Friday, November 6, 2009
My Week with Sesame Anniversaries: Day 5, Year 35
by Ryan Roe
This week I'm watching Sesame Street's past anniversary specials as we all get giddy with excitement about the show's 40th anniversary next week. If you haven't already, check out my thoughts on the 10th anniversary, the 20th anniversary, the 25th anniversary, and the 30th anniversary!
No, seriously. Can you believe Sesame Street has been around for 40 years? Why, it seems like just yesterday that we were saying, “No, seriously. Can you believe Sesame Street has been around for 35 years?”
That was in 2004, when the anniversary special The Street We Live On aired on PBS. This one is a different animal… It’s really just an episode of the show that happens to be all about the show itself. I’m not sure why they did it this way. Maybe none of the broadcast networks were interested in yet another Sesame birthday party, or maybe the producers just wanted to be meta. So we ended up with this, and that's fine, 'cause I never meta Sesame special I didn't like.
Now here’s Grover, and – oh, right. Here’s one thing that’s changed since the Elmopalooza. Frank Oz’s characters are now performed more often than not by Eric Jacobson (Grover and Bert) and David Rudman (Cookie Monster). It's a great decision... The increased presence of those three characters has really made Sesame feel more like itself since the dawn of the 2000s.
In 2004, the once and future Fix-It Shop was in its Mail-It Shop phase, and Maria and Luis have hired Grover to deliver an important package to Oscar. This seems like a really inefficient way to do business considering Oscar lives about twelve steps away… and anyway, isn’t Grover pretty bad at every job he attempts? No wonder the Mail-It Shop didn’t last.
On his epic journey to the other end of the block, Grover passes by pretty much every major character, Muppet and human, plus three chickens. I love when they do stuff like this -- I think it usually happens in the season premieres, when they do a big street scene with everyone as an introduction/re-introduction to all the folks who populate the street. Plus three chickens.
When he finally arrives at the can (Oscar’s can, not the bathroom), Grover gives Oscar the parcel, and hey, it’s from Elmo (whom Oscar refers to as “the little red menace”). It’s a drawing of Dorothy with spaghetti spilled on it. Mmm, that sounds tasteful. Ha. And with that, we transition to Elmo’s World, where the—
Whoa! Hit the brakes there, buddy! Are they really doing this? A show celebrating the past 35 years of Sesame history, and five minutes in they toss us into Elmo’s World, without any kind of warning?
Answer: Yep. Before we know what hit us, we're off the street and hanging with Elmo and Dorothy. But hey, today Elmo is thinking about Sesame Street (“You know… Sesame Street!”) so all the usual parts of the Elmo’s World formula are related to the show. The question for Mr. Noodle is “How does Cookie Monster eat a cookie?” (Answer: By crumbling it all over the place without ever really eating it.) When Elmo asks a baby, that baby is big, blue and furry: It’s Cookie Monster himself in a “clever disguise.”
The remains of the cookie remind Cookie of the letter C, and now we have a few letter C inserts, some older and some newer. And later, Elmo and the Count count monsters to determine the Number of the Day. (It’s 10, in case you were wondering.)
So all the familiar Sesame elements are here, as are all the Elmo’s World elements. I’m not convinced this was the absolute best way to go about it, but it very well may have been the most effective way to simultaneously get kids high on learning and shoot their parents up with nostalgia. Or, how about this: If you think of a normal episode as a peanut M&M, with the peanut of Elmo’s World inside the candy-covered milk chocolate of Sesame Street, then The Street We Live On is like a reverse M&M. The milk chocolate is all there, but it’s inside the peanut. Come to think of it, that’s some damn skilled candy-making on the part of the Sesame producers.
After Elmo does some other stuff, Grover shows up and takes him on a magical taxi ride (What would an anniversary special be without Grover driving?) to witness scenes of Sesame Street… before he was born! Elmo gets to see Mr. Hooper, and baby Miles, and Maria’s wedding, and… Hey, wait a minute! Isn’t that Elmo as the ring-bearer at that wedding?
After his trip through the space-time continuum, Elmo runs out to the street and demands that everyone gather on the stoop, and they immediately drop what they’re doing to do his bidding. They all sing a song that I’m guessing is called “The Street We Live On,” which is nice enough, although it’s a bit adult contemporary for my tastes. My aunt would probably like it. Everyone gets to sing a line (including Dorothy! And… a CGI tree?!), and when Miles gets his turn he gives a hilariously melismatic performance. Don't wish your neighborhood had regular sing-alongs where everyone magically knew the words?
And so we come to the end of The Street We Live On, an hour that honors the show’s legacy and embodies the fact that it’s still going strong as it reaches today’s youngsters. The end of the song is the end of the special, and everyone says bye-bye… but we’ll be back. After all, we live there too.
Other things about this special:
●Status update on Oscar’s grouchiness this time in 2004: I am happy to report that Oscar yells “Get lost!” at various characters about three times, with no provocation whatsoever. I know, I know, it's far from the the most blatantly dickish thing he’s ever done, but it’s still pretty darn grouchy.
●In the lead-in to “Journey to Ernie,” Bert finds himself in Elmo’s World, at which point he asks, “How do I get out of Elmo’s World?” thus echoing the sentiment of millions of parents watching at home.
●Were the writers worried kids watching this show might get bored with vintage clips and such? There are four different moments here where the kids are instructed to get up and do a dance along with the characters. One of these is led by Snuffy, and is a popular Snuffleupagus dance called “The Snuffleupagus.” Isn’t that a weird name for a Snuffleupagus dance? You don’t see us doing a dance called “The Homo Sapien.”
●There’s an extended version of the song “Dance Myself to Sleep” that features celebrities dancing. Julianne Moore is adorable, while Larry King doesn’t even bother to get up from his desk:
Then again, it’s possible that Larry King is physically unable to stand up, or perhaps he forgot to wear pants that day, again.
BONUS! What’s the Name of That Song?
Believe it or not, there was also a direct-to-DVD special billed as a 35th anniversary celebration. It’s really similar to A Musical Celebration ten years earlier, with Big Bird, Super Grover, and Elmo searching for a song that everyone can sing, interspersed with cool Sesame Street songs. It’s perhaps most notable for the fact that, after 31 years, the cast finally determines that “What’s the Name of That Song?” is the name of that song.
Naturally, this special ends with a big group musical number, and it's another groovy medley. (In which Bob comes in with his arm around Gina. Could she be his rebound gal after Linda left the show?). Yay, everyone can sing together, and yay, Sesame Street has a lot of good songs, and yay, we love it.
