10 Awful TV Shows With Incredible First Episodes
From Supernatural to The Walking Dead, these shows should have quit while they were ahead.
If you want to build a loyal audience for your TV show and get the critics on your side early, then the most important thing is nailing your first episode. As long that first instalment is something spectacular, you'll earn a fanbase that will stick around during good times and bad just to see if you can reach those epic heights again.
Sadly, some shows never manage to do that. For every show that hits the ground running and doesn't stop until they're drowning in Emmys, there are shows that also hit the ground running... and then just kind of stop. These are the most painful shows to be a fan of because you know how amazing they can be.
Maybe you keep watching for the premise or because this season's new arc might finally go somewhere. But you know deep down that it will never be the same again.
Let's take a look at some of the worst offenders, the shows that had the potential to be the greatest of all time but now are firmly confined to the dustbin of television history.
10. Riverdale
This idea had the potential to be so much more than your run-of-the-mill teen drama. A dark reboot of Archie Comics, peeling back the saccharine layers of the small-town '50s America aesthetic to reveal a dark underbelly? All inspired by shows like Twin Peaks and with a twisted murder mystery to solve? No wonder this was greenlit.
And the pilot episode of Riverdale pretty much delivers on the promise of its premise. The son of the wealthiest family in town, Jason Blossom, washes up dead in the nearby river and nobody knows who did it. What follows in the show’s first hour is a perfect blend of high-school drama and gritty crime thrills, as long as you forget the odd subplot about Archie Andrews hooking up with his teacher.
But the next few episodes quickly signal a devolution into everything that the show is loathed for now. Illogical character decisions, horror elements thrown in seemingly at random and the high school age characters patently refusing to act like high schoolers. Once again taking inspiration from Twin Peaks, Riverdale could never quite recapture what made the pilot so special and, by most accounts, continues its steady decline downwards to this day.