Whatever happened to predictability? (10)
Remember the opening line to the Full House theme? It asks, “Whatever happened to predictability?” It’s a good question! We could ordinarily anticipate a theme song to open a half-hour sitcom. For more than 60 years, that was the norm, and people knew the words! Now, a good sitcom theme song is a rarity. (Thank you for pointing that out, MT!)
The music that accompanies the opening credits of a show not only gives you the cast, writers, and producers but it can also function for another purpose. A song with lyrics can often supply the backdrop of the show you are about to watch.
For example, The Brady Bunch clearly tells you, “Here’s the story of a lovely lady….” The Gilligan’s Island theme song invites you to “Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…” The Beverly Hillbillies singer encourages you to “Listen to my story about a man named Jed…” My Mother the Car, which may be too antiquated for most of The Aspiring Critic readers, tells you in its opening, “Well, you all may think my story is more fiction than it’s fact. But believe it or not my mother dear decided she’d come back.” There’s isn’t a chance on earth you would understand this show without that explanation!
Similarly, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air opens with “Now, this is a story all about how
my life got flipped-turned upside down…” The extremely clever lyrics to The Nanny — “She was working in a bridal shop in Flushing Queens when her boyfriend threw her out in one of those crushing scenes…” (come on, that’s gold! )– gives you all you need to know to watch. Then there’s Mr. Ed, of course, where “A horse is a horse, of course, of course and no one can talk to a horse, of course. That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed.” After hearing the opening song, you clearly know what you are getting yourself into.
Sometimes, however, the opening theme is simply a song. There’s not a Cheers fan in the world who doesn’t know “Where everybody knows your name.” Who doesn’t have all the words memorized to Friends’ “I’ll be there for you”? “Everywhere you look” is Full House, and Mad About You wonders, “Tell me why, I love you like I do.” “The Golden Girls” on a weekly basis would “Thank you for being a friend.” And Mary Tyler Moore answered the question, “How will you make it on your own?” In fact, the lyrics changed in later seasons from “You might just make it …” to “You’re gonna make it!” The Jeffersons theme certainly gave you insight that this family was “Movin’ on up to the East Side” without a full background story. In many cases, you might not get a thorough explanation of the show’s premise but you do get a catchy melody with frequently unforgettable words.
Other shows reutilize pop songs. Wonder Years used (and uses) Joe Cocker’s “With A Little Help From My Friends” while Bosom Buddies used Billy Joel’s “My Life.” Some started with the familiar and moved on, such as Grace Under Fire which incorporated “Lady Madonna” by Aretha Franklin then switched to “Perfect World” while Happy Days used Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” and then transitioned to “Happy Days,” its own theme song. One wonders for both shows — was that a change worth making….?
Here’s an interesting factoid: The opening theme music can have unsung lyrics. (Is that like “If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? If a song has words and no one sings them, are there really lyrics?”) Did you know that I Love Lucy has lyrics? “I love Lucy and she loves me, We’re as happy as two can be.” So does the theme from That Girl –“Diamonds, daisies, snowflakes, that girl.” “Suicide is Painless” is the name of the opening theme song to M*A*S*H, and the words are “Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes” — not a fan of that rhyme! The theme could have complicated lyrics, for example “Our whole universe was in a hot dense state, Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait…The Earth began to cool, The autotrophs began to drool, Neanderthals developed tools…” You have to appreciate a song that features words like autotrophs and Neanderthals. FYI — that’s Nine Inch Nails bringing The Big Bang Theory opening.
The polar opposite of this would clearly be Two and A Half Men, where producers didn’t bother with lyrics, and went with the much more basic “Men, men, men, men, men, men, men manly men.” And lots of oohs!
Many showrunners simply select a class of music that is distinctive and often memorable. Everyone recognizes the signature synthesized sounds of Seinfeld (say that three times fast!) or the brass and drums when rewatching Modern Family. Even if you are not a Curb Your Enthusiasm fan, you’d probably recognize the circus-like tuba sounds. “Taxi” has the lovely melody known Angela’s Theme — which happens to be The Aspiring Critic’s ringtone.
Animated shows were also on board with the opening theme song that prove the point. A cartoon is still a sitcom — and the toy piano notes of Rugrats are as familiar as the music above. Several introduce the characters — there’s “Meet George Jetson” and “Flintstones, meet the Flintstones.” Family Guy takes a broader view — “It seems today that all you see is violence in movies and sex on TV” but still tells you about our Family Guy.
There are so many theme songs that stick in one’s mind. “What would we do, baby, without us” from Family Ties; “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and then you have…” The Facts of Life. “Show me that smile” from Growing Pains.
But all of these are from many decades ago. Is there a theme song in the past five years that everyone is humming?
Probably one of the most acclaimed sitcoms of all times also had one of the more interesting and talked about opening theme songs. All in the Family was well known for great acting, and writing, and tackling very difficult subjects that had never been part of prime time. But it was its opening song that had viewers and listeners puzzled for years. The penultimate line had us all asking, Did they say, “Gee, I roll a salad great”? Was it “Gia, row a salad crate”? Or “Gee our old grow sour red grapes?” Or “Geena Rolla Serit Grate” — whatever that means?
There were a lot of memorable and wonderful opening theme songs to sitcoms. Not so much anymore. As they said in All in the Family, “Those were the days.”
