Rinaldo

I urge us all to resist the use of "outro" -- I know it's in use, and therefore I can't take issue with anyone using it here, but it offends me both as a musician and a teacher of writing. It's a false formation: if "intro" is short for "introduction," is outro short for "outroduction"? Just "end-title music" should do fine. "Postlude" would be accurate usage but nobody uses it for TV. I rather like "playout," but I may be unique there. Even in times when shows had such end music, it often went unheard because the network would cut out the audio so they could make their own special announcements. This was especially true when a show was the last one in prime time for the evening -- the network had to tease you for the 11:00 news. Sometimes I never heard this music until the show went into syndication or home video. A prime example was the end-title music for Remington Steele. It was an arrangement of Henry Mancini's "Theme for Laura" (whether by him or by series composer Richard Lewis Warren), which underscored the main titles of Season 1 of the series (I can't find it in that form online) and often was used within an episode. Here is how it was played over the end credits. This is the YouTube poster's own synthesized approximation/extension of the orchestral original, but it's remarkably faithful.

Fair point.

I suddenly had a recovered memory of 1982, and a really-dopey, kinda-endearing series with a credit sequence to match. I give you Whiz Kids: So much I love about this: the Mozartean paraphrase, the leisurely character introductions (girls are for ballet -- hey, at least the drummer's not the black kid...), the head slowly rising into view, the video arcade (Tempest!), the inability to fake cello playing for even 1.5 seconds, the happy glance back at one's roomful of computers (which would now probably all fit on a microchip)... I'm grinning as I type.

Actually the background score for The Graduate is by Dave Grusin. Not to slight the immortal Simon & Garfunkel songs we all remember, and which summon up memories of the movie instantly, but I'd like Grusin to have his recognition too. Someone who was good at writing the right song for a movie, and at working it into his underscoring, was Fred Karlin, who did this very well for a couple of early-70s movies I liked when they were new: The Sterile Cuckoo ("Come Saturday Morning") and Lovers and Other Strangers ("For All We Know").

Presumably if you've led the life of a supermodel with decades of self-starvation behind you, huge satisfying breakfasts haunt your dreams. This is the third time Donald Faison has been on. He hasn't been picked for final round any of those 3 times. (The wiki episode page is handy for this.) It's true that in all 3 cases choosing him would have involved team-jumping; but sticking with the contestant's own team (Chris Colfer, Joel Madden, Sarah Chalke) didn't result in the big prize any of those times, so that didn't work out so well. Better to pick the best person regardless (Zachary Levi, anyone?). In fact, of the 20 episodes shown so far, the $25,000 has been won just 10 times -- exactly half. J.D. should've been an 11th, and it's not his fault he wasn't. (The helpful celebs for those 10 wins were Yvette Nicole Brown twice, Anthony Anderson, Aubrey Plaza, David Giuntoli, Rachel Bilson, Valerie Bertinelli, Thomas Lennon, Nate Berkus, and Mr. Levi. The lowest total, if anyone wants to know who not to pick, was Cobie Smulders with $4000.)

I think you may be right, and there've been some bad ones. J.D. may be the most finely tuned contestant they've had (though... it's a shame about biffing Katie Holmes, which could've pulled him through despite everything). But Sarah Chalke combined the final-round faults of Minnie Driver ("this is my favorite actor -- what, that isn't enough?") and Al Roker ("Um, um..."). She really does need to write him a check out of her own money.

The TCM site says that Wilde's singing was dubbed by Tom Clark in this movie. When I think of Phil Silvers on film, my immediate reaction is to recall how I love him in Cover Girl. He's just so much fun hoofing alongside Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth.

This is such a great hour of television. Many series have done a Rashomon episode (Fame and thirtysomething come to mind, but there are plenty more), but I bet none have been as intricately layered as this. The first time I saw it (during its initial airing) my eyes kept getting wider and my grin bigger. After a while I was able to anticipate what might happen next, but they still surpassed my expectations. Gina Bellman deserves a special medal for her adaptability with accents.

DVD may not have had years of classes as MTM had, but he had experience. On Broadway, after a short-lived revue, he had starred in Bye Bye Birdie, in a role (Albert) with definite dance responsibilities.

Awww. Argh. It was looking more and more likely, but one always hopes. Maybe that "shop it around to other networks" idea will work out this time (though it seldom does...). And they better show those remaining four episodes!

@MaryMitch, I'd been thinking of It's a Living too! Same music guy who had done Soap and Benson, but this song is way zippier, as if it were a 1960s show tune a la "Mame". When I think it back to myself, I always have to start with Crash!, for that initial cymbal hit. And I really milk that group slide near the end, on "Iiiiii --- t's aaaaa living!"

Donald Faison was very good when he was on before, and Andy Roddick was surprisingly fun. I hope he gets to do How Do You Doo? again.

