The definitive ranking of every Cosby Show credits sequence
The Cosby Show, the sitcom that singlehandedly revived the fortunes of the genre and its network, NBC, turns 30 today, having debuted back in 1984. The show was, in many ways, revolutionary; its humor leaned less on story and more on hanging out with a warm, funny family, breaking with years of sitcoms that were heavy on the “sit” and not so heavy on the “com.”
But one of the things most worth celebrating about Cosby is its opening credits sequence, which might be the best in television history.
This is not an opinion I issue lightly, nor one that you would hear all that often. The low-key premise of the Cosby credits — everybody dances! — doesn’t make for something as instantly memorable as the opening sequences for, say, Gilligan’s Island or All in the Family. But where those shows worked overtime to establish premise or character, Cosby’s minimalist credits are telling you everything you need to watch the show, purely through visuals.
The Cosby credits act as a kind of visual family album. In every one of the seven basic iterations of them, we first meet Cliff Huxtable, then his wife Clair. They dance together long enough to establish their partnership, before we go through the couple’s five children, one at a time, from oldest to youngest. This quickly establishes Cliff’s relationships with Sondra, Denise, Theo, Vanessa, and Rudy, before returning to Cliff on his own. (He is the star, after all.)
The subtle shifts in the sequence drove home the series’ evolution, too. As the kids got older, they were no longer extensions of their father, dancing while paired with him, and, instead, got solos of their own. When the two oldest daughters got married, their husbands (and Denise’s new step-daughter) were incorporated in the proper places, the better to quickly establish who these new characters were.
In the season four sequence — the first in which Sondra’s husband Elvin is a series regular — Cliff actually mimics a father giving away his daughter at a wedding by, instead, giving away Elvin to Sondra, a neat encapsulation of the series’ sneakily progressive gender politics.
Of course, as the show got older and more popular, those credits sequences got more and more elaborate (and doubled nicely as a history of American pop music that, perhaps, overrated Bobby McFerrin’s influence), but they always returned to that core idea of the family album. Here are the Huxtables. Here is how they relate to each other. Now you know how to watch the show. That might seem silly, now that the family is so engrained in our popular culture, but it’s almost certainly part of why the show got so big, so quickly. It told you everything.
Here is a quick run through the Cosby Show’s opening credits, ranked in terms of music, dance, and Cosby mugging.
So after all of that description, the season one credits actually feature absolutely no dancing, and little Cosby mugging. The original credits sequence involved the Huxtables in the park, sans Sondra (she was a later addition), hanging out around a giant van (presumably their ride?) and dressing in baseball paraphernalia. It’s a pretty standard family sitcom opening — cute, but non-essential. Still, here’s Stu Gardner and Cosby’s theme in its most basic form, and it’s immediately charming. And dig that sax solo!
This is where the sequence takes its most famous form for the first time. Cliff and the various family members cavort in front of a blank grey backdrop, and it all starts with a close-up of Cosby’s face as he mugs. Already, though, the series is filling you in on Sondra’s maturity, Denise’s sometimes fractious relationship with her parents, and even Theo’s irrepressible good nature. The show would top itself, but it would never quite match the impact of this simple sequence.
