Best Cold Opens on TV

The part before the theme song, which is somehow the part everyone remembers.

Entries
10
Category
TV
Updated
  1. A singed pink teddy bear floating face down in a backyard swimming pool, missing one eye, the water otherwise still.

    10. Seven Thirty-Seven

    Breaking Bad · 2009

    A charred pink teddy bear floats in a pool, filmed in black and white except for the bear. Season two kept returning to that image, and the cold open titles spelled out the finale's plane crash. Bryan Cranston directed. The bear did not make it.

  2. Five empty spots in a police lineup room under harsh light, height chart on the wall, a single microphone on a stand in front.

    09. DFW

    Brooklyn Nine-Nine · 2018

    Jake asks a police lineup to perform a Backstreet Boys song so a victim can pick out the killer by voice. The suspect cannot stop himself from singing his part. It runs about a minute and the internet has watched it more than the rest of the series combined. Probably.

  3. A typewriter on a writer's desk beside an empty chair, a half-finished manuscript, and a rumpled beige raincoat draped over the lamp.

    08. Murder by the Book

    Columbo · 1971

    The first regular Columbo episode opens with Jack Cassidy murdering his writing partner, so you know whodunit before the credits. The rest is watching a man in a raincoat figure it out. Steven Spielberg directed, Steven Bochco wrote. Both went on to be fine.

  4. A black-and-white shopping mall food court at closing time, a tray of cinnamon rolls under a heat lamp, a VHS tape on the counter.

    07. Uno

    Better Call Saul · 2015

    Black-and-white Omaha, a Cinnabon manager going through his day, then going home to watch his old lawyer commercials on VHS. The only color is a reflection in his glasses. It was cable's highest-rated scripted series premiere to that point. Frosting has never looked sadder.

  5. A dark prehistoric cave mouth after an earthquake, rocks fallen across the entrance, a rattlesnake coiled on a sunlit stone outside.

    06. Axis Mundi

    The Leftovers · 2015

    The season two premiere opens with about nine wordless minutes of a pregnant cavewoman surviving an earthquake, giving birth alone, and losing a fight with a rattlesnake. None of the cast appears. Mimi Leder directed. HBO's notes meeting must have been short.

  6. A gleaming new black hearse crumpled against the front of a city bus on a quiet street, a Christmas wreath on the hearse grille, tinsel on the asphalt.

    05. Pilot (Six Feet Under)

    Six Feet Under · 2001

    On Christmas Eve, the patriarch of a family funeral home drives off in his brand new hearse and is promptly hit by a city bus. Alan Ball wrote and directed it. Every episode after opened with somebody dying. Not subtle, but efficient.

  7. A cluttered underground bunker with a vintage record player spinning, a computer terminal glowing green, and a geodesic dome ceiling.

    04. Man of Science, Man of Faith

    Lost · 2005

    A stranger wakes up, works out, makes breakfast and injects himself to Mama Cass, all somewhere underground. Then the camera reveals we are inside the hatch. The season two premiere drew 23.47 million viewers, the most Lost ever got. It was all downhill from the hatch.

  8. A smoking metal trash can in a drab office, a vending machine smashed open, a ceiling tile knocked loose overhead.

    03. Stress Relief

    The Office · 2009

    Dwight seals the exits and lights a trash can to run a fire drill. Angela throws her cat through the ceiling, Kevin loots the vending machine, Stanley has a heart attack. It aired after the Super Bowl to 22.9 million people, the show's all-time high. Fair.

  9. A pair of khaki pants tumbling through a clear blue sky above red desert scrub.

    02. Pilot

    Breaking Bad · 2008

    A pair of khakis floats across the New Mexico sky, followed by an RV driven by a man in a gas mask and his underwear. He records a goodbye on a camcorder and aims a pistol at the sirens. Vince Gilligan wrote and directed it. Strong first impression.

  10. A chalk outline on a Baltimore rowhouse stoop at night, scattered dice and crumpled dollar bills beside it under a sodium streetlight.

    01. The Target

    The Wire · 2002

    McNulty on a stoop beside a body, hearing how Snot Boogie robbed the same craps game every week and the guys let him play anyway, because this is America. David Simon put the whole show's thesis in the first scene. Most pilots can't find theirs by episode six.

Honorable mentions

  • A small classroom desk with two chairs, one tipped over, a lesson book open, and a bowl of fingertip-sized cheese puffs.

    The Wolverines

    Saturday Night Live · 1975

    The very first SNL opens with Michael O'Donoghue teaching John Belushi absurd English phrases, then collapsing; Belushi collapses too, and Chevy Chase says the line that has started the show ever since. Fifty years later, every cold open still ends with that sentence.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A steamy bathroom with the shower running behind a frosted glass door, a towel and a cowboy hat on the hook outside.

    Return to Camelot

    Dallas · 1986

    Season ten opens with Pam waking up and Bobby Ewing alive in the shower, which means the entire previous season, death and all, was a dream. Patrick Duffy wanted back in and ratings had sagged. A full year of television, deleted by a bathroom.

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