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Day 18 - Favorite title sequence
Jul. 9th, 2010 07:24 pmThis is another topic where I say, "One? Really?"
Let me start off by saying, I hate the modern short or non-existent title sequences. It's bad enough that we've lost six minutes off our hour long shows since the late 1960s, the fact that the title sequence has been lost is sad. There's a visceral thrill to hearing The West Wing's theme or seeing the list of pseudo-sciences on Fringe. I'm glad Criminal Minds still has full titles -- or at least did through the first five seasons. Heaven knows what they're going to give us next year. I'd also like to add to my honorable mentions Bewitched, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and George of the Jungle for unfailingly priming me to laugh.
5. Beauty and the Beast
This one is almost too long, but it establishes the premise and primes the audience for the stories to follow. While to a certain extent all television shows take us to a fantasy world, most of them are heightened realities. The sequences this show used (it changed for season 3) had to establish a fantasy world. They're slow, soft-focused, and centered on the journey between Catherine's world "where the wealthy and the powerful rule" and the Underworld, Vincent's "secret place, far below the city streets."
4. Numb3rs
"We all use math, everyday..." For the first season or two, my heart quickened when I heard those words. It was so nice to see a Jewish family. It was so nice to see smart people who don't have to apologize for it. It was so nice to see math.
3. Eureka (first season)
Another show that ended up with a truncated credits sequence after the first season, Eureka's whistling theme and focus on the sheriff evoked Mayberry, and then deliberately subverted it. The dogs are being walked by a robot; the grass is being cut with lasers. And the car at the service station is a flying Citroen DS.
2. It Takes a Thief (second season)
I'm mad that this isn't still available on Hulu. The music for the first season's credits isn't as good and the sequence itself isn't quite as sixties mod with the multiple frames and quick cutting. The third season had a different "call line" at the end of the sequence -- Wagner saying, "Let me get this straight: you want me to steal?"
In the second season, the music and images were perfect -- a slightly darker tune, but a brighter backbeat than I, Spy had -- and the call line was spoken by Malachi Throne, one of the great speaking voices of all time, "Al, we're not asking you to lie. We're just asking you to steal."
1. I, Spy
The insouciant travelogue music has a dark undercurrent with a running bass guitar providing urgency. The visuals are rotoscoped (I assume) versions of Robert Culp playing tennis (the ball bouncing is a pizzicato violin) leading into him crouched with a gun. Then there's a sequence which in the first two seasons showed a little bit about what would happen in that night's episode. That was after Culp lit his cigarette and threw a bomb at the audience. There's something both funny and frightening about the sequence. The music's great, nearly up to the standards of Mission Impossible (I loved learning to play that as a kid.). And the sequence sets up the dichotomy of Kelly Robinson's and Alexander Scott's lives as, openly, a tennis pro and his trainer and, covertly, secret agents.
Let me start off by saying, I hate the modern short or non-existent title sequences. It's bad enough that we've lost six minutes off our hour long shows since the late 1960s, the fact that the title sequence has been lost is sad. There's a visceral thrill to hearing The West Wing's theme or seeing the list of pseudo-sciences on Fringe. I'm glad Criminal Minds still has full titles -- or at least did through the first five seasons. Heaven knows what they're going to give us next year. I'd also like to add to my honorable mentions Bewitched, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and George of the Jungle for unfailingly priming me to laugh.
5. Beauty and the Beast
This one is almost too long, but it establishes the premise and primes the audience for the stories to follow. While to a certain extent all television shows take us to a fantasy world, most of them are heightened realities. The sequences this show used (it changed for season 3) had to establish a fantasy world. They're slow, soft-focused, and centered on the journey between Catherine's world "where the wealthy and the powerful rule" and the Underworld, Vincent's "secret place, far below the city streets."
4. Numb3rs
"We all use math, everyday..." For the first season or two, my heart quickened when I heard those words. It was so nice to see a Jewish family. It was so nice to see smart people who don't have to apologize for it. It was so nice to see math.
3. Eureka (first season)
Another show that ended up with a truncated credits sequence after the first season, Eureka's whistling theme and focus on the sheriff evoked Mayberry, and then deliberately subverted it. The dogs are being walked by a robot; the grass is being cut with lasers. And the car at the service station is a flying Citroen DS.
2. It Takes a Thief (second season)
I'm mad that this isn't still available on Hulu. The music for the first season's credits isn't as good and the sequence itself isn't quite as sixties mod with the multiple frames and quick cutting. The third season had a different "call line" at the end of the sequence -- Wagner saying, "Let me get this straight: you want me to steal?"
In the second season, the music and images were perfect -- a slightly darker tune, but a brighter backbeat than I, Spy had -- and the call line was spoken by Malachi Throne, one of the great speaking voices of all time, "Al, we're not asking you to lie. We're just asking you to steal."
1. I, Spy
The insouciant travelogue music has a dark undercurrent with a running bass guitar providing urgency. The visuals are rotoscoped (I assume) versions of Robert Culp playing tennis (the ball bouncing is a pizzicato violin) leading into him crouched with a gun. Then there's a sequence which in the first two seasons showed a little bit about what would happen in that night's episode. That was after Culp lit his cigarette and threw a bomb at the audience. There's something both funny and frightening about the sequence. The music's great, nearly up to the standards of Mission Impossible (I loved learning to play that as a kid.). And the sequence sets up the dichotomy of Kelly Robinson's and Alexander Scott's lives as, openly, a tennis pro and his trainer and, covertly, secret agents.
