8 Great TV Shows With Awful First Seasons

Star Trek shows almost always never start off on the best foot. The best case scenario for this is Deep Space Nine, and even that was mostly just okay.

And then you have the infamous first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which just fundamentally does not work.

The reasons for this vary even more wildly than Parks and Rec, with there not being a singular reason why TNG's first season sucked. The stories weren't well written, the characters were clumsily written at the best of times, the sanctimonious tone that has always been the albatross around this franchise's neck was on full display, and perhaps most egregious of all, it featured a Riker WITHOUT A BEARD! And that's just wrong, man.

Fortunately, this show would get itself on track in its third season, turning itself into the groundbreaking TV series we all know it as today, but for those first two seasons, it was anyone's guess as to how long this reboot was going to last, or whether it deserved to last in the first place.