10 TV Shows Never Better Than Their First Season

It's hard not to be taken in by Scrubs, the medical sitcom that felt as silly and light-hearted as it did real and heartbreaking, but it's also hard to argue that it never reached the high quality of its first season again during its nine-season run.

Taking place in the fictional hospital Sacred Heart, the series follows a group of young, fish-out-of-water interns - including Zach Braff's day-dreaming narrator J.D. - who are forced to adapt to the fast-paced world of modern medicine, whilst juggling their turbulent personal lives.

The way the first season is constructed, allowing J.D. to lay down pearls of wisdom based on his latest troubles, is brilliantly balanced between comedy and drama that the rest of the show just isn't able to match. It's thoughtful, but also uplifting and endearingly weird.

As the series went on, always standing tall as a great sitcom year after year, it lost some of its balance, becoming increasingly silly and surreal in later years. It was never bad, save for the ill-fated ninth season, but it themes, characters, and narration were never better than its first year.