DEF REC: BEST FIRST SEASONS
DEF REC: BEST FIRST SEASONS
Deciding the Top TV Debuts
(Originally published on Substack on 5/18/26)
This is Def Rec, a totally unserious blog about entertainment experiences you will definitely recommend. Movie minutia and television tidbits get ranked, rated, reviewed and skewed, and in the end, you’ll know which one to def rec.
I’m Jon McBrine—I’m an authority on entertainment and pop culture because I have access to the Internet.
Sometimes a television series doesn’t stick the landing. There are instances of when a popular TV show drops the ball in its series finale despite the majority of its run crushing in the ratings. There are times when an episodic epic’s final airing is more memorable than the season preceding it. There are endless debates about how Seinfeld, The Sopranos, and even Stranger Things said goodbye - not to mention any “it was all a dream” scenarios from other shows - but what about those series that absolutely nailed their inaugural outings?
For this three-part list, I am examining a terrific trio of televised tales that had superb debut seasons. The remainder of their respective runs, however, don’t necessarily have to match the same opening quality. For example, one could argue that Game of Thrones had a strong start but many fans still feel the chill of how the live action song of ice and fire flamed out. Twin Peaks introduced a mind-bending mystery but after the creepy case was closed, well, you could say the Lynchian drama “peaked” early. A killer kickoff to a series can stand alone as a spectacular and gripping overarching storyline that encapsulates what genuinely amazing TV (or streaming) can be. A fantastic first season reminds us of why we enjoy these serialized adventures and how they keep us coming back every week and/or has us hitting the play next episode button.
Before I get to the main meat of this blog, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the HBO series True Detective. As a one-off season, the intense introductory crime story with backwoods twists and philosophical brain-benders is an all-timer. The only reason this incredible show isn’t on my list is because of my admittedly arbitrary qualifier of no anthologies. This also rules out shows like Fargo. The rationalization behind this is my preference of a show maintaining the majority of its players throughout its existence. Yes, Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) are mentioned at other points in Detective, making it so they coexist in the same universe, but I’m a man of principles. And a man of oddly specific prerequisites.
I’ll break down the top three TV shows with the best first seasons. And then I’ll reveal which is the number one pick I recommend.
If you agree with me or think I’m a psycho, let me know in the comments - or visit jonmcbrine.com to find all the ways to contact me and make some recommendations of your own.
Best First Seasons
The early mid-aughts was a golden time for television, especially for The WB/The CW (and lest we forget UPN). During this era, teen dramas continued their rampaging popularity, building off stellar standouts like Dawson’s Creek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Gilmore Girls, Everwood, 7th Heaven, Roswell, One Tree Hill, The OC, Kyle XY, and Smallville. In 2004, viewers were introduced to Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell), a teenage detective embroiled in classist high school culture clashes in her hometown of Neptune, California. Oh yeah, and her BFF Lilly (Amanda Seyfried) is murdered. Plus, Lilly’s brother, Duncan (Teddy Dunn), was Veronica’s boyfriend. Lilly’s former beau, Logan (Jason Dohring), will eventually develop some backseat-of-the-car-kind of feelings for Veronica. It’s a complex tapestry of hormonal teen antics. Not to worry, though, because Miss Mars is on the case and she got her gumshoe genes from her private eye dad, Keith (Enrico Colantoni), the county’s former sheriff. Assisting Veronica along her journey for justice are her friends - fellow high schooler with hoop dreams Wallace (Percy Daggs III), biker gang bad boy Weevil (Francis Capra), and hacker extraordinaire Mac (Tina Majorino), among others. The colorful contemporary noir vibe contributed to how the show immediately set its unique tone. The episodes were engaging, unraveling the mystery as the whodunit storyline progressed and as the characters’ relationships deepened.
As fun as it was to tag along for all the computer hacking, gym class heroics, and dating dilemmas, the showrunners knew how to get serious. The pilot established that Veronica’s previous year of high school was not a great time. Her bestie, Lilly, was killed and Veronica was assaulted after being drugged at a party. In the face of this trauma, Veronica keeps her snarky demeanor as she further uncovers the secrets of Neptune’s wealthy elite and how enough money can bail anyone out of almost anything.
As a singular season, the sarcastic sleuthing is top-notch. V-Mars isn’t afraid to expose political corruption, teen troubles, and getting right with folks on the wrong side of the tracks. All that and some family drama that really kept in the family. The second season offers more shocking revelations about Veronica’s past, but the first’s finale quite handily solves Lilly’s murder. Additional plotlines were, of course, seeded throughout the freshman season about a sophomore year. This introductory stretch of stories serves as a nostalgic time capsule exemplifying how awesome appointment TV-watching could be. Veronica Mars would go on to air two more regular seasons, a 2014 movie, a 2019 revival season, along with novels and audiobooks that preserved the private eye saga. That initial mystery, though, reigns supreme as one fantastic detective story worth investigating.
Reason to Rec: Even if you’re not nuts about decades-old teen dramas like I am, the 04-05 season of Veronica Mars is a must-watch for mystery buffs. This series proves the first is far from the worst.
