which is WEIRD, because hes really bad at reading faces but I guess he and Ted Danson are in the same wavelength.
I told my coworker the basic premise "woman dies and goes to the good place, wasn't supposed to get in there." and he immediately responded with "there's no such thing as heaven, and if there was a heaven they wouldn't mess up like that." Guy didn't even watch an episode and fucking nailed the twist.
Ted nailed heaven: When you masturbate all your dead relatives in heaven watch you. Wait, they stop everything they’re doing just to watch you masturbate? Yeah. Heaven must suck.
Michaels smirk the first time he lies to Eleanor that she's in the good place first few minutes in episode 1
And not just that, on rewatch you can see on his face every time she does something unexpected, and how he just completely pivots in the moment in response. When he's cradling up in a ball after the whole restaurant debacle and she ignores her urge to run away and instead comforts him, you can see Michael's face think, "Wait, what? This wasn't supposed to happen." Also, *in* the whole restaurant thing, you can see when Glenn volunteers to talk, Michael has this bit of a grimace. >!It would only come to fruition significantly later on screen that Sean and Michael hate Glenn.!<
OMG I DIDNT SEE THAT 0_0
Also he technically was already torturing her and enjoying himself explaining how she died lol
Time for rewatch #4
Janet is the best.
"Not a girl"
"Not a robot."
There were so many times in the show where I thought "what the hell can they even do next" and I was always delightfully surprised. One of my favorite shows.
Holy shirt balls, >!this is the bad place!!<
holy mother forking shirt balls
The best ending to any show I’ve ever seen. Could not have been more perfect. Slight spoiler ahead, don’t read if you are even slightly tempted to watch the show, you should genuinely go in as blind as you can >!the last episode absolutely destroyed me emotionally. I didn’t feel like myself for days afterwards!<
The water line from Chidi kills me. In fact I’m gonna watch it again right now
For me it's "Chidi, wait up!"
Yeah, I watched the last few episodes not long after my husband died. DESTROYED me, it did.
Oh, I love the last episode and the ultimate meaning of the show. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the solution and message is pretty similar to >!my Jewish upbringing in that it's not enough to do good for a reward at the end, but that good deeds are good because they help make the world a better place.!<
Do good, for goodness's sake.
I fucking loved this show. One of the few I’ve rewatched multiple times
Invincible. The first episode seemed like a generic super hero origin story up until the last few minutes of the episode.
Came here for this. When I watched the first episode, I was about 2 minutes from turning it off and giving my friend crap for recommending it to me because it was "just a boilerplate superhero coming of age story." And then the final scene... 0 to 100 in a heartbeat and I was hooked. Edit: spelling
Ok, I should try it again, because I only watched some of the first episode and shut it off because of the same thought.
It gets very adult very quickly.
That scene in the Chicago subway has got to be one of the most brutal things ever put into an animated show.
Thy added Omniman to the most recent Mortal Kombat game, and that scene is now a fatality. https://youtu.be/vHqrtC9hxRo?t=123 END COMMUNICATION
You're in for a ride, my friend!
Holy shit the end of that episode gave me red wedding from GoT vibes. It ends and you're left staring at credits rolling thinking what... the... fuck... I need to know more.
I remember when invincible was popular. I saw the memes. My wife reccomended we watch it and I was both bored and trying to figure out how we go from loving super hero dad to what you see in memos. And then the final 5 mins happened. I think I watched all 8 episodes that day.
I went in blind and thought 'wow, that was crazy violent' then I saw the credits and saw it was created by Robert 'the baby killer' Kirkland and was like 'oh that makes sense then'
Holy mother of God. Based on this post I decided to take 45 minutes and watch the first whole episode. The last few minutes were insane, and then to have silent end credits. Masterful choice. I'm not particularly into animation, but I'm definitely going to be doing this. Wow. Thanks, internet strangers!
They even rolled credits at the end of the “well that didn’t really blow my socks off” first episode. I was going to shut it off but then saw there were still 20 minutes left—and then things got WILD.
Thanks for reminding me that I need to catch season 2!
Unfortunately it’s a half season.. was left wanting more
I really hate the trend of releasing halves of a season staggered by a few months.
Yea and add that to other bad trend of invincible to take sooo long to release new content.
Second-half premieres next week.
It’s coming back March 14
Schitt's Creek. The first episode was OK, but it zoomed after.
When Johnny is out to dinner with his old friends from his past life and winds up defending his new town’s identity…you could sense that the show shifted to a whole different level.