Whew! That was a lot of anniversaries. If this were a less interesting television program -- like say, Fishing with Roland Martin, or Senate Judiciary Committee in Session on C-SPAN, or Friends -- I would pretty sick of it by now, but this is Sesame Street, so I want more. Lucky for me, then, that new episodes of the show start on Tuesday, November 10 when the 40th season hits PBS. Tune in, and then come back here to see what we thought of it!
Click here to see yourself before you were born on the Tough Pigs forum!
No, seriously. Can you believe Sesame Street has been around for 40 years? Why, it seems like just yesterday that we were saying, “No, seriously. Can you believe Sesame Street has been around for 35 years?”That was in 2004, when the anniversary special The Street We Live On aired on PBS. This one is a different animal… It’s really just an episode of the show that happens to be all about the show itself. I’m not sure why they did it this way. Maybe none of the broadcast networks were interested in yet another Sesame birthday party, or maybe the producers just wanted to be meta. So we ended up with this, and that's fine, 'cause I never meta Sesame special I didn't like.
Now here’s Grover, and – oh, right. Here’s one thing that’s changed since the Elmopalooza. Frank Oz’s characters are now performed more often than not by Eric Jacobson (Grover and Bert) and David Rudman (Cookie Monster). It's a great decision... The increased presence of those three characters has really made Sesame feel more like itself since the dawn of the 2000s.In 2004, the once and future Fix-It Shop was in its Mail-It Shop phase, and Maria and Luis have hired Grover to deliver an important package to Oscar. This seems like a really inefficient way to do business considering Oscar lives about twelve steps away… and anyway, isn’t Grover pretty bad at every job he attempts? No wonder the Mail-It Shop didn’t last.
On his epic journey to the other end of the block, Grover passes by pretty much every major character, Muppet and human, plus three chickens. I love when they do stuff like this -- I think it usually happens in the season premieres, when they do a big street scene with everyone as an introduction/re-introduction to all the folks who populate the street. Plus three chickens.
When he finally arrives at the can (Oscar’s can, not the bathroom), Grover gives Oscar the parcel, and hey, it’s from Elmo (whom Oscar refers to as “the little red menace”). It’s a drawing of Dorothy with spaghetti spilled on it. Mmm, that sounds tasteful. Ha. And with that, we transition to Elmo’s World, where the—Whoa! Hit the brakes there, buddy! Are they really doing this? A show celebrating the past 35 years of Sesame history, and five minutes in they toss us into Elmo’s World, without any kind of warning?
Answer: Yep. Before we know what hit us, we're off the street and hanging with Elmo and Dorothy. But hey, today Elmo is thinking about Sesame Street (“You know… Sesame Street!”) so all the usual parts of the Elmo’s World formula are related to the show. The question for Mr. Noodle is “How does Cookie Monster eat a cookie?” (Answer: By crumbling it all over the place without ever really eating it.) When Elmo asks a baby, that baby is big, blue and furry: It’s Cookie Monster himself in a “clever disguise.”
The remains of the cookie remind Cookie of the letter C, and now we have a few letter C inserts, some older and some newer. And later, Elmo and the Count count monsters to determine the Number of the Day. (It’s 10, in case you were wondering.)So all the familiar Sesame elements are here, as are all the Elmo’s World elements. I’m not convinced this was the absolute best way to go about it, but it very well may have been the most effective way to simultaneously get kids high on learning and shoot their parents up with nostalgia. Or, how about this: If you think of a normal episode as a peanut M&M, with the peanut of Elmo’s World inside the candy-covered milk chocolate of Sesame Street, then The Street We Live On is like a reverse M&M. The milk chocolate is all there, but it’s inside the peanut. Come to think of it, that’s some damn skilled candy-making on the part of the Sesame producers.
After Elmo does some other stuff, Grover shows up and takes him on a magical taxi ride (What would an anniversary special be without Grover driving?) to witness scenes of Sesame Street… before he was born! Elmo gets to see Mr. Hooper, and baby Miles, and Maria’s wedding, and… Hey, wait a minute! Isn’t that Elmo as the ring-bearer at that wedding?After his trip through the space-time continuum, Elmo runs out to the street and demands that everyone gather on the stoop, and they immediately drop what they’re doing to do his bidding. They all sing a song that I’m guessing is called “The Street We Live On,” which is nice enough, although it’s a bit adult contemporary for my tastes. My aunt would probably like it. Everyone gets to sing a line (including Dorothy! And… a CGI tree?!), and when Miles gets his turn he gives a hilariously melismatic performance. Don't wish your neighborhood had regular sing-alongs where everyone magically knew the words?
And so we come to the end of The Street We Live On, an hour that honors the show’s legacy and embodies the fact that it’s still going strong as it reaches today’s youngsters. The end of the song is the end of the special, and everyone says bye-bye… but we’ll be back. After all, we live there too.Other things about this special:
●Status update on Oscar’s grouchiness this time in 2004: I am happy to report that Oscar yells “Get lost!” at various characters about three times, with no provocation whatsoever. I know, I know, it's far from the the most blatantly dickish thing he’s ever done, but it’s still pretty darn grouchy.
●In the lead-in to “Journey to Ernie,” Bert finds himself in Elmo’s World, at which point he asks, “How do I get out of Elmo’s World?” thus echoing the sentiment of millions of parents watching at home.●Were the writers worried kids watching this show might get bored with vintage clips and such? There are four different moments here where the kids are instructed to get up and do a dance along with the characters. One of these is led by Snuffy, and is a popular Snuffleupagus dance called “The Snuffleupagus.” Isn’t that a weird name for a Snuffleupagus dance? You don’t see us doing a dance called “The Homo Sapien.”
●There’s an extended version of the song “Dance Myself to Sleep” that features celebrities dancing. Julianne Moore is adorable, while Larry King doesn’t even bother to get up from his desk:
Then again, it’s possible that Larry King is physically unable to stand up, or perhaps he forgot to wear pants that day, again.
BONUS! What’s the Name of That Song?Believe it or not, there was also a direct-to-DVD special billed as a 35th anniversary celebration. It’s really similar to A Musical Celebration ten years earlier, with Big Bird, Super Grover, and Elmo searching for a song that everyone can sing, interspersed with cool Sesame Street songs. It’s perhaps most notable for the fact that, after 31 years, the cast finally determines that “What’s the Name of That Song?” is the name of that song.
