The Simpsons opening sequence couch gag is shown, before the credits are displayed on a new widescreen flat panel television. Sometimes, the flat panel television falls to the floor and breaks, but unlike "Bart Gets a Z", the episode will begin then anyway. In the 500th episode, the opening sequence was a montage of all previous couch gags. Creator Matt Groening developed a lengthy opening sequence for the first season of "The Simpsons", in order to cut down on the animation necessary for each episode, but devised the two gags as compensation for the repeated material each week. In the first of the original
The Mary Tyler Moore Show opening sequence considerably in appearance. The exact spot where the cap toss occurred has been debated extensively, because the layout along Nicollet has changed substantially since the early 1970s; the actual backdrop of the toss, the Donaldson's department store kittycorner to the site, was destroyed in 1982 by the Minneapolis Thanksgiving Day Fire. The IDS Center was under construction when the original opening sequence was filmed. For an updated sequence used during the fourth season, Mary visited the recently completed IDS Center and was seen riding up the escalator in the Crystal Court. This exposure on prime-time television pre-dated, by two months,