Me, I’d have to nominate the 3rd (4th? 5th? 127th?) season intro for The Cosby Show. The one where they’re all wearing tropical neon dresses and shorts and do a whole big badly choregraphed dance number. I cringe in sympathetic embarrassment every time I see it.
How many other TV show directors have made their cast members do unspeakably cheesy things in the name of a theme song?
Good cheesy – I loved the intro to The Nanny.
Get a Life, Chris Elliott’s shot at a sitcom, used REM’s “Stand” as a theme song. Hard to out-goof that.
The Brady Bunch
Good: Happy Days
Bad: Laverne & Shirley
Dancing in a NY fountain with umbrellas and a couch.
Sound familiar?
Well, no one told them life was gonna be this way.
[claps five times]
Brady Bunch was my first thought, with all those hyper-cute people staring adoringly in every direction at each other.
Batman was a classic dumb opener, with all the POW BIFF ZAP captions and the baddies flying everywhere.
Three’s Company had a slew of bad ones- the zoo where Larry nuzzles up to the elephant and the fair where Larry climbs into the bumper car with the long haired guy.
My Three Sons and that stupid tapping wingtip.
Laverne and Shirley. nuff said.
cops
A couple from long ago may strike a chord in old timers or those addicted to reruns.
The Ernie Kovacs Show and a neat little ditty called (I think) Song of the Nairobi Trio where the trio was all dressed in gorilla suits and one of them had a pair of mallets. As the tune progressed, this guy/monkey would swivel around and bonk the piano player on the head with the mallets. This would be repeated several times. The tune was quite catchy and I can still hum it.
The Gerald McBoing Boing cartoon show had a neat little tune for a theme song that I later heard the Chico Hamilton Quintet jazz group do a neat jazz version of. I never did know the name of the tune, but I can hum it. It’s basically just a scale.
Goofy, in a good way, the theme to The Larry Schandling Show.
This is the theme to Larry’s show, the theme to Larry’s show
Larry called me up and asked if I would write his theme song
It’s almost half way over, how do you like it so far?
How do you like the theme to Larry’s show?..
“Believe it or not I’m walking on air…”
Yes the theme from The Greatest American Hero.
How can you talk about goofiest theme songs and leave out the one to the Weird Al Show? It’s deliberately goofy, but that shouldn’t disqualify it.
Or the one he wrote for Talk Soup.
Or the grunting “Na-naaaah!” theme for the animated The Tick
Or the one for Jay Ward’s Super Chicken
or Mr. Terrific
Or the one for the original Smothers Brothers Show – the one where Tom plays an angel nudging his brother.
Someone beat me to the Gary Shandling Show