On the decision to populate the ceiling with their own characters, creator Damon Lindelof said: "That suddenly made the sequence feel less pretentious, more irreverent and most importantly, original." Has there ever been a more pretentious, less irreverent, and most importantly, unoriginal sentence of Hollywood jargon ever spoken?
This is saying nothing about the shows themselves, by the way. I love Succession, but it opens on an interminable series of clips of the spoiled kids growing up, set to what sounds like someone dropped a guinea pig on a piano. At first I enjoyed it because it was a nice bit of exposition to see shitty kids who grow up to be shittier adults. But by Episode 3 I was skipping it. And sure, all of the gold and grime in the 90-second-long Deadwood opening provides a brutal kind of thematic beauty, but maybe all we need sometimes is 15 seconds and some goofy saxophone.