Sometimes those wordless ditties are pure gold, like the harrumphing waltz that begins every Curb Your Enthusiasm-or, for that matter, M*A*S*H*-but it’s not exactly the stuff of Archie and Edith at the piano or the old-timey photos ahead of Cheers, when a show’s theme could tell you a little story by itself. But it’s basically mood music, kind of like the screeching techno that began each episode of Silicon Valley. More paired-down and wordless intros have dominated, like in the case of two TV titans, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, but that’s not always a bad thing-led off every episode with a memorable credit sequence that captured an essence of the show- Mad Men’s ratting drums and melodramatic strings, Breaking Bad’s simmering slide guitar and sinister hissing. In 2008, Paste claimed “there’s no denying we’re past the golden age of the TV show theme song.” More than 10 years later, that still feels pretty true.