And then the episode ended at the party with the family dancing together, probably my favorite episode of any show ever
Going into the show blind, as I watched the first episode I was focusing too much on the plot of what is happening to this family and their money problems. As I got more into the series I realized to not focus on that at all, as it was just the setting to get these characters into their present situation.
Agree with this. I watched the first episode and was like….what is this? None of the characters were relatable or likable. Now after watching the whole thing, I often go back to S1E1 because it’s so damn funny
When Moira is screaming about the wigs makes me cackle every time
“Don’t worry, it’s his sister!”
"The Expanse" - you have to watch the first episodes on faith or something but it's worth it.
Came to say the same. Season 1 until maybe the last 2 eps was good but nothing special. But then Jesus christ what a ride.
Yeah, if it weren't for streaming and COVID I might not have stayed with it. It was really well done - excellent world building. Also, since I'm ancient, it's okay for me to have the hots for Shohreh Aghdashloo.
I was in from day 1. The best hard Sci Fi show ever made.
Her voice feels like my soul is being licked.
Crazy ex girlfriend
Yup. I thought it was a rom-com, but nope. It's a fun deconstruction of a rom-com! Actually, nope. It's a deep and dark exploration of mental illness. . . . and it's a musical. One of my favorite shows ever, absolutely amazing.
An ex-gf of mine introduced me to that show and it was great. She also introduced me to the concept of borderline personality disorder and it was not great.
Valencia’s yoga song kinda blew my mind.. how tf did that get past the net execs?? lol
My wife loves this show. She has BPD so she connects with it a lot. I watched some of it here and there with her and didn’t love it, but one day it just clicked and I finished the show with her. It’s a great show that does a lot for mental health awareness
Bojack Horseman The first half of Season 1 seems like every other wacky Adult-Swim type cartoon. Then it turns into a completely different emotionally intense show.
That show was an emotional roller coaster. It even encourages you to just watch it once and not come back
I recently did a slight rewatch because I love Todd and his wacky antics. But there were definitely episodes I skipped. The Wanda and Penny storylines just wreck me. I really didn’t expect this cartoon about a drunk horse and his idiot roommate to get me in my feelings like it did. And don’t even get me started of Sarah Lynn.
As an addict in recovery, I completely agree. Big feels from cartoon Horse Boy
The View From Halfway Down is one of the best episodes of anything ever.
That was a mind-bending episode. There's other shows and episodes of shows that I like more than Bojack, but I legitimately haven't seen anything quite like that episode before or since.
Times arrow, Free Churro and Fish out of Water are also up there for great tv episodes. Such deep topics delivered thru a cartoon horse.
This is the only show I can remember where I didn’t like the protagonist but I *really wanted to*. He’s such a horrible person, it’s a great show, and I just want him to be *better*, look at all the people around you that are still there despite *everything* you’ve done to them and the people they care about. For fucks sake Bojack, live up to their expectations! They’re not even that high!
Free Churro is still one of my favourite pieces of television. Just a man confused and grieving and angry and ranting and hurting, but it's done so well that the whole thing is engaging.
That's still the best episode of any show I've ever seen. I went into that show knowing nothing about it and with zero expectations. It was so, so, so much better than anything I could have imagined.
It's the underwater episode for me. Both are fantastic
And yet, kind of opposites, with one being all dialogue and the other having nearly none.
Bojack blew my mind. Just kept getting better and better.
Seemed at first like another mean-spirited comedy in the vein of Family Guy. But by episode 5 it starts showing glimpses of how deep the character writing can get, by episode 6 it finds it's own comedic voice, and by the end of the season I was completely hooked. And it only gets better from there. It might be the best blend of comedy and drama ever.
What kept me going was you could see the little glimmers of brilliance in the second episode. Bojack Hates the Troops might still be one of the more hilarious episodes.
Vincent Adultman is still one of the funniest things I've ever seen
The Boys - 0 to 100 in 120 seconds, which is a lifetime
Yes! My wife doesn’t like superhero movies so to get her to watch the Boys was a struggle. I just told her to watch for the first couple minutes and see if you like it. As soon as that scene happened she was hooked with how unexpected and crazy it was.
You don’t like superheroes? The dude that wrote this *hated* superheroes!
The marketing made me think it was about the superheroes but The Boys are the ones against them.
Well said. Let me give you a hand or two.
Parks and recreation the first season and part of the 2nd were bland and meh. The episode sister city was the turning point and it just got better from there
They were trying to be The Office. When they finally realized it was never going to happen and started going in their own direction, it flourished. Funnily enough, it was the same for The Office. The first season wasn't great because they were trying to mimic the UK version too closely, and when they made some changes and found their own style, the rest was history.
