Day 27 - Best Pilot Episode; Day 28 - First TV Show Obsession

I tend to be pretty lenient with pilots; I always remember that they're not just the first episode of a show, they're also a sales pitch to the network. A pilot has to do a lot: introduce the characters, the setting, the tone, the premise, the visual aesthetic; it has to hook viewers; it has to be open enough that there are possibilities for dozens and dozens of episodes to come, but it has to be closed enough that there's some specificity there; it has to ask some questions and allowed them to remain unanswered, so the show has something to continue to explore, but not so many that you don't feel like you're going anywhere.




Most pilots aren't that great, really, or the show they set out to establish isn't the one it ends up becoming. The only pilot I've ever seen that does everything a pilot should do, is totally cohesive with the rest of the series, and hits the ground running is the Arrested Development pilot. I find it even more remarkable how well this pilot does everything it does in only 22 minutes.



I was really into TV shows from pretty much day one. I rarely watched shows casually as a kid; either I made sure I watched every single episode or I didn't bother. But, as you might have guessed, it wasn't until The X-Files that I went crazy over a show. I imagine part of it was being at the right age, but it was also the first legitimately good show I watched as it was airing for the first time, and that was a big deal, too. And, of course, the shipping (from the show that brought us the term itself!). It's kind of hard to discuss obsessing over XF as a kid without mentioning that.