TSSR- Season 6 (1974-1975)

 

Season 6. A season that a lot of people remember fondly, and a season that I’ve been particularly looking forward to covering.

The sixth season of Sesame Street was its true turning point. The previous five seasons we’ve already covered were really just the show experimenting and trying to figure out what it wanted to be and do, but this season, in particular, would be the start of what most fans would refer to as “The Golden Age of Sesame Street”, and it featured quite a few things that would become staples of the show as a whole, so without further ado, let’s dive in.

Production History

Guess what? I actually have more to say in terms of production history this time around! Yipee!

So, come 1974, Sesame Street was already a pop culture phenomenon, airing on 250 American TV stations and in 41 different countries, international versions of the show like Vila Sesamo, Plaza Sesamo, and Sesamstrasse were coming into fruition, Sesame Street Records was created to make and distribute SS albums, the show even got its own float in the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which quickly became a constant afterward.

So, of course, the CTW crew was going to be back for another season, with almost all of the original faces returning. Except for Joe Raposo, who stepped down as musical director, and was replaced by Sam Pottle.

One more thing that I want to bring up is that this season introduced the concept of repeats. Repeats, in the Sesame Street universe, are when the show takes a street story from a previously made episode and inserts brand-new segments into the mix, and season 6 gave us 30 of them to start off with. Now I don’t really have that much of an opinion on repeats. They’re literally just showing us stuff we’ve already seen before. So just to be sure you’re aware, I won’t be counting ANY repeats for any of the top 5 episode lists.

So after production wrapped up, the first episode of the season aired on November 4, 1974, and ended on May 2, 1975.

With that out of the way, let’s actually talk about this season.

Overview

As I said previously, while Sesame Street is always experimenting with what works and what doesn’t, the last five seasons we’ve gone over are the only ones that feel like the show was still in pilot mode, figuring out how the show should present itself. Season 6, on the other hand, is the true turning point that would define what the street was like for the longest time afterward. Which makes it a shame that there’s scarcely little of it online. No joke, I could only view five or six episodes from this season.

But anyway, the cast and their personalities were all set in stone, the episode plots mostly still feel fresh, the songs increase in catchiness, and the lessons get an update, as well. Season 6’s curriculum focused on affect behavior, divergent thinking, career awareness, social interactions, and creativity.

You can see all, or most, of these lessons in the plots themselves, which include, but are not limited to:

• Cookie Monster taking charge of Hooper’s Store, while David is away, and trying not to eat any cookies.
• Big Bird crushing on Maria.
• Grover trying and failing to take a picture of Luis.
• Oscar opening his own Break-It Shop.
• Big Bird trying to help Snuffy find a game he’s good at.
• Oscar trying to find a new place of residence within his neighborhood.
• Maria getting a job in construction.
• And The Count spending the whole day following an ant.

All simple plots, which are elevated by the characters, their personalities, and their chemistry with each other. And as we’ll see later on, this is the kind of storytelling that becomes a constant for the rest of the show. (At least for the next 30 seasons, or so.)

Characters

As I said before, the characters are what carry what goes down in this season. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that each of the main characters’ personalities was finally set in stone in season 6. From this point, Big Bird, Oscar, Ernie, Bert, Grover, Snuffy, and the main street residents are who they are for pretty much the rest of the show.

I can’t go over everyone, but right now, I want to talk about the characters who stood out the most to me. Starting off with a certain googly-eye monster and purple vampire.

Cookie Monster and Count Von Count are living proof that your characters can be one-note AND three-dimensional at the same time. On the surface, they’re the two simplest characters of the central cast, Cookie Monster is a monster who loves cookies, and the Count is a vampire who loves counting, but miraculously, even though they’re written to deliver the same kinds of jokes, they never seem to grow old or boring, which is half thanks to the writing and half thanks to the performers. The writing team was able to concoct new scenarios to place them in, and Frank Oz and Jerry Nelson (Later David Rudman and Matt Vogel) gave 110% effort to their roles and turned them into entertaining characters.

But they’re not just entertaining, they’re also WAY nicer than they started out being. In their first appearances, both Cookie and Count acted rather antagonistically, the former attempting to eat Kermit alive, and the latter messing up Ernie’s block tower on purpose and constantly ignoring and preventing him and Bert from telling him to stop. But as the show continued, especially in this season, both characters soften up and become nicer, more considerate, and start to care more about their neighbors.

Cookie Monster may still be an eating machine with minimal impulse control, but now he’s much more willing to help his friends out and admit when he messes up. Meanwhile, The Count gets a surplus of starring roles this season, and while his counting can get on the other characters' nerves half of the time, he comes off as much more well-meaning and enthusiastic, and much more importantly, he doesn’t hypnotize or stun anyone to get his way. These two may be obsessive nutcases, but they don’t let their obsessions stop them from being good friends and upstanding members of their community. And I believe that’s part of the reason why they remain staples of the show to this day.

