Classic Openers

[Janice]

Wings has some of the best openings in all of television. A few of my favorites are:

Roy and Lowell playing chess. Each one thinks it's the other's turn...for half an hour.

Brian sitting in the plane pretending to be a passenger waiting for takeoff....he gets irate and starts the plane for takeoff, scaring the wits out of the passengers. Funny stuff.

[Adamantium]

There's one in a season four episode, where Joe is sitting at his desk with a guitar, Brian is standing up by the desk and Antonio is sitting in a chair with a spoon and a mug. Then Lowell walks in and starts sanding down the side of the door. At once, Joe starts playing a tune, Antonio starts hitting the mug, Lowell sands the door in rythym and Brian starts humming. Then they all stop, look at eachother, and go for it again.

[losthighway]

That's a great one TVAdam! One of my favorites was on fairly recently where Brian is reading a newspaper article to Roy that states a survey was taken saying 15% of the population would rather watch TV then have sex.

Roy and Brian discuss it for a couple minutes, and then Lowell enters and Brian says, "Lowell, what would you rather do, watch TV or have sex?" And Lowell says, "Buy me dinner and the choice is yours."

[Krista2882]

Originally posted by TVAdam
There's one in a season four episode, where Joe is sitting at his desk with a guitar, Brian is standing up by the desk and Antonio is sitting in a chair with a spoon and a mug. Then Lowell walks in and starts sanding down the side of the door. At once, Joe starts playing a tune, Antonio starts hitting the mug, Lowell sands the door in rythym and Brian starts humming. Then they all stop, look at eachother, and go for it again.

That's my favorite one!!!! I love that.
Tim Daly playing guitar...

I believe that's from the "Date Package #7" episode...

[Krista2882]

Originally posted by losthighway
One of my favorites was on fairly recently where Brian is reading a newspaper article to Roy that states a survey was taken saying 15% of the population would rather watch TV then have sex.

Roy and Brian discuss it for a couple minutes, and then Lowell enters and Brian says, "Lowell, what would you rather do, watch TV or have sex?" And Lowell says, "Buy me dinner and the choice is yours."

hahahaha yeah, that one cracks me up! lol

[phoebe7165]

Originally posted by Krista2882
hahahaha yeah, that one cracks me up! lol

Me, too!!! I also like the one where Lowell is teaching himself to dance in the hanger(I think the samba, or tango, or something!!). Joe walks in and Lowell asks him to dance with him. I always thought when shows have people of the same sex dancing together, it's always entertaining for me(Lowell & Joe, Roy & Antonio, Rose & Blanche on Golden Girls, Joey & the building supervisor on Friends).

[AngeFaitore]

It has to be the one where Lowell has half of his thick, long hair cut off and he says to Roy that he can't remember what he hasn't finished and then Fay comes out with scissors and tells Lowell that she has to finish cutting his hair.

I really wonder if the cast betted Thomas to do that on set. His hair was ridiculously thick and long.

[pilotguy]

Originally posted by AngeFaitore
It has to be the one where Lowell has half of his thick, long hair cut off and he says to Roy that he can't remember what he hasn't finished and then Fay comes out with scissors and tells Lowell that she has to finish cutting his hair.

I really wonder if the cast betted Thomas to do that on set. His hair was ridiculously thick and long.

Yes, I LOVE that one....That's one of those "It's so STUPID that it's FUNNY" type of openings!

[Krista2882]

Originally posted by AngeFaitore
It has to be the one where Lowell has half of his thick, long hair cut off and he says to Roy that he can't remember what he hasn't finished and then Fay comes out with scissors and tells Lowell that she has to finish cutting his hair.

i think he was going for the Cyndi Lauper look. He should have kept his hair like that. haha

[pilotguy]

A GREAT opening gag is the one where a planeload of impatient passengers are seated, waiting to take off and no pilot on board....then we suddenly see Brian sitting with the passengers, pretending to be one of them! Brian bolts out of his passenger seat and sits in the pilot's seat, saying something like "OK, I've waited long enough....I'm flying this thing myself....It can't be THAT hard to do!" while he fiddles with the controls!

The looks of frightened shock on the passengers' faces are PRICELESS!

[Chocoholic]

I love all those too. Another favorite of mine is when Helen has that really rude customer and she gives him regular coffee instead of decaf and gives him a phone number where he can bother her if it keeps him up all night. Turns out it was Roy's phone number! I told a couple of my co-workers about that scene once and they were laughing so hard.

[pilotguy]

Originally posted by Snoopy
I love all those too. Another favorite of mine is when Helen has that really rude customer and she gives him regular coffee instead of decaf and gives him a phone number where he can bother her if it keeps him up all night. Turns out it was Roy's phone number! I told a couple of my co-workers about that scene once and they were laughing so hard.

The neat thing about THAT opening is that it's one of the few opening gags that actually carried over into the "main" show itself....

During the episode, Roy is saying how tired he is because somebody phoned him in the middle of the night and then he couldn't get back to sleep!

Most of the time the opening gag stood on it's own, and had NOTHING to do with the story which was to follow, but that "call in the middle of the night" gag was the basis or "set up" for a later reference in the main body of the program....and that was very unusual for "Wings".