There's something so inherently unforgettable about the first time: it's an introduction, it's an invitation to an entire new world, a chance for new discoveries and places to explore with someone special. It can be completely raunchy and totally uninhibited, or it can be smooth and loving and gentle. It all depends on how you like it, and how Ryan Murphy decides to give it to you.
More: The 20 Greatest TV Pilots Since 2000
All jokes aside, our 20 favorite TV pilots of the new millennium are a mash-up of critically acclaimed wonders as well as fan favorites and--sorry, we can't help it--our guiltiest pleasures of the past decade and then some. Where YOU come in is calling us out: did we make the right picks? What did we leave out? Should your favorite series be higher or lower? Let us know in the comments below. The first question we asked ourselves when diving in was simple: what are the elements that make a good first episode? So let's start off with a show you may not have ever heard of, but then a bunch you definitely have!
20 – FIREFLY (FOX , December 20, 2002) “Serenity”
FOX was foolish when it premiered Firefly in 2002. Why, you ask? Because they showed the second and third episodes first, rather than the pilot. See, they thought the pilot wasn't exciting enough, and viewers who tuned were rightfully confused. Perhaps they wouldn't have been if the pilot had actually preceded the rest of the space shenanigans, as it’s legitimately one of the best Sci-Fi pilots of all time, seamlessly introducing a dystopian future while setting up the misfit group of rag tag rebels. There was no question as to who Mal and his crew were, nor how they related to each other. There is something so simple in Firefly's delivery; a somewhat old story with a whole new spin. - Emily Cheever
19 – REVENGE (ABC, October 19, 2011) “Pilot”
“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” Morality is tarnished as we’re immediately introduced to Labor Day weekend at a Fire & Ice engagement party and gunshots ring out over champagne toasts. The beautiful people, charmed lifestyles, stunning manors and a dead groom-to-be left near the crimson tide create immediate investment when an imposter resides among them, set to ruin all of their lives. What is everyone’s story? How did they get there? And why are we as viewers so delightfully intrigued by a vicious murder and a woman coming home to avenge her father’s death? Within the first five minutes there are chilling clues, torn romances and an Icy matriarch who add to the boiling pot of questions that need answers. The glorified world of The Hamptons never looked so dangerously haunting- but it also became a place we wanted to be for months to come. - Stephanie Webber
18 – ALIAS (ABC, September 30, 2001) “Truth Be Told”
JJ Abrams knows how to start a show with a bang more than anyone else, and ten years on, “Truth Be Told” still plays like dynamite. Alias’ first episode contains more twists than entire seasons of other shows, but what was truly revolutionary about it back in 2001 was the scope and spectacle of it all. Mixing equal parts Mission: Impossible and Run Lola Run while throwing in a dash of family drama and just a touch of the post-grad anxiety that Abrams explored in Felicity, “Truth Be Told” felt more like an action movie than a TV show. Alias raised the bar for a decade of TV and showed that the small screen didn't have to constrain a show's ideas—or the action. - Jonah Gardner
17 – THE VAMPIRE DIARIES (The CW, September 10, 2009) “Pilot”
Bluntly, The Vampire Diaries might be a series about hot sexy adults playing teens, decidedly so by the casting geniuses who threw coquettish Nina Dobrev, brooding Paul Wesley, and stunningly dangerous Ian Somerhalder on the silver platter of raging high school hormones; seriously, what else did you need for a teen drama? Yes, it’s clearly Twilight-inspired, but peel back all of the brilliant layers: Stefan chasing the doppelganger silhouette of a woman he loved long ago opens up the floodgates for a centuries-long saga between generations of men and vampires, but it also examines the growing pains of adolescence (with plenty of drugs!) and the growing uncertainties of the future. Plenty doses of dark and mythical, yet still fueled by the bigger blunders of the teenage years. - Terron R. Moore
16 – GAME OF THRONES (HBO, April 17, 2011) “Winter Is Coming”
Let's be honest, the fan base for Game Of Thrones was already built by the time the series rolled around to HBO; the characters, the setting, the mythology was all in place by the time it premiered, only to be followed by the massive millions of diehard followers ready to see the book series hit the small screen. But here's the thing- they (HBO, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, etc) did a f*cking amazing job of introducing the world that George R.R. Martin so carefully established in words and chapters: the adaptation was seamless, even for the folks who hadn't read the books, and from the first moments of action you knew that this was going to be an epic battle between good, evil and that grey area in between. From the White Walkers to the Stark clan, everything about this pilot was a flawless introduction into the fantasy world that we have come to know and love. - Emily Cheever
15 – PRETTY LITTLE LIARS (ABC Family, June 8, 2010) “Pilot”
