8 Great TV Shows With Awful First Seasons

The first season of Parks and Rec just flat out doesn't work. At all. there are some good episodes and funny moments, but nowhere near the amount that would come later.

There are a multitude of reasons for this, from not having the expansive supporting cast that would come in later seasons that made the cast gel better like Ben, Chris, and the Tammies, to the comedy just being too slow and trying too hard to be The Office instead of its own thing, but the biggest knock against the first season was how it wrote Leslie Knope.

The writers had always intended for Leslie to be a role model, a good, honest woman in politics who always tries to see the best in people. But that is NOT how people saw her in season 1, because that isn't how the other characters saw her.

In season 1, there was just this contempt for Leslie among the other characters that made the audience see her as this annoyingly naive fool instead of the inspiration she would later become. By changing that small detail, Parks and Recreation saved itself from obscurity.