Welcome back to our coverage of the unproduced Sesame Street movie The Alphabet Thieves. Please click here to revisit part one
To recap where we are so far: Some literary villains have stolen all the letters of the alphabet and plan to turn it into soup, destroying them permanently. Our heroes from Sesame Street have made their way into the Land of Make Believe to get ‘em back! So let’s check out part two, with artwork by the talented FeltyCartoons!
Ruthie dials the White House, but instead of the President, she reaches the “special assistant to the undersecretary of liaison” – aka Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the Telephone Operator, who is naturally difficult and believes they’re merely crank callers. Oscar pulls up with his Sloppy Jalopy to visit the Land of Make Believe, not to provide any help, but to hob-knob with the villains. He drives through the mirror, which ends up shattering it completely, keeping anyone else from entering – “All this and seven years bad luck!” he declares. Super Grover returns, crashing into the wall behind the empty mirror frame.
Back in the Land of Make Believe, the foursome take shelter from the Witch’s enchanted rain in the home of the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. The Witch then summons a small, familiar tornado that turns gigantic by the time it reaches the shoe, which gets sucked up. The four begin to sing a song, “What a Curious Thing to be Up in a Shoe.” Elmo takes a peek out the window and gets sucked into the cyclone, still singing as he flies past the window. Elmo is then sent flying elsewhere, when the shoe finally lands in the woods, everyone unharmed.
Witnessing this, Captain Hook takes a crack at things, and orders Mr. Smee and his pirate crew to capture the do-gooders and make them walk the plank. Elsewhere, Oscar drives his car down a bumpy yellow brick road, when a woozy Elmo lands in the passenger seat. “Oh no! It’s raining Elmos,” he gripes.
Back home, Reporter Kermit the Frog makes his requisite cameo at a construction site. “Whaddya mean, don’t stand here,” he says to an off-camera person, “I’m a reporter…ever hear of the First Amendment?” Kermit points toward a blank sign behind him, pondering what it said before the letters disappeared. The word turns out to be “DANGER,” and Kermit is walloped by a wrecking ball. Elsewhere on the block, the cast attempts to piece the broken mirror back together again.
While the pirates begin to trail Big Bird, Zoe, and Little Red, Oscar and Elmo are seen driving past in the opposite direction, arguing over the right way to the castle. They pass by Cookie Monster, but Oscar forges ahead without stopping – “I don’t brake for Cookie Monsters! Besides, my brakes don’t work!” Cookie eats the sign pointing towards the castle. Down the road, the Count is seen having the time of his life counting the Seven Dwarves and Three Pigs. Oscar suddenly hears the sounds of sweet music and turns the car towards it.
Oscar begins to trail the Pied Piper (suggested to be played by noted flutist James Gallway), who has various other storybook characters entranced by his music, including Ernie and Bert. The latter gets so caught up in the tune that he turns it into a big musical number. As the song ends, the Sloppy Jalopy breaks down and Oscar forces the meek little Elmo to push the car. The car suddenly starts up again and Oscar drives off, leaving Elmo behind.
Back on Sesame Street, Telly runs into a woman who asks where Sesame Street and the Fix-It Shop are. Telly realizes that with no letters on any sign, nobody else will be able to find their way around. He begins loudly yelling “Sesame Street! Sesame Street!” by the lamppost. He later recruits Herry, Snuffy, Prairie Dawn, and some kids to do the same with the other signs around the block.
After the sack of letters nearly escapes the clutches of the Make Believe villains, the Sesame humans finally manage to repair the mirror, only for it to break once more when Super Grover flies through it. He sails through the skies and collides with Peter Pan, falling to the ground (though Peter has a more graceful landing). Super Grover takes a moment to sit and catch his super breath, when a giant dragon rests nearby and its tail pins Grover’s cape to the ground.
Elmo presses onward alone, coming across a large gingerbread house. As he takes a nibble, the witch from Hansel and Gretel takes him inside and locks him in a cage. She begins to prepare him some spaghetti with plans to eat him up for her own supper. Meanwhile, Big Bird, Zoe, and Little Red fall into a pit just deep enough for an eight-foot bird and are captured by Hook’s crew.
The Wicked Witch and Wolf see this and celebrate that nobody can stop them now. They load all the letters they’ve collected into the cooking pot, when some fly out and write out a message – “You’ll Never Get Away With This.” The Witch stirs them back inside the pot and begins to sing a song with the Wolf about how they’ll no longer be “bad guys” once the alphabet is extinct.
Mr. Smee and the crew have blindfolded our heroes and prod them across the plank, which is set up over a lake. Just when it seems like they’ll fall in, the Pied Piper, with Bert, Ernie, and more fictional characters in tow, passes by. The pirates all fall under the musical spell and dance along as Bert begins a short reprise of his previous song. Big Bird and the others dance too, but because of their blindfolds, they bump into trees and such and get left behind.
Now nighttime at the gingerbread house, Elmo has finished five plates of spaghetti by the time the witch heads to bed. He starts to sing a song titled “Never,” about all the things he’ll never get to do without an alphabet in his life (like go to school, read, or learn to drive). Suddenly, a chewing sound permeates the quiet of the night – it’s Cookie Monster, who helps free Elmo and devours the entire house (“Me love home cooking!”).
The Witch and Wolf check on the soup; the letters are still able to fly out in order, meaning the soup’s not ready. Elmo and Cookie find a tree to rest on, but Elmo wants a bedtime story. Cookie Monster attempts to recite one (where nearly every other word is “cookie”). Elmo launches into a wistful song about “Once upon a time…,” with the rest of the cast joining in from other parts of the Land of Make Believe and back home on Sesame Street. Oscar sleeps in the Sloppy Jalopy, which starts to roll away…
Will the Sesame gang retrieve the alphabet? Will Ernie and Bert get out of the Pied Piper’s musical sway? Will Roosevelt Franklin finally get a line of dialogue? Spoiler alert: no, he won’t. But you’ll find out the answers to those first two questions in part three later this week!
Click here to have some spaghetti on the Tough Pigs Discord!
By Shane Keating
