With both Parks and Recreation and The Office (American), I had heard enough bad things about the first season that I just started with season 2. That may have been the right choice.
The first few episodes aren’t bad, but they don’t tell you what the whole series is like or where it’s going. (Deliberately: much of the fun is seeing how the storyline unfolds over the course of the series—the twists and turns that it takes.)
Agreed with some of the posts here. I think the first three seasons of Community are among the greatest runs of comedy in TV history, but on every rewatch I realize a bit more how they really hadn’t settled on the tone until season 2.
The Wire was consistently brilliant, but you need to get past the first three episodes. Not that they’re not good, it’s just the show is the dictonary definition of “slow burn setup.” Once you get past the scene-setting, it’s impossible to put down, but In understand how people might give up before the three hour mark.
I thought How I Met Your Mother was a standard edgeless Friends knockoff for the first season, with the voiceover being the only thing to really distinguish it from the pack. Then in the second season it started getting downright surreal in its storytelling and I was glad I didn’t chuck in the towel. I even kind of like that strange final season, and I was wrecked by the finale.
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow was absolutely, utterly dire in the first season. Awful script, a shitty villain, and even dependable actors not giving a crap. It go so much better though. Sometime around season 4, I feel like the writers just decided to go absolutely anywhere their muses took them, and it became gleefully bonkers (though I still don’t like the Gary character, because TV doesn’t need a new Eddie Deezen).
Definitely agreed; The cliffhanger at the end of ST:TNG’s third season (“The Best of Both Worlds, Part I”) left me with my mouth agape – Trek had never done anything like that before.
Similarly, and from that same era, Babylon 5 didn’t impress me much during its first season: the writing and acting were both uneven (though it was only much later that we learned that the actor who was playing the station’s commander was going through a mental health crisis during filming). I watched it that year under duress, as my wife enjoyed it, but I rolled my eyes a lot.
But, seasons 2 through 4 were, IMO, among the best sci-fi television of that era. (The big issue with Season 5 is that, due to concerns about being cancelled, the show’s creator wrapped up the main plotlines in Season 4; once they were renewed, he had to come up with another season’s stories.)
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia didn’t really find its footing until Danny Devito joined the cast in Season 2.
TNG got immeasurably better after two specific things happened (this entirely IMHO). After the second or so season, when they switched the cast out of those hilarious spandex suits (and stopped having extras run down the corridors in manskirts) into proper uniforms. And then later on when Roddenberry’s health started to decline (he passed away around the beginning of season 4, I think) and the writers could take the figurative “what would Gene do?” sign down and expand the scope of storytelling.
I would agree with Community peaking at season two. Season one is certainly “watchable,” as I like to say, and three is pretty good. After that, they’re expendable.
We started Bojack Horseman and weren’t terribly excited at first. But we thought it just might be worthwhile to go on a bit longer, give it a chance and see where it was gonna go. Turned out to be great. “Time’s Arrow,” either the last or next-to-last episode of season four, is probably one of the greatest, most heavy-duty episodes of television I’ve ever seen.
Completely with you on Bojack. I wasn’t entirely sold on it after s1, but decided to stick at it, and by the underwater episode I was completely hooked. The episode with the eulogy is hilarious, and the Time’s Arrow episode is a masterpiece.
You forgot Riker’s beard. That’s another of the key reasons the show got better 
.
30 Rock: Start a few eps from the end of season one so you can meet Jacks mom for the first time
Parks and Rec: S2E1
I need to finish The Good Place and should watch from the beginning but having known the twist…
I think all the eps of Community are worthwhile but thats just me.
The first season of The Good Place is brilliant, but it’s easy to miss how great it is until you rewatch it after the twist and spot all the foreshadowing.
I agree with The Office, STTNG and 30-Rock. Even The Sopranos needed a little time to get it together.
So it seems to me that most TV series that I have liked needed the better part of a first season to find their footing. Very few were gripping right out of the gate, with their “voice” and style intact.
I’d say Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul achieved that, and also The Good Place. What amazes me is that Arrested Development was so great from moment one. I still don’t understand how that show was funny on paper, in a way that could be explained to the other writers. Absolutely incredible that it made it to TV and was so, so funny.
Weren’t we all. For its entire run, I enjoyed everything, some more than others, from the start. Many series take a season or two to find its groove, but HIMYM seems to be the opposite, in a kind of unique way. How it ended was so disappointing that it ruined the very memory of the show I’d enjoyed for years, so much so that I don’t even want to go back and rewatch favorite scenes. No other show that I can think of right now has done quite the same job of ruining itself entirely (and I watched both Lost and Heroes to the bitter end).
I think a lot of people looked at the first few eps of “The Detectorists” and shut it down. It really grows on you and is a gentler form of humor than most American sitcoms.
BUT…one of the most famous Sopranos eps is S1 E5 “College”. And funnily enough Ron Moore’s fave ep of New Battlestar Galactica is S1E1 (After the mini-series) “33”
I honestly didn’t think “The Good Place” looked like something I wanted to watch, based on the promos for show. But about a month into the season, NBC reran the first four episodes back to back on a Saturday night and I happened to catch it, and I was hooked.
Same here, but in the gap between seasons 2 and 3, I never went and saw the rest. I think I should start over and watch it all.
I gave up on TNG in the first season, didn’t get back into it until season 4 or 5. Same with DS9, but stuck it out through Voyager and made it to the last season of Enterprise.
Two series I switched off at first and later came to absolutely love:
The first time I tried watching Cheers, Cliff was rambling about the intestines of a whale. I thought “Oh, crap! Another lame sitcom ‘filmed before a live audience.’” How wrong I was. I think the next time I bothered checking it out (it was getting great reviews), the episode with Alice Beasely as Coach’s daughter was on. I almost cried as I watched the scene they did together in Sam’s office.
The first time I watched The Paper Chase, I thought “Oh, God! Idealistic college students campaigning for social justice. No thanks!” I figured I might have made a mistake when somebody warned me never to call him while it was on. By that time, I was enrolled in what was essentially a pre-Law course and got caught up in the whole Hart–Kingsfield relationship. When it was announced they were going to do all four years after the show was cancelled at the end of the first season, I was ecstatic.
Two more I never thought I would like: Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men, both of which I started watching in reruns. At first I thought the only reason audiences were laughing at some of the jokes in the first was because one of the characters was speaking with an Indian accent. Then I saw the episode in which Leonard and Sheldon become roommates, and I laughed my ass off when they got to the time-travel scene. The show was funny while it was about science, nerds, and sex, but I came to hate it when it started to be about “relationships.” I found Sheldon’s transformation from condescending jerk to caring, sensitive boyfriend particularly nauseating.
I remember when Two and a Half Men was made fun of in an episode of CSI (“I can’t write that crap!” said one Hollywood writer), and I thought “Is it really that bad?” I decided to check it out to satisfy my curiosity and stayed because of the raunchy humor. I love raunchy humor! 
Been bingeing it this past week~half way through the 4th season, it continues to engage me.
I, too, am a sucker for medical dramas. New Amsterdam veers perilously close to a medical rom-com prime time soap opera, but the quality of the ensemble cast’s acting compensates for a lot of sins. It helps that my first job out of school was at Boston City Hospital, another historical first inner city public hospital-that environment and characters they nailed.
The problem with Two And A Half Men was they should have just ended it when the Charlie Sheen shit hit the fan. They dragged it out for another… what? 3, 4 seasons? with Ashton Kutcher.
Going waaay back, add Newhart to the list. Steven Kampmann and Jennifer Holmes were dropped from the cast. Julia Duffy and Peter Scolari were added to make comedy gold.