John's Blog

Of course, The Sopranos just had to make The Onion AV Club list of 22 TV Opening-Credit Sequences That Fit Their Shows Perfectly, coming in just behind what still remains as one of the best shows ever, Homicide: Life On The Streets.

The funny thing is that both shows evoke a sense of "home" when I see the credits. Homicide features a montage that includes glimpses of row houses typical of those found in my old neck of the woods. I could be wrong, but it seems that they've got more "permastone" covered houses per capita than anywhere else in the country. With Homicide being shot on location, they occasionally used some local talent, featuring a taste of the regional accent. And in Tony's driving sequence it features many of the memorable, but less than scenic local sights that are found in this neck of the woods. How sad is it that the last time I was traveling for work, watching The Sopranos in the middle of nowhere, this sequence made me homesick?

With the final few Sopranos episodes right around the corner, it should be interesting to see if the opening credits are fine tuned even more. After 9-11, the WTC towers were edited out to reflect the new reality. His radio has always been tuned to "102.7" which used to be a rock & roll station, which he probably would have listened to. But the station has had a few format changes, causing them to quickly pan past the radio frequency. Now that it is a "lite-fm" clone, I wonder if they'll just cut this out entirely.

But I'm more than a little bit disappointed to see that with all the "old school" classics that made the list, the opening to Hawaii Five-O seems to be missing. Seems like this might be reason enough for a round of The Hawaii 50 Drinking Game. Book 'em Dan-o.

Tags: TV, pop-culture, you tube