Thursday, Feb 7:
Things get fuzzy
Thursday, Feb 7:Yesterday, I had a visit from the Rad Squad. They weren’t at all pleased. They told me that my Sesame reviews this week were leaning far too much toward the Trad, and that I’d better shape up. I don’t really like Journey to Ernie. I’m not that interested in Monster Clubhouse. And, really, the thing I’ve mostly liked about the new Sesame format is that it gives me more Grover and Cookie Monster. If I don’t start liking more new stuff this week, I may be in danger of losing my Rad cred.
But, in the immortal words of Herry Monster, I just can’t help it. Grover and Cookie Monster are everywhere on Sesame Street these days. Sesame is doing some very clever gradual recasting — Frank Oz is still performing Grover and Cookie Monster in the Letter of the Day inserts, but new performers are playing them on the Street. (David Rudman is playing Cookie Monster, and Eric Jacobson is the new Grover performer.) And Rudman and Jacobson are just plain excellent. In fact, in yesterday’s Letter of the Day segment with Grover as the Federal Impress mail carrier, they actually switched off performers within the same sketch — Oz played Cookie Monster first, and then when Grover entered, Oz played Grover to Rudman’s Cookie Monster. It feels like a very smooth transition, and I don’t think the kids will notice a thing. They’re just not jarring at all, and if I wasn’t preternaturally attuned to the specific timber of Frank Oz’s voice, I wouldn’t notice myself.
And this means that those characters can take their old places at the center of Sesame Street again. In the Street story today, Luis and Maria renovated their old Fix-It Shop and turned it into a Mail-It Shop, which I guess makes sense, since kids these days aren’t very likely to live near a Fix-It Shop anyway. Everybody sings a song about how great it is to have a place where you can send and receive mail. They’re all terribly excited, as if it just weren’t possible to ever send mail before the Mail-It Shop opened. It feels to me like we maybe already had one of these already, except we called it a Post Office, but whatever. As long as they’re happy. Anyway, all the Muppets come in for their mail. Big Bird gets birdseed from his Granny Bird. Elmo gets fish food for Dorothy. Cookie Monster gets a package from L.L. Cookie.
And who’s the one bringing all this mail? It’s Grover, the furry blue mail carrier and tuba delivery monster! Grover keeps running in and out with big packages, falling down every single time. It’s great. Before the recasts, this couldn’t possibly be Grover getting so much air time. It would have been some no-name mail carrier Muppet, which wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun. I predict that this year little kids will be falling in love with Grover all over again. I certainly am.
Not to mention the ever-hilarious Cookie Monster’s Letter of the Day segment: “Hello there! Cookie Monster here! Me asking provocative question… What is Letter of the Day?” This, of course, is why it’s also nice to still have Frank Oz around to perform these characters. Who else but Oz would be using the word “provocative” in a Sesame Street segment? You gotta love the guy. Once again, Cookie doesn’t want to eat the cookie with the Letter of the Day, so he disguises the cookie with his Cookie Disguise Kit. He puts a mustache and glasses on the cookie. “Excuse me, sir,” he says. “Have you seen where cookie went?” This is so excellent. I can’t believe they’ve made 26 of these, and so far they’ve all been consistently hilarious.
So this might actually be where Rad and Trad meet. Yes, Grover and Cookie are sometimes performed by new puppeteers — but this means that our old favorite characters get to keep working their magic every day. I’m finding myself getting more and more swayed to the Trad Side of the Force. The new characters are fine, but there really is a reason why, 33 years later, Cookie Monster and Grover still feel fresh and real and funny. They’re just good characters, and it’s great to have them back.
by Danny Horn
