TVSquad

We've talked a lot here about theme songs and how they just don't make them like they used to. The openings to shows used to be a lot longer, a real part of the show. Today we're lucky if we get a few bars of music and maybe a credit or two. Heck, one show, Lost, only plays one note and shows the logo.

The Popcorn Trick has a list of the Top 25 Opening Credits of '80s Action Shows, and you can't argue with most of the picks. Magnum P.I. is on the list, as is Riptide, Miami Vice, and The A Team. I would quibble a little bit with the choice of The Rockford Files. One of my favorites, but it was really more of a '70s show than '80s (it ended in 1980). I was 13 years old when Vegas premiered (in 1978 - it ran until 1981) and I wanted to be Dan Tanna and live in Vegas and have hot girlfriends and drive around with a lion in my sports car.

Cagney and Lacey shouldn't be on the list though. It should be replaced with one of several other shows from the '80s. After the jump, the five shows they missed.

Superhero TV shows can be really great if done right, but for every Heroes or The Flash we get a half dozen shows that never made it past the pilot episode or made it and just weren't very good. Cracked recently had a feature about comic books that shouldn't be made into movies, and that got me thinking about superhero TV shows that failed and/or weren't that great. Below are six examples of shows that should have never been made, along with video clips so you can marinate in their awfulness.

Lists are fun, aren't they? They put everything in perspective, they're easy to navigate, and they spark debate. But sometimes a list has entries in it that just make you scratch your head and wonder, do they really think that or are they just trying to be provocative?

The Chicago Tribune lists their picks for the 25 worst shows of all-time. Many of the usual suspects are here: Pink Lady and Jeff, BJ and the Bear, Manimal, and Small Wonder - but then they go completely off the rails and lists The 100 Lives of Blackjack Savage! If you don't remember this NBC show (it lasted 8 episodes in 1991), it was about a billionaire (Daniel Hugh-Kelly), accused of embezzlement, who escapes to an island, who gets involved with a ghost and has to save 100 lives. This was a really fun show and doesn't deserve to be on any "worst" list.

I spent about 15 minutes last night reading a ridiculously detailed summary of the 8(!?) separate timelines that spring into and out of existence throughout the course of the three Back To The Future movies. It just so happened that during my study of "timeline 1985(a)" that my wife happened into my office to ask me what I was up to. When I told her, she sorta sadly shook her head and left muttering something about me "having no life."

Okay, I admit, trolling Wikipedia for the latest breakdown of a 19-year-old movie franchise ain't exactly what Henry David Thoreau meant when he spoke about "sucking the marrow out of life", but there's at least one person in the world who has even less of a life than I do: the guy who wrote the friggin' article in the first place.

And you know what? Thank God for that guy...