In which Dopers explain why their favorite TV shows best seasons are, in fact, the best season of any TV show ever. Links and spoiler boxes are encouraged.
I’ll begin with Xena: Warrior Princess, season four. The season began, oddly enough, by telling you exactly how it was going to end. Here’s a quick summary:
Xena, believing her beloved friend Gabrielle to have died, determines to join her in the Amazon afterlife, only to discover that (a) Gaby isn’t dead yet, and (b) the two of them are destined to die at the hands of the Roman empire. Once the two not-quite-lovers are reunited, Xena spends much of the year trying to cheat fate–not merely because she doesn’t want to see Gabrielle crucified, but because she fears that she, Xena, is overall bad for Gabrielle. She fails, and at the end of the season the two die on Roman crosses.
People survived a plane crash on a mysterious island. A man could walk again. Connections between the people were established through the use of interesting flashbacks. Bits of a bigger picture were expertly revealed with the hope that it was all going to make sense someday. Always something that made you tune in again next week.
Season 4 of The Wire. Completely slammed home the hopelessness of the situation while the “gods” (the institutions) toyed with well-meaning mortals, and destroyed the innocents from the day they entered the system. The scene where the kid yells at the detective “you got my back, right?” as the detective walks away was the most heart-wrenching thing I’ve ever seen on TV.
I’m probably going to catch a lot of grief for this, but I’m going to say Kyle XY. From the moment he first yelled out at the dinner table, “Yo. Let’s get some juice down here! Juice me!”, I was sold. I really liked this show, and I was terribly dissapointed when it didn’t return.
But! It turns out that ABC Family is going to pick it up. Series II will begin Monday, June 11 at 8:00 Eastern.
I’ll ditto Firefly, Season 1 of Lost, and add Season 1 of *Survivor *and Season 1 of Battlestar Galactica (the new one).
Yes, that’s right, I stuck a reality show in there! Back when it was, a tiny bit, about survivalism. The back-stabbing, treachery and boresome politics was there, but it was rather compelling, since we hadn’t seen it a gazillion times yet. Also, since the first group of contestants hadn’t ever seen *Survivor *before, they hadn’t auditioned for nor were as bloodthirsty and focused on that part, and the actual concept of the show was exciting and rather revolutionary.
No freaking way Firefly! A perfect season would have been a whole season, with renewal or closure at the end of it. Firefly doesn’t even come close to qualifying, and shame on anybody who thinks so!
Buffy Season 3 comes close. The end of high school, everything that came with it…perfect.
Don’t be ridiculous. There was no RILEY in Season 3. How could you have a perfect Buffy without Riley?
::quickly leaps into Pylea-bound wormhole to escape pitchforks::
On the other hand, Sarah Michelle Gellar had breasts back thing. She was pretty with breasts.
The first season of HBO’s Deadwood – hell, the first episode. Characters were firmly established and while they did evolve, they didn’t change to serve the plot (looking at you, Desperate Housewives).
Glorious dialogue, humor, violence, smart use of music, and sets that made you want to freeze every frame and look around.
I think most comedies would find it difficult to crack this list, but I’ll nominate Seinfeld season 4.
There are several individual episodes from this season (“The Contest”, “The Handicap Spot”) that I think most would place high on a list of the best 1/2 hours of TV. But taken as a whole, there is a unity of structure and creative linking between the episodes that make the whole season greater than the collection of individual episodes.
Obviously the overall-theme of the pitch, development, and airing of the “Jerry” sitcom dominates the season (a natural outgrowth of the “Trip” episodes from the beginning of the season; two episodes which complete the saga of Kramer in California). But the self-reference to the Seinfeld show itself provides a level of irony that can’t really be appreciated by looking at a single episode.
This is also the season where Seinfeld becan to see the comedic value of direct links between specific episodes. The entire montage of former characters seen watching the “Jerry” pilot in the season finale is only funny if you’ve watched the entire season, and this is only the most obvious example of comedic links between episodes (e.g. George goes to see “Rochelle, Rochelle” in “The Movie”, misses it, so he rents and then loses the video release in “The Smelly Car”).
Later seasons would follow a similar pattern, but they never really hit the high note of Season 4.
I nominate Season 2 of Taxi (79-80) and the best season of Taxi and consideration for best season of a sitcom ever.
This season included “Reverend Jim: A Space Odyssey” where Jim takes the drivers test and needs to know “What does a Yellow Light Mean?” It had Xena introduced to humanize Louis a little. A wonderful follow-up to the first season with where Obese Phone Answering service girl Angela returns after losing much weight. Louis meeting Xena’s parents. A two part strike episode and the excellent two part cabbies fantasies that concluded with a huge production number.
The show had hit its stride and Kaufmann had not yet become a distraction. Reverend Jim was probably the best add-on character ever.
I nominate Season 2 of Star Trek (67-68) as the best season of any science fiction series.
It included “Amok Time” (when Spock needs to mate), “Mirror, Mirror” (the Alternate universe one that so many later shows have honored/ripped-off), “The Doomsday Machine” (where the Enterprise destroys a rogue planet eater) “I, Mudd” which feature the return of Harry Mudd as leader of a planet of Androids. “Journey to Babel” with Ambassador Sarek and the Andorians. The classic comedies of the series, “The Trouble With Tribbles” & “A Piece of the Action”. Tribbles, should go without saying. Piece of the Action was on a planet that based itself on a book about prohibition Chicago left 100 years earlier.
A great season.
You know, my son and I were talking about this - we were watching TV Saturday and nothing as usual was on - so as we were flipping through the channels, one of our old favorite shows came on - and we were trying to figure out what the best season ever had been since there have been so many changes since the show initially started.
The consensus was that season one of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers was the best. No doubt.
Season 2 of* Roseanne*. Yeah, Roseanne had probably gone all bitchcakes by then, but comedically, it was a freakin’ hilarious show and most of the kinks had been worked out of it.
Season 3 of Farscape. There was a perfect balance of everything, and it managed to make you laugh and rip your heart out within seconds of one another.
As much as I liked season 1 of *Lost *and several seasons of The Sopranos, I’ve gotta go with Season 2 of *Rome *on HBO. I don’t think there was any show on TV that I looked more forward to watching each week. Alas, it looks like a season 3 is not going to happen.
That’s probably the most sublimely funny scene in television history.