Naturally, this special ends with a big group musical number, and it's another groovy medley. (In which Bob comes in with his arm around Gina. Could she be his rebound gal after Linda left the show?). Yay, everyone can sing together, and yay, Sesame Street has a lot of good songs, and yay, we love it.Whew! That was a lot of anniversaries. If this were a less interesting television program -- like say, Fishing with Roland Martin, or Senate Judiciary Committee in Session on C-SPAN, or Friends -- I would pretty sick of it by now, but this is Sesame Street, so I want more. Lucky for me, then, that new episodes of the show start on Tuesday, November 10 when the 40th season hits PBS. Tune in, and then come back here to see what we thought of it!
Click here to see yourself before you were born on the Tough Pigs forum!
ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com
Labels: my week, Sesame Street
Thursday, November 5, 2009
My Week with Sesame Anniversaries: Day 4, Year 30
by Ryan Roe
This week, I'm marking Sesame Street's 40th anniversary by watching specials from the show's previous anniversaries. On Monday I celebrated the 30th anniversary of the 10th anniversary special, on Tuesday I comemmorated the 20th anniversary of the 20th anniversary special, and yesterday I marked the 15th anniversary of the 25th anniversary special. Join me now as I check out Elmopalooza, a special commemorating Sesame Street's 30th year.Here we are now in 1998*. Has anything changed since the 25th anniversary a few years ago? You bet your sweet bippy it has, and it’s all because of a little thing called Tickle Me Elmo, the toy that captured the hearts of America’s children while simultaneously driving their parents to violent rioting in the aisles at Toys ‘R’ Us. The little red monster is a huge star now, and that explains why this special, which aired on ABC, is called Elmopalooza and not Sesamepalooza or BigBirdapalooza, or Sesamestreet celebratesitsbirthdaywithaprimetimetelevisionspecialpalooza.
But don’t judge a TV special by its cover: As Tough Pigs founder Danny Horn once pointed out here on the site, the show is really an ensemble piece, with the whole cast of Sesame Street Muppets putting on a show for us. Elmopalooza is a change of pace from previous anniversaries in that it is absolutely not a clip show. Clips are so 1994, so this is a variety show, coming to us live from Radio City Music Hall! And just to throw us off, nobody ever mentions the fact that it's the 30th anniversary.
Our host is Jon Stewart, during the post-Jon Stewart Show, pre-Daily Show era in which he was not yet the most trusted TV journalist in America. The director is Prairie Dawn. I’m a big Prairie Dawn fan – she’s a funny character who tends to get overlooked, so it’s nice to see her used so well here. She even gets to utter the show's one shocking obscenity: “We’re in deep doo-doo!” Yikes! What's next, Ernie saying "consarn it?" (I apologize if the previous sentence offended anyone.) So why are they in deep doo-doo? Well, here’s what happens: It seems the door to the dressing room sticks when you close it… and Elmo, unaware of this fact, closes said door, trapping Jon Stewart and Prairie Dawn and the entire crew inside, just moments before the show is supposed to start. Jeez, Radio City Music Hall must be a pretty crappy little theater to only have one dressing room.
But now Elmo has ruined everything ("Just like he always does!" shout the old-school cynics), and that’s why he and all his friends have to run the show themselves. The show consists of a bunch of slickly produced music videos of classic Sesame Street songs performed by famous singers with Muppets. I don't know... If I bought an expensive ticket to a big show at Radio City, I'd probably be pretty disappointed if all they did was play some videos, but at least most of the videos are pretty cool.It just occurred to me that none of the songs they chose are very educational, and I wonder if that was a deliberate for the primetime audience. “Mambo I, I, I” and “The Zig Zag Dance” (sung here by Gloria Estefan and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, respectively) are sort of about letters, but not really. Really they’re just catchy songs.
Some of the song covers are better than others. Shawn Colvin and Ernie sing “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon” while on a romantic road trip (I swear, Colvin comes this close to asking Ernie to marry her). It’s quite lovely, although I’m not sure their driver would agree. He looks pretty unamused... I’m guessing he’s a Bert fan, and he’s never forgiven Ernie for that time he ate Bert’s piece of chocolate cake. The Fugees do a hippety-hoppety version of “Happy to Be Me” on the streets of New York City, with Big Bird and Snuffy. I really like seeing Snuffy outdoors on location, and I wish we could see more of that on the show, although I would settle for seeing him walking down the street outside my house tomorrow morning. En Vogue shows up to do “I Want a Monster to Be My Friend,” and although the song loses a lot in the translation to an R&B arrangement, there’s some fun stuff with the Sesame Street monsters hanging out with the En Voguers. One of them is seen at a drive-in movie with the Two-Headed Monster, and I swear, this special is all about pop singers dating Muppets.
Meanwhile, the humans of Sesame Street – Susan, Gordon, Bob, Mr. Handford, and Gina – are on their way to the show, but they’re having some problems getting there because their driver is, of course, Grover. It was established 10 years earlier that Grover does not know how to get to Sesame Street by car, and now it seems he’s not so great at getting to 6th Avenue at 50th Street either. His wrong turns lead them to a snowy landscape where Grover picks up a few penguins, and Roswell, New Mexico, where one of the “Yip-Yip” Martians hitches a ride. How does Grover keep getting jobs? There's no way he's ever gotten a positive letter of recommendation.
The show goes on, even as various attempts to release Jon Stewart and Prairie Dawn from their well-furnished prison fail miserably. And guess who shows up again? It's Rosie O'Donnell, who, like Elmo, has become a lot more famous since appearing in Stars and Street Forever in 1994. (His fame rose because he was ticklish, hers rose because she threw Koosh balls at people.) They do an onstage performance of the song "Nearly Missed"... I believe it was originally sung by Susan, but Rosie and Elmo do a rap arrangement, and I can't say it's an improvement.At the end of their song, Rosie does a big, theatrical, "ta-da!" gesture, knocking Elmo clear off the stage and into the wings, where he crashes into the stagehand monsters, resulting in all the scenery collapsing all over the stage. Elmo is despondent about having messed up the whole show, but I'd just like to point out that the destruction of this particular number was caused by Rosie O'Donnell. Not that she takes responsibility for it, no sir. She just lets Elmo -- an innocent three-year-old! -- feel sorry for himself. Didn't O'Donnell have the nickname "Queen of Nice" in those days? Well, in reality, she's a heartless beast.
