I couldn’t get past the second episode on this. I should try it again.
I have noticed that this has become much more common lately in television. Where shows are slow to start and get into and you have to “make it past the few first episodes” before getting into it, why is that? Is this a newish trend or has it always been this way? I don’t remember having that issue a decade or more ago. Most recently I tried Schitt’s Creek. I couldn’t stand the first three episodes but I forced myself to get through them since the reviews where so good, and the show got so much better after.
Honestly I think it's bad showrunning.
Too many showrunners (and directors) do not understand that they are competing against a million similar movies and TV shows -- it is their responsibility to show us, in the first episode (and the first 10 minutes of a movie) why their product is special.
If they choose to use that all-important first-impression time to go through banal crap we have all seen before "oh, he lives in a house, he wakes up in the morning, he has a family he loves, he engages in small-talk" or "oh, we have a workplace ensemble, let's play 'which character matches which WKRP character?'" then they shouldn't be surprised when viewers stop watching because, honestly, who wants to see what you've already seen 10,000 times?
Showrunners, the first episode is NOT about introducing all your characters and their complicated lives!!! Assume that your viewers have watched TV and know how this works!!! Episode 1 is about IMMEDIATELY creating a situation so funny, or outrageous, or exciting, that we want to keep watching. We can put together who's who as we watch.
Put the backstory, the introductions, into episode 3.
Look at say, Game of Thrones Episode 1 for how it's done. No assuming the audience need to be spoon fed, no explanations about who is who and what they are doing; just throw you in the deep end, immediately start talking politics and intrigue, and every viewer was hooked.
Amazingly another series I've seen that did this well was Lego City Adventures. Same thing; first episode starts with action, characters start doing things, we learn their personalities and roles over time.
If your TV show treats its viewers as stupider, less capable of picking up the story on the fly than a TV show aimed at 8 year olds, then you really can't be surprised when they aren't interested in watching it...
Oh, as for more common? I don't think it's more common now. Compared to when? I mean god 60s through 80s TV is just almighty bad, and even starting in the 90s the good stuff is rare. I think the main factors are
- as you get older you know the patterns more. You might have been willing to tolerate this the first few times you saw it, but the fiftieth time you see a procedural, setting itself up the way procedurals do, you yawn and say "next".
- related to that, you've had vastly more opportunity in the recent past to see snapshots of lots of TV. Hell, in one day I could go to Netflix and scan through the first episodes of 50 procedurals, something that in the 90s might have taken me dedicated planning and a few years recording episodes from different network shows. Which means you are VASTLY more sensitive today than you were even ten years ago, to what's filler, repetition, cliche, lazy story telling, and so on.
