I liked ENT S3 more than S1-2. I gave them bonus points for effort. They dropped the warmed-over VOY scripts and started trying to do a serialized show. They were no good at it, but I'll give them partial "noble failure" credit.
Worst Season Ever?
- Thread starter DeepSpaceWine
- Start date
Hear, hear.
Well enlighten me on which of those I mentioned were better because I've rewatched the Xindi arc skipping the filler episodes numerous times and couldn't even get through an entire season of shows like The Event, V, Flas Forward, Eureka.
I thought it was fairly epic--a conflict spanning centuries with visits to the founding of the federation and the 26th century to 2004 Detroit to an alternate 20th century, numerous sets including various ships, the story took us from the depths of an underwater world to an Avian stronghold to a transdimensional realm. We had numerous players involved with competing agendas--Archer/ENT crew, the Xindi and within the Xindi you had groups vying, Sphere Builders, Daniels, Shran. T'Pol became addicted to trellium marking a dark turn for her character. Trip was trying to forgot about his loss. Archer had to make some pretty brutal decisions. The battles were high stakes going from one struggle to the next and were magnificently executed from a visual perspective. And you couldn't get much more epic than Earth being destroyed in one timeline and in another in danger of being destroyed with a looming ticking clock.
We really must have different tastes because it was none of those things. The stretch from Azati Prime to Zero Hour was the most exciting series of episodes since DS9's Final Chapter and only BSG and Lost has approached that kind of storytelling, narrative urgency or excitement since.
I didn't put ENT over LOST when comparing the entire series. I put ENT-S3 over LOST S2 and S6. At least ENT answered all the Xindi questions and didn't hope we'd forget them. And those 2 Lost seasons just dragged on. Looking back S2 was just a bunch of go nowhere plot threads with some of the weakest episodes of the series. Not to mention the tailies were introduced and were bland. And you want an anti-climatic watch Lost's "The End".
There were definitely big problems in the direction the show took in S3, but despite that there were several episodes which made it worthwhile. In particular the awesome "Borrowed Time" and "Saturn Dreaming of Mercury".
Ah, yea, easy to do with SyFy shows and their mid season breaks.
I loved Space: Above and Beyond, too.
But season 6 of Buffy is its best season.
Braver, edgier, more complex, morally ambiguous and thought-provoking than any other season, and as emotionally compelling as season 2 and season 5. Season 7 wasn't one of the better seasons because it had a weak main arc (the weakest aside from season 4), some things were rushed, the First's plan didn't make sense, some opportunities were missed, but it was still far from being a bad season, it had some great character moments and great episodes like Conversations with Dead People or Selfless. I would put it on par with season 4 and a little above season 1, but all seasons of Buffy were good IMO.
And yeah, if you're going to start down that road, let's have it out
Buffy/Spike is one of the show's best storylines and definitely the most interesting and well developed out of Buffy's romantic relationships. Sure, Buffy/Angel was a great story in the early seasons, and I know you like to see it as some sort of perfect love, but now when I look back, I see B/A in a different light, and I don't like the 'romantic' sugarcoating and sweeping under the carpet of all the destructive and disturbing aspects of their relationship, not to mention the subsequent idealization of it. (Until season 8, which deconstructed it and brought all those ugly aspects to light - maybe in a bit too extreme way for many people's tastes. Season 8 Bangel makes season 6 Spuffy look healthy by comparison.) At least the show was always honest about the bad and abusive aspects of B/S, which allowed it to end up in a much better place - which can't be said for B/A now.
And let me just say that I find it funny when people complain about seeing an attempted rape - by a character who was a rapist and a mass murderer long before, and that didn't stop anyone from thinking that he was so cool. Spike and Angel were both rapists and mass murderers when they were soulless and when Spike didn't have a chip to stop him, that's been canonically confirmed. But that was never a problem until you actually got to see it on screen?
I thought ENT season 3 was great and one of the best seasons of Trek. What a change after the weak first two seasons of ENT.
I thought they were lame and not nearly as funny as they were meant to be. The series did much better comedy episodes before (Humbug, Jose Chung's From Outer Space, Small Potatoes...).
And it's not. It's season 1. Season 2 is a big improvement and has one of the show's greatest episodes (The Measure of a Man) as well as a few other good episodes (Q Who, The Emissary) but it also had a lot of terrible episodes that weren't any better than the worst of S1 (Up the Long Ladder, The Outrageous Okona...).
