Street Knowledge (Chapter 8)

 

Chapter 8: Forty Furry Years

Having 40 of anything really, is a lot of a thing to have. And when you have a lot of a thing, one of your first instincts is to celebrate how much you have of it. And that’s exactly what the Sesame Workshop staff decided to do to commemorate Sesame Street’s 40th commemorative year of service.

2009 saw the release of special DVDs, toys, books, website changes, live events, appearances on other shows, a temporary street naming ceremony, a day named after it, and even a week-long takeover of the Google logo.

But, I feel like I’m forgetting to mention something. Oh yeah! THIS gem of an Emmy Award Ceremony appearance.

And the celebration would continue in the 40th season, as said by Joey Mazzarino, puppeteer of Murray, and now head-writer of Sesame Street:

“We're trying to do what we call a gem in every episode. That's for you guys, the fans. Little things like Biff and Sully in a scene, or some other stuff that I won't tell you about that will be hidden in the scene. There's one, the writing on the sandwich board outside of Hooper’s Store reads, "Loaf of bread / Container of milk / Stick of butter". We'll try to get one of those in most of the episodes this season.”

In short, the crew had littered all 27 episodes with one callback to Sesame’s early days, it could be a reference to an old segment or episode, a cameo from an old muppet character or crew member or an old song, playing in the background. And it was that decision that gave parents and older fans more incentive to watch the show, along with the kids.

But now, I’d better talk about season 40 itself. Remember in chapter 6 when I said season 33 would see Sesame Street use a more structured, formulaic format of telling episodes? Well, this season was going to be even more structured and even more formulaic. Taking inspiration from channel programming blocks, the show would appoint Murray as the host, who would hang out in the real-life setting of NYC, and introduce the main content of the show. And now I shall go over the format set in place for every episode up to episode 4526:

• The Word On The Street Segment
• New theme song
• Street story
• Segment where a celebrity and muppet go over the episode's highlighted word
• Murray goes over the letter of the day
• A segment about the letter of the day
• Abby's Flying Fairy School
• Murray goes over the number of the day
• A segment about the number of the day
• Either Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures or Murray Has A Little Lamb
• Murray goes over something else
• Other random segment
• Elmo's World
• Murray announces the sponsors
• Roll Credits!

As someone who watched this period of the show constantly in my life, I can tell you this structure 100% worked. We knew what was coming and when we would see it. And kids love knowing what things they’re gonna see and when they’re gonna see them

But now, let’s talk about the other changes that came with this season.

For starters, like I mentioned earlier, they got a new theme song. This time, kids would use sidewalk chalk to draw the street setting, with the muppets appearing as things were drawn.

For muppets, there weren’t any new ones per se, but like I said, retired muppets would make appearances in episodes, and that includes a certain frog.

Yes, for one segment only, Kermit makes a brief cameo in Elmo’s World, where Elmo discusses frogs who live in apartments.

As for our core muppet cast, they wouldn’t change… Except for Zoe. Starting and ending with this season she would have a new smaller puppet design. The fact that it only lasted one season should give you a hint that it wasn’t working out.

Also, as I mentioned in my format recap, a new segment starring Abby would debut this season. It was called “Abby’s Flying Fairy School”, where Abby attends Flying Fairy School with her fairy friends, Blogg and Gonnigan. Taught by their teacher, Mrs. Sparklenose, the three complete fairy-related tasks and problems everyday, usually with class pet gerbilcorn, Niblet, fairy chicken, Peck, and anthropomorphic blue spot, Spot tagging along.

Now it’s time to talk about memorable street stories, and you know what guys, I’m just gonna do what I did for season 39 and list the top 5 or so street stories I value the most from this season, and every season that comes after that.

1. Lin Manuel-Miranda, bird real-estate agent tries to sell Big Bird a new home.
2. Cookie Monster tries to grow a cookie tree, with help from Elmo and Abby.
3. Jimmy Fallon (AKA: Wild Nature Survivor Guy) tries to survive on Sesame Street.
4. Abby, Rosita and Zoe lead an entire tribute to the number 7.
5. Baby Bear and his family try hibernating, but realize they can’t do it.