Now, I wanna talk about a muppet who actually came to the limelight this season: Herry Monster. Previously, he was just the Beautiful Day Monster’s less hideous replacement that people mostly still feared. But as the show went on, especially in season 6, Herry really started to become his own character: A gentle giant who doesn't know his own strength. Herry gets a few street scenes to himself, where he uses his strongness to help his friends with a problem, or unintentionally mess something up for them, he even has one where he learns that being tough doesn’t mean you can’t cry.

Now, while Herry is not my favorite of the cast, he’s still very fun and relatable. Lots of kids, mainly boys, struggle with showing off their feminine sides, and watching a character like Herry, who does like lifting weights and other strength-related activities, but also loves kittens and has his own stuffed doll that he cherishes, probably helped them feel better about themselves and their self-image. Just another example of Sesame Street continuing to be the progressive pioneer we know it is.

I’d also like to briefly mention Grover because this is the season where he performs his most known bit of the entire show.

When it comes to the human characters, they remained more or less the same, except that one of them went through yet another casting change. Can you guess who it was?

That’s right. Gordon Robinson would undergo his fourth and final actor replacement in the form of the great Roscoe Orman, who would go on to be Gordon’s actor for the rest of the show. I talked about this in my Sesame Seeds Blog about Gordon, but I really think Mr. Orman was the best Gordon. While Matt Robinson was really good, I still stand by my statement that he came off as more of a teacher than a regular neighborhood guy. Roscoe, on the other hand, was able to act like a teacher most of the time but also had lots of moments where he could just act like an actual person, reacting to the chaos his felt neighbors bring to his life, and being much more dynamic on-screen partner with whoever he’s paired up with.

Maria was also very prevalent in this season, becoming both a magnet for affectionate muppets and a trailblazer for little girls like Susan who came before her, proving that she can do a lot more than most people would have given her credit for. She focused a lot of her screen time on building and fixing things, and I’m not sure if that was intentional foreshadowing for future events, but even if not, it’s genius.

But we weren’t just focusing on old characters this season, we also got a selection of new characters from troll parrot Poco Loco to loud and rowdy cowgirl, Rodeo Rosie, but the biggest standout of them all has to be the almost always stressed-out musician known as Don Music.

For the uninitiated, Don Music is a songwriter who suffers from a severe case of writer’s block every time he tries to come up with a new song, and as someone who struggles with writer’s block every so often, his skits hold up surprisingly well. I’m sure anyone who’s ever written something before has had a moment where you just can’t think of the right thing to say, and you just wanna bang your head on the nearest thing possible. Of course, as grown individuals who know what pain feels like, we would never do this, but little kids aren’t like that, so I guess it should be no surprise when parents started writing about their children imitating Don’s habit of smashing his head into his piano, and they eventually fazed him out of the series. But despite this I think Don is a very fun character, who was brilliantly performed, very relatable, and definitely earned his place in the hall of fan-favorite SS muppets.

My Top 5s

My Top 5 Favorite Street Stories

(Before we get into this part, I just want to let you know that episode 702 may be an honorable mention, but it’s a whole separate can of worms that I wanna talk about at a later date. So, look out for that.)

#5: (Episode 700) The One Where Maria Borrows Sugar From Oscar: The Maria/Oscar dynamic is what makes this one for me. I’m 100% certain that Oscar only made Maria get the sugar from inside his can just so he could give her a tour of his pad as a way to impress her.

#4: (Episode 745) The One With Big Bird’s Cousin Herman: Aside from being a funny episode in general, considering in the first season, Big Bird had to be taken off-screen for his family to appear, I think it’s nice to finally see that they were able to build a new Big Bird puppet to be on-screen with the other one.

#3: (Episode 748) The One Where Cookie Monster Dreams Of The Midas Touch: This goes back to what I said about Cookie Monster being both one-note and 3-dimensional. Initially, Cookie thinks having the ability to turn anything into cookies is amazing, but when he accidentally touches Bob and Susan and they turn into cookie piles, he immediately feels regret and wants to undo the damage. Would season 1 Cookie Monster react this way if put in this situation? I don’t think so. He’d probably just eat the baked goods that used to be his friends without a second thought.

#2: (Episode 666) The One Where The Count Counts Streetlights: Another great season opener that finds a creative way to introduce all the characters and street locations through the Count and his obsession. Not just that, but it gives us a great song and a perfect example of how infectious happiness is.