And then a bunch of stuff happens, and everything's fine, and then the cast does a closing medley of their greatest hits onstage. With just a handful of Muppets and humans, it seems kind of small compared to the cast-of-thousands finales we've seen in previous shows, but who cares? Sesame Street has been around for 30 years, and as this show proves, everyone in the world loves it, from Jimmy Buffett to Chris Rock. Say it with me: Ten more years! Ten more years!Other things about this special:
●So how's Oscar's grouchiness in 1998? Well, he doesn't get much time in the spotlight, so it's hard to tell. But for the second anniversary special in a row, he ultimately comes up with the solution that saves the day. Oscar the hero? It sure looks like he's getting nicer as he gets older.
●The video for "One Small Voice" tells a little story, with a kid at a talent show feeling too nervous to sing until Big Bird offers him some encouragement. The celebrity guest on this one is Kenny Loggins, but he doesn't appear at the talent show, no does he interact with anyone ever... He's apparently trapped in limbo, where he's surrounded by blackness and forced to sing inspirational children's songs for all eternity.
●And now a few more images... Check out Maria’s amazing pants in the “Mambo, I, I, I” video!
●Bob gets cozy with a penguin:
●The Count looks short when you can see his whole body:
So that's Elmopalooza. Tomorrow it'll be 2004, and Elmo will be itching to learn about Sesame Street for the 35th anniversary show The Street We Live On.
Click here for The Street We Live On. And click here to do the Zig Zag dance on the Tough Pigs forum!
ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com
*That's right: Although this was marketed as a 30th anniversary special, it aired in 1998, the show's 29th anniversary, so either they were so excited about turning 30 they just couldn't wait another year, or they're not as good at counting as they've always led us to believe.
Labels: my week, Sesame Street
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
My Week with Sesame Anniversaries: Day 3, Year 25
by Ryan Roe
This week, I’m preparing for the beginning of Sesame Street’s 40th season next week by watching old Sesame Street anniversary specials. Check out my thoughts on the 10th anniversary and the 20th anniversary.So here we are in 1994, and it’s Sesame Street’s 25th anniversary, and wow. A lot has changed since the 20th anniversary five short years ago. In fact, there were more changes between the 20th and 25th years of the show than there were between the 10th and 20th. A few important people are gone – Jim Henson, Richard Hunt, Northern Calloway – and that makes a huge difference. But beyond that, the street itself has undergone a makeover. Everything’s a little brighter, and we now have the “Around the Corner” area, with a bunch of new sets and characters to go with it.
There’s Celina, and Ruthie, and Benny, and Zoe, and the Furry Arms Hotel, and the Finders Keepers store, and, and, and… I was well past the target audience by 1994, but I was already a Sesame geek, so I was pretty excited about Around the Corner’s debut. Now, though, I can see how it just wasn’t necessary. I mean, there were some funny street stories at the Furry Arms, but does a fancy hotel really belong on Sesame Street?The guest star-filled special Stars and Street aired on ABC, and it has more of a narrative than the previous, more strictly retrospective anniversaries. The writers had to come up with a plot that emphasizes how valuable Sesame Street is, and they achieve that by threatening to take the street away. Joe Pesci plays real estate tycoon Ronald Grump, who wants to demolish Sesame Street to build his Grump Tower. He’s a spoof of the similarly-named real-life real estate mogul, of course, and while Pesci has played some bad guys in his career, you can’t get much more evil than Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is covering the whole story as it unfolds, as a reporter named Kathie Lee Kathie. Which is… funny? I guess? A look at the credits reveal that wacky Hollywood Squares regular Bruce Vilanch provided “additional material” for this special, and I have to wonder if some of this Kathie Lee Kathie stuff is his. We find out later that Kathie used to have a talk show, but it was canceled, and Elmo makes some snarky remarks about it. I love it when Elmo gets snarky.But while there is a story, not much actually happens. The characters mostly stand around alternating between anger and depression, saying things like “How can we stop Grump? He’s so rich! And so mean!” And there’s a lot of restating the premise: Grump wants to get rid of Sesame Street, that makes us feel bad. I guess the writers were catering to the little kids in the audience. Man, little kids are dumb.
Of course, the threat of No More Sesame Street is really just an excuse for (guess what?) montages, as everyone reminisces about memorable moments. It’s not just the obvious letter montage/number montage/international montage setup. There are some other themes, like a series of clips featuring characters overcoming adversity, a group of slapstick-y, comic clips, and one that includes lots of hugging and smooching. (I'm sure Elmo remembers fondly the time Gina kissed him all over his furry face.) But grumpy Grump is unmoved by all this history: “If there’s one thing I despise,” he says, “it’s cheap sentiment. Hugs, kiddie television, cute, furry animals…”Kiddie television? Naturally, that got me to thinking, AGAIN, about the issue of Sesame Street characters’ perception of their own reality. When they talk about “all the great things that have happened here on Sesame Street,” they’re not exclusively referring to a physical location. A lot of the stuff in the montages – Ed Grimley in a park, opera singer Marilyn Horne performing “C Is For Cookie” – obviously didn’t happen within a three- or four-block stretch of a New York city street. So are Gordon, Maria, and Savion aware that they’re actually campaigning for a TV show, and not just a street? Who knows? And indeed, who, besides me, cares?
At one point, Benny Rabbit (a cranky, high-strung character who's not around anymore probably because the producers realized they only needed one Oscar) approaches Grump and offers to help him with his evil plan, in exchange for a job as a doorman at Grump's new building. Grump immediately brushes him off, but I almost wish they had pursued that potential subplot. Benny's willingness to be a furry Judas is an unusually dark turn for a Sesame character. But then, Grump himself is unusual because it's not often we see villains in Sesame Street productions, especially not with hairpieces.You want more guest stars? This show's got 'em. Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman have the thankless job of playing giant worms on Slimey’s favorite cable channel, WormTV. I’m a little suspicious of the idea that Slimey can afford cable on a worm’s salary, so I’m guessing Oscar just steals it. This leads to a montage of popular music-style songs, including one I’d never seen before with a dashing Kevin Kline and a fetching Phoebe Cates singing about measurements. I found the full clip on YouTube, which is at least 72 inches of delightful:
There’s a scene where Kathie Lee Kathie, seeking advice, calls up Regis Philbin and the real Kathie Lee Gifford, which dilutes the joke of her name even further. Those of you still playing the Kathie Lee Gifford drinking game can take a shot, because naturally Gifford manages to work in a reference to her son Cody.
