The Magic of Season Ones

Something I have noticed lately across my favourite TV shows is that, for almost every single one of them, my favourite season is the first. I'd like to explore that a bit in this piece, and try to work out what it is about these series' debuts that make them so compelling, what challenges shows face as they enter into later seasons of production, and why I think first seasons are often able to still come out on top.

Twin Peaks. Stranger Things. Westworld. Severance. Game of Thrones. Fargo. The Mandalorian. These are shows spanning different genres, decades and themes, but they're united by the fact that they are amongst my favourite TV shows, and united further still by the fact that their debut season remains my favourite season of each respective show. I'd like to explore a few of these shows, and break down some of the issues I have that arise when shows run for multiple seasons.

Spoilers ahead for Stranger Things, Game of Thrones, Westworld and The Mandalorian.

"Bigger and Better"

As new seasons of shows are greenlit, it is typical for budgets to increase. Studios are no longer gambling with an unknown quantity when they are saying yes to a season two, or three (and so on.), so a second or a third season of a show is more likely to land with an audience because there is already an existing fanbase. With bigger budgets and the pressure of wanting to somehow outperform the debut season, there is often the desire to quite literally "go bigger" with the storylines and casts. More complex plotlines, more characters, more action and more often than not, more CGI. With the worldbuilding and characters of earlier seasons already laid out as a foundation, shows get to flex their muscles in later seasons with flashy set pieces, new locations and characters and a constant raising of stakes. This makes sense narratively, as you tend to want the big, exciting climactic resolutions to your story to come in the latter half of your overall runtime.

It's a double-edged sword though, because I think that too many shows become, unfortunately, too wrapped up in this desire to constantly become "bigger" with each new season, gradually escalating to the point where the parameters - the boundaries set by the show and the world that it takes place in - begin to crack under the weight. It becomes too difficult to care about the characters or the stakes when there is an endless escalation of threats which are forced to become more world-shattering and less believable. And sure, in the case of aforementioned shows like Twin Peaks, Game of Thrones or Stranger Things, viewers aren't exactly looking for realism, but they are looking for a world which has established rules, logic and parameters upon which their stories unfold in. When shows feels the need to go bigger with each season, that ends up making last season's big climax the new high score to try and beat, regardless of whether that "new high" was alluded to, or how much sense it makes in the context of the wider story as it was initially established.

The biggest culprit that I can think of for what I am describing is Netflix's Stranger Things. Before I continue I will caveat this by stating that I adore show in its entirety and I am eagerly awaiting the final season, but for me there has been nothing quite like that first season. Early Stranger Things feels like a small scale mystery show, clearly blending influences like Stephen King, Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter in with pop culture references to the 80s. There's spooky goings on in a small town where we are told nothing ever happens. Police Chief Jim Hopper remarks in episode three that he feels "cursed", because a child has gone missing and there has been a murder under his watch. It is stated that Hawkins is a town where nothing ever happens, and this matters because it helps to frame the scale, and the scope, of the action.

This isn't a world-ending catastrophe we're dealing with - it's a small story about a community affected by the dark goings on at Hawkins Lab and the fallout from opening gates to the upside-down. A single creature has escaped and has been abducting children and animals, and there is a conspiracy involving a young girl with telepathy. The story takes place primarily from the perspective of the kids, as well as Jim and Joyce. Half the town believes that Joyce is crazy, and Jim seems to keep his cards pretty close to his chest, so this allows for some crazy and supernatural things to happen without the wider world, or even much of Hawkins, paying much attention. Contrast this with season four, where you have Murray and Joyce traveling to Russia to break Hopper out of a prison, culminating in a pack of demigorgon creatures storming the prison, and Hopper facing down the last one in the courtyard, framed like a gladiator arena, armed with a sword. The town of Hawkins, meanwhile, is subject to major destruction as we watch four enormous chasms open up, ripping trees, roads and houses apart. Countless people are killed and it's by far the singular most catastrophic event we have seen happen in the show. Now, I expect that season five will give us some reason as to why people have come to believe that this was a natural disaster and wasn't an event caused by Vecna and the supernatural upside-down goings on of the series, but either way it is no longer something that the people of Hawkins can ignore. In the space of four seasons we have gone from a town where nothing happens, with a missing kid and a murder seen as earth-shattering, to a death toll of around 400. We find out that there was a secret Russian facility underneath a shopping mall. Dozens of people and animals are being turned into organic paste to fuel the physical form of the Mind Flayer creature, and again, by the end of season four, a major earthquake-like event has physically destroyed large areas of the town.

