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When bad titles happen to good TV shows

Naming a series isn't as easy as it always looks

When bad titles happen to good TV shows
Malin Akerman in the very good, but very badly-titled, Trophy Wife

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When Marta Kauffman and David Crane turned in their first draft of a pilot for a sitcom about six Gen X friends who spent a lot of time hanging out at their local coffee house, it was called Insomnia Cafe. Later drafts went by Friends Like Us and Six of One, before finally someone involved decided that simplicity was their friend, and the story of Monica, Phoebe, Rachel, Chandler, Joey, and Ross became known as just Friends.

Sometimes, people overthink TV show titles. Sometimes, not enough thought goes into them. Most of the time, frankly, it doesn't matter. Friends became a generation-defining smash, even with a generic title. Mom and Girls succeeded with similarly generic titles many years later. But generic titles are also often attached to generic shows that vanish quickly: the same season that House debuted, NBC had its own show about a medical investigator, called... Medical Investigation. It lasted 20 episodes. And shows with strange titles have had long and healthy runs: though I would argue that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a title that created a barrier to entry for the show, it nonetheless ran seven seasons and is among the most acclaimed shows of the last 30 years.

So, no, bad or forgettable titles don't automatically break TV shows. But they can still make life harder than it needs to be. Let's look back at some classic examples — some attached to shows that were canceled quickly, others to series that needed some effort and special circumstances to overcome off-putting names:

Trophy Wife (ABC, 2013-14)