Hey, remember when people still liked Rosie O’Donnell? They must have at some point, which explains why she’s here as the Spirit of Hope, who shows up when Telly, Luis, and Savion are at their most hopeless and helps them out by buying them all several beers. I mean, by showing them a particularly optimistic montage. Then she has to run, because “Hope’s very much in demand during sweeps week.”The best guest stars are Susan Sarandon and the always-dependable Charles Grodin, playing a couple of rich twits who are considering buying a home in the Grump Tower. They’re horrified to see Oscar, which is not an unreasonable reaction. Grump assures them he’ll be gone along with the rest of the street once the tower is built, but guess what? It turns out Oscar’s can is on city property, so Grump can’t build unless Oscar moves.
Why would Oscar give up his trash can? It's spacious, affordable, and convenient to the subway, so he’s not going anywhere. I know, I know, that’s a spoiler. I’d like to apologize to anyone reading this who thought maybe Sesame Street was destroyed and replaced by a high-rise in 1994.
All the other poor saps on Sesame Street don’t know about this development yet, so they start the world's most pointless protest march. Their chant, “1, 2, 3, 4, Sesame Street forever more!” is no "What do we want? Freedom!/When do we want it? Now!" but it’s catchy enough. They quickly discover the truth, and Oscar is a hero, much to his dismay.The show closes with everyone singing "Sing." Whoa, deja vu! That's the exact same song they used to end 20 and Still Counting, but this time around it's mashed up with a new song I'll assume is called "Our Favorite Street." Even the guest stars join in, and if you ever wondered whether Corbin Bernsen and Rosie O'Donnell are stunningly bad signers, I can assure you that they are.
So, Sesame Street in 1994. A lot of old-school fans will tell you that this is about the time the show started to lose its mojo. It definitely has a different vibe than it did five or ten years earlier, but it's still Sesame Street, and that means it was still evolving and developing, and I'm going to go ahead and say it was very nearly as good as it had ever been.It's funny that the show seems to carry an anti-gentrification message, with the characters insisting that their urban neighborhood is fine just the way it is and nothing needs to change... but maybe that was the point. Maybe the writers were trying to let us know that even when things get tweaked here and there, the spirit of the show stays the same, and those closest to it are never going to let it become unrecognizable as Sesame Street, because they're always committed to continuing the elements that make it great. Or some crap like that.
Other things about this special:
●Back when Zoe first started wearing her tutu, I thought it was pretty silly, but I've gotten so used to it that now it's weird to see her naked, as she is here. Even weirder, though, is the fact that Ruth Buzzi also spends the entire special naked.
●Once again my copy of this special has the original commercials, and guess who shows up in a spot for Jell-O? Besides Bill Cosby, I mean. It's none other than tiny, adorable Desiree Casado, who plays Gabi on the show and in this special.
I'm sure millions of children saw this, and said to their parents, "Look, parents! Gabi from Sesame Street says I should eat Jell-O, so you have to buy me as much Jell-O as I want now or I'll never learn the alphabet!" And that's how the childhood obesity epidemic started.
●The important question: How grouchy is Oscar in this special? Stars and Street emphasizes the yucky aspect of Oscar's grouch-hood more than the jerk aspect. He's still grouchy, but not as aggressively so as in the previous two anniversary specials. Maybe he was just having a bad day. Or would that be a good day?
BONUS! Sesame Street: A Musical CelebrationAs crazy as it sounds, there were actually two 25th anniversary specials. The other one aired on PBS as Sesame Street Jam: A Musical Celebration, and released on video as 25 Wonderful Years: A Musical Celebration. I have the home video version. I don’t have as much to say about it, because it’s mostly just songs from the show, with a framing story in which Big Bird, Telly, and Prairie Dawn are searching for singers, dancers, and “la-la-ers” in a city park.
Some of the song choices are obvious – “C Is For Cookie” and “Rubber Duckie” are required by law by this point, I think – but a few are more interesting, like En Vogue’s “Adventure,” and “Count It Higher.” “Do De Rubber Duck” shows up too, and how much do I love that song? A lot, that’s how much. In fact, I’m totally going to invite all my friends over to sing and dance with me in the bathtub in tribute to that song. Do you want in?
The big conflict in this special is that Big Bird gets depressed when he can’t find any la-la-ers, even with Mumford’s help, but what do you expect from an incompetent magician. Fortunately, Ladysmith Black Mambazo shows up out of nowhere to do some la-las, and then Big Bird’s happy again and everyone joins in a rousing rendition of… yep, you guessed it. “Sing." All right, it's a pretty song and everything, but now they're just getting lazy.And so Sesame Street has reached its silver anniversary. It’s grown, it’s evolved, and it’s marked the occasion with two specials using the exact same closing number. They’ll do another special when the 30th anniversary rolls around, but this time, not much will have changed... except for one thing, and that one thing is the skyrocketing superstardom of a little guy with a red face. And I don’t mean Mickey Rooney!
Click here for Elmopalooza. And click here to make your reservation for the Furry Arms hotel on the Tough Pigs forum!
ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com
Labels: my week, Sesame Street
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
My Week with Sesame Anniversaries: Day 2, Year 20
by Ryan Roe
This week, I’m preparing for the beginning of Sesame Street’s 40th season next week by watching old Sesame Street anniversary specials. Yesterday I watched the 10th anniversary special A Walking Tour of Sesame Street, and today I’m watching 1989’s Sesame Street: 20 and Still Counting.
A ten-year anniversary is definitely cause for celebration. Fifteen years? Not so much. Who cares about fifteen years? But twenty years, now that’s something to brag about, preferably on primetime network television, and so we have Sesame Street: 20 and Still Counting, an hourlong special that aired on NBC in 1989. (By the way, I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but that’s the most clever title of all the anniversary specials.)
This special begins with Jim Henson and Kermit welcoming us. Jim says, “Back in 1968, I was asked to take part in an experiment to see if you could use television to teach preschool children. We all figured it would last a few seasons at most, but here we are 20 years later, and Sesame Street is still going strong.” Yeah, man! It’s 1989, and it is still going strong. That’s so, like, radical! Tubular! Gnarly! (That’s how people talked in 1989, right?)It makes me think: When the show first started, the producers had no expectations about how long it would last, but what about after they crossed the 10-year mark? The 15-year mark? At what point did it become understood that Sesame Street was going to be around long enough for the kids who watched it to grow up and show it to their kids? At what point did it cease to be surprising that Sesame Street would stay on the air long enough for seven U.S. presidents to come and go?
