What's In A Title?

So last night, I was watching Fringe, and I realized I didn't know what the title of the episode was. And I really wanted to! Then it struck me: the evolution and availability of episode titles is one of the main factors in elevating the television experience to a higher form of art.

When I bought my first Friends dvd, I was blown away by the fact that the episodes all had titles. "What is the point," I asked myself, "When no one gets to see what the titles are until they buy the dvds?" I mean, I assumed it would be useful to the writers and producers, but the titles seemed more amusing and meant for general consumption.

These days, with DVR and the internet, a title is generally the first thing you experience about an episode. They can be funny (Epidemiology 101 = Community's rabies/zombies episode; Psych's Meat is Murder...But Murder Is Also Murder; HIMYM's The Sexless Inkeeper; I could keep going...), artful (basically all of Mad Men), or simply informative (South Park's Mysterion Rises kept me from watching this week because I didn't have a lot of time and that storyline loses my interest)...or, of course, all three at once.

Great art comes with a title (oh, sure, you can leave your piece untitled, but that says more about the artist than about the art), and now that titles for TV are easily available, it has elevated the viewing experience. This is not to say that a show is good because it's got a clever heading, but for many shows that are already producing great content, a smart title can enhance and supplement the material in the show itself. And man, it sure makes blogging about TV a hell of a lot easier.