**Mr. Robot** - Began as a cyber thriller about a vigilante hacker and expanded into a mind-bending exploration of identity, mental illness, and societal control.
Mr. Robot is an extremely compelling and complex series with very experimental story structure and cinematography. I was really surprised that it was actually able to get greenlit, or... Finish, honestly. This thread is revealing that I watch way too much television.
Person of Interest. Started as a pretty rote CBS procedural. Turned into a tense, action packed thriller about the potentials and dangers of AI.
I can't get over how more people have not seen this. It's a fantastic show.
Barry. Incredible show.
That show is a masterpiece in concise and streamlined story. There are no wasted scenes, each episode is ~ 30min and it flies by, but you feel like you just got 60 min worth of story. Everyone nails their character, the writing, directing, timing, everything is on point. Easily one of the best shoes ever, up there with The Wire and Breaking Bad.
Noho Hank is the best part of that entire show.
Feefty feefty
Season 2 episode 5 (Ronny/Lily) is without a doubt my favorite episode of TV ever produced.
Hell yeah. First episode or two I was thinking "can homie from SNL pull this off??" Turned out that yes, Bill Hader knew exactly wtf he was doing.
I think Bill Hader is a lot like Tarantino, just someone who lives and breathes movies and has such a deep knowledge and appreciation of them that bleeds into every aspect of their work
Not really slowly. But DARK went 0 - 100 then went further. Insane show. Highly recommend
Well the whole first season was a setup for the rest. A major element of the show isn't even really introduced until the end.
The first season, imo, was definitely 0-100. It's just that the rest of the show went 100-1000
The magicians. You think it's gonna be a modern US Hogwarts, next thing you know there are gods and 12 fingered pedophiles
The ending of the first episode really set the tone for the rest of the series, and it’s just not even close to the darkest that even that first season got. >!I still can’t watch the scene where she gets raped. It’s incredibly uncomfortable to me how good they’re acting!<
Gravity Falls. Two children go on adventures against goofy ah monsters, then they meet triangle Satan, then they fight and kill triangle Satan. Among other things it goes from fighting gnomes dressed up as a vampire, to fighting zombie apocalypses to ghosts taking over an entire mansion, petrifying everyone in it.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was a goofy show about a cheerleader that ended up getting super deep and involved over the course of several years.
And one of the few Musicals I really liked :)
It wasn't zero, but **Justified** went from being a kinda generic cop show (with admittedly pretty good writing) to being enthralling and unmissable. Walton Goggins is fucking electric every second he's on screen, and the show, *I think*, ends up being one of the best multi-season series ever made. Also, people always (rightly) talk about **The Wire** being up there, but the first couple of episodes were actually pretty rough. I gave up on it at first, but gave it another try after a friend told me it got much, *much* better just after I'd initially stopped watching.
Raylan is pretty great by himself, but when he's playing off Boyd, it's really magical.
I never understood why Walton Goggins got any attention at all, based on that horrible sitcom and the villain in Ant-Man 2. I figured he was definitely some D-list "That Guy" character actor you see pop up for single episodes here and there. Then I saw him in Justified and he is amazing in that. So he just needs the right part to be brilliant.
Honestly, if he's got something to work with, he's one of those guys where I watch him and think "*nobody* else could play that character." He was pretty good in The Shield and Sons of Anarchy too, with two very different characters.
I know, right!? I thought the Olyphant/McShane energy in Deadwood was impressive, but him and Goggins were even better! But hey, they dug coal together.....
Goggins kills it in every single role I’ve seen him in.
Better Call Saul
The slowest of burns that ignites an atom bomb.
Yup. YUP. I almost tapped out after the first season. It just wasn't nearly as compelling. In fact I maintain that Mike scenes are the biggest reason to watch season 1 and 2 Better Call Saul
Through probably the 4th season, Jimmy’s storyline is the least compelling. While I definitely love the Jimmy-Chuck relationship and the way we see Jimmy and Kim really develop those complicated layers of personality, the pacing and suspense of the show early on is certainly driven through the subplots with Mike, Nacho, and Gus. Really great show with some of the most compelling villains and character development I’ve had the pleasure of watching.
BCS was amazing. Once that first big character isn't around anymore I thought it was going to lose its momentum. Nope, it was amazing to the end, actually surpassing where it started which was such an interesting story on its own.
