Sesame St S4: Highlights
There are lots of things to love about the scene, particularly in how it riffs on a famous Shakespeare play–a joke targeted directly to the parents. But I also love that, as with the Sesame Street monsters, it presents the sort of characters that would usually be frightening to children but trusts them to be able to handle it. And in some ways, they’re even more frightening than the monsters, because they aren’t soft or cuddly. They look like typical pointy-nosed evil fairy tale witches. With that said, however, they’re also very funny and end up simply making a bowl of chicken soup, and so underneath the cooperation example (which is quite similar to the Bert and Ernie scene in which the two share peanut butter and bread, even ending on a similar gag about needing to cooperate with another friend for an additional component!), there’s also a subtler don’t-judge-a-book-by-its-cover moral snuck in there, as well.
And speaking of sneaking in lessons, as well as characters who could otherwise have been scary, next we have “The Song of the Count,” a klezmer-infused ditty that is likely the Count’s most famous song–unsurprisingly, given its name:
What I love about the song is that, like many of the other character’s signature songs, such as Ernie’s “Rubber Duckie” and Kermit’s “Bein’ Green,” it’s more of a character song than an educational one. For a song ostensibly about counting, it doesn’t actually feature that many numbers. The Count recites, “1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4” a number of times, but really it’s more about his love of counting than anything else. He lists all of the different things he loves to count, from the “cobwebs on the wall” to the “candles on the shelf,” and then his best line, “When I’m alone, I count myself!”
Next up, yet another classic, in which Ernie makes a bust of Bert’s head:
Of all of the Ernie-steals-Bert’s-nose sketches, this is the one I remember most vividly and is probably the funniest. A short, simple sketch, it includes a familiar Sesame Street set-up of comparing two things to see how they match up, as in “The Great Cookie Thief,” here pointing out that the one difference between Bert’s face and the bust’s is that it’s missing a nose, at which point it swerves into flat-out absurdist comedy when Ernie–who is out of clay–grabs the nose right off of Bert’s face and attaches it to the bust! Of course, technically, now they don’t match again because the Bert statue has a nose and he doesn’t, but I guess the only other solution would be the much darker throwing-Bert’s-nose-away-all-together, so for the sake of comedy, we can just let that one slide.
And then the final clip on Old School is a cartoon of the classic comic strip character, Beetle Bailey, attempting to be first in line to dinner at the mess hall by digging a hole under all of the guys in front of him. When he pops his head out, however, it rolls the table-on-wheels away from him and to the other side of the line, making him the last one in line once more. Like the Superman and Batman cartoon sketches before him, it’s kind of fun/strange to see a comics character pop up on Sesame Street, but that’s really the most interesting thing about it.
Next, the 40 Years of Sunny Day clips, beginning with yet another precious John-John moment, this time with Herry Monster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scu9zzC5U3g
I mean, my god, could this kid have been any more adorable? I just can’t even handle it. Next up, a quick bit from a recurring sketch called Roosevelt Franklin High School, featuring the eponymous African-American Muppet who, as I mentioned in the past, proved to be a bit controversial for Sesame Street, some people considering him a black stereotype while other praised him for representing inner city black youth, who they claimed did speak and sound like him. This brief bit simply introduces the difference between loud and soft, and it’s very short, and, as with the previous Roosevelt Franklin clip, more interesting to see today for what it represents than for what it actually is.
And then we come full circle with yet another Sesame Street Newsflash, although I’m going to guess that this one was filmed a bit earlier than the previous one, as the Prince Charming puppet looks slightly different. Although the basic shape of the face is still Guy Smiley-esque, he has dopier, more primitive-seeming eyes. And, as with Rapunzel, we once more have Kermit at the scene of a famous fairy tale, but this time it’s Sleeping Beauty:
And, as you see, whereas the last one’s humor derived from Rapunzel’s personality not matching the general fairy tale description, this one’s derives from the standard kiss of true love not working the way it was expected to, for when the prince kisses Sleeping Beauty, not only does she not awaken, but he falls into a deep sleep, as well! “Stay tuned and maybe in another 100 years, someone will come by and kiss them both!” a befuddled Kermit replies.
And that’s all for today! Please come back next Tuesday for our second and final set of season 4 highlights!
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