It is a very rare thing, indeed, when I pick the first season of any television show as my favorite. With
Buffy, it was Season Three; with
Battlestar Galactica, it was Season Two.
Arrested Development really began impressing me during Season Two, and
Xena (my next challenge!) definitely was incredibly rough during the first season (like I am going to give that away before I even begin my challenge). Usually, growing pains plague the first set of episodes, where the writers are working out the kinks of character development, plot points, etc., and while the second season was probably the best season of the bunch, I find myself going back to rewatch the first.
It's not without its issues, of course. A lot of the acting is over-the-top (a constant of the series, if I'm being completely honest), and the dialogue has not aged well, such as any time Lt. Rodriguez (replaced by Olmos' Castillo) substitutes a less harsh equivalent of whatever swear word wasn't allowed to air on NBC. It can also be a tad bit preachy, which I think was also another issue of being a prime time television show in the 1980s which dealt directly with the darker side of humanity. Other than those things, Season One is a pretty solid one, with some excellent episodes, like "Evan" and "Milk Run."
Both the first and second seasons are also what most people think of when they start talking about
Miami Vice (if that's a thing that happens?). It doesn't have the darker tones of the latter seasons but does manage to have a bit of grit, even if it was neutered by censors.
That does get me wondering about how the show might have been different had it aired on a cable network instead of NBC. Would it have been more like
The Wire or
The Shield? Who knows? It might not have turned out to be the cultural phenomenon that it ended up being, but a girl can dream.
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