#1: (Episode 725) The One Where Cookie Monster Looks After Hooper’s Store For David: This is my favorite episode of this season and the whole show, because of how it develops my favorite character. Think about it, Cookie Monster, without any other motives, and despite knowing that David doesn’t want him to eat the cookies, volunteers to man Hooper’s while David helps his mom. He even promises that he won’t eat the cookies until David gets back and throughout the episode, he delivers on that promise. In earlier episodes, Cookie probably would’ve just made that promise to David, and then immediately consumed the cookies as soon as David left. And sure, he may have eaten the rest of the store, but he never promised not to. He only promised not to eat the cookies and he did just that. It’s this episode that cements the fact that Cookie Monster is now a character who thinks about other things/people and not just his stomach, and that’s one of the reasons why he’s my favorite character. Besides that, this episode is just really funny. Not just because of Cookie struggling to control his appetite, but because of the ending where David loses it. I talked about it in my top 55 SS moments list but this scene will never not be funny to me. Just a fun and fantastic episode all around.

Honorable Mentions: Episode 702, Episode 695, Episode 673, Episode 689, Episode 705, Episode 711, and Episode 744

My Least Favorite Street Story: (Episode 723) The One Where Bad Barney Blackmails Big Bird: I talked about how I don’t think Bad Barney really works in the show he was created for in the last installment, so you can imagine I wasn’t too fond of his comeback here. After their last encounter, you would think Big Bird would avoid this dude like the plague or stand up to him like he did last time, but no. Big Bird reverts back to caring about what this bully thinks of him and it’s not fun to see Bad Barney push our friend around like he does. As I said, placing a status-quo run-of-the-mill bully character who never changes in a show with a cast as diverse and nuanced as Sesame Street just doesn’t work. And I’m glad the writers realized this eventually. Luckily, this episode does have another scene with Maria, Gordon, and Oscar to balance things out, so I wouldn’t say it’s that bad.

My Top 5 Favorite Songs

#5: If I Had A Kid Like You: This song is just beautiful. For one of his first solos, Mr. Orman knocked it out of the ballpark. Not to mention it’s another great instance of foreshadowing.

#4: Exit: It’s catchy, straightforward, and features Little Chrissy. That’s a winning formula. Though, I do think it’s a little silly for Little Chrissy to not notice the very thing his song was about.

#3: Telephone Rock: Now it’s the other famous SS band’s turn to be on this list. It’s just another really catchy song that will get kids accustomed to the concept of telephones.

#2: Yes We Can Can: Not only is this another catchy song sung by great singers, but its message is a very profound one that still bears repeating in the current year of 2023.

#1: What’s The Name Of That Song?: I put this song at the top of this list because of how relevant it still is, even after all these years. Every one of us has had this experience where we know how a particular song goes, but we can’t for the life of us figure out what it’s called. I know this has happened to me at least once a month. Don’t believe me? Just go to the YouTube comment section of Duarte - Sandstorm. A Much Deeper Level had a great take on this song, which you can read right here.

Honorable Mentions: Women Can Be, I Can’t Help It, I Just Adore 4, Like/Dislike, Swinging Alphabet, A Boy From Indiana, When I Was As Little As You Are, and Sesame Street Improvisation

My Least Favorite Song: Beep: Once again, this song isn’t terrible, just the least good. Though I will say it is kinda funny how the purple muppet sounds like Huey and Riley Freeman.

My Top 5 Favorite Segments

#5: Baby Calves: I think this segment speaks for itself. It’s a segment about baby animals.

#4: The Robot With Emotions: This is another enjoyable one, mainly because of the titular robot.

#3: I'm An Indian: This segment is brilliant, and exactly how you should handle situations with ill-informed people.

#2: New Ball In Town: Not only is the music insanely earworm-y, but it also has a very nice message about including others that might be new or different from you.

#1: The Typewriter: The mere fact that people are able to fondly remember a typewriter of all things should really be a testament to how simple we humans are. But yeah, these shorts are enjoyable to watch, because of the different things that happen in each one. There’s one for every letter of the alphabet.

Honorable Mentions: She's An Architect

My Least Favorite Segment: Bus: I find the animation on this one to be a little creepy.

Conclusion

All in all, I’d say season 6 is the best season so far. Mostly because I feel it’s where the show finally started to lock itself in place. The characters are now who they’ll be for most of their on-screen time and continue to elevate the stories with their dynamic personalities, the music continues to get better and better, and it has the type of humor and esthetic that most Sesame Street fans fondly remember it for. Hopefully, people start uploading more of the episodes online, because this is definitely a season worth coming back to.

But just wait until the next installment! I’ll have much more material to work with there, including the first of many trips that the cast take. But I shan’t say anymore, or I’ll spoil what’s to come.

Well, thanks for joining me on another Sesame Street retrospective installment, and I’ll see you in the next one. But for now, it’s time for us to do what Little Chrissy said and use the way out.

*(Images from Tony Whitaker, Muppet Wiki, and Google Images)