Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Chocolate bunnies and white horses: I know you know

"Psych" can go over the top, but I've always had fun with -- admired, even -- their quirky tradition of occasionally re-imagining their opening titles with music, shots, and even font to match that week's episode (the "Bollywood" version was priceless). In an age when TV theme songs have mostly been reduced to nothing more than a three-second clip from Massive Attack or They Might Be Giants, and opening credits are absorbed into Act I at the bottom of the screen, this deserves recognition.

Would I be willing to watch the opening credits of "The Rockford Files" or "Hawaii Five-O" again rather than an extra 60 seconds of "House MD" or "Malcolm in the Middle?" Yeah, probably.

I confess: I was a pretty serious "Twin Peaks" fan back in the day. That being said, the recent TP/Psych parody/pastiche episode wasn't all that much fun for me, at least not in proportion to the work they clearly and honestly put into all the intertextual references, including casting. They pushed 'way too hard.

Still, when it opens on a chocolate bunny and the credits end with a white horse, you know someone's worn their 20-year-old VHS bootlegs to a frazzle. And good lord -- you forgive almost anything when they recruit Julee Cruise (the chanteuse from the TP Road House) for the breathy Angelo Badalamenti-esque bass-reverb reworking of the "Psych" theme song in "Twin Peaks style.


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