The word of the day segments that would air after street scenes really increased how many celebrities would appear. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t still have other segments to themselves.

Like Ricky Gervais performing a very interesting celebrity lullaby for Elmo.

Adam Sandler writing a song about Elmo, which is harder than it looks.

And First Lady Michelle Obama recruiting Elmo and the kids to plant a garden in the arbor.

Now that Sesame Street was in its forties, it was time for season 41, which premiered on September 27, 2010.

In terms of memorable street scenes, I actually have 7 to mention, this time:

1. Telly, Elmo and Rosita become Happy Scientists.
2. For the first time in the show’s history, Elmo realizes that maybe Rocco is more to Zoe than he thought.
3. Chris surprises Leela with a Rakhi festival. If you wanna know what Rakhi is, click here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raksha_Bandhan
4. Sesame Street celebrates twins day, and Chris reveals he has a twin sister. (Played by Christy Knowings)
5. For a brief period of time, Super Grover becomes Iron Monster and tries to help everyone at the laundromat.
6. In two episodes Elmo, Abby and Telly form superhero teams with both Ryan Reynolds and Chris.
7. And this last one is actually one of my least favorite episodes of the show, where the vegetables act like spoiled brats who can’t accept that not everyone likes to eat them, and everyone succumbs to them.

Also some memorable shorts would also debut this season.

Elmo teaches us how to do a dance he made up.

Ernie sings about the things he wonders.

Will.i.am and the muppet cast sings about being proud of who they are.

And a little girl named Segi sings about how much she loves her hair.

This would also be the season where two certain lovable blue monsters would elevate their popularity.

Grover’s secret identity would get an update and become Super Grover 2.O. Whose new segments would air interchangeably in the middle of the show with Bert and Ernie’s Great Adventures.

And Cookie Monster, while not doing anything necessarily big on the show, would attempt to host the hit sketch comedy series, Saturday Night Live, and even made his own audition tape.

Now, who wouldn’t want Cookie Monster to host SNL after that?

The crew even made their own page for it on Facebook and they got SO much support that eventually…

Cookie didn’t get to host SNL. But he did get to sing Silver Bells with Jeff Bridges at the end of an episode, so it worked out.

There was one last thing that happened during this season, and it wasn’t very pleasant.

Popular singer Katy Perry made an appearance on the street singing a version of the popular song of one of her songs (Hot N Cold) with Elmo.

Seems innocent enough, right? Well, apparently a bunch of parents thought that the top of Miss Perry’s breasts (That’s literally all that was shown) was TOO much skin to expose to kids, so the scene never made it to the actual show. Parents. They’re great at overreacting, am I right?

Going back to Elmo, the man who was always underneath him was gonna get some well deserved recognition.

On January 23, Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey made its debut to the public. It was a documentary on Kevin Clash and it was amazing.

Then it was time for season 42, which was geared to focus on STEM. (Which is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.)

Most important street scenes include:

1. Rosita teaches Gina and Marco all about Marco's latin heritage.
2. Oscar takes an online grouch school.
3. Big Bird gets bullied by the leader of the ironically named Good Bird's Club.
4. Maria becomes the superintendent of 123 Sesame Street.
5. And Elmo becomes gigantic.

This season would also introduce a new segment that would take the place of Murray’s letter and and number check ins, where he and Ovejita would ask scientific questions and find out the answers with the help of kids, of course.

As for new segments we got the monster superhero we didn’t know we needed.

https://dai.ly/x2luo0u

Bruno Mars, the muppet monsters and Abby inspired us to not give up.

Elmo and a muppet version of a certain pop icon sang a spoof of a popular song by said pop icon.

Segi, the girl from last season sang about how she wants to change the world.

Sutton Foster sang about what simple machine she loves most.

And last but not least, one of my favorite song parodies, featuring Elvis Costello, Elmo and Cookie Monster.

Now, I wanna go over a type of media Sesame Street isn’t really known for: Video Games.

