Was Hang Time a better show before Peter Engel was the showrunner beginning in the second season?

To give you a better idea:

https://sites.psu.edu/mobilesafarimoonsafari/2016/04/05/hang-time-season-one-as-cannon/

By the time that Peter Engel got his hands on it its second season, Hang Time was no longer the smiling, heartfelt teen sitcom it was in its first series. In fact, I had rarely seen any episodes beyond the first season. I had seen most of the episodes of the first season working at my father’s video store in the fall of 1995.

The premise behind “Hang Time” was pretty simple: A female basketball playing character joined a high school boys team as there was no girls team in the small school district, due to Title IX or a Supreme Court decision or something. The logic of producing the programme was to have another Saved By The Bell hit on NBC’s hands for their “TNBC” teen-themed Saturday morning programme line-up. To make sure that this would have success, however, was to have Saved By The Bell’s producer, Peter Engel, take over from the second season onward.

The first series’ theme song painted the feeling of the show as though it were The O.C. The subplot story arc was of the male protagonist, Chris Atwater, to develop a romantic relationship with female protagonist, Julie Connor, In the first season, this happened, although it took up to episode 10 of 13 for it to reach its apex. Episode plots were what you’d expect: The novelty of having a girl on an all boys team, a new direction for play, passing a history test to qualify academically as a player. But what I enjoy most about watching episodes of the first season on YouTube is that the first season of this show is like taking a time machine back to the 1990s.

https://web.archive.org/web/20011210115947/http://members.aol.com/IJBall3/WWW/HT/Home.html

There were 13 episodes in Hang Time's first season. Hang Time was renewed for a second season, which began on September 7, 1996; there were also 13 episodes in season #2. Again, the show then ran for a total of six seasons, ending in the 2000-2001 TV season.

For reasons not enitrely clear to me, Mark Fink was out as Producer of "Hang Time" for season #2; "Saved by the Bell" and "California Dreams" Producer Peter Engel took over. Many changes were made to the show to the show in season #2, some of them displeasing to fans of season #1.

In fact, I decided to abandon doing the (full) Hang Time Episode Guide, after season #2 finished airing. My reasons for doing this are partly explained in a review of the season #2 premiere of HT that I wrote and posted to alt.tv.saved-bell (and which is just as relevant to the other episodes in season #2, as it was to the premiere). Personally, I couldn't stand to see HT degenerate into another "Saved by the Bell: The New Class", with a cast change, and declining comedic value, every season. Basically, with the end of the run of "California Dreams", I'm just got too old to continue watching T-NBC (especially with the remaining shows yielding only marginal entertainment value).

https://web.archive.org/web/20011210234419/http://members.aol.com/IJBall3/WWW/HT/review.html