Jim introduces our host, Bill Cosby, and then just to be on the safe side, Cosby appears with a title on the screen reading BILL COSBY, in case we haven’t been paying attention and don’t recognize the star of TV’s #1 sitcom. (Hiring Cosby, of course, continues the policy of hiring cast members from the 1978 film A Piece of the Action to host Sesame Street anniversary specials. One can only assume that if there had been a 15th anniversary special, it would have been hosted by Sidney Poitier.)
Cosby interacts with the Sesame characters a lot more than James Earl Jones did ten years ago. Pretty much every time Cosby introduces a clip montage, he's accompanied or interrupted by a Muppet. This includes Elmo, who learns the meaning of the word "curriculum," and Placido Flamingo, who ends up singing a duet with Placido Domingo, "the other greatest opera singer in the world." Honestly, I'd rather hear the flamingo than the Domingo, but at least the song is in English, because if it had been an operatic piece in Spanish or Italian, all the kids watching would have gotten restless. And when I say "all the kids watching," I mean me.Like James Earl Jones before him, Cosby can’t resist approaching Oscar’s trash can. He opens the lid, and a bunch of toy snakes come sproinging out. Oscar tells him to mind his own business, Ph.D-face, and Cosby does that funny sort of eye-rolling grin he does. “I’ve been insulted by Oscar the Grouch…”
So, for the record, Oscar is just as grouchy in 1989 as he was in 1979, and he’s still yelling at hosts of anniversary specials. He’s also pretty good at creative insults. "Ph.D-face," that's really hitting Cosby where he lives.
Cosby also meets Big Bird, which leads to a montage of great Bird moments, including one where it looks like he’s standing in a lake(!). I can't imagine that they would ever let a puppet get wet like that, so I can only assume this means Big Bird is real. Hey, remember when Big Bird was the star of Sesame Street? I remember that. When Cosby asks Big Bird how he can still be six years old when he’s been around for 20 years, the bird has a perfect answer: “Just lucky, I guess!” And then he walks away la-la-la-ing, leaving Bill Cosby speechless.The clip montages are entertaining -- besides the usual letter and number bits, there's a run of Muppets falling over backwards, and one of characters getting sprayed with water -- but they really just make me wish I could see all the sketches in their entirety. I can't wait until they release a Sesame Street complete series DVD set of all 4,000 episodes on 80 discs. That's gonna be great.
There are a few bits that run throughout the special, like the one that follows aspiring documentarians Ernie and Bert using a video camera to take footage of Sesame Street so they can see it on television. This is despite Bert's misgivings: “Who wants to see Sesame Street on TV?” They film kids waving at the camera, they film Maria and Luis fixing a toaster. So basically, they suck as filmmakers. This is a street where giant birds ride unicycles, where a species descended from wooly mammoths and unknown to science sings the alphabet, and the best they can do is a married couple fixing a toaster? The Maysles brothers they ain't. While this is going on, Bob, Gordon, and Susan are reminiscing over in Hooper's Store. Or maybe it’s actually Bob McGrath, Roscoe Orman, and Loretta Long. It's kind of unclear, probably in a deliberate effort to avoid making any toddler heads spin. Like if Gordon had said, "Well, it sure has been fun being an actor playing a character named Gordon on TV who is not actually real, just like the Tooth Fairy is not real!" that would have been ill-advised. But whoever they are, it's lovely listening in. At one point, Susan/Loretta says, “Well, I’m up for 20 more, how ‘bout you guys?” and I love that. Because it’s true! They do go on for 20 more years!
Out on a real-life city street, reporter Kermit keeps tries to ask the Question of the Day: "Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?" He keeps getting interrupted by Grover, who’s making a lot of noise working as an ice cream salesman and later as a jackhammer monster. It strikes me as funny that Grover bothers to wear a hardhat while jackhammering, despite the fact that he’s not wearing any clothes.When Kermit approaches two young women, there’s a spark of recognition. It’s Fanny and Shala, Kermit’s costars from 1973’s “next to” sketch! In that sketch, Kermit demonstrates being next to each kid, and they squeeze him a lot. He asks them for an update, and they both tell him they’re in college. That proves that Sesame Street makes kids smart! Then they squeeze him again, which proves that Kermit is cuddly. But they forget to answer the Question of the Day, and so Kermit is still empty-handed. Thanks for nothing, Fanny and Shala.
Later in the show, we see the classic insert where Herry counts to 20 with everyone’s favorite Sesame kid, John-John… and then they reunite Herry with the grown-up John-John, and they count again! The notion of bringing back the all-growed-up kids works so well, I wish they had done more of it. I know I would have liked to see an older version of Joey, the little girl who frustrated Kermit by insisting that Cookie Monster was a letter of the alphabet, or maybe the girl who turned Paul Simon’s performance of “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” into an impromptu sing-along. Where they at?When Cosby tells us that Sesame Street has a mother, and her name is Joan Ganz Cooney, we cut to Cooney and Jim Henson chatting about the show. She says she's especially proud of the co-productions, but most thrilled to know that they have Sesame Street in the Middle East now. Her dream is that someday peace will break out in the Middle East over shared recognition of a Bert & Ernie sketch. Of course, we all know that that is exactly what happened in 1997, when Yasser Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu performed the “Why do you have a banana in your ear?” sketch at Camp David, with Bill Clinton playing the role of the banana.
A montage about life stuff includes a clip of Big Bird finding out that there’s a baby growing inside Maria’s body. When he asks how it happened, Luis grins as he explains, “We decided to start a family, so together we started a baby growing inside Maria’s body!” He’s so proud of himself, heh heh heh. They also show the clip from the show about the death of Mr. Hooper. It never gets any less heartbreaking, does it?Cosby says, “And so Big Bird learned about death, birth, love, marriage, adoption, and that life is constantly changing, as Sesame Street keeps changing.” Just then Cookie Monster pops up and asks for a cookie, to which Cosby replies, “Some things never change!” Oh yeah?! I hear they're changing his name to Vegetable M— oh, nevermind.
By the end of the special, Kermit is still outside, and he still has no answer to his Question of the Day. He admits his complete failure as a journalist and hails a cab back to Sesame Street, and guess who’s driving? Yeah, it’s Grover. And now Kermit has a new problem, because Grover has no idea how to get to Sesame Street. This is not the last time Grover’s poor grasp of geography will cause trouble in an anniversary special. (Ooh, foreshadowing!)By this point, Bert and Ernie have finished their documentary, but Cookie Monster eats the tape (I hear they're changing his name to Hi-8 Videocassette Monster). Argh, now no one will ever get to see Sesame Street on television! “What’re we gonna do now?” Bert cries, and Don Music has the only logical solution: “Let’s sing!”