That’s not to say, Sesame Street hasn’t made ANY video games. On the contrary they’ve released quite a few, but when you think of Sesame Street “Video Games” aren’t exactly the first words that come to mind.

Well this time period would see the release of four games (three are present now) for the Wii, along with fuzzy little case versions of the characters you can put on your remotes.

As well as two games for the Xbox.

2012 would be the year, where Super Grover would be the first SS character to go where no SS character had ever gone before: San Diego Comic Con.

Yes, Super Grover did appear at this convention to promote a new toy likeness of himself that could fly that Hasbro made.

But luckily, he made it back just in time for season 43, and good thing too, because there were some great street stories that went down:

1. Cookie Monster tries to join the Cookie Connoisseurs Club, and needs to learn how to delicately nibble a cookie.
2. Elmo, Grover and Rosita make their very own Sesame Street-O-Saurus.
3. Oscar’s in charge of planning the Trashgiving Day parade.
4. The Veggie Monster debunking episode I mentioned in the last chapter.
5. And as a special treat for National Disabilities Awareness Month, Elmo meets a dog named Brandeis and helps him get a job as a service dog.

Also, this would be the season that would introduce two segments that would be replacements for two other segments.

There was Elmo: The Musical, where Elmo imagines himself in different musical scenarios, accompanied by his sentient curtain friend, Velvet, which would replace Elmo’s World after its 13 years on air.

And Murray would get a different tune-in segment this season, based on a very popular Sesame Street song, The People In Your Neighborhood, where he and Ovejita would learn about the very unique careers people had.

For new shorts and segments we got:

Ducks and Chickens arguing on how to walk.

A song about different kinds of people.

And one where Frank Oz puppeteers Grover through a song on how special he, and you are.

Oh, and there was also something really cool that happened, where Cookie Monster tweeted a spoof of Carly Rae Jepsen’s popular “Call Me Maybe” song.

And it got so many favorites and retweets, the staff decided to turn it into an actual music video, which at the time of me typing this has 23,452,493 views and 113K likes.

All of this attention gave Cookie Monster another boost in popularity which I’ll talk about more in a minute.

But this season wouldn’t be the only Sesame-related TV thing this year, for the crew were about to tackle a really big issue that happens to quite a few kids: Divorce. For full disclosure, the Sesame crew actually tried to tackle this issue in 1992 with Snuffy, Alice and their parents, but it didn’t go so well, so it was never aired, but they decided to try again this time with Abby.

Where the staff went wrong, in their first approach, was that they depicted the emotions to realistically, and that made kids unhappy/freaked out, so for this resource kit/DVD (that I own), they focused more on how Abby dealt with the aftermath of the divorce, learning that wasn’t her fault her parents stopped being married and that they still loved her with all of their hearts.

It was a very sweet video, but sadly, things were actually getting less sweet.

In 2012, Mitt Romney was going against Barack Obama in the United States presidential election debates. And when asked about what he would do about funding for PBS, this is what he had to say:

"I'm sorry, Jim, I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I'm not going to -- I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That's number one."

So basically, what Romney said is that he wants to cut government funding for PBS, which meant they would be getting ad breaks in between programs, which doesn’t really make sense. I mean, the segments that air in between actual street stories are like commercials, but the purpose of that is that instead of trying to sell you something, they’re trying to get you to learn something, if you aired actual commercials along with it, it kinda defeats the purpose, you know?

So, the people responded back, using Big Bird the most since he was the one Romney mentioned by name.

There were memes.

Political cartoons.

Disturbing edited videos on late night talk shows.

And even a protest march that took place at the National Mall in Washington D.C. on November 3rd, 2012.

So, with Big Bird being the main mascot used to save PBS’ funding, Cookie Monster’s parody song blowing up, and Elmo still being adored by so many kids, had cemented them as the three most popular/marketable muppets of the street. And my top 3 favorites.

And speaking of popularity, in 2013, the Sesame Street YouTube channel became the first channel AND the first US children’s media outlet to reach a billion views, with the Count being the one to address the occasion.

