12 TV Shows That Got Better After Their First Season

Some TV shows that got better after their first season simply needed time to figure out what they wanted to be. A new television series has to introduce its characters, establish its world, find the right tone, and convince an audience to keep watching, often while the people making the show are still figuring out exactly what they’ve created.

Sometimes everything clicks immediately. Other shows need a little more time.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the first season was bad. Some excellent television series began with perfectly good opening seasons before becoming substantially better once the writers understood their characters, the actors settled into their roles, or the series discovered storytelling possibilities that weren’t obvious when it began.

Others really did have rough starts.

For this list of TV shows that got better after their first season, we’re looking for more than a simple increase in episode quality. There needs to be an identifiable reason the series improved. Maybe a character was reworked, a new cast member changed the chemistry, an unsuccessful element was abandoned, or the writers finally discovered what made their premise special.

The improvement also doesn’t have to happen immediately when Season 2 begins. Some television shows require several seasons to reach their full potential. What matters is that the series eventually became noticeably stronger than the version audiences first encountered.

Sometimes a first season is the finished product.

Sometimes it’s the prototype.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

It’s hard to reconcile the confidence of Star Trek: The Next Generation at its peak with how uneven the series was when it began.

The first season had the pieces that would eventually make the show great. Patrick Stewart was already commanding as Jean-Luc Picard, Brent Spiner quickly demonstrated Data’s potential, and the new Enterprise provided an enormous canvas for another generation of Star Trek stories.

Unfortunately, the series frequently seemed unsure what to do with all of it.

What wasn’t working in Season 1

Early The Next Generation often feels caught between two eras of television. It wants to establish a new version of Star Trek, but many episodes still follow the storytelling rhythms and ideas of the original series.

That occasionally produces stories that already felt dated in 1987. “Code of Honor” became particularly infamous, while episodes such as “The Naked Now” explicitly returned to concepts from the original series before viewers had much opportunity to learn who these new characters were.

The characters themselves were also still being calibrated. Picard could be unusually distant, Wesley Crusher was often written as a wunderkind who could solve problems that baffled experienced Starfleet officers, and the ensemble had not yet developed the chemistry that would eventually make simply watching the senior officers play poker entertaining.

The improvement wasn’t instantaneous. Season 2 introduced important elements, including Guinan and the Borg, but remained inconsistent.

Season 3 is where The Next Generation truly arrives.

The writing becomes more sophisticated, the characters feel comfortable with one another, and the series stops looking backward quite so often. Stories increasingly explore diplomacy, ethics, artificial intelligence, individuality, and the responsibilities of command in ways specifically suited to this crew.

The Next Generation didn’t merely survive its growing pains. It eventually produced some of the finest episodes in the entire Star Trek franchise.

Fortunately, nobody decided the journey should end at Farpoint.

Where to watch:Check current streaming availability; sold on physical media and digitally.

Parks and Recreation

If someone watches the first season of Parks and Recreation and wonders why the series became so beloved, that’s understandable.

The six-episode opening season offers glimpses of what will emerge, but it’s still searching for an identity separate from other workplace mockumentaries, particularly The Office.

The biggest problem is sitting right in the middle of it.

Leslie Knope isn’t quite Leslie Knope yet.

What wasn’t working in Season 1

The earliest version of Leslie is considerably more oblivious and socially inept than the character viewers would come to know. There’s an uncomfortable amount of Michael Scott in the formula, with comedy frequently generated by Leslie misunderstanding situations while everyone around her recognizes what’s actually happening.

That approach wastes one of the most interesting things about the character: Leslie isn’t funny because she’s bad at government.

She’s funny because she cares about government more than any reasonable human being possibly could.

The supporting cast is also underdeveloped. Pawnee hasn’t yet become the magnificently deranged community it will eventually become, and some relationships exist primarily because the show seems to think a workplace comedy is supposed to have them.

Beginning in Season 2, the writers make a crucial adjustment. Leslie is allowed to be good at her job.

She’s still obsessive, exhausting, occasionally naive, and capable of turning the smallest municipal issue into a crusade. But she’s also intelligent, hardworking, loyal, and genuinely effective. Her coworkers may find her overwhelming, but they increasingly respect her.

The rest of the ensemble improves along with her. Ron Swanson becomes more than Leslie’s ideological opposite. April and Andy develop into one of the show’s defining relationships. Tom’s absurd ambitions expand, Donna gains more room, and Pawnee itself becomes populated by citizens who make the Parks Department employees look remarkably sane.

