Rank the seasons

Kind of hard to rank the middle seasons, all I know is that 5 is the best and 1 the worst.

1. Season 5 (10/10)
2. Season 3 (9/10)
3. Season 4 (9/10
4. Season 2 (8.5/10)
5. Season 1 (7/10)

All of them fantastic and better than 99% of what's ever been featured on television, that being said:

-Season 3: Everything regarding Nate's development as it relates to Lisa is fantastic, most cohesive, best episodes, most thought-provking season in my opinion. All of the characters are at their most interesting, in my opinion.

-Season 2: The most consistently fantastic deaths, introduction of Sarah, finds the seamless blend of comedy and drama that I think Season 1 was lacking, ever so slightly.

-Season 5: Saved by the final episodes of course, but still uniformly fantastic nevertheless. Includes my favorite episode, A Coat of White Primer, and immediately showcases such heartbreaking dissent and turmoil for many of the relationships that we'd watched develop over the past 5 seasons.

-Season 4: Almost put this one as my least favorite, but I at this moment I prefer meandering and forgettable SFU to some of the things that we were subjected to in Season 1. While I do think that Nate's early struggles at regaining stability after Lisa are fantastic, the majority of the season feels like filler to me. Between the introduction of Joe, Claire's now tired days as an art student, Keith's new job, nearly everything with Ruth and George, and Rico's affair, all of these seem like concepts from a show that was running out of stories to tell. Certainly none of these represent the creative and emotional highpoint that the show had previously reached.

And then of course, there's David's "That's My Dog" storyline, which while I don't hate, doesn't really bring anything to the table for me. It felt like shoehorned conflict for the sake of giving MCH something interesting to do. But what really bothered me about the storyline was how long it was dragged out, to the point where David was still seeing the man in red while simultaneously grieving for Nate.

Now of course there is plenty of symbolism to be found, it and of course would later lead to David's struggles with self-acceptance, but we had seen him deal with that for the length of the series, certainly we didn't need to see that bleed into Nate's death and take away the focus from what should have been the sole storyline. There was already enough material for David to work with as a grieving brother, continuing his PTSD from the previous season just seemed distracting and unnecessary.


-Season 1: While still fantastic, does contain some episodes/characters/storylines that I dread arriving at, upon rewatch. Gabriel Dimas, the plotline involving the fire, the seemingly never-ending inclusion of Billy, etc. As a whole, while there are no shortage of classic moments in this season, it's the one that I am always the most eager to be done with, as I'm watching it. I can't help but feel as though many of the storylines and dramatic moments are only half-baked and don't reach the poignancy or depth that the show would later find.