Sesame Street Ep #666
Bert defends Ernie at the movies.
And again, we see new!Gordon, just blending in as if he were always there, just as with the previous Gordon swaps. You have to wonder how strange this must have been for kids watching at the time for this guy to just randomly change faces every few years or so with no on-screen acknowledgment.
The next significant sketch is another installment of Bert and Ernie at the Movies, which follows a similar conceit to some earlier Ernie sketches in which our poor little buddy gets so swept away by his emotions that the seemingly slightest outside influence sees him rapidly shifting from full-on sobbing to uproarious laughter, but this time it’s due to a seemingly schizophrenic film whose tone goes from scary to sad to hilarious. What’s particularly nice about this one, however, is that it doesn’t find Bert and Ernie at odds with one another at all. In fact, although everyone around them begins to get very irritated with the noise Ernie’s making, Bert not only defends his friend to them but helps talk him down each time when his emotions get the better of him, being gentle and patient with him all the while, just as he was when helping teach Ernie how to use a straw in Mr. Hooper’s shop, which is a lovely thing to see.
And you know what? Bert is absolutely right. It’s one thing when Ernie is making too much noise at a movie when eating snacks or slurping from a straw, but in this situation, he’s simply naturally reacting to the film, and the other heartless audience members aren’t only being unreasonable but making much more noise in reacting to Ernie that he ever made in the first place. And it’s particularly funny/amazing to see one guy in particular drive Bert to defend Ernie so rigorously that they practically come to blows. The guy threatens to kick them out, and Bert yells, “You throw me out?! I’d like to see that!” as Ernie settles in and continues to quietly watch the film.
Grover puts the cart before the horse.
Then, we have another Kermit lecture, Sesame Street once again doing a bit of rural outreach by centering an educational sketch on the country, this time with Kermit planning to demonstrate how a horse and cart works with his assistant Grover, posing as “Farmer Grover”. However, our lovable monster soon shows off his humorous lack of experience by attempting to hitch the horse behind the cart. Kermit reacts in a typically Muppet-Show-Kermit-losing-his-temper way, underlining that “You don’t push the cart. You pull the cart and ride inside while the cart is being pulled!” Farmer Grover claims to have gotten it, but as you might guess, he ends up confusing the pronouns and the sketch ends with Grover pulling the cart as the horse, sitting in the cart, pulls on his reins, calling, “Giddyup, Grover!”
Nearing the end of the episode, there’s then an odd little scene in which all of the adults and some of the kids are gathered around Oscar’s trashcan, as he demonstrates “none,” “some,” and “all”. At first, he orders everyone to show what it’s like when none of them are happy, so they all try to put on the saddest expressions they can, but as it goes along, they begin to fidget and some eventually start to smile, meaning only some of them are unhappy, but by the end, they’re all uproariously laughing, to Oscar’s annoyance. What makes it extremely strange, however, is just how the laughter is depicted. The camera zooms in on their initially joyful reactions and remains on them long enough that suddenly it seems to tip over from jubiliation to a documentary film depiction of genuine madness. Their eyes look so intense–particularly Gordon and Bob’s–and the cacophany of their reactions sounds so deafening that it legitimately looks like an experimental art film about insanity. And then there’s that weird moment when Susan collapses onto Maria and rolls with her, their bodies entwined.
Bedtime on Sesame Street.
Shortly after, we get a replay of a very early Bert and Ernie sketch, the only reason I’m mentioning it being that it’s surprising to see them replaying such an early scene, since Bert and Ernie both look jarringly different than they did at other points in this same episode and even sound a bit different. I imagine it would’ve really confused a young audience who were already coping with Gordon switching bodies the very same week, though it’s possible they wouldn’t have noticed.
And we wrap up on a similarly quiet scene to the one that opened the show, with the Count still on top of the lamppost, but now counting each of the lights going out on Sesame Street. To his dismay, however, the lamppost itself stays on, and Luis explains to him that it won’t go out until morning, and so our intrepid number addict commits to staying up there until then so he can count the extinguishing of that one final light. Again, it’s a nice framing device but it would’ve been cool had the whole episode followed this conceit and had more people interacted with the Count up there. Oh, well, hope springs eternal that we’ll finally get to better developed Sesame Street episodes soon…