Truth? Everyone likes a good girl, but everyone loves a good girl gone bad, and the fictional town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania is rampant with young women trying to contain their barely kept secrets. So when one of them mysteriously disappears and a fearless foursome have to pick up the pieces one year later, they have no idea about the horrors that will begin to unravel when they begin to receive mysterious texts from an unknown stalker named ‘A’. The pilot opens up the show’s two central mysteries (Who is ‘A’? Who killed Alison?) with a calm, creeping intensity as well as a fierce wardrobe and a shocking teacher-student hookup (it is, after all, a female-targeted teen drama). There’s little we know to start—other than death and danger haunt these girls—and it’s just enough to start diving in. There’s plenty more than meets the lies. - Terron R. Moore
14 – ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (FOX, November 3, 2003) “Pilot”
Anyone wondering why comedy connoisseurs are still begging for an Arrested Development revival need look no further than the show’s very first episode, a pilot that's genuinely hilarious by packing more laugh-out-louds in the opening five minutes than most sitcoms can manage in an entire season. That it effortlessly introduces us to each member of the wealthy, self-absorbed Bluth family—white collar criminal George Sr., alcoholic socialite Lucille, straight-laced Michael, Segway-riding magician GOB, hypocritical activist Lindsay, and nervous wreck and amateur cartographer Buster—all while establishing the show’s signature hyperactive pace, manic plotting, and gay Tobias jokes is evidence that Development was destined for cult status from the very beginning. - Jeremy Popkin
13 – AMERICAN HORROR STORY (FX, October 5, 2011) “Pilot”
I like to brag, so I'll tell you this: I got the pilot of Horror Story about a month before its premiere last year. I was anxious for the show, especially because Ryan Murphy—say what you will—is always good in the beginning. What I saw was something so disturbingly original that I showed it to everyone in the office. The jarring camera work, the highly perverted nature of the characters, and the plot movements all started off with such a bang that it made viewers wonder where else the series could actually go. American Horror Story started with a bang and never even approached a whimper. - Emily Cheever
12 – LONE STAR (FOX, September 20, 2010) “Pilot”
One of the most dangerous things a series can do is establish an uncertainty in its main character. You either love a lead and tune in to see them grow or develop, or you don’t, in which case you may have very few other reasons to watch. So the most fascinating thing about Lonestar and its 2-episode run on FOX—before being abruptly cancelled due to low ratings—is where it puts its lead in the viewer’s brain as a man actively and masterfully living two different lives in two different parts of the country as he cons hard working men out of their money, yet fights to manage the intricacies of his own and the pressures of his father. Do you like this guy? Do you hate him? Do you see yourself in him, or is he despicable? Lone Star became a strange short film, an incredibly layered depiction of the happiness, the sadness, the despair, confusion, anger, bliss, and power that all rise out of a good-hearted man simply being in too deep. - Terron R. Moore
11 - GREY’S ANATOMY (ABC, March 27, 2005) “A Hard Day’s Night”
What I liked most about the Grey's pilot is that it started these now-qualified doctors off as interns on their first 48-hour shifts. Even as an intern, Meredith Grey outperforms and outsmarts everyone because that's how it's supposed to be - her mother was a doctor, and Grey's path is already paved for her. Several of the interns start to make friends right away, and these relationships, romantic or not, become pivotal in the coming seasons. Because the people who now have lives in their hands everyday started off as beginners who made mistakes and who needed help from the regulars, it was easy to accept this pilot as one of the best. - Jaymie Bailey
10 – THE WALKING DEAD (AMC, October 31, 2010) “Days Gone Bye”
What little goodwill that still exists for The Walking Dead comes almost exclusively from “Days Gone Bye,” as riveting and atmospheric an hour of TV as we've ever seen. This pilot sidesteps its characters almost entirely and focuses instead on the eerie stillness of a world where most of the population is dead and society as we know it has ceased to exist. “Days Gone Bye” wallows in the emptiness that comes at the end of the world. Nowhere is this more firmly stated than in the heart-stopping teaser, where Rick comes upon a gas station littered with abandoned cars. He meets a young girl and tries to help her but, when she turns around, he realizes that she is a zombie and he shoots her in the head. This is not Zombieland wish fulfillment, but the gritty reality of what it would take to survive when the world's stopped. - Jonah Gardner
9 – DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES (ABC, October 4, 2004) “Pilot”
