The Art and Science Of The Cold Open

The cold open of your sitcom pilot may be the most important two pages you will ever write in your life, unless you write a long ransom note for yourself or jot down an ancient family recipe to pass on. You have so much work to do in those two pages: you have to introduce us to a world we will want to inhabit, introduce us to characters we're going to want to spend time with, and you have to hook us with hard, funny jokes (it's a sitcom- it needs com). In this episode I talk about two of my favorite-ever cold opens (I have about a hundred), both of which coincidentally (seriously, I chose them first then realized it) use punk rock at the top of the show- AP Bio and Reservation Dogs.