Nothing disappoints me more than a TV show that fails to live up to the expectations set by its first season. It’s called the “sophomore slump.” It happens more often than you think. Some shows deliver a near-perfect first season before taking a noticeable dip in quality.
Three of the shows on this list have won Emmys, making their eventual declines even more disappointing. Another show on this list is a teen comic book adaptation that lost its edge after the first season. My top selection is one of HBO’s greatest seasons produced this century.
Riverdale
Archie Comics come to life
Justice for Riverdale. This show became a parody of itself toward the end of its seven-season run. However, I’ll defend Riverdale’sfirst season until the cows come home. Based on characters from Archie Comics, Riverdale introduces audiences to a group of teenagers in the titular town, including Archie (KJ Apa), Jughead (Cole Sprouse), Betty (Lili Reinhart), and Veronica (Camila Mendes). The first season revolves around the murder of a teenager and the investigation to identify the killer.
Season 1 was a murder mystery with entertaining characters, teen drama, and an engaging setting. It perfectly balanced camp with melodrama, the secret formula for a teen soap. Riverdalepeaked in season 1 because the quality of the storytelling declined drastically in subsequent seasons. The show leaned too far into the supernatural and took weirdness to a new level with a rocket-ship escape, a gargoyle king, and an alternate dimension. I’ll take the grounded murder mystery over a storyline about convincing a former criminal to play football.
Westworld
Should’ve never left the theme park
Westworldhad the ingredients to be a successful HBO drama. It had a talented creative team in Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy and drew on beloved stacked cast included Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Wright, James Marsden, Ed Harris, Tessa Thompson, and Anthony Hopkins. Most importantly, Westworldhad an innovative sci-fi premise: a Western-themed amusement park run by “hosts,” androids designed to entertain guests
The hosts eventually revolt, fight for their freedom, and escape into the real world. The battle between humanity and AI is always going to play well with fans if done correctly, and in the first season, it succeeds. Once the show left the park, it lost its edge. Good luck explaining the plot to a friend after the confusing narratives and jumbled timelines of later seasons. Westworldshould have followed the motto, “Less is more.”
Killing Eve
Please come back, Phoebe
Nothing gets me more excited than watching the birth of a star. Despite her work in My Mad Fat Diary and Doctor Foster, I didn’t discover Jodie Comer until Killing Eve,BBC America’s espionage thriller based on Luke Jennings’ Villanelleseries. Comer plays Villanelle, a highly skilled and boisterous assassin working for a covert organization known as The Twelve. Sandra Oh, best known for her work on Grey’s Anatomy, plays Eve, an MI5 analyst who joins a secret MI6 division tasked with hunting down Villanelle. The series becomes a seductive cat-and-mouse thriller in which Eve and Villanelle develop an obsession with each other.
Killing Eve’sfirst season packs plenty of suspense and a surprising amount of laughs. The chemistry between Comer and Oh is infectious. However, the show lost its secret weapon after Season 1: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who did not return as showrunner for season 2. While Emerald Fennell came close to capturing the spirit of the show in season 2, nothing compares to Waller-Bridge’s work in the first season, which was a riveting run of television.
True Detective
Lightning in a bottle
In the streaming era, it’s common for movie stars to take roles on television. There used to be a stigma that you had to be either a movie star or a television star; you couldn’t do both. Even in the early 2010s, that mindset still existed in Hollywood. The success of True Detective in 2014 helped usher in a new era in which A-list stars made the jump to cable television. True Detectiveseason 1 starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as detectives Rust Cohle and Marty Hart.
The season plays out across two timelines: in 1995, Rust and Marty investigate a murder, while in 2012, the former partners reconvene after new evidence emerges. The show is a true two-hander, with McConaughey playing the philosophical pessimist and Harrelson the pragmatic skeptic. The ending of episode 4 remains one of the most exhilarating sequences in television history. I implore you to watch it on HBO Max.
True Detective is an anthology series, so Season 2 featured a new cast and a new case. Season 2 ran into a host of issues, including too many lead characters and the miscasting of Vince Vaughn. Seasons 3 and 4 were better than Season 2, but nothing will ever touch the magic of that first season.
More perfect movies and shows to check out
Nothing is truly perfect, but these movies and shows come close. Mad Max: Fury Roadand Dazed and Confusedare movies that are impossible to stop watching after the first scene. Meanwhile, Lanternsis an excellent show that everyone should check out.
