My all-time favorite opening sequence for a TV show is Hawaii Five-O. I’ll be willing to bet that just the mention of this show gets you humming its theme song in your head. It was infectious. And then you add the killer video sequence — the tidal wave, the fast-zoom into McGarrett, the girl on the beach — it was genius. I remember being mesmerized by it every week as I sat down with a bowl of popcorn and 16-ounce bottle of RC Cola and watched the show with my family (back in the days when families could sit down and watch TV shows together) on our old console TV.
It seems like every show had an elaborate opening sequence when I was a kid. Remember the ABC Sunday Night Movie? Even they had a huge animated sequence with a lavishly orchestrated theme song that introduced the movie of the week.
It got me wondering…. Why don’t we see elaborate opening sequences like this anymore? Because they’re too costly to produce? They take too much time out of the ever-shrinking run time for most TV shows? Lack of creativity? Whatever the reason is, it’s a shame. They were great fun.
Hawaii 5-0
RC Cola
You’re dating yourself CJ
Hey! They still sell RC! Remember when they sold them in actual glass bottles? And the bottle caps actually had cork inside, and if you scraped away the cork, there was a 10 cent refund? I used demand RC cola, so I could use those bottle caps to buy comic books! Of course, this was back when comics cost 20 cents each. An two eight-pack of bottles (10-cent refunds for each bottle) and a couple of those bottle caps were enough for an orgy of comic books, Cokes and candy at the Convenient Store at top of Abington Hill at Prospect.
And we used to look for tossed away ICEE paper cups to collect the premiums to get a free ICEE.
Yep, I especially remember the 16-ounce glass bottles. Wish they still came that way. With Coke and Pepsi products, they stopped putting cash value under the bottle caps, opting instead for letters that you were supposed to collect until you spelled whatever their catchphrase was at the time. What I liked was that, within the same product group, you could mix and match bottles of soda. For instance, if you wanted to get four bottles of Pepsi and four bottles of Diet Pepsi, you could do that. Or if you wanted two Orange Crush, two Grape Crush, and four Strawberry Crush, you could do that, too. Ah, those were the days….
Soda tasted better out of glass bottles. And they reused them, which was better for the environment instead of the aluminum cans and plastic bottles we just throw away now. They never should have stopped bottling soda in glass bottles, IMO.
I vote for the Rockford Files opening. My alltime favorite. Now available on DVD.
The answer’s simple. Time. Most sitcoms are cut down to 21 minutes now including opening and closing titles. When shows like Hawaii Five-O aired (and I realize it was an hour show..just setting the time)..shows had 24 minutes. Shows have dropped the elaborate openings to give themselves a minute of extra time plus whatever they can squeeze out of the end…which is why you see more squeezeback credits now than you ever have before.
Not that many years ago, RC was far cheaper than Coke or Pepsi. That has changed as they charge the same price. And why don’t they make cherry RC anymore?