Season five will inevitably now have to try and one-up this enormous scale and magnitude to ensure that it is the biggest and most bombastic season yet. I'll likely enjoy it, but the reason I enjoy the show Stranger Things is because of its characters. I am perfectly happy with the scale of the mystery and the action as it stands in seasons one and two. Small in scale, going beyond the realms of possibility, but remaining contained and conceivable within the confines of what we understand the world of Stranger Things to be - a slightly heightened version of our world. By the finale of season four, I no longer feel like I am in the same place that we were in at the beginning of episode one of season one. I like the bulk of the mysterious goings on to be happening outside of the public's awareness, and I struggle to empathise when I see an earthquake destroying entire neighbourhoods of unseen, unnamed characters. I get that it's bad, and it's evil and destructive, but I would much rather the show remained focused, zoomed in on the small cast of characters that we have grown to know and love.

Underwhelming Reveals, Mysteries and Endings

Many shows plant seeds - dropping hints and breadcrumb trails in their early seasons about big reveals that will come to germinate later on. This can make rewatching the show interesting, because there will likely be elements of foreshadowing, or hints alluding to future events, that you didn't pick up on the first time around. However, this is all reliant on these big reveals actually landing with the audience and carrying weight. Sadly, Game of Thrones is one such show where many of its breadcrumb trails which started in its early seasons simply don't pay off. The major reveal that Jon Snow is in fact, not a bastard, but a trueborn Targaryen and heir to the Iron Throne, is teased as early as season one. The last time that Jon and Ned Stark speak, he tells Jon that the next time they meet, they will talk about his mother. Of course, they never meet again, but we as the audience remember this, and it becomes a mystery that we are invested in finding out about. Later on in the show, Bran is able to see that Jon was born of Lyanna Stark, and he also sees that Lyanna and Rhaegar secretly married. This information is then passed onto Jon, but it doesn't really serve any purpose to the show outside of manufacturing tension between him and Daenerys. We are led to believe, too, that he is "The Prince Who Was Promised", and that he would bring an end to the White Walkers and The Night King. Jon's involvement is definitely important in winning the war, but for the final couple of seasons of the show he really doesn't do much of note. He isn't the one to face and kill the Night King, and he doesn't even end up as King on the Iron Throne, despite all of the major players knowing his true parentage. I know that I am not alone in being bitterly disappointed with how Game of Thrones concluded.

When I return to early seasons of Game of Thrones, I often end up finding myself yearning for the mystery of these breadcrumb trails once more. When a big reveal doesn't land right, it can feel like your time was wasted; your emotional investment didn't pay off. While the reveal of the mystery can't be undone, feelings evoked by that initial intrigue of the first season can be compartmentalised and separated from the rest. I have mentally separated seasons one-four of Game of Thrones from five-eight, because that latter half is where I started to get disappointed. I have revisited earlier episodes, but I have not dared step again past season four. Too much of what was promised let me down, and I've had to quarantine large elements of the show in my mind to continue to be able to enjoy what we got early on in the show. I can just watch the earlier episodes and pretend that it got cancelled halfway through. Damn, I guess we'll never find out how it ends...because a lack of an ending is often better than a bad ending.

