I forgot there was a US version of that. If you liked that, you may wanna check out the British Shameless. It ran for eleven series, but I stopped watching around the third or fourth when it started to focus on different characters.

Alright. Pitch me Shameless in one sentence or less.

You literally just described a gender swapped Arrested Development.

That's all I know, I don't watch either series

Crawling thru season 3 of Veronica Mars. It doesn't have the spark of the first two seasons, but I'm determined to finish it before watching the movie.

Yeah, the "Train Job" was not a good way to start the series. Serenity (pilot) is better, but that was, of course, the purpose. Train Job was a more rushed job, with little to invest in the characters.

Too bad the rest of the world didn't feel that way. I gave up on the show after watching The Train Job when it aired. Mind you, while I liked Buffy I didn't watch Angel, and had heard bad things about this show from the local paper's TV reviewer (he had seen a cut of an episode without effects at the network "up fronts" where ad rates are set), so the show had to prove itself. It didn't. Maybe if I watched it again, with the full knowledge that the show is good, I'd like it, but when I go back to Firefly I skip that one.

I think Train Job was my first Firefly experience and I don't even remember finishing it - it seemed impenetrable and weird, and I thought the re-use of Starship Troopers gear made it seem really cheap. It was Serenity that opened my eyes.

So yeah, some anecdotal evidence that Train Job failed as a pilot.