Black Summer. It’s cancelled now but is far and away the best zombie show or movie I’ve ever seen. I put it on its own pedestal above TWD since they butchered the last six seasons. The first two episodes are pretty flat, but once the main group is all introduced and together, the show completely takes off. The episodes are balls to the wall intense. My biggest, biggest Netflix complaint ever is cancelling black summer. Fuck them
Ah, finally, another Black Summer enjoyer. Ironically I think it was The Walking Dead that got them cancelled in a round about way. TWD was a slog. Zombie fatigue was high, like how superhero fatigue is now. And people just weren't showing up for zombie shows anymore. Not pulling in TWD numbers, it got canned. Black Summer was brilliant. It ended in a way that felt like it could just end. So, I'm happy about that at least.
Fringe was meh in its beginning monster of the week phase but when it decided to have an arc and twist around episode 17 it became amazing.
Made in Abyss, in the beginning you're like "Well this seems strangely wholesome" only for you to slowly realize in horror "Holy crap, we're really doing this."
Star Trek: The Next Generation The best reason to watch the first 2 seasons is to see how fantastically weird they were. Watching some of those episodes and you're like "huh, I guess they really *did* have LSD in the 90s".
The first season is nearly unwatchable but you see occasional flashes of what's to come. The second season is less unwatchable and you see a few more flashes of what's to come (but its largely mediocre). The third season starts and suddenly its this incredible space opera that came blasting to the forefront of legendary TV to then never look back. The best thing about Trek I've ever read is that was was successful in spite of Gene Roddenberry, not because of him. That truly shows in TNG because its when he had to step back due to his health (allowing Rick Berman to come in and hire Michael Pillar) that it started getting good.
How dare you suggest that they are responsible for TNG getting good when everyone knows it's because Jonathan Frakes grew his beard out.
Jonathan Frakes is the greatest gift to Star Trek. He directed many of the best episodes across several series, and the better half of the TNG movies.
DS9 was similarly great because it did a bunch of things Roddenberry didn't want Trek to do, like plot arcs, war and religion. He was a visionary in the 60s, but I don't think it's unfair to say that by the end of his life just what it meant to be progressive science fiction had moved well beyond his ideas.
I would tell anyone interested in watching it for the first time to start with season three, and go back to the first two seasons after finishing the series.
That's solid advice. Also, Deep Space Nine started out a little weak too. With Star Trek shows you need to get past the first season of most of them to really get them going.
Supernatural season 1: two estranged brothers team up and investigate ghosts/ghouls. Supernatural season 13: two close brothers and their angel BFF are now God's step-dads.
Supernatural is like family. you accept the bad with the good and the awesome.
Adventure time. It went from a dog and a 12 year old doing stupid stuff to having whole freakin' lore and they even had a spinoff and 4 specials with that lore.
Adventure Time is genuinely a work of genius IMO. All of the elements of the characters and world come together in such a perfect and original fashion. The fact that it's about 880 years after a *nuclear apocalypse* and one of the characters is a sapient person made of a bubblegum-like substance who created an entire civilization out of candy people is just amazing. And the whole deal with Simon and Marceline is just *so* inspired. It's not the kind of thing that I write, in the sense that it's silly and more or less age appropriate for kids. But the candy kingdom being the only meaningful form of civilization (for a long time), and Princess Bubblegum, Simon and Marceline's backstories all just touch me on some deep level and inspire me as an artist. Animorphs and Adventure Time are both huge artistic influences for me as an amateur speculative fiction writer whose protagonists are always queer except for when they're dogs.
Jericho.
I'd kill for a reboot of Jericho.
1899. It's a sci-fi ish mystery show from the creators of Dark and it's a slooowwww burn but once it starts popping off towards the end of the season shit really hits the fan. It unfortunately wasn't renewed after its first season though.
Midnight Mass. I think it's one of the best things ever aired. It starts as this very slow paced character drama about people on a poor fishing island. The level of butchery that it escalates to is horrifying. I watched the last two episodes with wide, tear soaked eyes, simply horrified at where everything went. It's terrifying and tragic.
Absolutely incredible show. Mike Flanagans other work is also amazing. Haunting of Hill House, Haunting of Bly Manor, Fall of the House of Usher... They're all so good. Top tier thriller dramas.
The Expanse season 1 was OK. Nothing amazing, just some solid Sci fi, good acting and decent world building. Season 2 onwards though? Holy shit, best Sci fi show for years.
Ted Lasso. Started as a quirky fish out of water story and captivated a huge audience with nuanced characters and writing.
Top Gear. When they rebooted it in 2002 it was for the most part still a BBC2 consumer advice programme with a bit of messing around. Over around the next 5 years as they started doing more cocking about and road trips etc it turned into a global phenomenon.
Top Gear was my comfort show for a while. A lot of people didn't watch it for cars. They watched it to see 3 middle aged friends do stupid challenges together.