The eventual departures and arrivals matter as well. Mark Brendanawicz leaves, while Ben Wyatt and Chris Traeger join the ensemble and immediately open new storytelling possibilities.

Most importantly, Parks and Recreation stops treating sincerity as something that needs to be undercut. The characters are allowed to care about their jobs, their town, and one another without the series becoming any less funny.

Season 1 was trying to figure out how to make Leslie Knope funny.

The answer turned out to be letting Leslie Knope be Leslie Knope.

Where to watch:Check current streaming availability; sold on physical media and digitally.

The Office

The American version of The Office had an unusual problem when it premiered in 2005: it was adapting a critically acclaimed British comedy with such a distinctive voice that successfully copying it risked preventing the new series from developing one of its own.

For six episodes, that’s largely what happened.

Season 1 isn’t without strengths. Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski, and Jenna Fischer are already establishing the relationships that will drive the series, and “Diversity Day” demonstrates how effectively the American version could generate painfully uncomfortable comedy.

But Michael Scott is a problem.

What wasn’t working in Season 1

The earliest Michael is considerably closer to Ricky Gervais’ David Brent. He’s abrasive, desperate for approval, frequently cruel, and often difficult to understand as someone his employees would tolerate any longer than necessary.

That works in the darker environment of the British original, but the American series was being built to potentially run for years. Spending that much time with Michael required finding something beneath the neediness and inappropriate behavior.

The supporting characters also haven’t fully emerged. Dwight, Jim, and Pam are immediately recognizable, but much of the office remains background scenery rather than the ensemble that will eventually make Dunder Mifflin feel populated by an entire ecosystem of strange personalities.

Season 2 makes one of the most important adjustments in the show’s history by allowing Michael to occasionally be good at something.

He’s still inappropriate, immature, desperate for affection, and capable of making everyone around him profoundly uncomfortable. But episodes begin revealing that Michael is an excellent salesman and, underneath everything else, genuinely cares about many of his employees.

That little bit of humanity changes the character enormously. Instead of simply waiting for Michael to receive the consequences of his behavior, viewers can occasionally understand why the people around him haven’t completely abandoned him.

The series also expands its attention beyond its central characters. Angela, Kevin, Oscar, Stanley, Phyllis, Creed, Kelly, and the rest of the office gradually develop distinct personalities, relationships, grudges, and increasingly bizarre histories.

Meanwhile, Jim and Pam’s relationship gains emotional weight that the mockumentary format is particularly good at capturing through glances, pauses, and conversations that don’t quite say what either person means.

The American Office began by asking whether it could successfully recreate the British series.

It got much better when it stopped trying.

Where to watch:Check current streaming availability; sold on physical media and digitally.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer differs from several other entries on this list because it isn’t a failed version of the show.

It’s a smaller one.

Across its 12 episodes, Season 1 establishes Buffy, Giles, Willow, Xander, Angel, Sunnydale, the Hellmouth, and the central metaphor that the horrors of adolescence can become literal monsters. The show has strong episodes, memorable characters, and plenty of evidence that Joss Whedon’s television adaptation of his original film concept has found fertile ground.

Then Season 2 demonstrates just how much more the premise can do.

The abbreelatively straightforward supernatural threats. The Master provides a season-long antagonist, but much of the storytelling remains episodic, and the emotional consequences rarely extend far beyond individual installments

The production itself can also feel modest compared with what follows. Sunnydale is there, but the larger supernatural world around it hasn’t fully opened up.

Most importantly, the series hasn’t yet demonstrated how brutally it can use its characters’ relationships as part of the horror.

Season 2 introduces Spike and Drusilla, immediately giving the series villains with considerably more personality and unpredictability. Their arrival expands vampire mythology and creates antagonists who feel personally connected to the world, rather than simply waiting underground for the Slayer to arrive.

But the season’s defining development comes from Angel.

Buffy and Angel’s romance becomes increasingly important before Angel loses his soul and reverts to Angelus. Suddenly, the person Buffy loves knows everything about her, her friends, and her vulnerabilities, and intends to use that knowledge to hurt her as much as possible.

It’s the moment Buffy proves that its supernatural metaphors can carry devastating emotional consequences. The monsters are no longer merely representations of teenage problems. The series can make its mythology and its characters’ emotional lives inseparable.

