Sesame St S6: Bert & Ernie
“Glass of Water”
It’s a cute sketch that gives Oz a chance to do a spin on Bert’s regular persona, but the best bit is probably the aspect where Ernie gets under Bert’s skin a little by describing his physical attributes, such as his “pointy” head, “beady” eyes, “cucumbery” nose, “grumpy” mouth, and–my favorite part–his “floppy, soggy” arms. I love when Muppets directly point out their physical attributes that specifically derive from being puppets, such as in “Doctor Monster,” where Ernie tells Cookie that his eyes can’t go all googly as Cookie’s can, the literal reason being how they’re constructed. Here, Ernie’s pointing out how Bert’s arms are thin and floppy, since they’re just made out of light foam, squishing them as he points this out, which also reminded me of the bit in The Muppets Take Manhattan in which the nurse played by Linda Lavin repeatedly twists Kermit’s arms to test his reflexes.
Meanwhile, “Glass of Water” is a Bert and Ernie sketch with a fantastically funny pay-off that I didn’t guess correctly but came close. Bert observes Ernie repeatedly exiting the kitchen with a glass of water, going outside of the apartment, returning with an empty glass, walking back to the kitchen with a full glass, going back outside with the glass empty again, and so on and so forth. He makes numerous guesses as to what Ernie is doing–that he’s watering plants, that he’s giving water to an animal, that Susan and Gordon are outside and thirsty–none of which turn out to be correct. But all this talk of water makes him so thirsty, he asks Ernie if he can drink the water he’s currently holding, and Ernie obliges. Only after he finishes drinking does Ernie explain the truth to him.
My guess was that there was a fire outside that Ernie was (very) slowly putting out, but as it turns out, the exact opposite is correct. Instead, the kitchen faucet is broken and the apartment is gradually flooding with water. Ernie had been attempting to solve the problem one glass of water at a time but ultimately to no avail as, in the last moment of the sketch, thanks to a fun trick shot, the place is entirely submerged, the water finally rising all the way above Bert and Ernie’s heads! By his last line, Bert’s yell of “ERNIE!” has turned into a gargle!
“Bert is Sick”
In “Bert is Sick”, Ernie behaves similarly foolishly/innocently when he comes bounding into the bedroom telling Bert that he’s heard that somebody on Sesame Street is sick but he’s not sure who, so he takes out his handy How to Tell if Someone is Sick book to help him figure out the answer. Naturally, this entire time, Bert is lying in bed, coughing, sneezing, and groaning, and continues to fulfill all of the attributes of someone who is sick, as per the descriptions in Ernie’s book. By the end, Ernie finally puts all of these clues together and realizes that Bert is sick…which causes him to instantly begin to pester Bert because if he’s sick, he must know which friend of theirs on Sesame Street is sick!
A great example of a well-intentioned Ernie–he wants to find out who’s sick in order to help them–showing absolutely no awareness of what’s going on around him, as at first, he ignores Bert’s pleas for help in his quest to find out who he should help, and then can’t figure out that Bert is the sick person he’d heard about even after he realizes that he’s sick.
Our next clip, “Ernie Prepares to Do the Laundry”, however, is arguably the first in the set in which Ernie outwits Bert. Now, it’s still played fairly subtly so it can be a bit difficult to tell whether Ernie is genuinely innocent in this or not, but my guess is it’s leaning towards him playing willfully dumber than he actually is in order to get out of doing the laundry. The basic gist of it is Bert telling Ernie it’s his turn to do the laundry, at which point Ernie picks up the empty laundry basket, prepared to go to the laundromat. Bert informs him that he’s forgetting something, however, at which point Ernie realizes that, duh, he’s forgotten his rubber ducky! He finds and puts it in the basket and prepares to go. But, nope, that’s not it.
“Ernie Prepares to Do the Laundry”
Oh, it must be a storybook so they don’t get bored! And then cookies to snack on. And boots, in case the washing machine overflows. And a radio. And a ukelele. And a yo-yo. And a basketball. And coloring books. And crayons. And and and finally Bert has had enough, telling him that he’s forgotten the laundry and, furthermore, now that the basket is full of all of this garbage, he won’t be able to fit the laundry in there! In response, Ernie announces that, since he can’t do the laundry anymore, he’s off to play baseball! Again, wocka wocka!
Next time: the rest of the Bert & Ernie sketches of Season 6!