My Week with Sesame Home Video – Thursday

Cut & Paste Sesame
Thursday, May 23

Today, instead of having a theme for the day, I humbly present a completely random selection of Sesame Street home videos, chosen completely at random because I’m pretty sure that’s how most of these videos were put together.

So, let’s see, today’s videos will be, um… Get Up And Dance, Sing Yourself Silly, Kids’ Favorite Songs and 1 2 3 Count With Me. Because, essentially, whatever.

Get Up And Dance is a dance party featuring Big Bird, Celina, and a whole bunch of cloned Sesame Kids. It’s Radar’s birthday, apparently, and that means everybody has to stand around the dance studio shouting and getting dance steps wrong. This is Big Bird as Barney — in 33 years of Sesame Street, I’ve never heard so many kids all yelling Yaaaaaaay! at once. What entertainment there is here is mainly provided by the kids who don’t know the moves staring blankly at people off-camera.

From the second song onwards, footage of the gang in the dance studio intercut with Sesame file footage of people doing vaguely relevant things, including infuriatingly teasing shots from classic sketches that we’d rather be watching, like Cookie flying to the moon. Then, because this is a really rockin’ birthday party, they turn on the TV to the Dance Channel, and we start intercutting between the random bad dancing and actual sketches, like “The Birdland Jump,” and Kingston Livingston III singing about birthdays. Because, clearly, the one thing that improves Sesame Street sketches is inserting footage of uncoordinated kids dancing to them. The effect is like trying to watch Sesame while somebody else keeps changing the channel.

It might give some indication of how entertaining this dance party is if I tell you that Celina spends the entire time trying to convince Big Bird to stop the party.

Here’s my problem with these vaguely themed compilation videos. It’s pretty much like watching the show every day, but there seems to be more of the bland, annoying stuff. I mean, if I buy an Elmo’s World tape, I know what I’m getting. If I buy The Best of Ernie and Bert, I know, pretty much, what I’m getting. But if I buy Get Up And Dance, I get an almost totally random sampling of dancy stuff mixed up with overlong, uninspired, and often frankly substandard linking material.

But, of course, the thing about random samplings is this — just when you’re ready to give up, they throw in something really cool, like “A New Way to Walk” with a whole bunch of celebrities, including John Goodman, Marisa Tomei, Rosie O’Donnell and Sally Jesse Raphael, all doing funny walks.

Uh, and then Celina falls asleep.

Did somebody mention random? In between Get Up And Dance and Sing Yourself Silly, Elmo does a really funny dance against black-screen. It’s an amazing, virtuoso performance for no reason whatsoever, for precisely 37 seconds. And then he stops, abruptly, before the music’s finished, with a bad edit.

Sing Yourself Silly wisely concentrates on clips of silly songs with minimal linking material, which is just as well, because the linking material consists of the Sesame cast saying, “Now that was silly!” Because, of course, that isn’t evident from the songs. Or the title.

And because I’m feeling grouchy, I’m also going to gripe about the presence of random non-Muppet songs, like the animated “Ladybugs’ Picnic” and “Ten Tiny Turtles,” and the ancient, bizarre clip of James Taylor singing with a bunch of overly loud kids who must be in retirement homes by now.

But just to show you I’m not entirely black-hearted, here’s some things in this video that don’t make me cranky: “The Honker Duckie Dinger Jamboree.” Polly Darton. Gladys the Cow. Forgetful Jones. “Banana Can’t Grow Alone.” The Count saying, “Sewen bananas!” “Put Down the Duckie” (the Extended Celebrity Mix). And, of course, Don Music. But then I wonder why the other half of the tape is so crappy, and I get cranky again.

You may remember that I was really rather harsh on the Kids’ Favorite Songs album in My Week with Sesame Music. Well, today, I watched the video. It’s better — much, much better. It has Telly in it, and some letters of the alphabet singing doo-wop. But that’s not nearly enough to make up for “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” And if the music wasn’t bad enough, why not throw in the least cohesive, shaggy dog storyline I’ve ever seen? And some of the dullest animations about numbers ever dully animated? And a closing credits sequence that repeats the most annoying parts of the tape?

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. This is all too depressing, and I’m getting way too cranky. This column needs an injection of innocence, an urgent transfusion of pure, light-hearted fun and joy. Maybe I’ll ask Three-year-old Kynan for his opinion… Oh. Three-year-old Kynan’s fallen asleep. Never mind.

This is how bad it is right now: Changing tapes, I catch a glimpse of a Lynda Carter TV movie, and I actually consider watching that instead of 1 2 3 Count With Me. Will my faith in humanity, and, more importantly, in the Muppets, be restored within the next few paragraphs? To find out, continue reading at least as far as the next sentence.

1 2 3 Count With Me is a wonderful little oddity in which Steve’s Ernie finds himself temporarily in charge of the Furry Arms, assisted by Benny Bunny. Structurally, it’s all over the place — it lures you into thinking it’s not a clip show by deliberately not showing any clips for, like, the first 10 minutes, and then it keeps you on edge by showing them at moments that seem psychologically timed to surprise you — and more and more frequently towards the end. Story-wise, it doesn’t make sense for a second, and the quality of the clips is, as is by now the tradition, really patchy, but none of this matters — there’s a real sense of cohesion, and even fun.

Maybe it’s the fact that the linking segments are actually the main focus, with the clips supplementing the story, rather than the story being a flimsy excuse to show clips. There’s even two new songs. Or maybe it’s just Ernie, at the center of it all, exuding pure joy, just like in the old days.

So I’m happy again. How’s that for a surprise ending?

Tomorrow: Elmo goes straight to video in Peter and the Wolf.

by Kynan Barker