Season 2 also becomes more comfortable balancing horror, comedy, romance, tragedy, and serialized storytelling without allowing any one element to overwhelm the others.

Season 1 showed that Buffy the Vampire Slayer could work as a television series.

Season 2 showed why people would still be talking about it decades later.

Where to watch:Check current streaming availability; sold on physical media and digitally.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine begins with one enormous advantage over The Next Generation: it already knows it shouldn’t simply imitate the Star Trek series that came before it.

Putting Commander Benjamin Sisko and his crew on a stationary space station rather than a starship changes the basic storytelling engine. Problems can’t always be left behind at the end of an episode; Bajor is still recovering from the Cardassian occupation, and the Federation has arrived in a region where its presence isn’t universally welcomed.

The first season contains all of those ingredients. It just hasn’t discovered everything it can do with them yet.

Early Deep Space Nine frequently falls back on familiar standalone Star Trek structures even though its setting is designed for longer-term consequences. There are strong episodes, particularly “Duet,” but the series can feel caught between the episodic storytelling inherited from The Next Generation and the more serialized drama it will eventually embrace.

The ensemble is also still settling into place. Relationships that later become essential, including the friendship between Bashir and O’Brien, haven’t fully developed, and characters like Dax are still being defined.

Even the station itself initially feels more like a setting than the politically complicated crossroads it eventually becomes.

The series begins expanding almost immediately in Season 2, opening with a three-part story that dives more deeply into Bajoran politics. Then it introduces something that changes the scale of the entire series.

The Dominion.

What begins as ominous references to a distant Gamma Quadrant power eventually becomes the central threat around which much of Deep Space Nine is constructed. The Dominion gives the series an opportunity to explore war, occupation, compromise, loyalty, religion, and the limits of Federation idealism over multiple seasons.

The show’s stationary setting suddenly becomes its greatest strength. When political conditions change, Sisko can’t simply order the Defiant to warp toward next week’s adventure. Bajor, Cardassia, the wormhole, and the people aboard the station remain, accumulating history and consequences.

Characters who initially seem peripheral become essential. Garak develops from a mysterious tailor into one of the franchise’s richest recurring characters. Nog undergoes an extraordinary transformation. Dukat becomes far more complicated than a conventional returning villain, and Sisko gradually grows into a commander uniquely suited to the increasingly difficult world around him.

Deep Space Nine began as the Star Trek show that couldn’t go anywhere.

Eventually, that became the reason it could go places the franchise never had before.

Where to watch:Check current streaming availability; sold on physical media and digitally.

Seinfeld

The first season of Seinfeld is so short that it almost feels less like a television season than a network experiment.

Including the pilot, there are only five episodes. The basic idea is already visible: Jerry Seinfeld plays a fictionalized version of himself, ordinary inconveniences become subjects worthy of intense analysis, and conversations about seemingly nothing can consume enormous amounts of time.

But the meticulously constructed comedy machine that Seinfeld eventually becomes isn’t running yet.

What wasn’t working in Season 1

The characters are still prototypes. Kramer is originally called Kessler in the pilot, and the version Michael Richards plays is far less developed than the neighbor who will eventually burst through Jerry’s apartment door with another impossible scheme.

Elaine isn’t even in the pilot, meaning one-quarter of what becomes one of television’s great comedy ensembles is simply missing.

The stories are also relatively small and straightforward. That’s not inherently a problem for a show built around the minutiae of everyday life, but later Seinfeld episodes become remarkable for the way several apparently unrelated plots collide by the end. That structural confidence isn’t present yet.

As the series continues, Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer become increasingly specific and increasingly terrible.

George evolves into a magnificent collection of insecurity, dishonesty, selfishness, and rage. Elaine develops into far more than Jerry’s former girlfriend, with her own career disasters, relationships, grudges, and capacity for appalling behavior. Kramer becomes an unpredictable force capable of entering an episode with an idea that would sound insane coming from anyone else.

The show also learns to trust its unusual subject matter. Waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant can be an episode. Trying to find a car in a parking garage can be an episode. A contest involving something network television barely wanted the characters to discuss can become one of the most famous sitcom episodes ever produced.

Eventually, the plotting becomes almost mathematical. Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer can spend an episode pursuing completely different objectives, only for those stories to converge in ways that make the final disaster feel both surprising and inevitable.

The first season demonstrates that a show about nothing might work.

The seasons that follow discover just how much nothing there is to talk about.