Actually I really hate Angel season 4. I wouldn't say it was objectively bad (as in, TNG season 1 bad), but it bugged me in so many ways and made me dislike the show. I liked season 5 only because it was a refreshing change after season 4, but season 5 also had a bunch of its own problems and things that really annoyed me.And DevilEyes, I know you'll love my picks just as much as I loved yours
The Xander and Anya break-up, the attempted rape, The First, the lameass 'potential' slayers, Buffy working for a fast food joint, the pointless and overrated musical episode, and the limp, unconvincing Kennedy relationship were just some of the atrocities committed against this series in those seasons. I'd already lost interest in the series earlier with the Glory nonsense in season 5, but these seasons made me regret ever watching it in the first place. There were a few bright spots like the Trio, but it was mostly just a completely infuriating waste of time.
As for season 4 of "Angel", I didn't watch the series until last year, but if I had been watching it when it was first broadcast, I'm sure I would have quit the show in the middle of this season. Its consistent awfulness just exhausted me. The Connor-Jasmine arc is one of the worst, most disgusting story lines I have ever seen in any medium and every minute of it made me cringe.
It would have been a shame if I'd quit because of that season, since season 5 rebounded from 4's lows quite nicely. Seasons 6 and 7 of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and season 4 of "Angel" should be in an official dictionary or encyclopedia somewhere as definitions of "jumping the shark", right under the original "Happy Days" episode.
But season 6 of Buffy is its best season.
Braver, edgier, more complex, morally ambiguous and thought-provoking than any other season, and as emotionally compelling as season 2 and season 5. Season 7 wasn't one of the better seasons because it had a weak main arc (the weakest aside from season 4), some things were rushed, the First's plan didn't make sense, some opportunities were missed, but it was still far from being a bad season, it had some great character moments and great episodes like Conversations with Dead People or Selfless. I would put it on par with season 4 and a little above season 1, but all seasons of Buffy were good IMO.And yeah, if you're going to start down that road, let's have it out
Buffy/Spike is one of the show's best storylines and definitely the most interesting and well developed out of Buffy's romantic relationships. Sure, Buffy/Angel was a great story in the early seasons, and I know you like to see it as some sort of perfect love, but now when I look back, I see B/A in a different light, and I don't like the 'romantic' sugarcoating and sweeping under the carpet of all the destructive and disturbing aspects of their relationship, not to mention the subsequent idealization of it. (Until season 8, which deconstructed it and brought all those ugly aspects to light - maybe in a bit too extreme way for many people's tastes. Season 8 Bangel makes season 6 Spuffy look healthy by comparison.) At least the show was always honest about the bad and abusive aspects of B/S, which allowed it to end up in a much better place - which can't be said for B/A now.And let me just say that I find it funny when people complain about seeing an attempted rape - by a character who was a rapist and a mass murderer long before, and that didn't stop anyone from thinking that he was so cool. Spike and Angel were both rapists and mass murderers when they were soulless and when Spike didn't have a chip to stop him, that's been canonically confirmed. But that was never a problem until you actually got to see it on screen?
Gotta disagree about the Tailies. Eko was one of my favorite characters, and I liked Ana Lucia as well. "The 48 Days" was one of my favorite episodes.
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To quote Garak, "There may be hope for you yet!".
But season 6 of Buffy is its best season.
Here we go again!
I guess I can see why you or others might see it that way, but I just did not care for it at all. It seems like most generations of TV watchers have one show that they relate to deeply as a reflection of their growing pains going through school. For some, it's "Beverly Hills 90210" and for others, it's "Dawson's Creek". I'm sure there are many other examples prior to the '90s as well. I always tell people my most beloved adolescent growing pains/school drama was "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", so beyond the individual story lines I've mentioned, my big picture problem was that I didn't like the show taking the characters out of school. I'm not saying I don't think it could have remained a good and interesting show under any circumstances once the characters were taken out of school, I just didn't like the way the show went after taking them out of school. It went to places I'd rather it didn't go. I really didn't find Buffy's dilemmas in season 5, 6, 7 nearly as emotionally stimulating or smartly written as those in the high school and college seasons 2 to 4.
I know I'm in the minority on this, but this is my favourite season and it makes me sad that so many people seem to dislike it. The season features so many unique, classic self-contained (i.e. not really part of an ongoing arc) episodes that are gimmicky, but in a really original and imaginative way like "Hush", "Superstar", "Restless", the Giles-as-a-demon episode, the Faith two-parter, the best 'Willow's magic goes awry' episode (the only time I liked Buffy and Spike getting romantic, because it was a complete joke), and the Willow/Oz break-up.
I thought the Willow and Oz break-up was the most natural and believable break-up on the series (ironic, since it was forced by the real life desire of Seth Green to pursue other projects). This was one of the only ones I felt wasn't done just to drum up artificial drama because Joss Whedon loves to split up happy couples (an overdone cheap tactic of his).
The Initiative/Adam/Walsh were much weaker antagonists than the Mayor and Angelus and I think that's the main reason people seem to feel season 4 is so inferior to the previous seasons, but I don't think the drop in villain quality is enough to really sink the season as a whole. I believe it succeeds quite well in spite of the lackluster villains.
