DthRdrX

Lost season 1 was one of the greatest seasons any show EVER had so it was going to be near impossible to outdo itself. S2 wound up being a waste given what they did with the tail section characters. S3 was too long with too many filler episodes. I hated S4, as it was the first short season and spent too much time on the new characters, many of which sucked. I actually found S5 to be the most fun season after 1. S6 was an embarrassment.

True Detective may very well fit into this thread so enough.

Michael Corvin

Lost seasons 1-4 were great, but anyway you slice it, it had more than one good season even if we all disagree on which of those seasons are.

I'll toss out Orphan Black. Season 1 was riviting, and I've tried to get through season 2 twice and haven't made it all the way through yet.

First thought of Heroes which is obvious, but Human Target has to be my favorite. I joke all the time that it's one of the best one season shows out there.

mrhan

The B&W ep. were better esp. WWW. Conrad was actually doing a lot of martial arts in that first season. I never saw it in it's original run and only through syndication but that first season was really different from the rest of the series.

Fist of Doom

Star Trek: Enterprise

The first two seasons were pretty uneven and overall mediocre. S4 was kind of a mess with flashes of awesomeness (Into a Mirror, Darkly being one of the best Star Trek episodes ever).

Season 3 with the Xindi storyline was great, though.

DWilson

I know I've discussed with friends over the years a number of series that started strong and then got worse when the producers (or the network) started reacting to audience feedback.
For example, I think the first 13 episodes of "Glee" were quite refreshing for the type of show it was.
Another show that comes to mind is "The Drew Carey Show". The first season was a fairly straightforward sitcom and I found the characters likeable and easy to identify with. And then with season two they dropped his love interest and the rest of the characters became more and more cartoonish.

Thrush

They really should have ended S1 with Brody

mcnabb

Superman07

Can't fully agree.
Yes nothing matched season 1, but season 4 certainly brought back a lot of what was good and closed out pretty strong.

redsea

Lost had several good seasons. Homeland recovered in season 4.

The Sorkin show Sports Night had an excellent season 1 and then went downhill in the next season.

Michael Corvin

Blasphemy. Sports Night was great beginning to end. The only reason season 2 suffers is because season 1 was so strong.

PhantomStranger

Heroes - Virtually everyone agrees it became unwatchable after a strong first season.

Orphan Black - This was suggested earlier and I have to agree. Its first season had much tighter plotting before they went down the rabbit hole with clones. It went from compelling sci-fi drama to weird dramedy with an agenda.

Desperate Housewives - What started out as an entertaining show became just another primetime soap after its first season.

Many shows with tightly plotted first seasons fall into this trap. The original premise that drove much of the first season becomes unsustainable, exposing a lack of creativity when the initial formula gets stale. The Blacklist falls under this category.

redsea

Season 2 was worth seeing, but it was a big decline from the first one. I think Sorkin had other priorities.

Luds

That's the first one that came to mind too.
Great first season, mediocre second, garbate third, flushed it.

SmithsGuy

Lost, Orphan Black, Heroes
/agree

creekdipper

I tend to agree about a lot of the 60's shows (Daniel Boone & Mission: Impossible might be added to the b/w > subsequent color seasons list, although more than just the first seasons were good before getting mediocre to horrible). One defense of those shows is the fact that they were often churning out 30-40 shows per year (including a few 90-minute dramas; the wonder is that they were able to maintain high quality even for the first year).

Others with outstanding first seasons followed by rapid decline or descent into mediocrity:

Beverly Hillbillies
Twelve O'Clock High
Twin Peaks (only two seasons but still...)
Big Valley

And Star Trek: Original Series is a close miss:
S. 1 = A+; S. 2 = B; S. 3 =D/F

johnnysd

Id add Flash. Season 1 was great, but Season 2 was super dull and all over the place with sporadic cool things, and the ending of Season 2 was so bad I just bailed.

Arrow Season 1 as well. It became unwatchable really and so over the top melodramatic.

Heroes is the winner though. The first 10 episodes or so was maybe the best super hero TV ever, and then it just became terrible.

PhantomStranger

I think most fans consider Arrow's great second season with Deathstroke and Sara as the aberration. That is still the only season in which the flashbacks worked as well as the current timeline. It's no coincidence that Arrow got worse once those season two writers moved on to writing the Flash.

Michael Corvin

The flashbacks and island shit in season 2 is why I gave up on Arrow 2/3rds of the way through season 2.

Dangfish

It isn't just you. I agree 100%( except for the part about liking the entire series of each). The first seasons of these shows are the only ones that I consider watchable now. You can blame the caped crusader for all these shows being ruined. Due to the overwelming popularity of the 60's Batman series, the networks decided to dumb down all these potentially great shows & turn them into campy crap.
I still try to imagine what a great sci-fi ride Lost in Space could've been if it had kept it's first season roots.

Doc Moonlight

Crossing Jordan

TimeandTide

morriscroy

Sanctuary season 3 had a somewhat tighter plot with the "hollow earth" storyline.

In contrast, seasons 1, 2 and 4 seemed like a bunch of disjointed standalone episodes.

morriscroy

In hindsight, Continuum seem to follow the downhill slide of Heroes or Homeland. Though back in the original first-run of season 1 of Continuum, at the time I thought season 1 was like a bunch of disjointed standalone episodes which were rather mediocre, except for the first and final episodes.

As Continuum progressed through seasons 2, 3 and 4, the show seemed to make less and less sense, in spite of having a tighter plot and was more serialized. When I watch seasons 2 and 3 nowadays in reruns, they're very difficult to watch now. (Season 4 was basically a last-minute extension of season 3).

Fast forward to today, nowadays I find season 1 is the only season which is still watchable for me. (In spite of being mostly standalone type episodes).

morriscroy

One show which I initially found difficult to watch was Helix.

After it went off the air, I watched through the show again. Season 1 was actually quite watchable a second and third time. But season 2 was completely unwatchable.