And much, much worse.
I think that about 90% of shows that lasted more than one season will have differences in their openings. Lets stick to only citing only major, or interesting changes.
The difference between Cagney & Lacey 1st season and the restis worth mentioning. The minor changes in MAS*H over the years is trivial.
I always wondered if this was a TVLand created opening, done with a retro look. Good to know.
Yes, they did. I also wondered (from watching TVLand) why the segment that introduces Michael (Ralph Carter - S5) barely shows his face. You see more of him frontally in other character’s segments than you do in his own.
I love how you made Laverne French rather than Italian… 
DS9 also revamped the theme tune about half way through.
And for Enterprise’s venture into the Mirror Universe, they came up with a bit of a spoof of their usual opening sequence.
Wow. I had never heard that. Man that song is incredibly lame.
Which brings me to my usual minor hijack but it’s one of TV’s all-time great yarns.
When Sherwood Schwartz was developing the idea for Gilligan’s Island, one of the snags they hit was what if somebody tunes into the show mid-season. The viewer would have no idea what was going on, who these people were, why they were marooned on the island, etc.
Schwartz figured, that’s no problem, they could just weave the back story into the show’s opening theme and that would take care of that. He figured he would hire some professional song writers to compose and record the song and all would be good.
Well the meeting with the TV execs was like the next day and with no time to bring in the professionals, Schwartz noodled out the lyrics, sat down in front of a piano -he wasn’t in any way a formally trained musician- and “one-noted” the melody.
The next day’s meeting as he’s pitching the idea, one of the execs says: “I understand you have the show’s theme song.” “Yes, we do,” replies Schwartz. “Well, can we hear it?” the exec asks. Schwartz himself was unsure of what to do, but his agent sitting beside him kicks him from under the table and hisses to him “Sing!” and Schwartz stands up and launches into: “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…” and a legend arose.
Fin.
Rocko’s Modern Life had a decent theme, then the B-52’s ruined it.
The person/groups that performed the “The Wire’s” opening song changed each season. My favorite was woman that sang it in either season two or three. Also really liked Steve Earle’s version in the final season.
Gilligan’s Island fans may be interested in another Sherwood Schwartz creation, It’s About Time, which told the tale of two astronauts who somehow ended up stranded on prehistoric earth. After some weeks of dismal ratings, they escaped the past, bringing some cave people with them to the modern day. It was a heroic effort, but not enough to get them renewed for a second season.
The show had another explanatory theme song, this time accompanied by some crude animation. Rather than creating an entirely opening when the premise of the series was turned on its head, the producers tweaked the lyrics of the theme song and re-edited the existing animation.
House had no beginning sequence last night. Just the title, House. Like Grey’s Anatomy does now (after they dropped that cute melancholy little opening they had in the beginning, I miss that). I wonder if they will continue to drop the opening credits next season.
Similar to The Simpsons, the animated show **Chowder **has different foreground animation (something happening inside an oven) in every episode’s title sequence. The theme song and background action (main characters visible through the oven window) stay the same. Unfortunately, ever since Cartoon Network decided to split each half-hour episode into 2 15-minute episodes, they always reuse the same self-marinading blue carrot animation.
Pokemon changes the opening song and opening animation every season. They even change the show’s subtitle every year.
Yes, I do watch a lot of TV with my kids
Monty Python’s Flying Circus had different opening animations each year. In addition, all first-season shows had a bearded old man (Michael Palin) running to the camera and saying “It’s … .” The second season, they added John Cleese starting with “And now for something completely different” just before the first season "it’s man.: The third season, they showed a nude organist (Terry Jones) playing a couple of chords before going into the other three. Also, the opening credits could appear at any time during the show, from the beginning, to after a skit, to after several skits, and sometimes even at the end.
The sign outside of the Fawlty Towers changed from episode to episode, starting with “Fawlty Towers,” losing letters, having different letters crooked, and finaly forming anagrams and semi-anagrams of the hotel name, like “Flay Otters,” “Fatty Owls,” “Farty Towels,” and “Flowery Twats.”
They did, sorta. The original animated opening had alot of references to I Love Lucy’s that episode’s sponser, alot of the time this was Phillip Morris.
Blackadder had a different opening for each series- the first one involved shots of Blackadder riding a horse to reach a castle and doing silly things on the way whilst someone sang the lyrics, the second series had a flute-type theme whilst showing a chessboard with a recalcitrant snake (black adder) on it, before having the snake removed and replaced with something relevant to the show’s title (like a spud or a bag of coins). The third series had Blackadder going through a library looking at various books until finding a ribald novel featuring the episode’s title, and the fourth series was a military parade ground where the band begins playing “The British Grenadiers” before seguing into the Blackadder theme as the soldiers (and cast) parade past a review stand (where General Melchett is reviewing them).
Also, each series of Blackadder had different closing titles as well- the first series involved Blackadder falling off the horse and chasing after it, the second involved Blackadder walking in an Elizabethan garden whilst being bothered by a minstrel (who was singing about the episode’s events), the third series transmorphed the final shot into a woodcut-type illustration and did the credits in the style of a Regency playbill (“For the BENEFIT of SEVERAL VIEWERS, Mr. Curtis & Mr. Elton’s much admir’d play BLACKADDER THE THIRD was performed by…”) and the forth series was done to look like a period film, with sepia colour, jerky movements, and scratches on the film, with the exception of the final episode which simply changed to a field of poppies and then faded to black.
What the flying f–k is THAT???
P.S. Tell me you didn’t actually watch that show.
Psych regularly changes its theme music for themed episodes. Such as the acapella boy band one, the spanish soap opera one, and the Bollywood one.
The Raymond change vexed me; it deprived us of a gander at Debra’s gams, which were an excellent reason to put up with the horribleness of the characters. 
Star Trek also had two different versions of its theme: one purely instrumental, and one with a singer.
Their three chief openings were:
- Stills.
- Tripping over hassock.
- Avoiding hassock.
- Avoiding hassock, then stumbling over rug.
Their FOUR chief openings were… 
(Actually, it really did have four openings: The Dick Van Dyke Show - Wikipedia)
Does Japenese anime count? Then it would be Excel Saga,which changed not only the opening credits, they also changed the closing credits as well, and that was almost evey episode.
In a similar vein to Enterprise’s Mirror Universe opening, Torchwood had a season 2 episode with a different opening sequence.
In the episode Adam…
the character of “Adam” appeared in the opening sequence with other members of the Torchwood team. Adam was in fact an alien who had used some cunning psychic ability to convince the real members of the team that he was a member. The audience saw it from the same POV as the team
The TV show The Prisoner had a Western episode called Living in Harmony which staged the entire opening as though it were a Western. Although the story told in the opening credit sequence was analogous to the story told in the main show opening.