Sesame St S6: Grover, Etc.
And they are very clever ones. At first the babies hatch and instantly assume that Grover is their mother (which is actually yet another lesson, about imprinting), the funniest line being when one of them uses his first words ever to ask, “Mommy, can I watch TV?” But the scene doesn’t end there. Moments later, the actual mom comes back and makes her own mistake, namely that Grover is one of her children as well, so when she counts birds, she gets 4, another subtle counting lesson!
As with the previous scene, one of the things that so great about it is that this mistake isn’t corrected. Sesame Street doesn’t reassert that, no, there are actually only 3 birds, because it goes without saying that its audience will understand that. It’s “edutainment” that cares just as much about the latter part of the word as the first and arguably more so (something it didn’t always achieve perfectly when the show first started), because by this point, the creative team clearly realizes that the fun aspect being more prominent allows children to absorb the educational aspects without even realizing it. Because they’re not being preached to. The lessons are simply flowing in organically, almost as a by-product of the entertainment.
Returning to the mother, the scene neatly wraps up when she proceeds to actually treat Grover like one of her babies, at first trying to feed him a worm–when he resists, she tells him she’ll leave it for when he gets hungry, just like a human mother might, and he emphatically responds, “I will never get hungry for a worm!” which also made me laugh a lot–and then demanding he submit to flying lessons, which lead to him crashing to the ground in a heap and deciding that perhaps birds aren’t so cute after all, making it another example of a Grover-collapses-in-an-exhausted-heap sketch but one with its own unique twist on the trope.
Next up, Grover and Herry teach the concepts of “here” and “there” to a little pink monster called Billy…or at least attempt to do so:
Like the previous sketch, this is yet another one that doesn’t overexplain itself. Billy desperately wants to get to “there” and yet no matter where he goes, he always finds himself “here”. There’s an element of “Who’s On First?” to the comedy when Billy tells Grover he wants to go over “there,” so runs to Herry, who tells him that he’s “here” but Grover’s over there, only for Grover to tell him that he’s here and Herry is there once he arrives. It’s a simpler construction than that famous Abbot and Costello sketch but the concept of one person getting further and further frustrated by another’s language-based misunderstanding is recognizable.
And, again, the sketch relies on children picking up on the meaning, which is actually rather complex, this idea that these words are defined by where one happens to be at any given moment, similar to how “yesterday” and “tomorrow” are things you can only have already experienced or anticipate experiencing. It’s also a nice change from the first two sketches, as Grover is the one trying to teach a concept to someone else who isn’t getting it, rather than the other way around.
And now we come to another Grover the Waiter sketch. Whereas many of these also give Grover the upper hand as in the previous sketch, here Grover and Mr. Johnson essentially drive one another crazy and in an odd way, Johnson comes out slightly on top, despite not getting the meal he bargained for. You’ll see:
One of the major aspects I love about the Grover the Waiter sketches is that, rather than repeating the exact same dynamic in each scene as sometimes happens with recurring comedy sketches on TV shows, Grover and Mr. Johnson don’t just act out slightly different versions of the same basic scene. While each one will always believe himself to be correct and the other one crazy, it isn’t always the wacky Grover irritating a fully reasonable Mr. Johnson. Sometimes it’s a more confrontational Mr. Johnson refusing to listen to a relatively level-headed Grover or at least making things worse through his own stubbornness.