Hey Jeremy,
Hope all is well. Haven't talked in awhile, you good? I have been thinking about television a lot lately. A couple of months back I decided to change my TV viewing habits to reflect a more positive outlook on life. I spent so much time with Walter White and Rick Grimes that I feared I was becoming desensitized to violence, I don't know, I'm not a scientist. It just felt as if I wasn't grossed out by the violence on these shows anymore and it kind of worried me. There is already so much gross, horrible stuff going on why do I need to watch this guy's face get blown off too?
So, I ended up avoiding a lot of programs that I probably would like if I weren't cutting out the gore. I skipped Hannibal, couldn't hang with True Detective, had straight up no interest in Game of Thrones (I can't do King shit). Instead I have spent my TV time with a bunch of comedies; Broad City is great, Playing House is really fun, Review is incredible. But with as much great new TV that is out there I find myself reverting back to classics on Netflix like The Office, Cheers, Scrubs. Those shows are like a blanket. As soon as the cold open is over and the theme song rolls in it feels like a warm tea slowly coating your throat (sexual?) Especially that Cheers theme song. That has to be one of the greatest/weirdest theme songs in TV history. Most people remember the line "Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name", not everyone remembers the second verse that goes "Roll out of bed, Mr. Coffee's dead, the morning's looking bright / And your shrink ran off to Europe and didn't even write / And your husband wants to be a girl." Yay, comedy!
Most comedies had incredible theme songs, like real, actual songs with lyrics and a chorus. Unlike most dramas such as Lost, Breaking Bad, Law and Order - those shows had great themes but there is something really special about the songs that had lyrics. Like the theme for Good Times! Now, there's a theme song! To be fair, so many TV comedies from the 80s and 90s had theme songs that just literally spelled out what the show was about. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air literally starts with "This is a story..." Which now seems so cliche and lame. The show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt did a good job of kind of subverting that idea with their theme song.
I like the idea of the song setting the stage for the show. Which brings me back to trying to stay away from graphic and violent TV. I've been digging deep into Netflix to find shows that represent a good moral compass, luckily for me most of these shows are Sci-Fi related. It's a genre that is built upon reflecting our own human experience back at us in hopes of getting us to see ourselves and learn about the human condition, or something. Star Trek is such a great franchise for this exact reason. The whole series is built on the concept of a humanitarian mission. How wholesome! After I tore through the original series I bounced through The Next Generation and Voyager and am currently just starting the most current (2001-2005) installment, Enterprise. Most Star Trek fans don't looooove it. I think it's fine, I like spaceships, aliens are dope, Scott Bakula is a fucking joy.
What struck me most about the show though was the theme song. I'm sure if you Google "Star Trek: Enterprise theme song" there will be a ton of results about how weird people think it was, which it totally is. The song comes out of nowhere after the show's cold open, it felt like my Netflix had somehow switched to a weird montage in a romantic comedy and not a sci-fi show. But the more I watch it, the more I get it. It's a sweet song, and the show is really sweet. It's Scott Bakula for christ's sake! In my never-ending quest to find the good stuff in the world, the Star Trek: Enterprise theme song is a nice little gem to have in my back pocket, it feels like a blanket too. It at least beats listening to the anxiety-inducing theme to Walking Dead. Check out the song below, it's total cheese.
Talk soon,
DYLAN