I do ask this from time to time, I just wanna see if it's worth my time continuing. For example, I watched the first 6 episodes of Mad Men. They weren't bad, but I asked someone when does it pick up? He said, "you've watched 6 episodes, it's already there, if you're not into it, then it's not for you."

I appreciated his response and didn't continue. Some things just don't hook you right away, it's nice to know from viewers if things do pick up at a certain point or even if you get to episode X and you still aren't invested quit. It's all about not wasting my time so I can move on to a show that will hook me.

A lot of people have very little free time to really "discover" tv, and some shows are pretty apparent from what they'll be from the get-go, whereas others need a few episodes to really get going. Particularly, the first season of Bojack got fairly weak reviews because only the first few episodes, where it was mostly animal puns and traditional sitcom tropes, before it showed what it was actually about.

However, not every show does that; a lot of shows early episodes are pretty indicative of what you're given for the rest. So it's pretty reasonable to ask, if you're someone with not a lot of time to spare, if a show you might be interested but aren't feeling quite yet does a Bojack and "finds its legs", or if you what see early on is exactly what you'll get for the run of the show.

Social media is melting people's brains. There was a post the other day of someone saying they loved the pilot of a show and if they should keep watching.

People are bored, lonely and insecure, so they look for validation on the internet.

Breaking Bad wasn't slow for me. The premise was interesting enough to keep me watching.

I hate slow paced shows. Reality is I've already watched too many movies and TV series in my life, a show murking around and being dull is annoying/ It's often not unique or ambitious enough to warrant the slow start. I've wasted a lot of time on shows that didn't get any more interesting after the 3rd episode.

A show being easy to watch or fast pace and interesting from the get go is a valuable quality in itself.

There are also shows where the show genuinely get significantly better after x amount of episodes.

I bet I can name more shows that had bad/slow starts that NEVER got better than you can that did.

That's probably why.

Name 20.

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> The Leftovers is just so fucking boring.

Did you even watch it.

https://www.tvguide.com/galleries/51-worst-tv-shows-of-the-century-ranked/

Instant gratification, social media (tiktok, snapchat, Youtube shorts, FB stories) making people only want to consume 30 seconds of entertainment before moving on to the next funny video or whatever. Not to sound like a grumpy old man, but I feel like a lot of people who ask this question are younger and need to be entertained NOW. But I also understand that some middle aged people might ask this too because they don't have much free time and need to be more selective in what they watch in their spare time.

Some people dont have that much time to waste

Because free time is valuable and people don't want to waste it watching crap.

Remember it used to be if ratings fell hard enough on network shows they would be pulled from the schedule within 6 episodes or less never to be seen again.

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I liked Breaking Bad's first season. Couldn't get into the Leftovers but I assume other people liked the quiet gloominess of the opening episodes.

Seems to me that you're just a pretentious douche that didn't really appreciate either shows openings but instead see sticking through them as some sort of admirable feat of endurance. Like a twelve year old bragging about eating a spicy pepper.

If you don't like the first few episodes of NCIS, you won't like NCIS.

If you don't like the first few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you still might like Buffy because it doesn't really find it's voice until the last episode of season 1 (my opinion) or even up to the middle of season 2 (a fairly common opinion).

Some shows are all they are from the get go, others take time to evolve into what they wind up being, in which case you might like later episodes when you didn't care for earlier, or even vice versa sometimes.

And not all shows get "better". I thought the first season of the (original) L Word was a really good character driven drama. In season two it switched to a plot driven soap, and I grew increasingly frustrated with it until I quit watching it sometime later after a couple seasons of hoping it would go back to what it was the first season.

>Literally one of the greatest shows of all time according to critics and viewers alike. But the first season was really "slow" and "boring."

Rewatch the first episode, and to an extent, the first season, and revisit this statement. Breaking Bad was screaming out of the gate.

There's a huge difference between something that starts slow and something that needs to "get better". Slow is fine if it's interesting. But if the show isn't good for a few episodes, regardless of pacing, I'm not going to waste the limited number of hours I have on this planet watching trash I dislike in the hopes that it will improve.

This 100%.

I only have a certain amount of time most nights to watch TV, maybe an hour or two before bed. Unless a pilot is complete trash I'll at least give a show a few episodes before checking out. I'm not going to waste 7 or 8 hours for a show to "start getting good".

I think also streaming services opened the door to a million more options of shows to watch as opposed to 15-20 years ago when it was your standard cable networks and premium channels. So a lot of people's attention spans with "slow burn" shows isn't what it used to be as a result.

> Rewatch the first episode, and to an extent, the first season, and revisit this statement. Breaking Bad was screaming out of the gate.

I agree. If you notice I put slow and boring in quotes to reflect what others have said. Not me.

nothing wrong with that question, honestly. People wanna know if it's worth the time investment

breaking bad season 1 wasn't slow or boring, and big action or conflict aren't necessarily interesting

people ask because they don't want to gamble their time on whether a show will improve or not. A lot of the time the first episode of a show will serve as a synecdoche for the whole thing, so if it's bad or mediocre it makes me assume that the whole thing is bad or mediocre in a similar manner. Episodic media should still be good on an episode to episode basis.

Good/bad will mean different things to different people, but what they experience is what they will use to make a decision, if theyre asking others then theyre just trying to make a more informed decision influenced by people who have already invested time into a show.

Lately I've felt like mediocre shows are putting the meat of their stories into the beginning and end of seasons, with middle episodes serving as just meandering diversions that don't really serve to forward any thesis/concepts. I would like to avoid these shows in the future so I'll look to reviews I trust

All the “free time is valuable “ make me lol. I’d hate for it to interrupt your 23 hours scrolling Reddit.

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The shows that I absolutely enjoy are the ones that had me from the start. I am slow to start and I always miss the trends, so after years of dismissing Naruto as "kid stuff," I tried it out a few weeks ago and have already gone through 100+ episodes.

I know what I like better than anyone. People recommend these newer shows to me all the time, but they never bother to understand what I like as an individual. So, I will watch a few minutes, or one episode, but my joys in life are so specific to me that it doesn't take hours for me to know if I am enjoying myself.

I am the same with video games.

A lot of the time, it feels like they don't actually want their question answered. They just want to let people know, that they don't like the show.

Low mentality / short attention span and RAMPANT ADHD spectrum type shit because are food stream and plastics are contaminated with hormones, PCBs, DDTs and by products of pharmacy that noone pays any attention to, and has been for multiple generations now. We are an evolution of mental deformity that wont change until people start believing it. But hey, I'm no Chicken Little. I wont say "the sky is falling" or "there is no hope" because I happen to know that the evolutionary path we are on now is wholly reversible. If it weren't we would all already be dead.