Speaking of the Count, I have to go over something important that happened that involves him. Here’s a video of him, along with Elmo and Train (A band I solely remember because they’re named after the thing I loved most as a kid.) singing a spoof of one of Train’s songs, centered around the number 5.

The video you just watched was one of Jerry Nelson’s last performances of the Count, before his death on August 23rd, last year. Jerry Nelson was a vital part of the Sesame Puppeteer crew, giving not only life to the Count, but to Herry Monster, The Amazing Mumford, Biff, Mr. Johnson, Frazzle, Sherlock Hemlock, for a brief period, Snuffy, and so many other characters.

So, in honor of this great puppeteer, a special episode and DVD were released, that pays tribute to Mr. Nelson, which I will recap for you:

Elmo, Abby, Cookie Monster and Grover are playing a game of hide-and-seek with the Count, when they hear about a contest for the greatest counters ever. Knowing that the Count is the best counter ever, they decide to enter him in the contest secretly, and surprise him later. To do that, they need to film him counting something, but after a few mishaps, they do manage to catch the Count counting something, when they tell the Count, he happily obliges to accept the award, as soon as he solves a counting emergency in Chicago. The night of the award ceremony, The Count’s flight gets delayed, leaving the street to have to cover for him, Alan and Telly try impersonating him, but they can’t do the challenge of counting the moving pickles, but Elmo takes the mantle and impersonates the Count and counts all of the pickles by counting by twos, but it doesn’t work, because no thunder and lightning strikes when he laughs, but just went it seems like all hope is lost, all of the Count’s friends stand up and assert that they’re the Count as well, the judges, touched by their sentiments… still give the award to the second best counter, a calculator. But the Count, who comes back via bats, assures them he doesn’t care about the award, it just matters that he has so many friends that care about him, that he can count on.

If that isn’t the greatest tribute to Jerry Nelson, then I don’t know what is.

Anyway, let’s talk about the rest of season 44, which introduced a new change. From now on, the episodes would no longer be labeled in chronological order, but instead what number episode of the season they were in. And that made it really hard to figure out how many episodes of the show there were, altogether, so… Thanks a LOT, whoever idea that was!!!

But I digress. This would be the season where one of the muppet members would get a major change, and it was Elmo.

Kevin Clash had not just been performing Elmo, but doing so much else for Sesame Street for 28 years, but after getting charged with sexual interactions with minors, (which turned out to not be true, BTW.) Mr. Clash, not wanting to cause any distractions with his controversy, decided the best thing for him to do was retire from the show. Though, he was still present for part of the filming process of this season, and that’s why you can still hear him as Elmo in some parts. But for the rest of the taping, our favorite little red ball of fur would be taken over by a new puppeteer named Ryan Dillon.

In fact, let me just go over the other major puppeteer changes that went down the past few years.

• As Frank Oz got less and less involved with the show, Bert and Grover were taken over by Eric Jacobson and Cookie Monster was taken over by David Rudman.
• When Steve Whitmire stopped doing muppet productions, Ernie was taken over by Billy Barkhurst.
• And after Jerry Nelson’s death, The Count was taken over by Matt Vogel.

Speaking of recasting, seeing as how Gabi had departed just last year, the crew decided it was time to add a new human to the cast.

Enter Armando, or just Mando, for short, who’s played by Ismael Cruz Cordova. He was a fun character, but he only stuck around for two seasons, so we never really got to know him as much as we did with everyone else.

But anyway, with that in place, season 44 began airing. Some highlight street stories include:

1. The epic Count and Jerry Nelson tribute I recapped.
   
2. Cookie Monster learning the joy of painting.
3. Johnny Gotcha (Tom Bergeron) tries to find people on Sesame Street using bad manners for his show.
4. Rosita writes her own autobiography.
5. Elmo helps Zoe plan Rocco's wedding. (Yes, rocks can have weddings. Get used to it.)
6. And Chris and Alan pretend to be Elmo’s grandparents when they can’t make it for a Grandparents celebration.

This is also the season that would introduce a new segment that was somewhat inspired by the classic Monsterpiece Theater.

