Sesame Seeds (Episode 12): Telly Monster

 

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Sesame Seeds, the series where we look at the progression of a Sesame Street character from humble beginnings to the present day.

Today, we’re looking at a monster who’s not as popular as Elmo, Cookie and Grover, but still an important one nonetheless: Telly.

Telly Monster, as most of us know him is an emotional, neurotic, worrying mess. The Chuckie Finster/Piglet/Courage of Sesame Street. But he didn’t start out that way.

Telly was conceived in the late 70s, as a monster who loved to watch television. Hence the name. Puppetered by Bob Payne, he would first appear in episode 1257 of season 10, where we would find him parked in the arbor on top of a crate, sitting very close to a TV he plugged in, with big, swirly eyes and long TV antenna sticking out of his head.

So as you can see, Telly’s thing was that he was always too busy watching TV to do literally anything else. After filming the episode, the CTW realized:

“Hmmm… maybe a monster who does nothing but watch TV all day isn’t the best character kids should learn from.”

So Telly was scrapped and no new material was filmed for him. But the next year, they would use him again, though he was stripped of his more noticeable features, and was relegated to the background.

Then one day, Caroll Spinney fell off his bike and sprained his ankle, which meant he couldn’t do Big Bird until it healed. So Jon Stone had to rewrite certain episodes to feature a different character. Can you guess who it was?

If you said Telly, you’re absolutely correct. Telly was passed on to Brian Muehl who gave him a gruff, slow voice and the worrying personality we would know him for further down the road. For the next few years, Telly would present himself as a monster who was never really sure of anything, and always needed help from the other characters, whenever he wanted to do something. It didn’t help that usually, he’d be paired up with the mean and snarky Oscar, who, as you might have guessed, wasn’t always the most supportive.

Muehl loved performing Telly, and would go on to do so for the next 5 seasons, Don’t Eat The Pictures and Big Bird in China. Telly would also get a chance to follow in Kermit’s footsteps by becoming the Monster on the Spot news reporter.

But then, starting with season 16, Telly would be taken over full time by Martin P. Robinson. At first, Robinson tried to imitate the voice that had been used before him, gruff, slow, and kinda sad. But then he had an epiphany that maybe he should put a little more oomph into his performance. And I’ll let him explain how:

“His main thing now is that he believes totally in whatever he’s into...and he can turn on a dime and that doesn’t belie what he was feeling before. He can go from great joy to great sorrow and it’s all totally genuine.”

So now that Telly was being way more expressive with his emotions, his popularity gradually started to increase, and pretty soon, along with Big Bird, Oscar and Elmo, he was now one of the main street muppets.

In the 90s, Telly was given more traits to better define his personality. He was an avid fan of triangles, he could pogo stick, and he could play an assortment of instruments, including the bassoon, the tuba, and of course, the triangle.

He also made a best friend in Baby Bear, from Goldilocks and the Three Bears, who, unlike Oscar, provided Telly with a much more balanced dynamic.

When the 2000s came around, not much changed for Telly, except for the fact that he had a new pet hamster named Chuckie, who in episode 3860 of season 31, would be revealed to be a girl who was pregnant with four baby hamsters.

From there, Telly would be one of six characters the newer seasons like to focus on. (The other five being Elmo, Rosita, Zoe, Baby Bear and Abby.) Some of his adventures include, becoming Texas Telly and tracking down the Golden Triangle of Destiny, experiencing jealousy directed at Baby Bear’s pet Ralphie, briefly getting a new high tech pogo stick, making Rahki bracelets for everyone on Sesame Street, and the like.

When Sesame Street moved to HBO, and the character focus shifted, Telly would still make appearances in episodes, but significantly less-so.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Telly made small appearances in Elmo’s Playdate, an episode of The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo, and was even featured in this nice video.

Going to the present day with Season 51, Telly has not made any appearances in any new material. The season isn’t over yet, so we’ll have to wait and see if he does.

But now on to Telly himself. I did see a lot of him growing up watching the show, but I didn’t pick up that he was a worrier. Probably because Martin P. Robinson was so good at making him show many different emotions.

Telly is at his very best when he’s allowed to overreact to whatever situation he’s currently facing. Like episode 4214 of season 41, where Telly, Rosita and Elmo become happy scientists. Telly gets increasingly frustrated each time his hypothesis is proven wrong, and it’s hilarious to watch, because of how expressive Marty P makes him.

Sadly, as many of fellow muppet fans have pointed out, even though Telly is a street MVP, there’s hardly any merchandise of him that you can find in stores, and that’s disappointing because I definitely feel Telly has just as much merchandise potential as Elmo, Abby, Big Bird, and the rest of his friends.

But even so, if you’re ever looking for a Sesame Street character who offers strong emotions, talents to boot, and a lesson or two on triangles, Telly’s your monster, and I hope he continues to stick around for as long as he can.

Well, that brings us to the end of another episode. Allow me to make my exit via pogo stick.

Boing, Boing, BOINGAROONIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!