So they sing “Sing,” and as each character gets a closeup, the actor’s name appears on the screen. There’s also a terrific moment where a kid spontaneously tousles Don Music’s hair and Don does a double take. Then Little Miles Orman appears as Gordon and Susan’s son Miles, and he’s cute, but he obviously doesn’t know the words. How unprofessional.
Finally, a huge crowd of humans and Muppets do the la-la-la-la-la’s. I'm pretty sure they're spilling off the sidewalk and out into the street, which is a major safety hazard, but fortunately nobody gets run over by a bus. Bill Cosby tells a baby, “Sesame Street is 20 years old, and going on for another 20!” And holy cow, he’s right! He’s so right! This is one of my favorite things about these anniversary specials, when they say, “Hey, maybe we’ll keep going for another decade or two!” and they have no idea if they will or not, but I know because I live in the future.
So while the message of the 10th anniversary show was "Sesame Street is a television program that teaches kids stuff," this one is more like, "Wow, you guys. Sesame Street is a really, really, really, really good show." And yes, that's really, really, really, really true.
So now Sesame Street is old enough to drive, vote, smoke, and get drafted. Tomorrow we'll watch Stars and Street Forever and see how the show celebrates being old enough to rent a car! Woo-hoo!
Other things about this special:
●Jim Henson’s sweater is reminiscent of a Cliff Huxtable sweater from The Cosby Show. Then Bob, Gordon, and Susan are wearing sweaters too! I'm now certain that Bill Cosby gave everyone on the set his hand-me-downs during the making of this special, and nothing will ever convince me otherwise.
●Cosby begins by saying, "I’m standing on the most famous street in America, maybe the whole world.” For a minute there I thought he was going to compare it to Flugelhorn Street, or whatever, like James Earl Jones did.
●Cosby remarks, "[Sesame Street is] now seen all over the world, and they’re still asking how to get here.” And then, providing a vital clue to superfans eagerly awaiting the creation of Muppet Wiki sixteen years later, he says, “I took the A train.” It's a clue!
●It’s interesting to glimpse all the characters who were prominent in 1989, but who aren’t around anymore: Snuffy’s sister Alice, Uncle Wally, Ruby Monster, Meryl Sheep. Say, have I ever talked about how much I dig Meryl Sheep? Of course nobody in the world remembers her now, but she was a pretty great character. Here she is with Susan Sarandon:
●My tape of this special has all the commercials intact… and hey, there’s a promo for The Jim Henson Hour! Man, I can’t wait to watch that show. It’s gonna be so good, and I bet it’ll be a big hit like The Muppet Show.
●In case you were wondering, this special was sponsored by Clorox. The next time you use Clorox, offer a few words of thanks for bringing Ruby Monster into your home.
So while the message of the 10th anniversary show was "Sesame Street is a television program that teaches kids stuff," this one is more like, "Wow, you guys. Sesame Street is a really, really, really, really good show." And yes, that's really, really, really, really true.
So now Sesame Street is old enough to drive, vote, smoke, and get drafted. Tomorrow we'll watch Stars and Street Forever and see how the show celebrates being old enough to rent a car! Woo-hoo!
Other things about this special:
●Jim Henson’s sweater is reminiscent of a Cliff Huxtable sweater from The Cosby Show. Then Bob, Gordon, and Susan are wearing sweaters too! I'm now certain that Bill Cosby gave everyone on the set his hand-me-downs during the making of this special, and nothing will ever convince me otherwise.
●Cosby begins by saying, "I’m standing on the most famous street in America, maybe the whole world.” For a minute there I thought he was going to compare it to Flugelhorn Street, or whatever, like James Earl Jones did.
●Cosby remarks, "[Sesame Street is] now seen all over the world, and they’re still asking how to get here.” And then, providing a vital clue to superfans eagerly awaiting the creation of Muppet Wiki sixteen years later, he says, “I took the A train.” It's a clue!
●It’s interesting to glimpse all the characters who were prominent in 1989, but who aren’t around anymore: Snuffy’s sister Alice, Uncle Wally, Ruby Monster, Meryl Sheep. Say, have I ever talked about how much I dig Meryl Sheep? Of course nobody in the world remembers her now, but she was a pretty great character. Here she is with Susan Sarandon:
●My tape of this special has all the commercials intact… and hey, there’s a promo for The Jim Henson Hour! Man, I can’t wait to watch that show. It’s gonna be so good, and I bet it’ll be a big hit like The Muppet Show.
●In case you were wondering, this special was sponsored by Clorox. The next time you use Clorox, offer a few words of thanks for bringing Ruby Monster into your home.
Click here to read about the 25th anniversary special! And click here to answer the Question of the Day on the Tough Pigs forum!
ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com
Labels: my week, Sesame Street
Monday, November 2, 2009
My Week with Sesame Anniversaries: Day 1, Year 10
by Ryan Roe
You know what happens next week? The 40th season of Sesame Street starts, that's what. And yes: 40 years is amazing, what a legacy, so many children educated, blah blah blah. Sesame Workshop is releasing a cool new book and a cool new DVD, but there's no TV special to celebrate the show going over the hill.So I’m commemorating the show's 40th season by watching the previous anniversary specials, starting with 1979's 10-year show, A Walking Tour of Sesame Street with James Earl Jones. Later this week I’ll be watching the 20th anniversary special Sesame Street: 20 and Still Counting, the 25th anniversary special Stars and Street Forever, the 30th anniversary special Elmopalooza, and the 35th anniversary special The Street We Live On. Man, that’s a lot of anniversaries. Let’s get started.
So in 1979, Sesame Street had been around for a decade. That's quite an accomplishment for any TV series, although 30 years later it kinda seems pretty wimpy. As we've often heard, the show was created as an experiment to see if TV could teach kids in an entertaining way, so the point of the tenth anniversary special is basically to say, "Dude, it works!"As you've most likely guessed unless you're pretty stupid, our host for this half hour is James Earl Jones, and he meanders down Sesame Street while talking to us. Sesame Street’s not a very big place, so a walking tour really doesn’t take very long. Jones takes a lot of breaks while we watch montages of clips from the show, which make up the bulk of the special. I don't know what he's doing while we're watching the clips... If I were James Earl Jones I'd probably just stand there saying random words out loud and marveling at how cool they sounded in my deep, rich voice. Words like "lugubrious."