Where to watch:Check current streaming availability; sold on physical media and digitally.

The Simpsons

The first season of The Simpsons is fascinating to revisit because almost everything the series needs to succeed is already there.

Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie are recognizable. Springfield is beginning to take shape around them. The show already understands that it can combine family comedy with satire, and episodes such as “Life on the Fast Lane” demonstrate an emotional intelligence that would remain important even as the series became considerably more absurd.

But it doesn’t yet move like The Simpsons.

The earliest episodes are slower and more grounded than what follows. Stories tend to concentrate heavily on the Simpson family, while many Springfield residents who eventually become indispensable are either barely developed or haven’t appeared yet.

The comedy is also less dense. Later episodes can stack visual jokes, dialogue, cultural references, background gags, and character comedy on top of one another without sacrificing the story. Season 1 hasn’t developed that rhythm.

Even the animation reflects a series still being refined. The characters and locations are familiar, but there’s a roughness to the earliest episodes that makes them immediately distinguishable from what the show would look like only a few years later.

The transformation happens remarkably quickly.

Springfield expands into one of television’s great fictional communities, with Mr. Burns, Principal Skinner, Moe, Krusty, Chief Wiggum, Ned Flanders, and dozens of other characters becoming capable of supporting substantial stories and jokes of their own.

Homer also evolves. The early version is more conventionally frustrated and authoritarian, particularly with Bart. As the series discovers the character’s combination of stupidity, enthusiasm, selfishness, vulnerability, and genuine love for his family, Homer becomes an almost limitless comedy engine.

Season 1 proved that an animated family could sustain a prime-time sitcom.

What followed demonstrated that animation could do things a live-action sitcom couldn’t even attempt.

Springfield was only getting started.

Where to watch:Check current streaming availability; sold on physical media and digitally.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia already knows what kind of people inhabit Paddy’s Pub when it begins. Dennis, Dee, Mac, and Charlie are selfish, dishonest, ignorant, and perfectly willing to make virtually any situation worse if they believe there’s something in it for them.

Season 1 establishes the formula.

Season 2 adds Frank Reynolds and discovers that the formula was missing an ingredient.

The seven-episode first season is impressively fearless, particularly for a low-budget comedy from creators who were largely unknown at the time. The Gang tackles subjects other sitcoms would approach cautiously, if at all, and the series immediately understands that its characters should almost never learn the correct lesson from anything that happens to them.

But the ensemble doesn’t yet have the same chaotic balance it eventually develops. Dennis, Dee, Mac, and Charlie can create plenty of trouble themselves, but their world is still relatively contained.

It needs someone capable of funding their worst impulses while simultaneously encouraging them.

Danny DeVito joins the cast in Season 2 as Frank Reynolds, initially introduced as Dennis and Dee’s father. Adding an established actor to a tiny cable comedy could easily have distorted the series around its new star.

Instead, Frank becomes one of them.

More accurately, he eventually becomes worse than most of them.

Frank brings money, experience, and almost no meaningful restraint into the Gang’s ecosystem. Schemes that might previously have collapsed because four broke people couldn’t afford to execute them suddenly become possible. At the same time, Frank increasingly abandons whatever respectable life he once maintained and enthusiastically descends into the filth surrounding Charlie and Paddy’s Pub.

The rest of the characters become more extreme as the writers discover exactly how far they can push them. Mac’s delusions about his physical abilities expand. Dennis’ vanity develops into something far darker. Dee becomes just as capable of appalling behavior as the men around her, and Charlie’s bizarre personal world grows increasingly elaborate.

Most sitcoms improve their characters by making them more sympathetic.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia got better by discovering how much worse everyone could become.

Frank just helped pay for it.

Where to watch:Check current streaming availability; sold on physical media and digitally.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. arrived with an opportunity that sounded almost impossible to waste. The Marvel Cinematic Universe had become a theatrical phenomenon, Phil Coulson was unexpectedly alive, and ABC had a weekly television series capable of exploring what happened in the corners of that universe where the Avengers weren’t around to save everyone.

Then much of the first season seemed afraid to do anything too important.

There was a reason for that.

What wasn’t working in Season 1

The early episodes lean heavily on a case-of-the-week structure. Coulson’s newly assembled team flies around the world aboard the Bus investigating unusual objects, enhanced people, and problems connected to the expanding MCU.

The cast has chemistry, and the series gradually plants larger mysteries involving Coulson’s resurrection and the true loyalties of people around him. But the show often feels as though it’s waiting for permission to become more consequential.

