Program: Perfect Strangers (1986-1993)
The Song: I kind of love the opening harmonica riff. Then that dude starts singing, and I expect everybody to pull Mentos out of their pants. Seriously. This song sounds like the world's longest and most earnest commercial for mint candies.
It's this earnestness, however, that makes me enjoy the song so much. No one should be this passionate about Perfect Strangers. I mean, I loved Balki's hijinks as a child, but, hell, Full House was appointment viewing when I was younger. Obviously, I didn't ask much from my sitcoms in the early 90's, just silly accents and occasional dances of joy. I also didn't think about the theme song when I was a kid. It was just this musical distraction keeping me from my weekly Balki fix. These days, as a grown man with a vast knowledge of kitsch and it's many benefits to the human body, I can fully enjoy a stupid song like "Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now."
Here's a little look at my private life if you care: Every few months, me and my wife will randomly enter into some weird sitcom theme song sing-off. She'll sing a little "Growing Pains," I'll follow that up with "Family Matters" or my version of "Who's the Boss" ("There's a time for cats and a time for kittens/I like cats and kittens too."), she'll come in with a little "Charles in Charge," and I'll do a little "Full House." The point is, we know all of these songs by heart. I've known the Perfect Strangers theme song by heart since I was a young man. That's either really sick or kinda cool. Probably a combination of the two.
But these were songs you could memorize and sing over and over again. They were actual songs. Not great songs, but catchy, memorable, real ones, with verses and choruses and everything. And "Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now" remains one of the best, even with its repetition of "on the wings of my dreams." That's a little clunky, if I'm being honest.
The Opening Credit Sequence: Pretty much gives us a quick overview of what's happened before the show proper. One of our heroes has traveled to the United States from a country where lightly-mangled English yields hilarious results ("America or Burst." Oh, that's rich.); the other is moving from the comfort and safety of the suburbs to the Big City for the first time. What will happen when these two mismatched goofballs join forces? Why, baseball games, short pants, and wacky slapstick comedy, of course! And that's basically what happens on any given episode, right? It's been a long time since I've seen it.
