October 28: Opening Theme

Growing up, I never really had any inclinations to purchase movies when they made it to video cassette. I had the Karate Kid series, Back to the Future II, Jurassic Park, ET, and the Naked Gun series, but that was it. I never counted down the days until a movie was released to the public until DVDs came around.

Maybe it was because of my age and my overall lack of interest in the medium, but it seems to me that DVD brought a new wave of interest to consumers in owning major motion pictures. I don't remember my friends coming to school on Wednesdays with the news that they had just purchased Teen Wolf on video. I could be wrong, but I don't remember television series being popular on tape cassette either. With DVDs, it was suddenly popular to own favorite series from yesteryear and today.

I have a pretty large accumulation of DVDs, but more than my complete collection of Pixar films, my most prized discs are those of my Seinfeld set. I had to wait a few years in between the release of the first season and the ninth, but I was counting down the days the entire time. I would wake up early on those Tuesdays, make my way down to Best Buy and pick myself up the latest season before starting my day. I was always so excited about my new purchase, that the discs never made it home without being unwrapped even though I couldn't do anything with them.

It was with Seinfeld that I discovered the joys of TV on DVD. I could watch any episode I wanted at any time. I could easily watch the fourth episode of the fifth season and follow it with the eleventh episode of the eighth season. I didn't have to fast forward through commercials or episodes I didn't want to see. It was fantastic!

Because of this new "discovery," I started purchasing other TV shows on the format. Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office, Family Guy, etc. Unfortunately, however, it didn't take long before I discovered the one disadvantage of watching my favorite shows on DVD. The reason I didn't realize the flaw with Seinfeld is because Seinfeld doesn't have a full-length song as its theme and opening to each individual episode. It's simply a quick bass diddy to take the audience from the street up to Jerry's apartment. With most other shows, however, the audience has to sit through the theme each week before their show starts. Because the theme is a part of each episode, it's included with each episode on the DVDs. If the viewer wants to watch multiple episodes of a series, he or she now has to hear the same song over and over again.

You may not think it would be that big of a deal, but having to fast-forward through a thirty second to a minute long song every thirty minutes can get pretty annoying. You can't put a disc on and do something else without having that song lodge itself into your head. Because Seinfeld doesn't have a long, drawn out theme, this is one more reason it is the best show in the history of television.