Ugly Betty
Fashion-magazine collage and a poncho, in twelve seconds.
Ugly Betty opens with a main title sequence of 12 seconds.
At 12 seconds, it opens well under the 38-second median for comedy sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on ABC in 2006, when One Life to Live, All My Children and Schoolhouse Rock! were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
12sThe card.
More comedy opening titles from the 2000s
1 sequenceThe Big Bang Theory
Fourteen billion years of natural history in twenty-three seconds, flashing past at one image per beat.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMalcolm in the Middle
They Might Be Giants' 'Boss of Me' over archive film of chaos — falling, crashing and general misadventure, cut faster than a network comedy usually dares.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Office
Scranton, a car park and a filing cabinet, shot like stock footage for a regional business — twenty-two seconds that promise nothing will happen.
- Season 1
1 sequenceScrubs
Twelve seconds, an X-ray and a guitar — a medical comedy that spends less time on titles than most shows spend on a network ident.
- Season 1
1 sequenceIt's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Photographs of Philadelphia over a jaunty public-domain waltz, with the episode's absurd title card dropped into the middle of it.
- Seasons 2–4
1 sequenceModern Family
Fourteen seconds of family photographs sliding into place, and a card. Nothing else.
- Season 1