There’s an alphabet montage that kicks off with a first-season clip of Jones himself reciting the alphabet – “I did it without cue cards!” he claims, although I remain unconvinced. That's not to say it’s not effective… James Earl Jones glaring at the camera while sternly growling the alphabet is a clip that taught a generation of children their ABCs while simultaneously terrifying them.This montage also includes bits of alphabet segments with Flip Wilson, the cast of Bonanza, and Bill Cosby, who wears this remarkable getup:
Is Cos trying to look like a kid, or was there actually a time when that was an acceptable outfit? If Bill Cosby is reading this, I encourage him to call me up and let me know.
In this special, all the residents of Sesame Street are just going about their business while James Earl Jones addresses the camera. There’s nothing unusual about that – Susan and Gordon and the gang talk to the camera all the time. But to them, Sesame Street is a real place, where they live. Do they notice that James Earl Jones keeps talking referring to it as a television show? I hope not; if they were to become aware of their fictional nature they might suffer a complete nervous breakdown.
Man, overanalyzing the reality of Sesame Street is one of my favorite things to do.
Anyway, James Earl Jones is a good host for this show, because when he talks everyone listens, but he doesn’t seem entirely comfortable doing this gig. I’m pretty sure he is, in fact, reading from cue cards, and in his three-piece suit he comes across as overdressed, especially compared to Big Bird, who is of course one of the world’s most famous nudists.At one point Jones says, “Sesame Street learned early on that the more we offered, the more the kids in the audience learned, and so the curriculum expanded.”
Hold it! What’s this “we” business? Since when does James Earl Jones write Sesame Street? And he keeps doing this throughout the show. I mean, really... The producers graciously offer him the privilege of hosting this special, and what does he do? When nobody's looking, he goes off-book, slips in a few “We did thises” and “We teach kids thatses,” and takes all the credit for the show himself. Pretty sneaky, Mr. Darth Vader!
One thing that's largely missing from the street scenes of this special so far is Muppets. Jones says hi to a bunch of humans, but we don’t see anyone furry until he approaches Oscar’s trash can halfway through the show. Oscar pops out, and Jones greets him: “Well, if it isn’t Oscar the Grouch!” Oscar says, “Well, if it isn’t Oscar the Grouch, someone’s been cloning around!”
That, by the way, is a perfect example of why Sesame Street deserved to last for 10 years and have its anniversary celebrated. It’s the kind of kids’ show that features a bitter, angry character who lives surrounded by trash, and who can deliver jokes that are deliberately constructed to go over the heads of the children in the audience. Yep, I'd say the show is a success.Another observation: This is a pretty grouchy Oscar. I think some of the fans believe Oscar isn’t quite as grouchy he used to be, so I can’t wait to track his progress through all these anniversary specials and see how 10-year Oscar compares to 20-year Oscar, and 25-year Oscar and so on.
After one group of clips, we return to the street, where Jones is strolling – completely uninvited – into Big Bird’s empty nest area. Not cool, bro! Does Big Bird break into your house while you're not home? But Jones doesn’t give it a moment’s thought, he just keeps on talking to us about international co-productions or some crap. I'm not so sure about this Jones fellow.
One segment from the show that's presented here is a bit shot on location at the Metropolitan Opera House, with Big Bird trying to get the grown-ups to see Mr. Snuffleupagus, who’s coming to attend the opera. I can’t help but notice that, damn, the adults were mean to Big Bird back then.Not only do they not believe that there’s a Snuffleupagus, they actively make fun of him for talking about it! While they all stand in front of a fountain, Snuffy walks by in the background, and Big Bird starts yelling: There he is! Turn around so you can see him, he’s right over there! And they just stand there, and they’re all like, “Oh, sure Big Bird, so all we have to do is turn around and we’ll see him, yeah, of course, sure…” and by the time they turn around, the fountain shoots up a wall of water, and Snuffy is completely obscured, and they all shake their heads and roll their eyes and leave. I know some kids of the 70s believe it was a mistake for the show to make Snuffy visible to the adults, but I think it was a great choice, because this clip makes me want to punch the TV.
Our Walking Tour wraps up with James Earl Jones sharing some final thoughts, and this is when Big Bird finally shows up. He appears to sniff Jones, and then he says, “You know, I’ve learned a lot on Sesame Street.” There’s an awkward pause (waiting for the cue card guy to switch to the next card?) and then Jones says, “And I’ve… met… many friends.” Then they stand there for a second like they’re not sure what to do… Is that it? And then they walk away from the camera, and that’s the end of that.So it’s really not much of a 10th birthday party, really. (At least, it's not as exciting as my 10th birthday party when we played Battletoads all night). But here they are, and they must be amazed and overjoyed that they made it to ten years. And just think, this show is going to last long enough to see its fortieth anniversary! It’s perfectly reasonable, then, that the next anniversary special is a bit more self-congratulatory. And you can read about it tomorrow!
Other things about this special:
●When Jones first appears standing in front Hooper’s Store, he announces that he’s on one of the most famous streets in the world: "It’s not Flugel Street, and it’s not Pennsylvania Avenue… It’s not even the street where you live!" I'm sorry, but what the heck is Flugel Street?
●Here’s a fun fact: Will Lee, the actor who played Mr. Hooper, taught James Earl Jones acting at the American Theater Wing. Which is why it’s nifty, not to mention adorable, that Mr. Hooper greets Jones with a "Hi, Jimmy, nice to see you!"●The Grover waiter sketch they use has Jerry Nelson’s Fat Blue customer Muppet making a mistake: Complaining about his alphabet soup, he says, “There’s a Y missing!” then corrects himself, saying, “No, not the Y… It’s the Z. The Z is missing.” I love stuff like that. I know it only happened because they didn’t want to do another take, but I find it endearing.
●The numbers montage includes a really funky song called “Gimme Five” that I don’t remember ever seeing on the show, but now I can't stop thinking about it:
Entertaining and educational! What a great TV show.
Special thanks to Tough Pigs' own Scott H for research assistance. Click here for the 20th anniversary special Sesame Street: 20 and Still Counting! And click here to mock Big Bird on the Tough Pigs forum!
ToughPigsRyan@yahoo.com
Labels: my week, Sesame Street
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