For me, it’s the “L&O” franchise, especially “SVU”.
I watched the pilot episode of Angel which made me interested in watching Buffy.
I was able to catch up on the earlier episodes of Buffy by buying the videos and then watching the reruns on FX.
I missed the first five years or so of the Simpsons because I thought it was just another moronic Fox comedy series – “Married With Children” in cartoon form.
D’oh!!!:smack:
I didn’t get into Smallville until the second season.
I don’t regret it. From what I catch in reurns, the show really improved over that summer.
I started watching Sopranos and ER from their second seasons.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, reruns are nice
-Lil
Star Trek the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Buffy and Angel have this in common: I didn’t get into any of them until their second seasons.
That 70s Show. Missed the first four seasons, got hooked and caught up in less than four months.
The first episode of Seinfeld I watched was the last one. I’ve since seen the rest of them in syndication.
same as Kevin H, wrt to Seinfeld
I paid very tenuous attention to Buffy from the beginning, but I didn’t really get into it until near the end of the fifth season. Shortly before it went to hell…sigh
Scrubs. The first episode wasn’t what I expected and it took me most of the first season to fall in love with its brand of humor.
Sopranos. I’d heard about the show, but had little interest despite the rave reviews. Mere weeks ago, my daughter brought home the first season on DVD, and I became RIVETED to the set for hours.
Survivor. Working nights so missed the whole first season and thought it sounded stupid. Now I’m hooked good!
All of them. I’m hopelessly slow when it comes to getting into television shows. I’ve never seen one episode of Smallville, Sopranos, Survivor, TAR, Oz, BtVS, or Angel. I’ve seen exactly two episodes of ER.
I know. Hopeless.
The X-Files. Didn’t get into it until the middle of the fifth season. Of course, it had started to jump the shark by then. Typical for me.
NYPD Blue. My sisters would sit around the table discussing the show, and going “I can’t believe they said that on TV!” And I would think, any show that has to use that kind of language to get viewers is not a very good show. Finally gave in and watched it, and loved it!
The West Wing For a long time, my church held meetings on Wednesday evenings, and I wasn’t really home. Hubby talked favorably of the show a lot, and when we finally changed our regular Devotionals to Mondays, he said, “come watch this with me. It’s smart and funny. The dialogue is good, and the writing is great!” The fact that it featured John Spencer, who, IMHO, was a saving grace to L.A. Law in its later years, was a bonus!
I didn’t get into Buffy or Angel until October and have now seen all of the episodes of each.
Wow, jeanster, you’re probably the first person to go from Angel to Buffy. The first I’ve heard of, anyway.
Anyway, I started watching The West Wing during the second season (I think) because everyone told me how great it was. And I really did think it was great, for about a season and a half. Then I realized that I tired of the supergenius characters and the way they tried to use the cool dialogue to cover up the lack of actual drama in this political drama, so I stopped watching it midway through this year.
JAG, Ed and Deep Space 9.
I didn’t know JAG existed because I usually watched another show on Tuesday nights–can’t even remember what that show was. I got into it really late and was pretty confused when I watched the early episodes on the USA channel.
Ed I just thought was stupid. My parents watched it, and I don’t know why, but I adamantly refused to. Then I watched an episode and realized it was kind of interesting.
And, finally, I hated DS9 without even watching an episode of it. I liked the other ST series, but I had always thought DS9 was silly for being on a space station rather than a ship. Never realized how cool Dr Bashir (and I guess the others) were.