24 immediately pulled me in.
Buffy, Wonderfalls, Freaks and Geeks, Veronica Mars. I thought Angel’s premier episode was good, but the first season overall suffered by comparison to Buffy’s previous three.
Firefly gets special mention because if they had aired the episodes in the right order, it would have made a helluva lot more sense. As it is, in the right order, it’s an excellent first season.
Wow, I had the opposite reaction. I watched the pilot and decided I had no use for such an angsty remake of a cheesy classic. It was like Next Generation. Less action and more angst.
The Shield.
I don’t watch very much TV, but these series caught my attention. Many of them, however, I watched on Youtube or DVD or whatever, because I am really really bad at committing to watching TV.
These are the ones I got hooked into by the very first episode-
Battlestar Galactica (pilot miniseries was amazing)
Veronica Mars Seasons 1 and 2 (couldn’t get into S3 b/c first episode sucked)
Arrested Development
Freaks and Geeks
X-Files (I watched sporadically, on TV when it was airing, because I was really busy in high school, but I liked it from the first episode)
Briscoe County Jr.
Deadwood
Sex and the City (even though I hate the hype of “all women are like this,” the show by itself was reasonably well-written and funny)
24: Season 1
Heroes: Season 1 (didn’t like pilot of S2, so I quit watching)
Rome
The Office
Northern Exposure
Strangers with Candy
newer Dr. Who series, starting with Christopher Eccleston
Jeeves and Wooster
Didn’t catch me at all:
Carnivale
Fringe
Alias
Ali G Show (and I like twisted humour, as a I own all the seasons of SWC)
Nip and Tuck
Lost
Firefly, I really like. But I was under the impression that they didn’t air the pilot episode that I have on DVD on the air, so I would probably have been a little confused had I watched it while it was on Fox, despite my love for everything Sci-Fi/Fantasy.
The Wire also took me a while to get into-I only perservered because one of my friends is a huge fan.
I’m glad to hear that both the Sopranos and Buffy were good from the start. I watched the first 4 or 5 episodes of each to see if i would like them, and didn’t. so it wasn’t just a case of not getting into them.
As for other shows, the pilot of How I Met Your Mother might be the best episode of (a very good) series, certainly in the running. And 33, the first episode (after the miniseries) from Battlestar Galactica was one of the best episodes of television ever made. Talk about making you feel like a part of the action.
I second or third Six Feet Under- not only was a potentially main character killed, you got to be introduced to each person in the series in the context of that death. I became bonded quickly to most of the characters and I feel the series really stayed true to those initial introductions, i.e a little later on I start to think Nate, Jr. is a nice guy but that first episode he’s the same selfish, shallow person he is at the end (at least in my opinion).
Pardon me while I make some slight preparations.
:: slips on force shield belt, turns ouput to maximum, activates ::
The best opening episode of any of the Star Trek series was Voyager’s. I’m not sure what happened to fuck it up after that, but I blame the Germans.
I agree with the West Wing. I’ll also add ER. It’s now long past its sell-by date, but a year ago or so I watched a DVD of the first season. I thought the first episode was quite strong.
I agree with The West Wing, too. I think House started out pretty strong, except for the weird color thing they had going on - like recolored black-&-white movies, kinda. Life started well, too (doesn’t hurt to have a couple of lookers like Damian Lewis and Sarah Shahi…).
Battlestar Galactica, definitely. The mini was great, and “33” even better. It stripped away everything that was cheesy and dumb with the original, and cranked everything left up.
Lost was pretty good, too. Unlike BSG, though, Lost couldn’t really keep it up.
“Dexter”
“24”
“Buffy”
“The Sopranos”
“The Tudors”
“Frasier”
“Lost”
“The Office” (both sides of the pond)
“Heroes”
Certainly the best parts of Babylon 5 were not at the beginning, but it did pull me in from the start and only got better from there. It just has that addictive quality. It’s only by comparison with the rest of the show (except most of Season 5) that it wasn’t as good.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Gotta put in my vote for “The Wire” The cold open with McNulty interviewing the witness to a murder “Gots to let him play. This’s America.” I was hooked.
As much a Fan I am of Buffy, I disagree with all of you. I thought the pilot was weak, as was the first season overall. The Master was not particularly intimidating as a Big Bad, most of his minions sucked rocks, even Darla was pretty pointless until after she was re-introduced on Angel. The characters were very stereotyped and the dialog was just a germ of what it would become. And Joss made the mistake of making Cordelia a series regular and created that black hole of suck that pointlessed its way through two series. But second season came in strong introduing Spike and Dru in EP 3, OZ in EP 4, and finally knocking off deadweight Jenny Calendar we were off to the races, but the pilot, I’m pretty sure if I started there I would have dropped it like an overheated stone.
Really? The movie was fun and disposable, exactly as intended. Come on, it had Pee Wee Herman as a bad guy! “Kill them a LOT!”
He’s a shadow of his former self today, and perhaps me being 10 when it premiered puts that “soft focus” around my memories, but Robin Williams in the first season of Mork and Mindy was the one of the funniest people I ever saw on TV. Shazbot!
I’ll nth The Sopranos. Going back and rewatching, I’m always struck by how good it was early on. One of the classic episodes, “College,” was in season one, and it’s only the fourth one. You really got a sense of who the characters were from day one, and the plots were really good as well. And the actors seem super comfortable with their characters and with each other–Edie Falco and James Gandolfini seemed to have great chemistry from day one onward.
Six Feet Under had the best pilot and the best finale, I think.
Buffy’s pilot was good, but not ‘the best’ I don’t think.
Wonderfalls is up there. Lost had an excellent pilot, but dropped pretty quickly.
I liked the first episode of Cheers very much.
I’m gonna enter Sports Night into the fray.
The pilot itself is pretty good, although you only see that on the DVD. Then by judging from the first episode (The Apology) it was great. It was funny it was poignant and the ending was one of those breathless silence moments.
Lost had me at hello.
I’ll add Futurama as well. The pilot was brilliant (although the second episode was even better), and made me an instant fan.