The strangest thing about Wisteria Lane, a street that would ultimately become its own character on the show, is that it allows us to snoop where it very well shouldn’t: a fairly happy housewife suddenly puts a bullet in her own head with the credits still rolling. This is far from your average suburbia with weekend blue ribbon winnings for the best apple pie. Instead, four neighborhood friends are effortlessly categorized as the scorned, the OCD driven, a gold-digging model and a workaholic-turned-maternity-leave nut job. It’s a soap opera in a comic land, perhaps a place where the women have inhaled too much Windex. But it doesn’t matter—you want in. The pilot dives right in to eccentric behavior and banter, leaving viewers guilt-free for indulging in the twisted dark humor, especially with a threatening last minute note reveals that there are still some cracks in the pavement that will inevitably make its way toward the surface. It’s like we’ve been eavesdropping for years. - Stephanie Webber
8 – PUSHING DAISIES (ABC, October 3, 2007) “Pie-lette”
Pushing Daisies is so delightfully twee I can't even handle it. From the very beginning, viewers were hooked on the magic of the series, brought to you by Bryan Fuller. Why did this short lived show land up on the list? Because it sets up a great premise accompanied with whimsical aesthetics, followed with almost too cutesy dialogue and an impossibly attractive cast. At it's core, the pilot set up the wonder of romance and the pain of loss, and all the somewhat humorous elements in between. And what makes Daisies so impressive as a pilot is just how well it transcends a genre. Viewers had never seen anything like it and that includes Fuller's previous show Wonderfalls. The pilot itself was a journey into something new and unexpected, with just enough identifiable elements to keep us hanging on. I mean, honestly though, I think that just being introduced to a self effacing handsome pie maker is enough reason to pique anyone's interest. - Emily Cheever
7 – DEXTER (Showtime, October 1, 2006) “Dexter”
Dexter Morgan is hungry. And it’s the type of insatiable lust that isn’t culled by his steady girl Rita or his job as a blood splatter analyst for the Miami Police Department. Dexter thirsts for blood and killing, and the only way that constant obsession is satisfied is by taking the lives of the guilty. The duality of Dexter as both a vicious beast and puny lab geek are played brilliantly by star Michael C. Hall, who stares between the eyes as the lights in them go out, yet has no emotional feeling beyond his bloodlust, making him one of the most curious characters on television. Is he a hero? Is he a villain? Murderers have zero business being likable, but there’s never been one on television with this jaded sense of morality, this warped a vision of the world around him. Dexter’s pilot doesn’t shy away from being deathly dark—and dare we say, delicious. - Terron R. Moore
6 – THE O.C. (FOX, August 5, 2003) “Premiere”
The O.C. was long missing from our television lineup and we didn’t even know it. Starting in dreary Chino, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks steals a car and the rest is soundtrack history. It may sound cliché, but that's how it all began with this FOX series: as Ryan Atwood gets taken in behind the gated community and into a whole new world, we can’t help but want to be a part of it. The rich and fortunate have the parties and booze but they also have just as many issues as the new kid. It’s a spin on a high school plot that’s bound to have romances and drama, and ultimately draws us in as soon as the title appears and Phantom Planet’s “California” begins. There’s an instant gratification in seeing Ryan and nerd Seth Cohen interact and the one-liners give the pilot an appealing comical flare: “Welcome to the O.C., bitch!” Gee, well thank you! Glad we could make it. - Stephanie Webber
5 – FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS (NBC, October 3, 2006) “Pilot”
Often overlooked and criminally underappreciated throughout its five-year run, Friday Night Lights will still go down as one of the best TV dramas of all time. And not because of plot ploys or groundbreaking storylines, but because it's one of the most realistic depictions of family life ever attempted on screen. The pilot's subtle introduction of the core characters is achieved within the first five minutes of being thrown into this seemingly complex, but very real world. At first glance, the show is be about high school football in Dillon, Texas, but more importantly, it's about the family and community dynamic that goes along with it. Coach Eric Taylor and his wife Tami (brilliantly played by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton) face real-life struggles that are beautifully crafted within the show's first episode. It was smart. It wasn't a gimmick. And it sucked us all into that locker room every week. Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose, ya'll. - Sharon Tharp
4 – GLEE (FOX, May 19, 2009) “Pilot”
It's admittedly hard to remember the true beginnings of Glee, long before lost narratives and superfluous guest stars plagued the once-great FOX hit. But when we talk about that pilot, it instantly stands out as one of the most creative and effortlessly funny hours of television in a very long time. Lea Michele was casting gold as Rachel Berry, the overbearing, but strangely likeable star singer. Along with Matthew Morrison's endearing portrayal of the loveable Mr. Schue and Jane Lynch's brilliant characterization of Sue Sylvester, they carried us through the halls and lives of McKinley High. Forget about all the money and mistakes this (probably) dying show has made over the years, the genius idea of a misfit high school glee club absolutely filled a television void in '09. Will Glee ever be great again? Probably not. But hey, don't stop believin'. - Sharon Tharp