My objection to it isn't quite that simple. I realize Spike was a rapist and a murderer in the past and I don't just excuse that and only object to him attempting rape when it's on screen with a character I care about. My objection is to the fact that Buffy and Spike do get into a relationship where we're supposed to believe there's genuine love between them in spite of this attempted rape. I could never forgive him for that, and I'm appalled that she not only forgives him, but accepts him as a romantic parter after it.
I don't buy any of the excuses that their relationship is understandable because she was going through a dark time in her life so she was more vulnerable and more likely to make bad decisions, etc. etc. Unlike Angel, Spike's deplorable actions were not the result of him losing his soul and becoming a totally different person. I'm pretty sure (can't remember exactly since I hate the episode too much to watch it many times) he was still soulless when he did this, but he was at a more reformed stage where he was trying to be good and supposedly becoming a more sympathetic character.
It wasn't like part of the gleeful murder or rape sprees he would have gone on as his old self, but that didn't make it any less sickening to me. Spike's forcing himself on Buffy was just a really pathetic and disappointing place for the writers to take the character and effectively killed my interest in him. I couldn't feel sorry for him when he got his soul back later because by that point I was just sick of him. I never really got over it, and I can't believe Buffy would.
Well that's a matter of personal preference. I loved the show all the way through, but the 'adult' seasons clicked more for me.
You misunderstood me - I meant the weakest main arc was that of season 4. Not that season 4 itself was the weakest. I still think season 1 is the weakest even though I realized it was much better than I remembered it when I rewatched it - there's a noticeable rise in quality towards the end, but the first part of S1 has a lot of cheesiness and lack of continuity. Season 4 has several great episodes that I put in my top 10 or at least top 20, but neither of them has much to do with the seasons' main arc. There are also lots of great character moments and overall I really enjoy the season. It's not one of the best, but it's enjoyable because it's more lighthearted than the other seasons (even though I love the darkness and angst of 2 and 5 and 6).
But you had no problems with Buffy forgiving Angel for everything he did without a soul in S2, including murdering a bunch of people, terrorizing her and her friends and family, torturing Giles mentally and physically, and trying to destroy the world?
Or with her accepting him as a romantic partner while Giles is there remembering how he killed the woman he loved and took pleasure in making Giles learn about her death in the most horrible way? I can never forget that moment in "Passion", and though I like Angel, I could never see him the same way after that. It was one of the most evil things ever done in Buffyverse, IMO.Sorry, but that makes no sense to me. Buffy forgave Spike and took him back as a romantic partner after he got his soul back. Just like Angel, Spike's deplorable actions were a result of him being soulless, i.e. not having empathy/an internal moral compass. You're saying that Spike was worse and less forgivable than Angel because he was actually capable of doing some good even while soulless, while Angel as 'Angelus' was completely evil?
The point of the attempted rape plot (as the writers have said) was to make Spike decide to go and get his soul back, because he felt guilty for hurting the woman he loved; he realized he couldn't be neither 'man' (because without a soul he couldn't be really good) nor a 'monster' anymore (if he was still the monster he once was, he wouldn't even feel guilty in the first place). Spike, even as a soulless demon, chose to get his soul back. Angel never did - he was cursed with a soul, and when he lost it, in S2 of Buffy or in S4 of Angel, he never wanted it back (he did, however, try to lose his soul intentionally in S2 of Angel), and as soulless he never felt bad for hurting Buffy - on the contrary, he did his best to intentionally mentally torture her. Then when he realized he couldn't get rid of those pesky emotions for her, he tried to destroy the world. So, please tell me how do those facts make Angel morally better than Spike, or his actions more forgivable?
But you believe she could get over the murders of other people. See, I'm the opposite. I think that if Buffy had ever really processed Angel being the same guy as Angelus (she never makes that distinction with Spike), she would have a much harder time forgiving him than Spike. Frankly I'm not sure if anyone even has the right to forgive someone for killing and hurting other people. Buffy had a lot more right to forgive Spike for trying to rape her, than she had to forgive Angel for killing Jenny (not to mention a bunch of other people) and depriving Giles of the love of his life.
To quote a poster from Buffyforums, who is a big fan of Angel the character (though Buffy is his favorite character) and a former B/A fan (he became anti-Bangel as a result of S8)
Vampmogs said:
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I like s1 & 2 of TNG. Go figure.
And I love all the seasons of Millennium. Still might be my favorite show ever.
And I love all the seasons of Millennium. Still might be my favorite show ever.
Babylon 5's last season.