One title sequence from 1980 that seemed excessively long to me even at the time was Bosom Buddies. We get the long spoken explanation from Hanks and Scolari as to how they happen to find themselves dressing as women and living in a female-only residence (even though they rarely appeared in drag during season 2), and then what seems like a full minute of montage of the two guys around the city: shopping, playing, catching some rays, scored to "My Life." I like the song, but I never understood why that second half was there -- unless it was to reassure us by all that regular-guy activity that they're really straight (in which case, there are probably better choices than having them stretch out side by side in bathing suits). @Kromm, YouTube has at least one whole episode of Open All Night if you're curious. I was fond of it because it was so different from other half-hour shows, but I wouldn't call it wildly entertaining (particularly because I thought Susan Tyrrell was miscast, with no lightness of touch). It showed us a regular guy whose life hadn't quite taken off as he might have hoped, dealing with his family and living behind (or was it above?) his store, and just day-to-day life, not great but not awful. It was a precursor of Roseanne in that way perhaps. The stepson played by Sam Whipple was the first example I remember seeing on TV of whatever you call the male equivalent of a Valley Girl, with the spacey surfer-ish speech patterns.

We don't have many 30-second ones left at all, do we? Community, Parks and Rec, and Brooklyn 9-9 all do short credit sequences with names (and in the latter two, faces) of all the regulars, and I love them for it but does seem like a throwback to another time. (Which is no doubt what they wanted.)

My impression of what happened with Wings is that they didn't so much rewrite the opening theme as drop it -- as many series were doing in those years, when the permissible number of minutes for commercials each hour was increased yet again -- in favor of a quick sting to give just the title, and then actor credits superimposed over that week's opening scene. It's a way to recoup a little more time for the story when time keeps getting taken away.

One that I still remember with a smile is a short-lived sitcom from 1981, Open All Night. As "here's the premise" credit sequences go, this one gets the job done in a catchy succinct way.

I like the Cowboys, but they made some mistakes that might have put them last in any case, like wandering around the "maze" when nobody else did and having to go back for "A Matador." And is it possible that if they hadn't missed their highway exit they might have made the first plane? Though I was annoyed with the Afghanimals for U-Turning them, merely because I like watching them, I actually can't fault their logic. Jet & Cord are strong competition. Disliking Rachel already as I do, I settled happily into hating her further when she invoked Special Girl Privileges against the bulls.* (*Do I really need to clarify? Of course I'm not in favor of physical abuse of women. But in a specific pastime like this, with sufficient protection as part of the deal, she can take her lumps like everyone else.)

I have seen Martin Short make plenty of unbearable appearances, enough that I would find it impossible to declare a "worst." But this is right in there with the most unendurable of them. "Ready, Aim, Marry Me" is really the only Arrested Development episode I dislike -- I always skip it when I watch the DVDs. Otherwise, I like them all pretty nearly equally. (I haven't yet seen Season 4.) "Pier Pressure" may marginally rank at the top for me, and the Little Britain sequence marginally below par, but it's a small difference and I enjoy them all (minus that one exception) when I watch them. I never experienced a slump in the series and I don't find one season markedly superior to another.

I feel the same way, Sonoma. Everybody is so image-managed and protected now, I can't imagine anybody on TV just getting in there and having a good time competing -- not worrying if their hair wasn't just right or their speedo was too revealing. A favorite moment, in retrospect, was when Michael Warren of Hill Street Blues won the obstacle course, and his first words as Howard Cosell came up to congratulate him were "Is my hair on straight, Howard?" This was about a decade before he went public that he'd been wearing a hairpiece throughout the run of the show and afterward, and had been pretty much bald at 35. (In fact, at the time i mentioned the oddity of this to my father, who was sure it was just a dig at Cosell's own bad toupee. Maybe that's what most viewers assumed.) I guess this is another example of what I said in my first paragraph, with no manager swooping in to insist this be edited out.

Well, that's better than the other thing she might be doing....

Gary continuing his whisper-prompts to the point of explaining what a baby is was one of the funniest things I've seen in a while.

(It's true, I ruin everything....)

Actually, Charlie Baker, he did have a lot of dancing in Juno (I was at Encores! too -- remember that angsty ballet for the young guy in Act II?), which was his return to Broadway after nearly a decade's absence -- I simplified in order to keep my post relatively short. But after that, his singing became as important or more so. As to the operas, I'd love to find a live taping of one of them, to discover if he could really sustain those very demanding roles, or if Sarah Caldwell (whose Boston company was where he did most or all of them) liked his looks and acting skills and maybe publicity value (though... did he have enough of a following to actually bring people into the theater?) and was willing to put up with however he could sing them. I'm sure he worked hard and seriously on his classical singing though, because his career shows that he was/is a conscientious sort of person. I wonder if there's any way to get a suggestion about him to TCM, while he's still alive to perhaps participate (he's 86 now).

I don't mean to spoil anyone else's fun, so I'll whisper this and then shut up (as far as this thread goes): I don't really think these are references as much as coincidences, or devices that a lot of different stories would need to use, with no further justification needed. I mean, if anyone would need a signal with an assistant to get her out of unwanted conversations, it would be an elected official at a reception. OK, I'll move on. :)

Laura Benanti has really become a skillful actress, convincing in both light comedy and this sort of ominous drama. Plus, she's kept her beautiful soprano voice in good shape, as I saw in NYC just a few weeks ago: And then when she's just being herself, as in the following offhand summing up of this season's Broadway musicals, she's an engaging self-deprecating goofball.