In the television industry, getting your show picked up all hinges on a great pilot. We have to immediately understand the characters, want to see more from them, and be intrigued by the world they inhabit. A pilot also establishes the feel of a show - the tone, the pacing and the visual style.
We also have to get invested in the larger story from the offset, with a mystery or a problem that needs to be solved. There seems to be a common formula for a perfect first episode: start with a strong sense of the characters and hint at the major series arcs that will define your story. Here are the best pilots of the last 20 years!
True Detective
True Detective opens with our leads being interviewed by other cops. We see early on the writers’ ability to make exposition seamlessly fascinating. This lets us understand the heart of the first season: the interlinked murder mystery and the relationship between the two leads.
Showing they didn't catch the killer in episode one could leave us feeling like they had given away the end of the book. However, the intrigue in the writing and dramatic change in our past and present protagonists means we have to know how this plays out. There’s more to this story than a police procedural.
Lost
The moment Jack Shepherd steps onto an idyllic beach while fiery carnage rains down around him is iconic. This is everything a pilot should be, mixing plot and spectacle and hinting at many long-term character stories and relationships. John Locke staring at his legs, Michael calling for his son, and Kate massaging her wrists as she first appears all deftly sets up stories to come.
Whether Lost continued to pay off on its many plot threads is still debated, but its beginning is undeniably special. The standard title of “Pilot” actually fits, concluding with the leads looking up at the mysteriously mutilated body of the Oceanic 815 captain.
Game Of Thrones
The first episode of Game of Thrones was so complex that they famously shot it twice. Balancing this world isn’t easy, but the writers struck a balance with a lot of fires being tended at the same time. We’re introduced to the frozen North, the intrigues of the South and the cultures across the Narrow Sea.
We get just enough of each character, a feel for the houses and a sense of the world that audiences had to come back for more. Although, the darkly intriguing incest and attempted child murder in the closing moments may have had something to do with it.
Scrubs
It seemed for a while like Scrubs had faded entirely from the public consciousness. Now though, with the recent launch of real-life friends Zach Braff and Donald Faison’s rewatch podcast, it’s making a bit of a comeback.
We get the origin of many of Scrubs’ ongoing jokes, motifs, and plotlines right here in the pilot. These include Elliot’s relationship with her father, music to tell the story, goofy cutaways, the realities of medicine, the nickname Bambi, JD’s attraction and rivalry with Elliot, Turk and Carla’s series-long romance, the Janitor’s insanity and Dr. Kelso’s villainy in service to keeping the hospital afloat. Not bad for under 30 minutes.
Heroes
The Heroes pilot introduces myriad characters, connected only through an eclipse and their surfacing abilities. We see our leads in India, New York, Texas, Nevada, and Japan, and are left needing to know how they will intersect.
Each story fits in its own subgenre: Mohinder’s murder mystery, Peter’s coming of age, Claire’s teen drama, Niki’s psychological haunting by her own reflection, and Isaac’s drug-fueled struggle. This was a real human look at superheroes before the market became so overcrowded with capes.
Breaking Bad
The pilot episode of Breaking Bad is a self-contained film that’s also the start of something wonderful. So much of the series’ visual iconography is established here. We see gas masks, the RV, the New Mexico desert, and Walt’s penchant for wearing green shirts and saggy gray underpants.
The recurring setup of Walt and Jesse getting in over their heads, only for Walt to use his wits to get them out at the last second, starts here as well. Ending with Walter’s new sexual vigor hints that this family man might not be stepping into a new dark world just because he needs the cash.
Better Call Saul
Returning to this pace, shooting style and tone was like a glass of clear water after two years in a desert of muddy puddles. There’s a feeling when watching this world that we were all missing.
Better Call Saul uses a con per episode, culminating in a tense standoff or clever twist we didn’t see coming, but Jimmy was cooking up the whole time. While Walter White got out of his deadly situations through intelligence and luck, Slippin’ Jimmy is shown to be a slick salesman who gets results through practiced deception.
Fargo
The Fargo TV series is a beautiful continuation of the 1996 film’s darkly funny and brutally violent story of greed, murder, and escalation. The story is hilarious, dark and captivating. Not wasting a minute, the first episode features four murders: one mysterious, one hilarious, one heartbreaking, and one perhaps deserved.
We meet Lorne Malvo, the devil in human form. He corrupts people everywhere he goes, preternaturally disappears and talks a police officer into letting him go with ease. A great villain, we just want to see him work. The anthology setup makes the writing so confident. Lester Nygaard begins to break bad, and the writers plot his descent perfectly, knowing they only have 10 episodes to tell this tale.
The Walking Dead
While The Walking Dead has achieved success, the writing has become repetitive. Meet a group, the group is awful, kill the group. But were they the really awful people? Repeat. Build up a character for three episodes to kill them off. Repeat. Unfortunately, they didn’t kill people with the same careful build-up and following ramifications as Game of Thrones did so well in its early days.
The first season and episode, in Frank Darabont’s hands, has a contemplative pace. The pilot had some real tense moments and concisely set up the world. Opening up with Rick’s conflicted moment of shooting a little girl at some unspecified time introduces the key theme of human decency being chipped away over time.
Stranger Things
From the start, Stranger Things takes a lot of elements we’ve seen before and reintroduces them in the best possible way. The key difference is the kids swear and the parents take them seriously, which makes the show feel real despite its sci-fi premise.
The pilot doesn’t shy away from its era with all the smoking, synth, and cops drinking on the job you would expect. Wearing its references on its sleeve, viewers fell in love with this world straight away and continues to leave them wanting more. The pilot also cleverly sets up Winona Ryder’s harassed stare, an ongoing plotline for at least the first two seasons.