10 TV Pilots That Lied To Us About What The Show Was Going To Be Like

A show’s pilot episode sets the tone for the entire series and must capture the audience’s attention, but some don’t represent the show’s tone or story structure. After the pilot, a series might go on to switch actors, become more or less serialized, or have a significant change in production value. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is something that can change the viewing experience of a show, and be jarring when moving from the pilot to the rest of season 1.

There are many reasons that a pilot might differ from the body of a series. Some feature film scripts are produced and then retooled to become pilots for very successful shows. Others were simply in the early stages of development and used the pilot to work out the kinks, or received feedback on how best to change the show to appeal to audiences. Although a pilot is an introduction to the show and its premise, it’s important that the series only gets better as it goes on, instead of peaking in the first episode.

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10 Seinfeld (1989 – 1998)

Aired: July 5, 1989

When Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld first got Seinfeld off the ground and into the hands of a producer, it was called The Seinfeld Chronicles and did not feature every member of the iconic cast. Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is nowhere to be seen, being added later in the series, and Kramer (Michael Richards) is named Kessler. As Kessler, he’s a much less prominent character in the pilot, and less outrageous than he becomes in later seasons. Overall, the pilot is still largely about Jerry and George (Jason Alexander) navigating the pitfalls of social situations, but it lacks the bite and physicality that Seinfeld came to be known for.

9 Suits (2011 – 2019)

Aired: June 23, 2011

Suits has enjoyed a major resurgence since its addition to different streaming services, and this has brought renewed interest and viewership in its pilot episode. Though many of the elements that make Suits great are still present, there are some significant differences. The pilot is significantly longer than a typical episode and reads more like a feature than a pilot in many ways. Additionally, the pilot was shot in New York, the in-world setting of the show, but then moved to Toronto for the remaining episodes to cut costs.

Props and exteriors try to maintain the same New York feel of the pilot but never capture the true essence of the city. In terms of the characters, Donna (Sarah Rafferty) and Louis (Rick Hoffman) aren’t given nearly as much screen time and prevalence for how large their characters end up being. Even if the rest of the series doesn’t have quite as high a production value, the increased focus on the ensemble of characters is what made Suits such a success.

8 New Girl (2011 – 2018)

Aired: September 20, 2011

The question of why New Girl replaced Winston (Lamorne Morris) for Coach (Dayman Wayans Jr.) after the pilot has plagued many of the show’s viewers. Though both characters came to be part of the series, Coach is reintroduced in a smaller role after the pilot, and Winston becomes a mainstay of the core cast. Additionally, Jess (Zooey Deschanel) is a toned-down version of the character that she becomes, as well as more evolved in her adult life. Similarly to other sitcoms, New Girl starts with fairly normal characters in whacky situations but later changes the characters to be more unusual.

7 The O.C. (2003 -2007)

Aired: August 5, 2003

Though The O.C. has been lumped in with many of the typical teen dramas of the early 2000s, it didn’t start that way. The entire series focuses on the ways that Ryan (Ben McKenzie) and Seth (Adam Brody) feel out of place in Orange County, California. However, the pilot is much more focused on Ryan’s background and the experience of wealth inequality.

Ryan’s past does remain relevant, but the show devolved a bit into the classic day-to-day antics of high school and lets Sandy’s (Peter Gallagher) work as a public defender fall to the wayside. The decision to move from serious drama into teen melodrama might have been good for ratings, but it did make for a very different show. It’s the emotionally truthful elements that the show maintains that help The O.C. hold up many years later.

6 Fringe (2008 – 2013)

Aired: September 9, 2008

As one of the most expensive pilots of all time, Fringe set up promises that the series couldn’t quite deliver. It’s the length of a feature at around an hour and a half and spans an entire mission filled with conspiracy and intrigue. The show itself would revert to a procedural format with a monster-of-the-week that the team had to investigate. After a few seasons, the show started to become serialized, but the initial drop-off after such an ambitious pilot is hard to ignore. Not only is the scale of the pilot enormous, but it almost plays it safe when compared to the out-of-this-world science of the later seasons.

5 The X-Files (1993 – 2018)

Aired: September 10, 1993

One of the best aspects of The X-Files was almost ruined in the almost unrecognizable pilot. Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) are immediately casual and too friendly in terms of their social and physical relationship. The tension and will-they-won’t-they dynamic between the two FBI agents was one of the driving forces of the show, but the pilot seemed to definitively say “they will”. Additionally, the pilot almost confirms the existence of extraterrestrial life making contact with Earth, and Scully is not as skeptical of Mulder as she comes to be later on. The mystery of episodes after the pilot is an improvement of the series’ formula.

4 Once Upon A Time (2011 – 2018)

Aired: October 23, 2011

When Henry (Jared S. Gilmore) showed up at Emma’s (Jennifer Morrison) door in Boston claiming to be her son in the pilot of Once Upon A Time, it was the beginning of a series of twists that left the audience wanting more. The pilot sets up the balance between the real world and the fairy tale world well, but it could not have prepared anyone for the exploration of a different type of storybook character and villain every season.

The problem with the pilot, and Once Upon A Time as a whole, is that it played all of its cards right away. After several seasons of utilizing the same formula, Once Upon A Time lost a lot of the magic of the pilot and season 1. Additionally, because of the flashback format that the pilot introduces, many of the truths established in the beginning are reversed in later seasons, making earlier episodes less canon compliant.

3 Lost (2004 – 2010)

Aired: September 22 and 29, 2004

The two-part pilot of Lost is considered one of the best pilots of all time, and one of the best episodes of the series. However, it has the same problem as other series by creator J.J. Abrams; the pilot could’ve been a stand-alone film. Or, at least the first season could have. Lost begins to lose momentum almost immediately after the pilot, and almost none of the supernatural and religious themes that run throughout the later seasons are present in the first episode. Unsurprisingly, few could have predicted the overall outcome of Lost, and the character’s arcs from the premiere.

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2 The Sopranos (1999 – 2007)

Aired: January 10, 1999

Before The Sopranos became the iconic television show that it’s now known as, it was just a pilot that was made on spec almost two years before the episode premiered. Of the many differences between the pilot and the rest of season 1, are James Gandolfini’s performance as Tony and his role within the New Jersey organized crime family. In the pilot, Gandolfini had not fully realized all of Tony’s accent and affectations, and Tony even commits acts of violence in public.

To see Tony be the one to carry out a hit would be a shock later in the series. Additionally, he had a more clearly established leadership role in the pilot, whereas for the rest of the series, Tony is constantly trying to assert his dominance as leader of the family. There were other small actor and character changes throughout the episode that were dropped in the next episodes as the show became more recognizable.

1 Supernatural (2005 – 2020)

Aired: September 13, 2005

After fifteen seasons of Supernatural, it’s difficult to remember the pilot of the series, much less the elements that weren’t present in the rest of the show. However, the tone of the show and the dynamic of the central brothers, Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Padalecki), is almost unrecognizable. The two brothers barely know each other when they set off on their adventure in episode 1, and Sam wants nothing to do with Dean or with hunting. Not only do the two become inseparable as the show progresses, but the world of hunting expands far beyond the ghosts and demons from the pilot.