Losing Focus

Some shows, as well as becoming bigger budget productions, continue to expand their scope so extensively that they begin to lose what made them appealing in the first place. Westworld is one such example of this - its first two seasons are set almost entirely within the confines of the titular Westworld establishment. We are promised a show themed around a futuristic theme park-like attraction drenched in Wild West flavour, whilst acknowledging that this is all a facade. We wonder what the world outside the park must be like, and we get to see tiny glimpses of it through some of the human guests who visit Westworld. The true story taking place here though is the emergence of true synthetic intelligence, and I suppose it was inevitable that these free-willed hosts would want to leave the confines of the park and enter the wider world.

However, the more that we see of the real world in seasons three and four, the more I longed to be back in the confines of Westworld. The show did such a stellar job of worldbuilding early on, particularly in the first season, that it ended up feeling like an entirely different show later on, because of how much of its core identity seemed to be absent. As Westworld's scope expanded, it lost much of what its audience had grown to love. Or rather, what its audience had grown to love had become a far smaller part of the bigger picture. I wish that I liked seasons three and four of Westworld more, but they stray too far from the initial premise for me, and don't take enough time or effort to make the audience care about the world or the characters in the same way as the earlier episodes. Another big loss for me was the absence of Ford, played by Anthony Hopkins, in later series. It makes sense - his character is dead, and aside from a couple of guest scenes here and there, Hopkins had left the show. Ford's absence, though, coupled with the drastic change in setting and dramatic increase in scope end up leaving a vast hole in the show that even new faces like Aaron Paul and Vincent Cassel unfortunately just can't quite manage to fill.

Self-Indulgence & Fan Service

In a way, subsequent seasons of a television series are akin to being given the green light for a sequel. Shows are episodic in nature, but they are written and filmed in batches. I often find that, as shows go on, the teams behind them and the studios funding them become more and more aware of the show's presence and reception in the real world, and this can end up adversely affecting decisions made in later seasons.

It can sometimes feel like incidental moments, scenes or lines that became iconic or viral from a series can end up snowballing into a device that the writers lean on as a crutch. A great example is Grogu - "Baby Yoda" from The Mandalorian. I can't prove it, but I am certain that the writers decided to completely U-turn on their plans for him after the character's insane popularity far outshone even the titular Mandalorian himself. The entire storyline of the second season of the show was to return Grogu to his people - the Jedi - and this major emotional moment was entirely reversed, simply so that he could be present for the next set of adventures with the third season. Grogu wasn't even necessary to much of the plot of the third season, and although I enjoy him as a character, I would have preferred a heavier focus on the Mandalore plotline and Bo-Katan and have Grogu off training with Luke as an entirely separate story. But, the decision that the show ends up taking sabotages itself due to its own self-indulgence and wanting to continue the dynamic set, rather than allowing it to naturally follow a new path. It's ironic that a show which initially seemed to be so deliberate in its desire to stand alone from the bulk of Star Wars content seems now to be confined to its own dynamic and unable to stray from it.

In Summary

Debut seasons of shows are immune to all of these aforementioned problems, because the writers have no concept of how their work will be received. They can't lean on fan-favourite characters, moments or quotes, because there is no precedent set. There's no bar to beat. No mystery or reveal that has been set up. It's all new, and it's all raw and undigested by audiences. I think, ultimately, this is what I love so much about first seasons. And this may just be personal preference, but I tend to enjoy the lower stakes and cosiness that tends to be more often associated with shows in their earlier stages - the slow-burn worldbuilding and slice of life elements of shows in which we get to see the cast simply living out their lives before inevitable catastrophe upends their lives and kicks the plot off good and proper. It helps us to understand the world our story takes place in, and what our cast may be fighting for. In fact, there is a lot of heavy lifting needed in first seasons when it comes to worldbuilding and characters; every scene needs to be informing the viewer of something, somehow contributing to crafting the world and the story. "Season Ones" almost always have the lowest budgets across their shows, with smaller sets, less CGI and no existing fanbase to root for the show or to help spread awareness. Everything is taken at face value, and I think it is this need to be efficient in order to win this uphill battle that forces these seasons to be the best that they can possibly be. These are our first impressions with these stories and these worlds, and the actors, writers, directors, editors and producers all do their damnedest to get the show across the line and out into the world.