Every hit TV show starts by either telling viewers what the main plot is or showing them who the story is about. Sometimes that approach falls apart within a season or two. Often, it’s because the main plot or main character gets outshone by the very world built to support it/them, and audiences pick up on that change fast. That mismatch has produced some of the best TV shows ever made, almost by accident.
The five TV shows below all pulled off that trick. A prison dramedy, a goofy sitcom, a gangster epic, a Wild West mining camp, and a space opera made the cut. Each one proves the same thing: sometimes the supporting world of a TV show is why most fans tune in.
1. Orange Is the New Black (2013 – 2019)
Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) spent entire episodes in Orange Is the New Black panicking about trivial stuff like care packages while the women around her dealt with real prison trauma. That tonal gap says everything about why critics kept calling her the show’s weakest link. Jenji Kohan built the show out of Piper Kerman’s fall from grace. She planned to use Kerman’s 2010 memoir, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, to ease outsiders into Litchfield. But it didn’t take long for that plan to backfire in the best way possible.
Suzanne ‘Crazy Eyes’ (Uzo Aduba) broke hearts with her loneliness. Galina ‘Red’ (Kate Mulgrew) ran the kitchen like a mob boss. Tasha ‘Taystee’ (Danielle Brooks) and Poussey’s (Samira Wiley) relationship became the emotional core viewers gravitated towards, and Sophia Burset’s (Laverne Cox) fight for basic dignity generated the tears, memes, and eventually the show’s most celebrated moments. But Piper’s long-distance drama with her fiancé Larry (Jason Biggs) still felt like a subplot from a completely different, much duller show.
2. Boardwalk Empire (2010 – 2014)
Here, Atlantic City’s underworld kept generating better stories than the man supposedly running it. Steve Buscemi, for all his gifts playing unforgettable weirdos elsewhere, never quite gave Enoch ‘Nucky’ Thompson enough color to compete with what surrounded him. Albert ‘Chalky’ White (played by Michael Kenneth Williams) built an entire empire right under Nucky’s nose, right inside the Onyx Club.
Nelson Van Alden (played by Michael Shannon) went from uptight federal agent to a man he himself could barely recognize, and real gangsters like Arnold Rothstein and Lucky Luciano became fixtures across multiple seasons, leaving bigger marks than Nucky did in his own show. Margaret Schroeder’s (later Margaret Thompson, played by Kelly Macdonald) climb from Nucky’s mistress to political operator made his own character growth pale in comparison.
3. New Girl (2011 – 2018)
Longtime fans rarely point to the slow-burn romance when asked about what the most interesting thing about New Girl is. The answer is almost always the loft’s chaotic group dynamic. Jess (Zooey Deschanel) moving into a new apartment with three guys certainly kicked things off. But Schmidt’s (Max Greenfield) constant anxiety, Winston’s (Lamorne Morris) completely unhinged games, and Cece’s (Hannah Simone) orbit around the group built the show’s real comic engine.
The Jess-Nick relationship generated several seasons of will-they-won’t-they tension. Yet it’s clear to anyone paying attention that it didn’t generate half the buzz the douchebag jar or the platonic chemistry Nick and Schmidt’s relationship did. Even Jess became a divisive figure as time went on, adored for her earnestness in one season and accused of trying to overshadow the ensemble the next. But that group dynamic just kept getting stronger.
4. The Expanse (2015 – 2018)
Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) cursed out half the UN in more languages than most people speak combined in The Expanse. It’s one of the main reasons why she was way more fun to watch than the guy flying the ship. James Holden (Steven Strait) had a habit of showing up in the middle of every major crisis in the solar system. That narrative works fine as a plot device, but it gets old fast as actual character work.
The real hook was Avasarala’s political games plus the Belters and their own slang and grudges, built along a genuine class war between Earth, Mars, and the Belt. Amos (Wes Chatham) and Naomi (Dominique Tipper) gave the Rocinante crew its heart, sure, but Marco Inaro’s (Keon Alexander) rebellion and everything that came out of it are what most fans of the show still argue about online. By the finale, saving the solar system had become James Holden’s job description, but he wasn’t the reason people tuned back in.
5. Deadwood (2004 – 2006)
Timothy Olyphant has admitted flat out that it took him several seasons to get a handle on his own character, and it’s easy to see why the moment Al Swearengen walks into a room. Swearengen, played by Ian McShane at his filthy, foul-mouthed best, ran away with the show every time he opened his mouth. He switched alliances mid-sentence with monologues that could double as Shakespeare, just dirtier.
David Milch didn’t build Deadwood around one guy’s journey anyway. Alma Garrett’s (Molly Parker) opium habit and business plans, CY Tolliver’s (Powers Boothe) rival empire, Charlie Utter’s (Dayton Callie) grief, and Doc Cochran’s (Brad Dourif) exhausted decency all mattered as much as, if not even more than, anything Olyphant’s Bullock did with his badge.
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