3 – BREAKING BAD (AMC, January 20, 2008) “Pilot”
Breaking Bad is probably one of the best shows that has ever existed, purely because it followed a character's descent into no-holds-barred despicable behavior. Walt was an average man--in fact, so supremely average that no one would ever want to watch a show about him. He was empathetic but more importantly, he was desperate, and that makes you question what you would do for your family and your future if the future was quickly coming to an end. And it made us question our own morality, not whether or not we liked the characters or their choices. In this way, Breaking Bad's introduction is unique in comparing it to the rest of the equally incredible series. The feelings that we started out with have naturally evolved over the course of the series, but the pilot, like a newborn lion cub, was unassuming and somewhat docile. The pilot never had to manipulate us to get us interested. It's as honest as any documentary yet as compelling as any drama, and some of the reason for that is the expressive camera work. Even with the dark subject matter, the show is beautiful. This pilot is not only a flawless establishment of characters and situation, but it invites us to observe the most basic of human questions: what would have to happen to make you break bad? - Emily Cheever
2 – MAD MEN (AMC, July 19, 2007) “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”
If you think back to the first season of Mad Men, it’s a year where not much happens. Mad Men’s premiere year was one that liked to show instead of tell, examine rather than explain. So when we meet Don Draper for the very first time, there’s nothing he does for 55 minutes that’s very intriguing: he’s just a major ad executive with a busty girlfriend and a luxurious life, while his secretary Peggy begins her new life at Sterling Cooper and quickly adjusts to the misogynistic gender roles of New York City’s working class. But it’s within the last five minutes where your mind is blown: during a dinner with a client (who would eventually become one of his many trysts), he laments not only about the ideals of marriage and relationships, but confesses to believe that the idea of love itself is just an advertising invention. And that’s before the brilliant closer in which we find out that he’s married with children. Hell, Don Draper: how mad are you? - Terron R. Moore
1 – LOST (ABC, September 22, 2004) “Pilot, Parts 1 and 2”
And here we are, some eight years later, still talking about LOST. Sure, a lot of that conversation has to do with the end of the show and the disappointments that followed the explosive series finale, but we're here to talk about the beginning, and just what a phenomenal, epic, genre-bending beginning it was.
Simple enough, it started with the nondescript title sequence and went right into an aerial shot of an eye opening in terror. Was it the setting that reeled us in? The panic that Matthew Fox displayed? The thematic and mysterious music? All we know is that once we moved to the beach and saw that plane crash nothing would ever be the same for television ever again. It's funny enough that television's greatest mystery series starts with something that isn't so enigmatic--a plane crash--yet what drew us in immediately was the truth of the situation, the terror, confusion and enough people suffering from enough Post Traumatic Stress to send any shrink into a headspin.
The magic of this was that instantly we felt sympathy for everyone: Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke, Claire... hell, we even liked Shannon in the beginning because we identified so completely with her helpless, incessant and maddening screaming. We knew these characters even before their back (or was it forward? Or sideways?) stories. We understood the rebel without a cause, the heroic and handsome doctor and the protective father. There was no mystery there (yet), and the only mystery that we had to ruminate on was the ominous noises and shaking trees- one of many monsters that we would not yet know yet still begin to speculate on.
To forget about the plot, the characters, the smoke monster and the hatch and discuss the reason why the pilot (and eventually the series) strikes such a fondness in the heart of millions of people: because it was all about the joy of speculation, the joy of conversation. This show, most specifically the pilot, encouraged water cooler gossip the likes of which have never been seen before. What did YOU think killed the pilot? What are those noises in the woods? What caused the crash? The pilot doesn't' just introduce the world that LOST lives in but introduced the opportunity of viewer investigation, of camaraderie and therefore the kind of humanity that makes television great. The cultural lexicon changed after the show, the moments of the pilot so intense that even in investigating the Wikipedia page of September 22nd you see this. So why is LOST the best pilot of our time? Because it changed history (even, apparently in other timelines). Television, and whatever went down by the watercooler, would never be the same. - Emily Cheever
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That's our list! What do you think? Miss any major series or did we land all the right notes? Let us know in the comments below.
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