ON BEING ENTITLED

I wrote about this in the past - I love TV show episode titles. You don't see them on screen anymore (for the most part), but you can still find them listed at sites like TV.com and epguides.com.

Some of my favorites: "Son Of But Seriously, Folks" ('The Mary Tyler Moore Show'), "Tequila Mockingbird" ('Get Smart'), and "Any Old Port In The Storm" ('Columbo').

Even those that seem kind of corny when looking back at them - especially those from Quinn Martin classics like 'Barnaby Jones' ("To Catch A Dead Man" & "Death On Deposit") and 'Cannon' ("Come Watch Me Die" & "Memo From A Dead Man") - have an irresistable charm about them for me.

But I especially like it when a show carries through on a theme. All of the 'Man From U.N.C.L.E' episodes were "Affairs"; "Briefs" were the type of episodes in 'Dundee And The Culhane'; 'The Wild, Wild West' adventures were listed as "The Night Of... "; and most 'Remington Steele' episodes worked the word "Steele" into the title as a bad pun ("Steele Waters Run Deep").

So in my online trek looking for TV nuggets of interest, I found out that every episode of the short-lived 'Love, Inc.' was the name of another sitcom which somehow tied into the theme of the plotline. (It's an idea I've used for the Toobworld novel I've been working on for years, but I also use the titles of dramas and documentaries and specials.)

Best of all is that because these titles are not considered a part of Toobworld itself, then there's no Zonk in their use!

Here's a rundown of that list:

Pilot
Living Single
Mad About You
Bosom Buddies
Family Ties
Amen
Hope & Faith
Thick and Thin
One on One
The Honeymooners
Three's Company
Arrested Development
Grace Under Fire
Hello, Larry
Major Dad
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Anything But Love
Cursed
Fired Up
Full House
Dream On
Friends

Imagine the uproar if a show called 'Love, Inc.' had an episode entitled "Leave It To Beaver" or even "Family Ties". Ewwwww!

Of course, as with so many shows, they didn't even bother giving a title to their first episode which sold the series. The only time "Pilot" even makes sense in terms of the episode was in the first two-hour episode of 'Lost', thanks to the appearance of Greg Gunberg's character.

If it had not been for the fact that the show wasn't very popular, the theme could have run for years with so many sitcom titles to choose from - 'Oh, Baby', 'I Love Lucy', 'Sugar Time', 'The Golden Girls', 'The Odd Couple', 'Me And The Chimp', 'Platypus Man', and even 'Mr. Peepers'......

They could have given "Bonino" a whole new meaning!

BCnU!
Tele-Toby