In a very real sense, it was.

The television series couldn’t reveal one of its most important developments before Captain America: The Winter Soldier reached theaters. That movie exposes HYDRA’s infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. and effectively destroys the organization around which the television series had been built.

Suddenly, the show didn’t have to protect its original premise anymore.

The HYDRA revelation gives the back half of Season 1 an urgency that many of the earlier episodes lack. Characters’ loyalties become uncertain, the team’s redevelopment a deeply personal consequence for the television ensemble

More importantly, the destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D. gives the series freedom.

Later seasons increasingly build their own mythology around the Inhumans, Hydra, Ghost Rider, Life Model Decoys, the Framework, time travel, and threats that don’t require an Avengers cameo to feel significant.

The series also becomes surprisingly comfortable reinventing itself. One stretch can resemble a superhero drama, another can become science fiction, and another can trap its characters inside an artificial reality where familiar relationships and allegiances have been completely rearranged.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. began as a television series living in the shadow of the Marvel movies.

It got much better once the movies blew up S.H.I.E.L.D. and forced the show to build something of its own.

Where to watch:Check current streaming availability; sold on physical media and digitally.

Schitt’s Creek

The premise of Schitt’s Creek initially appears to be built around a simple collision. The wealthy Rose family loses almost everything and is forced to live in a small town they once purchased as a joke.

Put four spoiled rich people in a motel, surround them with eccentric locals, and watch them suffer.

That can sustain a comedy.

It couldn’t have sustained the Schitt’s Creek that eventually emerged.

The first season understandably emphasizes the culture clash. Johnny, Moira, David, and Alexis regard Schitt’s Creek as somewhere they need to escape, while the townspeople provide opportunities for the Roses to recoil at their dramatically reduced circumstances.

The characters can consequently feel harsher than they do later. The Roses are funny, but their selfishness and privilege create distance between them and the community.

Even relationships within the family are initially defined largely by dysfunction. They love one another somewhere underneath everything else, but they haven’t spent enough meaningful time together to be particularly good at demonstrating it.

Schitt’s Creek gradually makes a choice that changes everything: it allows its characters to become happier without making them less funny.

The town stops functioning primarily as punishment for the Roses and becomes their home. Johnny develops genuine relationships with Roland and Stevie while trying to rebuild his professional life. Moira remains magnificently theatrical but becomes increasingly invested in the community around her.

Alexis grows from a collection of outrageous stories about wealthy ex-boyfriends and dangerous international adventures into someone capable of building a career and making painful, mature decisions about her future.

David’s development becomes even more significant. His relationship with Patrick gives the series an emotional center that would have been difficult to imagine from the earliest episodes, while never requiring David to stop being David.

The key is that the Roses don’t become entirely different people. Moira never abandons her wigs. David doesn’t suddenly become relaxed. Alexis doesn’t forget how many bizarre situations she somehow survived before arriving in town.

They simply become better versions of themselves.

Schitt’s Creek began with a family desperately trying to leave.

It became something special when staying stopped looking like a failure.

Where to watch:Check current streaming availability; sold on physical media and digitally.

BoJack Horseman

The first episodes of BoJack Horseman make the series look relatively straightforward. BoJack is a washed-up sitcom star, Hollywood is filled with absurd animal-human hybrids, and the show has an endless supply of entertainment-industry targets to mock.

It’s funny, strange, and considerably darker than the fictional family sitcom that made BoJack famous.

It also hasn’t revealed what kind of series it really is.

Early BoJack Horseman leans heavily on rapid-fire jokes, celebrity satire, and the inherent absurdity of a world where a golden retriever can become a successful television actor, and nobody considers that unusual.

BoJack himself initially resembles a familiar television archetype: the selfish former celebrity whose terrible behavior creates most of his own problems.

The ingredients for something deeper appear almost immediately, especially through BoJack’s relationship with Diane and his desperation to control how his life is presented in her book. But viewers could reasonably watch the first few episodes and assume they were getting an unusually cynical Hollywood comedy.

As the first season progresses, BoJack Horseman begins refusing the easy emotional resets that television comedy usually provides.

BoJack hurts people, and the damage doesn’t disappear when the episode ends. His childhood, addictions, depression, fame, and capacity for self-sabotage become parts of an increasingly complicated character study, but the series also refuses to let those things function as automatic excuses for his behavior.

