HOLLYWOOD -- With each new TV season comes a fresh bunch of nagging questions, and the upcoming 2010-11 crop is no exception.
But we're not referring to stuff like, "Does The Good Wife's Alicia stand by Peter in his state's attorney bid or does Will come forward with a better plan?"
Or will the various brothers and sisters in Brothers & Sisters survive the time warp when the show follows through on its promise to leap forward a year for its fifth season?
Nope. What we're dying to know is, come September will Courteney Cox be returning Cougar-free?
And will William Shatner's new sitcom have a more pronounceable (but still FCC-friendly) name when the deliberately indecipherable $#*! My Dad Says makes its fall debut?
Because, almost as crucial to the success of a TV series as the casting and the storylines is a cleverly worded title that somehow manages to convey its entire essence in a handful of syllables.
Theoretically, that title should be locked in place fairly early on, but that's not always the case, is it, Samantha Who?
The Christina Applegate series was originally going to be called Sam I Am before running into copyright problems with the Dr. Seuss estate.
Then it was briefly known as Samantha Be Good before hitting the airwaves as Samantha Who?
Two seasons later, they called it cancelled.
Sometimes a change in the show's direction -- like when the pizza place no longer figured into the storylines of Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place -- necessitates a risky mid-run title change.
That's the option currently being weighed by the producers of Cougar Town, since the original older woman-dating-younger man concept has evolved into something less limiting.
There's also that extensive audience research that showed a number of viewers were initially slow to tune in because they were turned off by the cougar thing.
To give you an idea of just how important a title can be in establishing that all-important vibe, consider the following:
Good News, Bad News. Across the Hall. Yours & Mine. Gold Coast. It's A Small World. The Man.
Failed pilots for forgettable shows, you might rightfully ask?
Actually, they were all at one point being seriously considered as the titles of Seinfeld, Friends, The Brady Bunch, Miami Vice, Leave it to Beaver and Hawaii Five-O, respectively.
And they weren't the only names being floated.
In the case of Friends, Six of One and Insomnia Café were also on the shortlist.
It can really get you to thinking -- if ABC got its way with either one of The Secret Lives of Housewives or Wisteria Lane, would Desperate Housewives have as effectively commanded viewer attention?
Sometimes even one small alteration can change the course of TV destiny.
Would thirtysomething have been added to the Oxford Dictionary back in 1993, if the creators had opted for the initial spelling, namely Thirty Something?
We'll never know.
Meanwhile, had the creators of that turn-of-the-21st century sensation known as Who Wants to be a Millionaire gone with their original title, we have a feeling Cash Mountain wouldn't have earned its place in the pop culture lexicon.
Good thing it wasn't their final answer.
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