MovieChat Forums > Party of Five (1994) Discussion > Which are best seasons? (Just binge-watc...

Which are best seasons? (Just binge-watched S1, and want to skip around)


I'd never watched Party of Five before, and on a whim started watching it On Demand this past weekend. I spent about 2 days glued to my TV watching Season 1. I thought the writing was really well done, the stories seemed surprisingly original.

I started in on Season 2, but didn't really latch on to some of the new characters, so I abandoned it, and just skipped ahead to the series finale -- which was satisfying even though I wasn't clued in on a great deal of the plot elements from earlier episodes (but I must admit, I have skimmed some of the episode guide on Wikipedia -- I had to look up who in the world "Diana" was!).

Anyway, I'm interested in going back and watching some of the episodes between Season 2 and the finale, but am not necessarily interested in going in chronological order. And I was wondering if anybody had any opinion on which were the best seasons of the series. Anyone?

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[deleted]

You've already watched the best season (season 1). It's still entertaining after that, but much soapier. Fox told them to lighten up a bit after low-rated season 1, so it became a different show. The thing I didn't like was that the siblings had much less interaction after season 1; they each had their own subplots, and I think that approach hurt the show.

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I've caught myself up a bit since my OP, and I agree - there were certainly some soap opera storylines.

I liked how they kept bringing back guest stars. Like, the violin teacher, Ross, seemed to sporatically show up now and then - it was nice to see him, but I agree with the writers' choice to keep him as a minor character.

Although I'm still undecided whether I think Scott Wolf is a good actor or not, I liked how the alcoholism story arc pretty much spanned the whole season - the gradual build up was well done. Similarly, the slower build up of Kristen's depression and Julia's domestic violence over several episodes made the stories better than had they been given just a couple of episodes to resolve themselves.

I found the custody of Baby Diana a bit confusing.

Charlie's mullet circa Season 2 was awful.

At the end of the series the timeline for Julia's decision to move to Washington D.C. Was ridiculously fast. Justin was able to transfer from Yale to Georgetown in less than a week? They found an apartment in the same amount of time? And Justin told Bailey that Julia already called the org she was to intern at to back out of the job, but then afterward apparently it was really easy for her to get the internship back? Anyway, there were a lot of nonsense elements throughout the series, but this one just came to the forefront of my mind.

I think my favorite Salinger was Claudia. Watching her transformation over the years was pretty amazing. I think Lacey Chabert was really talented as a child actor...I wasn't as impressed in later seasons.

Before I watched Party of Five I always would mistake Jennifer Love Hewitt for Lacey Chabert and vice versa. I thought their characters must have been sisters. I still have pretty much the same opinion. What's worse is that JLH looked like a 12 year old playing opposite Scott Wolf (who looked quite a bit older than his character's age).

The professional wrestling story when Bailey and Will chauffer one of the wrestlers - wins as the most out-of-left-field storyline of the series.




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[deleted]

1-2 I think.

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For me, seasons 1-3 were amazing. Then it kind of falls apart starting with season 4.

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