Sesame St S1: Songs, Etc.
Having finally had enough, Little Bird shows him that he’s also a bird, with a beak, wings, and feathers, just like him. Once Big Bird accepts the truth, he asks if they can be friends. “Yeah, I guess so,” a reticent Little Bird responds. The sketch ends on a tender moment with Big Bird attempting to nuzzle him, undercut a moment later by Little Bird, who really couldn’t seem to care less, leaving–much like Oscar himself, another good example of Sesame Street keeping things from getting too saccharine.
Big Bird meets Little Bird
The final Season 1 clips on the set are the legendary Lou Rawls singing another song about the alphabet with kids on the street, Bob and Susan singing a song about body part pairs (eyes, ears, etc.) called “I’ve Got Two”–not one of the show’s greater musical efforts–and a cartoon about a boy attempting to fish but simply catching letters of the alphabet instead, until he finally decides to just make alphabet soup, which I vaguely recall from childhood.
The next few clips I watched were from the Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days DVD set, many of which overlapped with Old School, but three of which were new to me. One is another Batman cartoon, this one teaching the concepts of up, through, and around. Batman catches a criminal in a high-up apartment by tossing a boomerang tied to a rope up and through a window, where it wraps around the baddie. The second is another “baker” film, this time for the number 1. Again, we see little Brian Henson here, finding only 1 penny in his piggy bank. The third is Ernie singing the classic song, “If I Knew You Were Coming, I’d’ve Baked a Cake” while frenziedly baking a cake for a hungry Cookie Monster, who immediately devours it once he’s finished. This is just one of many Ernie and Cookie Monster sketches from the early days. As I mentioned before, it was actually in one of these that Cookie gained his love for cookies in particular and, thus, his name.
Next, I watched some clips that were posted on the official Sesame Street YouTube account, including one called “Father’s Song,” which comes across as so uncomfortably patriarchal and traditional-gender-role-reinforcing today that it’s almost creepy. For, you see, a father’s job is to fix things around the house, work long hours to provide for his wife and children, and to care for them as king of the house:
I was also able to find the accompanying “Mother’s Song” and “Children’s Song,” which may be even worse. The mom starts off by saying, “To be a mother, you have to have a husband,” which is just wrong on so many levels. Not even factoring in divorce or out-of-wedlock pregnancies, what about death? Is a widow not a mother? This would never appear on Sesame Street today, and neither would the fact that a mother’s job, according to the song, is to cook, bake, sew, do laundry, and tend to her children and husband.
And the children’s song is possibly even more troubling, with the daughter’s “job” being to play with dolls, help her mother cook and sew, and dress beautifully, while a the son’s is to run around, play ball, get messy, and to “grow up to be 6 feet tall”. But as uncomfortable as this may all be to see today, it remains a fascinating cultural relic, and an example of how not all of Sesame Street remains timeless. They constantly and deliberately modified the show to keep it relevant to the times.
Next up, we have two Kermit and Cookie Monster clips. As with his early scenes with Ernie, Cookie would often appear as the monster devouring things in the background of Kermit’s “lectures” on various subjects, the joke being that, in messing up Kermit’s plans, he often ended up inadvertently illustrating or enhancing the point the green guy was trying to make. Such as in this first example, in which Kermit is trying to illustrate the concept of “happy” to the kids at home, when Cookie appears out of nowhere and devours the happy face Kermit had drawn, which instead makes Kermit mad:
I love this sketch for so many reasons. For one, I’m pretty sure it’s the first time in this chronological watch that I’ve seen the usually-calm-and-controlled Kermit really lose his temper with another Muppet, which is always a delight to behold. He really goes off on Cookie here, and it’s just hilarious. Jim himself was always known to be a very patient man. He would get frustrated as anyone would but often would respond with a quiet “Hmm…” to indicate he wasn’t happy with something, so when Kermit got angry, it was a great way for him to channel his impatience in an exaggerated form and in character. I can imagine him having really relished these moments.
And this time in particular, Kermit goes nearly berserk to the point that he scares Cookie, and it is absolutely amazing. “YOU BIG, DUMB, STUPID, ROTTEN MONSTER!” he screams. “YOU MAKE ME SO MAD…I’M GONNA TELL ALL MY FRIENDS HOW ROTTEN YOU ARE…AND NOBODY’S GONNA PLAY WITH YOU ANY MORE!!” And Cookie’s response is absolutely precious. “Oh, Froggy!” he begs. And when Kermit then ups the stakes and threatens to tell his mother, he beseeches him, bawling, “Not my mommy!…Oh, Froggy, please!…Me so sad!”
Which is such a great twist on the typical early Muppet sketch formula. This time around, Kermit isn’t afraid of a monster or trying to avoid being devoured but actually scolding one into submission! And just as with Cookie’s phone call to his mommy in the episode I watched last, showing kids that these monsters also have mommies and they can also have their feelings hurt helps remove the fear of monsters and instead makes them a source of humor and even empathy. Incidentally, this is the first time I’ve noticed Cookie use the grammatically incorrect “me” (but correct for him) instead of “I”. I’ll have to keep an eye out for if that remains consistent in the future.