There is a button on every streaming remote that exists to commit a small crime: Skip Intro. And yet, for a precious few shows, no one in the room reaches for it. The great title sequence isn't a delay before the show — it is the show, distilled into ninety wordless seconds. It sets the mood, states the theme, and signs the whole enterprise before a line of dialogue is spoken.
The great opening titles aren't a delay before the show. They are the show, distilled.
The world as a machine
Some sequences build you the entire world. Game of Thrones turned its credits into a clockwork map of Westeros, the cities literally assembling themselves anew each week to track where the story had moved — a logistical marvel that doubled as a lesson in geography for a continent's worth of plot. It made the map a character.
The mood as a thesis
Others tell you who you're about to spend an hour with. The Sopranos simply put Tony in his car, driving from the Lincoln Tunnel to the suburbs, cigar in hand — the whole American-dream-gone-sour thesis of the series, delivered as a commute. Mad Men sent an animated adman falling past a city of seductive billboards, a free-fall that the entire show would spend seven seasons explaining.
And then there's pure style as statement: Severance's eerie, dissociative animated titles prepare you for a show about a mind divided against itself before you understand a word of the premise. These sequences endure because they understand a quiet truth: you only get one chance to tell the audience what they're in for. The shows we never skip are the ones that used it.