Favorite Pilot/Premiere Episode

The SciFi Chan has the tendency to air the pilot of "Sliders" every couple months (as they just finished doing) and I gotta say, it's my favorite first episode I can think of.

It has everything in it needed to draw in the viewer. It establishes the characters with just enough level of credulity that you get who they are but know there is more going on. Plus it just has this vibe of raw adventure that I love.

I'm sure post people will say "Twin Peaks", but I gotta go with "Sliders".

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Yeah, "Twin Peaks" for sure. That's gotta be right up there. "The Sopranos" is another great one. "The Larry Sanders Show" was brilliant from the first scene onward.



I think the first episode of "Moonlighting" really established the tone and characters extremely well. The first "Homicide: Life on the Street" is a grabber. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" with the famous "I hate spunk!" exchange alone puts it in rare company.

More recently, "Monk" did a great job in selling itself the first time.


Those are most of my favorites, I reckon.

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Ah, another Moonlighting fan. I too was sucked in from the very first episode. I don’t believe there had been anything like it up until then, and quite possibly since then either.

I remember in the way, way, back time, Stephen King’s first television program Golden Years aired. It was centered on an elderly janitor and his wife. The janitor worked for ‘The Shop’, which you might remember from Firestarter. The Shop was working on an anti-agathic drug, when low and behold, there’s an explosion! The janitor is soaked in the drug and slowly begins to age backwards (slowly meaning over a period of weeks and months). He and his wife must go on the lam so the Shop cannot turn them into lab rats.

It’s funny. IMDb lists the show as being originally aired in 1991, but I was gone from the country then. I’ve always remembered seeing the show when I was still a young teen-ager; which would make that the early 80s. Anybody else remember this show?

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You must be remembering something else then, because King's "Golden Years" was definitely 1991, as a Summer replacement series CBS was trying out (premiered July 18th, 1991 and the last one aired on August 22, 1991). Maybe you're thinking of "The Incredible Hulk" or the "Misfits of Science" or something?


Notoriously, CBS cancelled "Golden Years" quickly (there were only eight episodes that aired) without even allowing them to wrap up the series in any kind of way. But they had shot a kind of ending for it as is, and if you rent it on video you'll see that tacked-on conclusion rather than the open-ended one from the original series run. Essentially it became a mini-series by default, though they had hoped to make it an ongoing weekly show.

I watched the first couple espisodes, but as with most Stephen King projects my interest it in vanished almost immediately. It had a decent "The Fugitive" with a Sci-Fi twist set-up, but King's cardboard characters and zero sense of dialogue always turn me off.

Thanks Holden. It's amazing how often my memories have done the old switcheroo when I wasn't paying attention.

Twin Peaks, which I just watched this weekend.


Also:

The Sopranos
Battlestar Galactica (2004) (Mini, not really a pilot)


Moonlighting rocked, but I never saw the pilot...I still love the "Taming of the Shrew" episode, or a resonable facsimile thereof...

I had to pick TP, because it's Lynch...

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i have fond memories of Buffy and Angel primo eps

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And though it never aired I do have a copy and have watched it many times, so I have to mention "Heat Vision & Jack", a pilot that FOX decided not to take a chance on - in all their wisdom.



It starred Jack Black as an ex-astronaut who gained super-intelligence when his capsule accidentally traveled too close to the sun and baked his brain like so much cookie dough, resulting in increased size and mental capacity...but only in the sunlight of Earth. His sidekick is a talking motorcycle named Heat Vision, from when Jack's unemployed roommate was accidentally fused with the bike from an experimental ray gun as Jack was trying to escpae the evil minions of NASA (led by Ron Silver...as HIMSELF!). Heat Vision is voiced by Owen Wilson. The pilot was directed by Ben Stiller (he also had a cameo) and featured his wife Christine Taylor as a guest star.

It could have aired in late '99 or early 2000 - just as Black was about to explode into the mainstream in High Fidelity. Too hip for school, I guess. FOX programming idiots.

The Greatest American Hero pilot was hysterical. It's the only ep where he keeps swearing, every time he lands.

I was also hooked on The Tick (the live action version) by three minutes into the first episode.

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I liked the first episode of Monk (like Holden) because it was quirky and funny with interesting characters. Almost everyone I talked to at the time who watched the first episode ended up tuning in again next week; not that they continued on with watching but hey we are talking about first episodes.

Yeah definately the Sliders Pilot was a good one and got me hooked on the series; exciting, interesting and addictive in nature. That's all I can think of right now..

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The original C.S.I.

oooh yeah the CSI pilot was gooooood, thats like one of my favourite shows and the pilot just sort of exploded on ya