2004’s dominance of the small screen rages on with the explosive debut of the reimagining of a classic sci-fi series. Fans were reintroduced to Battlestar Galactica with a TV movie that led to the main series about a desperate space military warring against human-hating cybernetic beings. Gone were the beloved but admittedly cheesy costumes and makeup of the original late-seventies show (and its subsequent specials), and in their place were advanced effects, stellar sets, and a darker edge.
This incarnation of BSG arrived around the same time when sci-fi mainstay Star Trek was exploring not exactly strange new worlds with the prequel series Enterprise. Trek vet Ronald D. Moore worked as one of the main creative forces behind BSG venturing into a bolder direction while the former franchise he was a contributor to, well, stalled. Science fiction in general would endure other complicated offerings the following year after Battlestar’s debut: 2005 saw the source of many nerd arguments, Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, and the final voyage of Enterprise. Blasting off from the black holes left behind from other, more established stargazing franchises, BSG set its course for TV immortality. Fans latched onto the grittier rendition of the Cylon saga, eagerly ready to take sci-fi seriously again.
The galactic reboot nuked any notions of the past by tossing humanity into an AI-powered apocalypse. The surviving humans are loaded into a convoy of whatever spacecraft that weren’t obliterated. Political turmoil, panic-induced disarray, and some good old-fashioned religious visions spark crisis after crisis amongst the haphazard fleet of ships. Commander Adama (Edward James Olmos) has his hands full with leading his makeshift flagship vessel that is a throwback to a time before every cybernetic system was interconnected. The crew of the Galactica hope that their archaic armada’s low(er)-tech designs will shield them from the vengeful Cylon’s advanced Basestar ships.
The evil “Toasters” were still petty about having previously getting owned by their organic creators. Their return to power implemented the Cylon’s next-gen development of spies that were so humanlike that they were nearly undetectable. Even some of the undercover flesh-bags didn’t know that they were indeed incredibly sophisticated pieces of machinery.
Terminally-ill President Roslin (Mary McDonnell) does her darndest to lead the last survivors of mankind while Viper starfighter pilots “Starbuck” (Katee Sackhoff) is determined to break formation by going her own way, and Adama’s remaining son “Apollo” (Jamie Bamber) strives to break free from the shadow of his brother’s untimely demise. With the presidential personnel, fanatical zealots, tough-as-nails servicemen and women, and, of course, the ominous sentient cyber enemies, BSG has a little something for everybody.
The series would go onto spawn a few special presentation movies, and a prequel series Caprica in 2009 that failed to recapture the same interest as its predecessor. All the video games, board games, novelizations, and comic books can be traced back to the ’04 season that set the stage for interplanetary warfare. The show’s entire run was the stuff of televised legends, but it was the initial missions that captivated audiences enough to honor the legacy. BSG set the standard of what mature, hard sci-fi could be and it never relented. It is also a series that keeps its relevancy by making us yet again ponder if creating artificially intelligent beings could lead to our downfall. Nah, we’re probably alright. Right…?
Reason to Rec: Sci-fi fans looking to enlist a slightly more realistic and hard-edged war amongst the stars will move faster than light to watch this show. The biggest reason to check it out is to introduce the word “frak” into your personal lexicon.
2004 is shaping up to be the best year in all of television. The premiere of ABC’s Lost sent viewers spiraling into a mysterious ride where the more things got answered, the more questions arose. Much has been said about the show’s finale, as well as the varying opinions of the quality of the rest of the seasons leading up to it. Over the course of the series about eclectic island castaways, highlights included stories centering around quantum mechanics, theological pondering, as well as exploring reality itself. For a show about plane crash survivors learning how to adapt to life on an unknown island, Lost challenged people’s perception of the world itself.
The first season of Lost is essentially what happens when a group of strangers emerge from a catastrophic disaster and decides that maybe tribalism isn’t so bad. Everyone has an enigmatic backstory, and the island itself has an irritable identity. Being stuck in what largely appears to be a tropical paradise might not come off as too worrisome at first, but pesky things like food, clean water, shelter, communication with the outside world, and squabbles over dominance ensue panic. And this is before we meet the polar bears and black smoke entity.
The inaugural season packed in as many puzzling plots as possible while still finding time to squeeze in love triangles and petty grudges. America was on board for each episode’s cryptic unraveling, and water coolers everywhere were the grounds for many discussions about how fatefully intertwined the characters were. All those spooky elements inhabited the crazy island, as well as a whole darn science team and a French woman who had been in the jungle a little too long.
As if the myriad of maddening mysteries wasn’t enough, the primary focus was on the seemingly innocuous yet still altogether bizarre hatch. All season long, while wading in the weird storytelling waters, fans across the country craved to know just who or what was inside that large steel entrance that was oddly just kind of chilling in the middle of the dirt. Lost proved that a singular season can ensnare the imagination of a nation, leading us all deeper into its immersive world.
Reason to Rec: This is a strange saga you’ll gladly get “lost” in. Fair warning, though, the secrets and reveals can be frustrating. The mysteries do get resolved but for me, not every explanation was satisfying.
Def Rec Podcast coming soon!
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