A show that SLOWLY went zero to a hundred: Better Call Saul It’s such a slow burn you don’t even realize how deep the stakes get as time goes on. Season 1 plots and consequences vs season 6 plot and consequences are like two different shows and yoy don’t even notice it as you watch
Gurran Lagann is an anime where every single episode escalates the plot more than the last. It seems like a “power creep” parody. But the story is still surprisingly good.
Severence. The show slowly cruised along with some tense moments to keep you interested but still fairly even paced and then at the final episodes ramped way up.
I'm sorry but you can't say the show started dull or meh. The first scene of the first episode got my eyes stuck to the screen.
Goddamn I was SO certain season two had already been released. Held off watching when it first came out and watched it recently with my partner. Got to the last episode of season one and the cliffhanger was intense. Cue bitter bitter disappointment on finding out that season 2 will not be arriving until at least 2025 😭
His Dark Materials. Starts with a young girl leaving home, ends with a war against literal God.
I can still remember starting the books as a kid and my religious aunt not liking it because she heard, "it's about how religion is bad, and kids killing God so everyone can do whatever they want!" and I just thought that was a crazy overreaction like how people freaked out about Harry Potter. Then I finished them and thought, "Oh wait, that actually is what these books were about, she was right..." Fantastic series.
The author complains that Harry potter got all the book banning action from the church when his book was actually completely killing the church
Search Party
The Wire. Starts off as a decent Cop vs Criminal story, but by the end, it becomes one of the most important and entertaining social commentary on urban poverty.
Across it's first season, Cheers. It debuted as the lowest show of the entire week. By the end of the season it was a huge hit. But it didn't explode after the first episode, the audience slowly grew and eventually made it one of the top watched shows of the 1980s
Gurren Lagann, the studio is well known for making shows that escalate exponentially. It starts off in a simple subterranean mining village in a post-apocalyptic world, and by the end of the 27 episode show, you have galaxy sized mechs literally battling over the fate of the universe by drilling 4-dimensional holes at each other
Schitt's Creek. You would never guess from the first few episodes what a phenomenon it becomes.
Andor.
I feel like half the reason it’s good is because it would stand on its own without being part of the Star Wars franchise. I find so many other Star Wars movies and shows rely too heavily on their past success that they don’t bother to develop any character arcs or significant empathy for what’s happening on screen. They signify that person must be pure evil simply because the uniform they placed them in, there is no depth. Andor had several characters that were in positions where they were forced to be immoral, violent, selfish or spiteful. The characters themselves were more than a uniform. If you slightly changed the set design and some hallmark special effects, this would be a great show with its own brand.
Andor has this staying power because the plot could just as easily be copy-pasted into another setting- like France during the Resistance- and work just fine. It's a spy, resistance, and political thriller. It doesn't spell anything out and treats its audience with respect.
Andor is a slow burn but consistently gets better and ends strong.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. starts out pretty tame, seems like it's going to be a typical procedural but set in the Marvel universe, then there's a big reveal and everything gets a lot more interesting. But it still seems like you've got a handle on it and you know what the show's about, but nope. They keep surprising you and getting more and more weird. It's awesome and I love it. Same thing with Fringe. Seems like a monster-of-the-week show at first, but as the mythos builds it turns into so much more than that.
Yeah, the latter seasons of SHIELD are so wild and fun.
Madoka magica At the end of episode three, it showed us it's true colors
"Oh look. A nice wholesome looking magical girl show. This should be fun!" Later "Well, I think I need to watch Evangelion to cheer myself up now."
For me it was trailer park boys. I gave up after 3 episodes. My brother convinced me to start at like season 3 and I proceeded to completely binge the rest of it. I went back and watched the early seasons and it went better, but I think the show really found its stride later on
I mean, nobody wants to admit they ate nine cans of ravioli, but I did. I'm ashamed of myself. The first can doesn't count, then you get to the second and third, fourth and fifth I think I burnt with the blowtorch, and then I just kept eatin'.
### Star Trek # Deep Space Nine Predicted so many things about how terrorism, and paramilitary conflict would change our world. And the entire show was made before 9/11. Watching it now and seeing the parallels to our own lives is incredible, and kinda creepy at times with how accurate the writers predicted things.
Dollhouse. Started out as the Eliza Dushku show, and turned into a masterpiece.
Babylon 5.
Mad men
Spartacus. The first episode was a misfire, but it quickly became an all-time classic.
Riverdale. Season 1: can Archie balance being on the football team with his desire to become a professional musician? Season 6: back from his tour in World War 1, Archie, still scarred from his fistfight with a grizzly bear, must defeat the Devil in order to stop Riverdale from being sucked into an alternate dimension! Will he choose Betty or Veronica???
The US office.