It was the useless, weird epilogue to a series that had ended the previous season. And I really liked B5. :/
I'm watching that very season right now. Like season 1, for me, it gets better upon repeated viewings. And while there's still the sense of being past the main story, I like that we got to see what happens afterward. Most shows would've ended at a moment like when Sheridan becomes prez and the Alliance press conference is held. The "And they all lived happily ever after" ending.
Except what happens the next day? It was similar to what the Lord Of The Rings books did in showing that the story never really ends, and I'm glad that at least one show took this approach as it was different.
YMMV of course.
The obvious answer is TNG Season 1, but it's obvious for a reason. Even the couple episodes that are almost watchable are tainted by the shit that surrounds them. I'll watch almost any Trek if I'm flipping around the channels and it's on, even Voyager. But I literally cannot sit though a whole episode from TNG's first season.
Sure because of real-world issues, S5 of B5 starts up rough from Ground Zero, instead of the more smooth transition between S4 and S5 there would've been if not for Claudia Christian and the Cancellation threat. However, the second half of S5 is amongst the best the show has to offer, IMHO.Babylon 5's last season.
It was the useless, weird epilogue to a series that had ended the previous season. And I really liked B5. :/
I'm watching that very season right now. Like season 1, for me, it gets better upon repeated viewings. And while there's still the sense of being past the main story, I like that we got to see what happens afterward. Most shows would've ended at a moment like when Sheridan becomes prez and the Alliance press conference is held. The "And they all lived happily ever after" ending.
Except what happens the next day? It was similar to what the Lord Of The Rings books did in showing that the story never really ends, and I'm glad that at least one show took this approach as it was different.
YMMV of course.
For sheer awfulness, it is really hard to top the one-two punch that is season 5 of both Earth Final Conflict and Andromeda. Not only is EFC's final season so totally removed from everything that preceeded it, it looks so amazingly cheap that I'm surprised they could afford the film to shoot it on. Andromeda managed to still *look* fairly nice (for whatever reason, the visual effects actually improved significantly in its final two seasons) but when you have a spaceship show and that spaceship spends an entire season sitting in orbit of one planet, it's a pretty clear sign that you're out of money. I also enjoyed the notion of the four-legged, blue-skinned Vedran race "evolving" into ordinary makeup-less human beings. Yeah... that's it, they just "evolved" into creatures we don't have to spend any money on to depict!
For everyone who mentioned Voyager's third season as a contender, I would counter that its second season was actually much worse. That was the year of "Threshold", for starters, as well as that abominable hour where Kes had to choose whether to have a kid or not. Ugh. Season 3 may have sucked as well (it did, just like all the rest) but at least it ended with "Scorpion", practically the only episode of Voyager I like. How did season 2 end? With Captain Bonehead Janeway getting everyone marooned on the caveman planet because they just *had* to head straight into enemy territory and rescue that kid of Chakotay's that wasn't even his.
Enterprise's second season was lousy too, so much so that I stopped watching it right around the time they resorted to doing a Borg episode. Yeah, I've been told it's actually a decent episode (one of the few in the season) but I refuse to watch it on principle. If I wanted to see the Borg I would have put on *any* episode made in Voyager's last three seasons - chances are I'd get plenty of Borg that way.
For everyone who mentioned Voyager's third season as a contender, I would counter that its second season was actually much worse. That was the year of "Threshold", for starters, as well as that abominable hour where Kes had to choose whether to have a kid or not. Ugh. Season 3 may have sucked as well (it did, just like all the rest) but at least it ended with "Scorpion", practically the only episode of Voyager I like. How did season 2 end? With Captain Bonehead Janeway getting everyone marooned on the caveman planet because they just *had* to head straight into enemy territory and rescue that kid of Chakotay's that wasn't even his.
Enterprise's second season was lousy too, so much so that I stopped watching it right around the time they resorted to doing a Borg episode. Yeah, I've been told it's actually a decent episode (one of the few in the season) but I refuse to watch it on principle. If I wanted to see the Borg I would have put on *any* episode made in Voyager's last three seasons - chances are I'd get plenty of Borg that way.
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Why does it always get blamed on Hawk? Hawk was cool, it was that Stupid Ship and the rest of the new characters on it.
That Crichton really gets on my nerves, Theopolis ran circles around it .
^And here I thought I was the only one that disliked that show! Seriously, I don't get why some people rave about it. Aside from the very silly concept of highly trained fighter pilots doubling as space marines (in the real world; jarhead+cockpit=flaming wreckage), none of the characters were even remotely memorable and the setting was just a pretty bland and generic soft military drama disguised as sci-fi.
Can't think of anything else that hasn't been mentioned already as I have a habit of not watching shows that I loose interest in. Voyager and Enterprise are the only ones I ever forced myself to sit through and even then I skipped most of their seventh and third seasons respectively.
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