Credit Crisis

In my never-ending attempt to conceitedly rate everything, I got to thinking: what are the best and worst TV opening credit sequences out there right now?

Worst: The L Word



The opening of this long-running Showtime series features an interpolation of The Sound of Music’s “My Favorite Things” by New York City alt-rock band Betty, an inane, nerve-grating composition accompanied by visuals that look like something a student in a night computer class at a community college made on PowerPoint in about 3 hours. It could also be one of those rage-inducing “fan clips” you always see on YouTube in which some 14-year-old shut-in from a single-parent home has set images of Star Wars characters up against his own rewritten version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” The theme song lyrics (sample: “Women who long, love, lust/Women who give” WHAT?!) are about as poetic as the nutrition facts on the side of a cereal box. Rodgers and Hammerstein are rolling over in their graves!


Best: Mad Men



As a silhouetted businessman’s office begins to collapse around him and we see him plunge from the top of a building, we suddenly realize this image has been forever emblazoned on our collective national consciousness since 9/11—the destruction of the Manhattan skyscraper—the temple of capitalism and consumerism—that capped off the 20th century, the century in which America became the most powerful financial nation on the planet. It’s no coincidence those skyscrapers are adorned with kitschy, Saul Bass-inspired, period advertisements that celebrate/mock the ultra-American values of youth and vitality. Then there’s the ominous score which sounds like a riff on Bernard Hermann’s Psycho theme. These credits, created over a year ago, incredibly and anachronistically forecasted the new, post-bailout America in which corporate greed and glamour—exactly the kind Don Draper and his cronies proudly practice in this AMC show—have led to the collapse of our financial institutions and a repositioning of our values, an America in which “CEO” has become a pejorative. If only Don could see us now!

--Ray