From the archives: It's all in the title ... sequence, that is.

Somewhere through the huge list of comments for the discussion of the best TV pilots ever, someone asked if I wanted to talk about the best opening title sequences of all time. Conveniently, Matt Seitz and I teamed up(*) on just such a story five years ago, and I just posted it to NJ.com. Read and discuss. Lots of great sequences in the last few years that would no doubt be on the list (say what you want about "John From Cincinnati," but its title sequence was awesome).

(*) Though we wrote it together, and most of the better rhetorical flourishes no doubt came from Matt, I was the one who had to sit on the phone for a half-hour with the unhappy "Petticoat Junction" and "Beverly Hillbillies" fan who neither appreciated nor understood our dissing of his favorite shows. It was actually one of the more polite calls of this nature I've ever had -- no raised voices, no profanity, no invoking of deities -- and yet it went on for-fracking-ever, because the guy seemed determined not to hang up until he had convinced me of the justness of his cause. At one point -- after a crowd of copy editors had gathered around my desk, all of them wondering how long I could stay on the phone explaining over and over why I didn't think Jethro and Elly May were funny -- the guy said, mystified, "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do here. I keep giving you all these reasons why those shows were great, and you keep saying you didn't like them." I tried to gently explain the concept of agreeing to disagree, but we were on the phone for at least another 10 minutes after that. And that is why I love my job.