The supporting characters receive similar attention. Diane’s ideals repeatedly collide with her own choices. Princess Carolyn’s relentless competence can’t protect her from exhaustion or disappointment. Mr. Peanutbutter’s relentless optimism develops complications of its own, and Todd gradually becomes much more than the strange man sleeping on BoJack’s couch.

Later seasons become formally ambitious as well. The series experiments with structure, perspective, dialogue, and even the absence of dialogue while continuing to deliver jokes about animal behavior and show business.

That’s the remarkable trick. BoJack Horseman never stops being the ridiculous cartoon about a talking horse who starred in a cheesy 1990s sitcom.

It simply discovers that the ridiculous cartoon can also be devastating.

Where to watch:Check current streaming availability; sold on physical media where available.

Halt and Catch Fire

The first season of Halt and Catch Fire has a compelling setting, an excellent cast, and a fascinating subject. Set during the personal-computer revolution of the 1980s, it follows people attempting to force their way into an industry changing faster than almost anyone can predict.

It also spends too much time acting as though Joe MacMillan is unquestionably the center of that story.

The series becomes considerably better when it realizes he doesn’t have to be.

What wasn’t working in Season 1

Lee Pace gives Joe enormous presence, but the character initially fits a recognizable prestige-drama template: a brilliant, mysterious, manipulative man whose ambition pulls everyone else into his orbit.

That makes the first season’s effort to build a portable computer compelling, but it can also make the series feel more familiar than its subject deserves.

Meanwhile, two of its most interesting characters are already standing nearby. Cameron Howe brings the perspective of a gifted programmer who sees possibilities others don’t, while Donna Clark is initially framed partly through her marriage to Gordon, despite her formidable technical abilities.

Season 2 shifts much of its attention toward Cameron and Donna and their work building Mutiny, an online community that begins evolving beyond its origins as a gaming service.

That change expands the series enormously.

Instead of concentrating primarily on whether a group can build and sell a particular machine, Halt and Catch Fire becomes increasingly interested in how people recognize the future before everyone else does, what happens when someone else recognizes it first, and how creation affects friendships, marriages, careers, and identities.

Joe remains essential, but he becomes one part of an ensemble rather than the gravitational center around which everyone else must revolve. Gordon, Donna, Cameron, and Joe repeatedly separate, reconnect, compete, collaborate, and damage one another as technology moves from personal computers toward online communication and eventually the early web.

The series also becomes warmer without becoming sentimental. Its characters can be ruthless and selfish, but the show grows increasingly interested in the bonds between people who have spent years building things together.

Halt and Catch Fire begins as a drama about building the next important computer.

It becomes a drama about something much larger: the people trying to imagine what comes next.

Where to watch:Check current streaming availability; sold on physical media and digitally where available.

TV shows that got better learned what made them special

There’s no universal timetable for a television series to find itself. Parks and Recreation needed to rethink Leslie Knope. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia needed Frank Reynolds. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. needed the organization in its title to collapse, while Star Trek: Deep Space Nine needed several seasons before fully embracing the serialized storytelling its setting made possible.

That’s also why a rough first season shouldn’t necessarily be treated as a warning to stop watching. Television production is unusually complicated, and the version of a series that reaches the screen first isn’t always the version its writers and actors eventually discover together.

Some of these shows made relatively small adjustments. The American Office found enough humanity in Michael Scott to separate him from David Brent. Schitt’s Creek discovered that affection and character growth could make its comedy stronger rather than softer.

Others became substantially more ambitious. Buffy the Vampire Slayer turned its supernatural metaphors into serialized emotional consequences. BoJack Horseman evolved from a Hollywood satire about a washed-up sitcom star into a complicated examination of depression, addiction, responsibility, and whether recognizing your destructive behavior actually means anything if you continue hurting people.

Then there are shows such as The Simpsons and Seinfeld, where the early episodes resemble sketches of worlds that would eventually become extraordinarily detailed. Springfield and Jerry’s social universe simply needed time to fill with all the strange people who made them memorable.

A great television pilot can tell viewers exactly what a series is going to be.

But sometimes the more interesting journey is watching the people making a show figure that out for themselves.

Looking for more TV history?

• 12 TV Shows That Completely Reinvented Themselves
• 12 TV Shows That Were Saved From Cancellation
• 12 TV Shows That Survived Losing Their Main Character
• 12 TV Characters Who Were Never Supposed to Become So Important

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