March 19th, 2007
12. Buck Rogers In The 25th Century
It's hard to fathom now, but 1979's Buck Rogers was to Buster Crabbe's serials what today's Battlestar Galactica is to the clunky original. For tykes at the time, even meatheaded Gil Gerard (a.k.a. Lee Majors Lite) seemed kinda cool. But the show pales before its spine-tingling opening sequence. After a few staccato stabs of brass, narrator William Conrad brings his hefty baritone to bear on these portentous words: "The year is 1987, and NASA launches the last of America's deep-space probes." (The far future of 1987, just imagine!) Over some cool split-screen shots, ostensibly made to look like a spaceship control panel, the score's ominous orchestral swells give way to burping synthesizers before erupting into zero-G, vaguely disco-flavored triumph. The setup is undeniable: Astronaut Rogers and his shuttle are thrown from their flight trajectory by one of those handy "freak mishaps" (maybe loose foam?) and into suspended animation. Five hundred years later, he returns to Earth and proceeds to kick ass, bed aliens, and bring feathered hair to the fashion-starved future. The shots of ol' Buck Van Winkle falling through stratum after stratum of space-time is damn near metaphysical. Not even South Park's admittedly hilarious parody of the sequence is enough to put a dent in its corny, giddy glory.
13. Mannix
Cases could be made for The Wild Wild West and Mission: Impossible, but the snazziest action-show credits sequence of the '60s arguably belonged to Mannix, which used split screens and off-angle action shots to assert a sense of dynamism, matched by the brassy Lalo Schifrin score. These credits set the standard for cop shows to come, launching the genre headlong into the modernist era.
14. Police Woman ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLax5kn8tF4 )
Like a lot of '70s cop shows, Police Woman teased the episode we were about to watch before bringing on the theme song, but better than most—it always ended the tease on a tense scene and a seamless segue into music. Then comes the requisite rapid-fire, faintly ridiculous shots of Angie Dickinson and Earl Holliman in action, capped with the introduction of "Royster and Styles," two characters whose goofy clothes and exaggerated machismo received a good mocking at the hands of the Beastie Boys in their "Sabotage" video, two decades later.
15. Charlie's Angels
Speaking of "Sabotage," decades before the Beasties made fun of cop-show credits, Charlie's Angels essentially did the same, with an intentionally silly "origin story" that played up the series' juvenile nature via fairy tale narration and copious clips of scantily clad, feather-haired actresses doing impossibly awesome things. Just a few years after The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the '70s "liberated woman" was firing guns and striking fashion-model poses. They'd come a long way… and were apparently on their way back.
16. Police Squad!
More cop-show parody, raised to the level of absurdity. Gunfights in police stations! Guest stars killed off in the credits! Incorrect episode titles! And, of course, Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln! Either sublimely funny or supremely stupid, depending on your point of view, the Police Squad! credits certainly can't be accused of misrepresenting the tone of the show, even when its facts are way off.
17. Hill Street Blues
Few opening-credits sequences can make a fan's heart ache, but Hill Street Blues—like Taxi, below—does just that, from the plaintive first notes of Mike Post's melancholy jazz theme to the flat, grainy shots of police cars rolling out of a garage onto grubby, rain-slicked streets. The show's large cast is introduced in a series of smiling still shots, emphasizing a sense of camaraderie that we don't see much of later. When the show actually starts, these characters all get set loose to fend for themselves in a perpetually overcast, often-indifferent metropolis.
18. Taxi
Along with Barney Miller—and, oddly enough, Night Court—Taxi set the standard for downbeat, jazzy sitcoms in urban settings. In Taxi's case, the Bob James theme song, so pretty and forlorn, plays over an endless shot of a cab crossing a bridge and never getting anywhere. It absolutely summarizes the theme of a show about people intending to head someplace—into the art world, or onto Broadway—but in no particular hurry to arrive.
(Clip note: In the absence of the original, this Grand Theft Auto-generated copy will have to do, even though it's from the wrong angle.)
19. The X-Files
The whistling theme song is spooky enough—sort of The Andy Griffith Show turned on its ear—but the images of UFOs, unnatural phenomena, and shadowy men in stairwells makes the uncanny look almost epic. Now add the flashes of newspaper headlines, indicating that what we're about to see is grounded in a history that's been hidden from us. The credits promise to let us in on a big secret, as indicated by the final words that appear on the opening of most—though not all—X-Files episodes: "The Truth Is Out There."
20. The 4400
The 4400's actual opening credits don't tell the series' backstory, which involves 4,400 people stolen from the past and dumped in modern-day Seattle. The producers do that via a quick introduction that gets the practical information out of the way. Then the actual credits come in with a dreamy theme—Amanda Abizaid's "A Place In Time"—and a series of quiet, arty images meant to evoke that post-Rapture sense of people yanked abruptly from their daily tasks. A plate of uneaten food, a lit cigarette burning down, an empty bathtub starting to overflow, a book left unread on a park bench—they all speak to people yanked bodily from their lives with no warning. It's like a sad little mini-movie, and Abizaid's melancholy, whispery vocals make the images seem even lonelier. By the time the credits are over, the sight of living human beings on the screen seems warm and comforting by comparison, no matter what they're up to.
21. Cowboy Bebop
Yoko Kanno's virtuoso composing talent, which spans countries, genres, and eras, is a large part of what made the anime series Cowboy Bebop such a mega-hit; the episodes are titled after musical genres, which generally tie into the plot and the mood, and Kanno's music is often key to their pacing and mood. She gets things off to a rousing start in the opening credits with the screaming jazz piece "Tank." Meanwhile director Shinichiro Watanabe, following his usual mash-up muse, sends characters, locations, and cut-up images zipping past in an arty, dynamic collage inspired equally by James Bond films and classic cop shows.
22. The Simpsons
The Simpsons' opening theme is such a beloved international pop-culture staple that even a straight-faced live-action replication of it recently became an Internet sensation. Driven by Danny Elfman's infectious theme—a ditty that owes a suspicious, if not lawsuit-worthy, debt to Andre Previn's score for One Two Three—The Simpsons' opening sequence finds each of the family members in a trademark pose. Lisa's blowing a crazy be-bop saxamaphone solo, Bart's in trouble, Homer's racing away from work, and Marge is ensnared in domestic duties with Maggie in tow. Like all great opening sequences, The Simpsons' grooves on ritual and repetition, but throws in a pair of curveballs in two constantly changing running gags: the couch gag, which is usually funny and inventive, and Bart's opening chalkboard gag, which usually is not. Considering how conducive The Simpsons has been to insane over-the-top fandom, it's only fitting that it'd feature a credits sequence that holds up to thousands of viewings.
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