The Death of Theme Songs

On Monday, October 17), Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, was on Fresh Air doing an interview with Terry Gross. The interview was half about his new cd of old timey songs that he's releasing and also about his success with his three primetime cartoon shows. I love hearing interviews with writers/creators of the popular shows on TV today. It's easy enough to flip open a TV Guide and see an interview with the star of the show, but I'm just as interested as the people working hard behind the scenes. The people crammed into a writer's room late in the night hoping that one of their jokes makes it on the air. The best part of it is that most of them are vocal and give interviews often. You're no longer left wondering what the creator of your favorite show is like, but you get to see that a lot of these people still care very deeply about the characters on their show and it's not some cash cow that they're letting find its own way as the seasons progress.

Seth MacFarlane's interview gave me the impression that he's still very much involved in the creative direction of Family Guy. I guess it's hard not to be since he voices 3 out of 6 main characters on that show and major characters on both American Dad and The Cleveland Show. At 10 Seasons in, he still knows how the characters tick and also gives a damn about what the audience likes. Though Brian and Peter were the original pair of bff's on the show, he couldn't ignore the viewer's love for Stewie and Brian. He didn't say so here, but much like Dan Harmon (Community) and Ryan Murphy (Glee), I'm sure he keeps his ear to the web for creative feedback as well.

I would like to read MacFarlane's take on the previous season of the show, Season 9. (there may be interviews or reactions out there, I haven't really looked.) Fans of the show were treated to a very different style of Family Guy with less cutaways and more continuous storylines. This also allowed for a lot more character depth and sincere emotion out of the main characters that wasn't just ripped from the lines of an 80's movie. A lot of my friends didn't notice the difference right away, but they told me that they weren't fans of the season. To be honest, I tried very hard to like that season, but I skipped some episodes and didn't feel like I missed anything. I wanted to like it though, because I respected the writers for trying something new. I appreciated them for laying off the easy sight gags and fart jokes and writing something that took some effort. At the same time, it still fell short for me. It made me miss the old Family Guy that was dumb and easy humor and appreciate the subtle jokes that are in each episode.

One interesting topic that Seth had in the Fresh Air interview was about what a struggle it was with the network for Family Guy to even have a theme song.

We had to fight pretty hard to do a theme. ... It's a tradition that's kind of going away, and part of that is the networks are worried that people don't want to sit through the same thing week after week, and so shows are being discouraged from writing themes," he says. "I think what [executives] don't realize is, showmanship is showmanship. It hasn't changed in hundreds of years. It's a drum roll saying, 'Here comes a show.' ... And it gets the audience psyched up. ... And I think the absence of that is really tragic.

The death of theme songs. I think of my favorite sitcoms from the 90's and how many had just an instrumental track and some just used songs that already existed. But there's a great deal of satisfaction that comes with theme songs. I remember being a child and scrambling to pour my popcorn in the bowl as I heard the opening guitar notes for Full House each Friday. Sure, I could do the same scramble for Party of Five as I heard "Closer to Free", but a theme song makes the show unique. The style of it sets the tone of the show for a new viewer almost as much as the opening montage of character clips. And how satisfying is it to belt out the theme to Charles In Charge while drunk in a bar? It seems the only way you can get that now is if you're watching a show with viewers that aren't yet out of middle school...or Animation Domination.

A good interview overall. It was mostly about music, but it was funny and worth a listen. You can check out the interview on NPR's website.

What's Happenin?

I don't really know what I intend to do with this blog. I don't know if I want to show it to anyone or if I want this to be my own private thoughts that go absolutely nowhere. I suppose I could've just written them down and saved them on the computer, but then I thought, "What if I want to share my stupid ass thoughts? Wouldn't that be easier if they were already on some sort of site?" And so I decided to put things here, but not put the pressure of committing to something on myself.

The idea came to me a few weeks ago when I was leaving comments on a website. Someone asked me how I seemed to know so much about sitcoms. Not that I was a scholar or anything, but I'd obviously put way too much thought into a random episode of a TV show than the average person. I realized that since I've decided that I wanted to start nurturing my gift for comedic writing that I haven't been watching TV as much as studying it. I've always had a bit of an obsession with shows that I love. I wonder where the inspiration for new characters come from and what made them think a certain actor or actress was right for the job. I watch reruns and notice the stylistic shifts from one decade to another and delight when a trope from earlier times resurfaces.

Since I'm not a scholar or anything, this is really just a hobby. I wanted somewhere to document my thoughts, as well as talk about TV shows unabashedly since my girlfriend absolutely does not care about it. (And why should she? I'm not even sure why I care so much sometimes.) But this is what I have in mind. I'll see where it goes...