Street Knowledge (Chapter 9)

 

Chapter 9: New Digs

HBO and Sesame Street. Not two things you’d really think would go together terribly well. Regardless, in late 2015, Sesame Workshop made a deal with the Home Box Office that they’d premiere new Sesame episodes, before they would air on PBS Kids, nine months later.

And despite certain people and parodies saying otherwise,

Sesame Street was not changing its core motive: Teaching kids in a fun and entertaining way, but that didn’t mean there would be no changes at all. On the contrary, this would probably be the biggest set of changes the show had ever made. Yes, even more so, than Around the Corner.

And like Around the Corner, the set was getting a redesign, but instead of expanding the set, changes were made to the set they already had. And I will go over all of them, right now.

Elmo and his family would move to the 123 building and take residence in Gordon, Susan and Chris’s old apartment.

Oscar would move his trash can to the left side of the building, right underneath the windows of Elmo’s room. Not just that, he would get his own little dumpster area with a recycling bin. (As well as some other waste disposal units littered around the set that he can put himself into, at any time.)

The doors to Big Bird’s nest would be taken down, and the nest itself would be placed in a tree, with all of Big Bird’s things surrounding it.

The arbor would now feature a community play area, and a fairy garden run by Abby.

A newsstand run by the Two-Headed monster would be placed right in between the Subway and the Laundromat.

And Hooper’s Store would be more or less the same, except it would be repainted to resemble its early days. And Cookie Monster would live right above it.

Speaking of which, the new set also played into the new muppet aspect of the show, while most of the same muppets we’ve come to love after all these years would still make frequent appearances, starting with this season, a greater focus was put upon the six most popular characters: Elmo, Abby, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Grover, and Oscar.

Though, that’s not to say all these changes were good. For one thing, the human cast was about to get a MAJOR downgrade.

While Sonia Manzano (Maria) had publicly announced her retirement, Emilio Delgado (Luis), Roscoe Orman (Gordon), Bob McGrath (Bob), Loretta Long (Susan), Nitya Vidyasagar (Leela), and of course, Alison Bartlett (Gina) didn’t really get that and were suddenly off the show, for seemingly, no reason. Of course, it was revealed to be budgetary reasons, but it still hit fans pretty hard that most of the grown-ups they had come to love for years were no longer present in new material. (Well, Gordon did have a cameo in episode 4629, but that’s about it.)

The only humans that were still left on the show were Alan, Chris, and a new face introduced this season, Nina, played by Suki Lopez. She was a young, friendly face, who took over the bike shop, and also worked at the Laundromat from time to time.

Another, less than great change, was the new intro, while showing off some fantastic cinematography, cut the length of the original song to the first verse.

And that goes into the bigger picture, that the show's running time was now reduced to half an hour, so that meant there were less things the crew could show to viewers.

Going back to the muppet aspect, Fran Brill, the woman who puppeteered Zoe, Prairie Dawn and many other muppets retired in 2015. So her two most known characters were taken over by Jennifer Barnhart and Stephanie D’Abruzzo.

Also, despite Joey Mazzarino announcing his retirement the same year, he was still present for the filming of this season, but after that, all of the characters he puppeteered were more or less dropped.

And the last change I wanna go over, is that there would be no sponsors at the end of every episode. There would still be a letter and number of the day, but none of the characters would say that “Sesame Street was brought to you today by this letter and this number.”

But, in spite of all this, season 46 of Sesame Street premiered on January 16th. Here are some major stories:

1. Nina helps Elmo and Abby get ready for bed, and learns about Abby’s fairy bedtime routine.
2. Grouch explorer, Mucko Polo (Alan Cumming) recruits Oscar and Elmo to help him find grouchy things on Sesame Street
3. An entire episode, where the cast pretends to be dinosaurs.
4. The cast exercises for an entire episode.
5. The cast celebrates Halloween.
6. And Prairie Dawn’s friends help her learn that boys and girls can all pretend to be whatever they wanna be.

Also featured this season was the debut of Smart Cookies, a segment where Cookie Monster is the rookie on a team of special agent cookies, (Chipowski, Figby, and Miss Fortune) and together they try their best to stop an evil baker, known as The Crumb.

Another thing, is that since less and less parents were watching the show with their kids, there were fewer celebrities for the following seasons, but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t cool or memorable.

With that said, let’s go through some of the cool segments shown this season.

Prairie Dawn stars in a parody of a very popular Netflix show.

Pharell Williams shares with Elmo and Cookie Monster the joy of reading books.

Aloe Blacc tells us what it means to be an Everyday Hero.

Ne Yo tells us what to do with the bodies we’ve got.

Gwen Stefani tells us how to be a good friend.

Fifth Harmony sings with Elmo using music that’s everywhere.

And Nick Jonas joins Bert, Cookie Monster and the Count in checking shapes.

Now that the crew had given the kids time to get used to the new formula, it was time to up the ante in 2017 with season 47.

This season's curriculum is about kindness, and two characters would be introduced this season who enforce this even more.

Two years ago Sesame Street launched a new initiative called “Sesame Street and Autism: See Amazing In All Children”, which was designed to help kids learn that just because you have a disability, like Autism, you’re still an amazing person who can do amazing things. As is said to us in this really amazing song.

Also featured in this initiative was a book called “We’re Amazing, 1, 2, 3!” In it, Elmo and Abby make friends with a girl muppet named Julia (the muppet you see on the cover above you) who has Autism.

The book and Julia got so much good reception that eventually for season 47, they introduced Julia as an actual muppet character (With an outstanding performance by Stacey Gordon) in episode 4517. Where Alan helps Big Bird understand Julia’s condition better.

