What A 'Cold Open' Means In Television

Who could forget the opening scene of "Lost" — in J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof's masterpiece of a pilot episode — where our hero, Jack (Matthew Fox), awakens in a jungle on a seemingly uninhabited island to find the wreckage of his Oceanic flight and its survivors screaming and wandering about in shock? It's one of the most effective, mysterious, and captivating cold opens ever made. But what's a "cold open" exactly?

In television, a cold open is the very first scene of an episode that always appears before the title card (or opening credits) of any given series. It's one of the greatest storytelling tools TV writers have. It can come in many different forms and shapes, taking up usually five to ten minutes (and in rare examples, much longer) to immediately capture the viewer's attention as potently as possible.

Essentially, they serve as teasers, attempting to establish the show's tone, atmosphere, and vibe before we even find out what the plot is about. They can be used in any genre (from sitcoms to murder mysteries) for different reasons, but to the same effect. The best writers take advantage of them masterfully to grab the audience and never let them go. If you like, cold opens are like metaphorical gateway drugs to a world that sucks you in and makes you addicted to finding out more about it and the characters that populate it.

Cold opens, though clear in purpose, can be used in endless ways, depending on what the writer's primary aim is. Sitcoms usually go for a banger joke up front when it comes to cold opens, and two of the best to ever do it were Greg Daniels's (and Michael Schur's) immortal classics, "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation." There are dozens of hilarious examples to cite, like Jim (John Krasinski) impersonating Rainn Wilson's lunatic Dwight in both look and insufferable behaviour, or Nick Offerman's Ron faking to pull out his own tooth with a plier, causing his co-workers to shriek, run out of the room, and even faint at the sight of seeing such horror.

But if you ask me, the most powerful and intriguing cold opens that tend to live rent-free in the minds of fans often come from mystery shows and heavy dramas. I have to bring up "Lost" again because it was the series that elevated mysteries through cold opens to another level. There are many to pick from, but season 2's opener introducing Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) as a man living in solitude underground in a dark bunker with the sole company of a beeping computer (while Cass Elliot's "Make Your Own Kind of Music" blasts in the background) is one of the biggest WTF moment of TV history.

And I can't go without mentioning how Vince Gilligan practically gave new life to cold opens in his modern masterpiece, "Breaking Bad." It's not that he revolutionized cold openings but rather how daringly he experimented with them, sometimes going totally obscure, delivering short films at the beginning of certain episodes before diving into or continuing plotlines. Again, there are various examples to choose from, like Danny Trejo's Tortuga meeting the Salamanca Cousins, and with them his tragic fate, as his decapitated head ends up on a turtle. But the one you probably heard of, even if you haven't seen a minute of the show (it blew up the internet back then), is the "Say My Name" episode of season 5. In its cold open, Bryan Cranston delivers an acting masterclass by simply forcing an inferior (and frankly clueless) criminal to say his name. Regardless of how many times you watch it, it will give you chills on every occasion.

Such is the power of a pitch-perfect cold open.