Cookie’s Crumby Pictures was a segment where Cookie Monster would assume the main role in a series of movie parodies, learning about patience, obedience, and of course, self control. This segment would please the legions of Cookie Monster fans, and make many more. Including me.

As for other segments, there was one where Cookie Monster plays The Waiting Game, hosted by Guy Smiley.

And two more renditions of the alphabet. One sung by Usher, Elmo, Abby, Grover and Murray.

And the other sung by the Sesame Street muppet cast.

But during this season, 2013 became 2014, which was Sesame Street's 45th year of existence. And while they didn’t do anything as big as the last few anniversaries. Not only would there be another documentary on a puppeteer who brought life to two of the most popular characters, ever since the first episode,

But the characters we knew and loved would go to two different places. Grover made his way back to San Diego for Comic Con, this time taking Bert, Murray and Cookie Monster with him, so they could do their first CC panel ever.

And then Cookie Monster would tag along with Elmo and travel to the United Kingdom to be in one of the only british Sesame related things, the Furchester Hotel. Which is about Elmo visiting the hotel that his cousin, Phoebe, his aunt, Funella and his uncle, Furgus own. Cookie Monster also gets a job there, as both the room service and dining room waiter. Big Bird and The Count also make special visits in the second seasons. And even if you didn’t live in the UK, you could watch the whole series on YouTube.

But despite the series continuing until 2017, the two US monsters would still be on the street for the 45th season, which featured an important change in the set.

You see, there was a building that was previously purposed for different things, but in this season, it now gained a concrete identity as a bike shop that Luis and Maria ran.

But with that out of the way, let’s get to some of the exciting things that happened on the street this season.

1. Going back to the convention aspect, Elmo and Leela walk us through a day at Numeric Con, a convention devoted to number superheroes.
2. Oscar saves enough trash to buy a P.U.-gelhorn, with a little help from his friends.
3. Ernie makes a dance video, featuring all of his friends, including Bert.
4. Bert tries out to be Vincent van Stop’s (Josh Gad’s) sign-painting assistant.
5. Big Bird’s pen pal, Penelope Penguin, learns how to control her enthusiastic behavior.
6. And Segi learns that the color of her skin is very snazzy, indeed.

Also, this would be the season where the segments would get new segments replacing the usual tune in segments.

For example, both the letter and number of the day segments would be represented by two songs sung by the muppet cast and led by Elmo and the Count, respectively.

And as for Murray, he’d take up Kermit’s old job of news reporting in between segments. But instead of interviewing fairy tale characters, he’d interview real people on the streets of NYC.

For new, interesting segments, there was one where Janelle Monae sings an uplifting song about the power of the word “yet”.

Ed Sheeran sings a song with Elmo, Abby, Cookie Monster, Grover and Murray, about the differences between school and home.

Segi sings a song about what you do in class, when you wanna answer a question.

And Grover stars in a parody of the popular fantasy series “Game of Thrones”, that I will probably never watch. (The actual show, not the parody.)

And the season would end with one good thing and one bad thing.

The good thing was an hour long special, “The Cookie Thief”, where Cookie Monster, Elmo and Chris go to a cookie art museum and Cookie Monster would be accused of stealing the art pieces. But don’t worry, he clears his name in the end.

And the bad thing was that Sonia Manzano (Maria Rodriguez) announced her retirement this year. As you can imagine we were all sad to see essentially the very first Puerto Rican friend we ever knew leave the street we met her on. But it wouldn’t be all bad, for during that same year she wrote a memoir titled “Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx”, so fans could now read Miss Manzano’s life story and maybe learn something they hadn’t before.

But, in 2016, Maria retiring would be the least of the show's concerns. I mean, if you thought the changes from the last few chapters were big, these changes were even bigger, and they were all brought to you by the letters H, B and O.

Chapter 7: https://thomperfan.blogspot.com/2020/10/street-knowledge-chapter-7.html

Chapter 9: https://thomperfan.blogspot.com/2020/10/street-knowledge-chapter-9.html