The other character introduced this season would make a significant change to another muppet’s life. And that muppet is Abby Cadabby.

You see, as previously mentioned in the last chapter, Abby’s blood parents are divorced, but in this season, Abby’s mom (Maggie Cadabby) got married to a monster named Freddy, who coincidentally has a son named Rudy (Performed by Frankie Cordero), so that meant Abby now had a little brother. And she’d help Rudy ease into his new home, as he made his way into the main cast.

Other street stories this season are:

1. The Kindness Kid (Zachary Levi) inspires Elmo and Grover to do kind things for people.
2. Cookie Monster and Grover help Chris take care of a baby.
3. Elmo and Rosita meet a ball named Saul and help him learn that indoor activities can be fun.
4. Ernie helps Elmo ease up to taking a bath.
5. And Ovejita plays with a jetpack.

Something else would happen this season when it came to main segments.

Elmo’s World, which had not been featured ever since season 43, finally came back last season in rerun form, but in this season, it came back as a brand-new segment, which more or less follow the same format, but now it ran for five minutes, in a newly-designed place, and featured new characters. (An animated smartphone named Smartie and some more of Mr. Noodle’s family members.)

There would also be new letter and number of the day songs, with Abby and Cookie Monster taking the lead, this time.

For celebrity guest appearances, Sia Sang a Sensational Song About Songs.

Anthony Mackie teaches us how to make soup.

Ernie and Bert get their celebrity friends to sign an old classic with them.

Little Big Town, Elmo, Abby, Grover and Cookie remind us what I is for.

And Tori Kelly sang a song about kindness… though I prefer this version, featuring Chris Jackson.

But then, two things happened in October that year. One was good, the other was not so good, so I’ll go over that one first.

Caroll Spinney announced his retirement, making him the last of the original five Sesame puppeteers to not be on the show anymore. (The others being Jim Henson and Jerry Nelson, who died, and Frank Oz and Fran Brill, who retired also.) And with Spinney’s retirement, Matt Vogel would take over for Big Bird, and Eric Jacobson would take over for Oscar.

The other thing that happened was a new toy product was in the midst of production. Ivan Guerrero had designed his own Lego version of 123 Sesame Street, complete with Oscar’s trash can, Big Bird’s nest, and 14 lego figurines of the characters. He had submitted it to this website called Lego Ideas, a website where people submit ideas they have for Lego toys to be made into real toys, but did this one make the cut? You’ll find out in the next chapter.

After the 43 minute special “The Magical Wand Chase”, where Elmo, Abby, Big Bird, Rosita, Grover and Cookie Monster go on a wild goose chase all around the city to get Abby’s wand back from a bird, season 48 was upon us.

And what a season it was. Here are some the street stories I liked most:

1. For the first time, in, like, ever, Sesame Street does a Thanksgiving episode.
2. Bert and Ernie have a falling out, but eventually make up.
3. Chamki from Galli Galli Sim Sim (India) pays a visit and makes friends with Big Bird and the others.
4. Nina, Elmo, Abby and Grover celebrate the Chinese New Year.
5. Elmo helps some Martians learn how to make friends.
6. Mother Goose (Kate McKinnon) made a nursery rhyme about Elmo.
7. And my personal favorite, The Count comes to terms with the fact that he made a mistake in the very thing he’s named after.

A new segment would also be made this season, and it’s my favorite of the bunch.

The monster you see above me is named Gonger, and he was a supporting character in the Furchester Hotel, given a great performance by Warrick Brownlow-Pike. But for this season, he would come to Sesame Street, and start his own food truck business, with Cookie Monster as his partner-in-crime.

For other segments, John Legend and the SS muppets come together.

Grover attempts to count Laurie Hernandez doing cartwheels.

And Josh Groban, Elmo, Abby and Rosita sang a song about friendship.

Next came season 49, but before that, another special “When You Wish Upon A Pickle”, was made. It was really great, and I even made a review on it, which you can read, here.

This season was definitely more of a creative season, as the characters focused more on pretending to have different jobs and making their own stuff.

Here are some of the most memorable stories.

1. Big Bird and Abby make their own newspaper called “Hey! Sesame Street News”.
2. Elmo and Abby decide to be Gina’s old profession after seeing Dr. Birdwhistle. (Tiffany Haddish)
3. Telly and Rosita help Elmo not fall asleep on New Year's Eve.
4. Oscar loses his can.
5. Bill Nye helps Zoe, Rudy and Rosita find out what a strange thumping is.
6. Julia gets her own haircut.
7. And the street residents put on their own play.

We’d also get to see that Julia actually has a family, which consisted of her dad, her mom, her older brother Samuel, and their dog Rose. And together the five of them really showed how tight families can be.

Also, last season Billy Barkhurst passed on the responsibility of performing Ernie to Peter Linz, and that’s who our favorite orange goofball is still puppeteered by to this day.

Another main segment would debut this season. It was called Abby’s Amazing Adventures, which featured Abby and Rudy going on adventures to learn about different careers with the help of their magical basket friend.

Segments this season include Keegan-Michael Key taking over the newsstand for the Two-Headed Monster.

Questlove teaches Grover some drumming techniques.

Elmo makes his own play featuring Cookie Monster and Chance the Rapper.

And Oscar, Grundgetta and some other grouches teach Jack Antonoff about being a grouch.

If this is seeming very brief to you, that’s because it is, because we are about to get to the part where the street and all of the residents would make the greatest achievement of their lives.

Chapter 8: https://thomperfan.blogspot.com/2020/10/street-knowledge-chapter-8.html

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