As anyone who has followed this blog might ascertain, I have spent a great deal of time looking at season one episodes of a number of series. The reason for this is pretty mundane: DVDs are released in the chronological order and because of this I check out season on first. Yesterday, I was watching the first season of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES on TV Land and noticed that there was little difference between the first season and subsequent seasons other than the fact that it was in black and white. (The comedy was BRILLIANT beyond belief and such a reprieve from the tired one liners that are common on TV today….or, more accurately, have been common on TV since 1983) Other television programs are noticeably different. HAPPY DAYS, for example, developed into a RADICALLY different program by the second season. Ditto VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. LOST IN SPACE'S first 6 episodes were of a completely different style and tone of what would come later in season one. GILLIGAN'S ISLAND first black and white season (which was never syndicated to the degree the color episodes were) was significantly different in tone and decidedly less silly drew more of its humor from topical pop culture. BATMAN saw its subsequent seasons add camp for camp sake while forgoing the biting satire the first season embodied. THE FACTS OF LIFE became a completely new program in Season Two. So, I am going to make Looking at First Seasons a regular feature of this blog and it will become part of a trilogy of sorts. Looking at First Seasons will be followed by Hitting the Stride which will cover the points of a series that made the series famous and best known. The third part will be The Decline and Fall which will cover those programs that trudged into oblivion in a slow and painful way. (This is commonly referred to as jumping the shark, but shark jumping usually occurs during the period when a show hits its stride. The effects of shark jumping hit much later) A common example of this would be LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY'S final season which moved the program to California and had no Shirley. Oh, and who could forget the slow and agonizing death of ALL IN THE FAMILY when Gloria and Mike departed?

So, look for those features coming soon.