10 TV Shows That Pissed You Off Straight Away
8. It Felt Like A Pale Imitation Of The Office - Parks & Recreation
Considering how wildly beloved Parks and Recreation is today, you'd never guess that its first season was largely met with indifference from critics and audiences alike.
To many, the sticking point seemed to be that Parks and Rec was a low-effort carbon copy of The Office, and more to the point it wasn't a particularly funny or interesting one.
Beyond the stale, lazy humour, perhaps the biggest problem was that Amy Poehler's protagonist Leslie Knope just wasn't particularly likeable - she felt like a lesser, ersatz Michael Scott, and not someone audiences could invest in for multiple seasons.
But Parks and Rec enjoyed a sharp uptick near the end of its first season, as Leslie and the wider ensemble had their more appealing character traits dialled in, and the humour took on a more distinct, earnest tone.
It also didn't hurt when the show's most-loathed character, Mark Brendanawicz (Paul Schneider), was ditched at the end of season two, allowing the ensemble to crystalise around breakout characters such as Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt) and Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman).
By the time its seventh and final season aired in 2015, those vitriol-filled memories of season one - especially that awkward, clunky pilot episode - were so incredibly distant.