The Lost Art of the Sitcom Opening

On September 18th, popular X-denizen and good friend to your humble essayist, Kurt Schlichter reposted a link to the opening credit sequence of “WKRP In Cincinatti” on the 46th anniversary of its network premeire.

I probably watched that sequence ten or fifteen times in a row that afternoon and the sense of nostalgia was nearly overwhelming. The experience got me thinking about other sitcom intros from the period and how they were something of an art form in their own right.

While the half-hour multi-cam shows of the 70’s and early 80’s may have been laugh-out-loud comedies, the opening sequences which initially pulled us in gave off a very different vibe. I’ve written in other essays about how popular entertainment offerings are never about things (McGuffins), but rather they are about characters and emotional journeys. In the same way, TV sitcoms are never really about jokes, but the triumphs and failures of the characters within them.

It’s interesting to look back at some of these openers to see how they drew us in and set a tone for their shows, a tone which was often at odds with what followed in the actual episodes. The opening of WKRP introduced us to Cincinatti via stock images of the city, in the same way that the fictional radio station WKRP might have done for its radio listeners… “Give us two minutes and we’ll give you Cincinatti”, to bastardize a famous news motto. But what’s most interesting to me is the way the music and lyrics of the theme song belie the comedic nature of the show.

Baby, if you've ever wondered
Wondered whatever became of me
I'm living on the air in Cincinnati, Cincinnati, WKRP

Got kind of tired packing and unpacking
Town to town and up and down the dial
Maybe you and me were never meant to be
But baby think of me once in awhile

Heading up that highway
Leaving you behind
Hardest thing I've ever had to do
Broke my heart in two
But Baby, pay no mind
The price for finding me was losing you

Memories help me hide my lonesome feelin'
Far away from you and feelin' low
It's gettin' late my friend, my love, I miss you so
Take good care of you, I've gotta go

The opening credit sequence of “Taxi” operates in much the same way. It is a single unedited tracking shot of a taxi driving toward camera with the “Golden Hour” Manhattan skyline in the background, and Bob James’ “Angela” running underneath.

Simple, beautiful… and a little sad.

Despite the fact that “Taxi” was a classic “joke every ten seconds” sitcom, just as with WKRP, the opening sequence is something very different. Someone unfamiliar with the show and watching it for the first time in 2024 might be shocked to discover that “Taxi” is not, in fact, a drama.

“Welcome Back Kotter” is another fine example of the “let’s visit the city” approach to sitcom introductions. When I was a kid watching Kotter, Taxi and WKRP in their first runs, I had never visited Cincinatti, Manhattan or Brooklyn and I remember being fascinated by what I saw in those opening atmospheric shots of these host cities. The trains covered in graffitti seemed like something from another planet to a kid in suburban Virgina. And every week I watched for the girl in her bright blue “Ty Cobbs Cheerleaders” satin jacket, wondering what those words might mean, and with no Google available to quickly give me the answer.

Life delivered more mystery back in those days.

Alongside M*A*S*H which, it should be noted, features a theme song about suicide, the opening sequence of “Cheers” is probably the most recognized series opener of all time and takes a similar approach. The series’ primary location, a Boston bar, is as much a character as Sam, Diane, Norm or Cliff but the scenes in the opening are not of contemporaneous Boston or even of the titular bar, but rather colorized photographs from bars long dead, men and women of the distant past frozen in time, drinking and carousing together in a way that is meant to remind us of the characters in the show.

But always underneath these broadly comedic shows of the 70’s ran that intruiging undercurrent of melancholy. The juxtaposition is striking. Perhaps it was a sign of the times.

The sitcoms of the period, like its movies, reflected an America in which the buzzword of the day was “struggle.” Widowed Alice Hyatt scratching out a meager living slinging slop at Mel’s diner, coming home every night to a disaffected teen. Hopeless kids with marginal futures trying to learn something useful from their prodigal son teacher at an inner city high school before they got somebody pregnant or wound up in jail. Ann Romano struggling to raise two daughters as a single mom in the big city. The Keatons, idealistic hippies, trying to raise their kids responsibly at the dawn of an era that would spawn Gordon Gekko and “greed is good.” Rootless radio station employees grown accustomed to the sad reality of jumping from city-to-city chasing the dream of that next big radio job. Cab drivers living fare-to-fare in a city that doesn’t much care about what happens to them. A Vietnam war allegory about doctors struggling to retain their sanity amid the horrors of a conflict they didn’t ask to fight. And Sam the ex-baseball player dealing with the premature end of his big league dreams as he settles for running a basement bar filled with lovable miscreants.

Fundamentally, these were poignant stories. Stories about people struggling to get by in the era of “malaise.” The writing and the performances were broadly comedic and many featured a laugh track, but underneath the hood, the stories often matched the melancholy sound and lyrics of their theme songs.

(Above: Danny DeVito widens the gap between the tone of “Taxi” and its opening theme)

Opening credit sequences are a lost art these days. “Lost” because the ritual of collective TV watching is a thing of the past with no real place here in the streaming era. And yes, once upon a time, Network TV watching was a ritual. Like a formal State dinner with seventeen different kinds of spoons and a new glass for each course, Network TV viewing came with a set of rules and an irresistable order. All over America families gathered around the TV set at the appointed time, tuned our sets to the proper channel and waited for the opening notes of the songs we all knew by heart, excited to spend half another hour with characters we’d come to think of as friends.

There was something gratifying too about the idea that all across the country millions of our fellow Americans were doing the same exact thing at the same exact moment. If you are of a certain age, you probably have a memory of getting up during a commercial break on a warm night, maybe to let the dog out, and hearing the sound of the same commercial you were just watching coming from your neighbor’s open window. There was something special about that sense of shared culture, all of us participating at the same time, no matter where or who we were… city mouse and country mouse… doctors, lawyers, electricians and plumbers. There was an irresistable allure to being a part of something magical that would only happen once and then never again.

Streaming TV viewing, by contrast, is a solitary act with no real sense of time or place and where nobody knows your name. By the time a popular 70’s show entered syndication, a committed fan would have watched the series opener one hundred times or more. But memorable credit sequences are more rare now, a function of their incompatibility with the churn-and-burn binge-viewing nature of the streaming model. Easier to just click the “skip” button, or “next episode”, and get on with it.

Instant gratification saves time, certainly, but in the process something is lost that perhaps should not have been. There is value in waiting. Part of what makes Christmas so special is the month long run-up that precedes it. There is also something captivating and mysterious about the idea of being treated to a show. To the knowledge that we can’t speed things up at a whim. That we can’t just skip to the good stuff. It is satisfying in a way that the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am rhythm of streaming will never be able to deliver. And it’s hard not to wonder if the old ways of network TV might not have been good for us in some critical way we can no longer recall.

Sit down, relax… be still. Someone else is in charge for the next 26 minutes and you can’t skip ahead. You are not in control. If the episode ends in a cliffhanger, you’re going to have to wait a week to find out what happens. And that’s OK.

Everything moves faster now. And while it may be an article of faith at Wharton Business School that the customer is always right, there is no immutable law that says the customer will always be happier, or even better off, once they get it.

“Sometimes you wanna go… where everybody knows your name… and they’re always glad you came…”