Consumer Guide Album

Television's Greatest Hits [TVT, 1985]
Ignorant of (not altogether uninterested in) television and resistant to (not dead set against) camp, I didn't think this collection of sixty-five TV-show themes would get to me, and I'm happy to report I was wrong. I mean, total immunity to such a document would be counterproductive, like total immunity to Ronald Reagan; you fight the power better if you feel it sometimes. Not that anything so grave is involved here--just corn and cuteness so concentrated they make your teeth hurt. You get plot summaries and program music, jingle singers and cartoon characters, pseudocountry and pseudoclassical. Also great tunes (dja know Gounod wrote the Hitchcock theme?), memories you didn't know you had, memories you didn't have, and Don Pardo for continuity. Love it or leave it. B+