Sesame St S5: Highlights

Posted on Jan 19, 2016 in Henson, Sesame Street, Shows, Television

The “tall hat lady” blocks Ernie at the movies.

Today, we proceed with our first day of highlights from Season 5 of Sesame Street. As per usual, I watched the first set on the Sesame Street: Old School Volume 1 DVD set.

We begin with a classic Bert and Ernie at the Movies sketch, which also happens to be the one I remember best from childhood, in which a lady with an insanely tall, colorful hat with frills and feathers practically brushing the ceiling sits down right in front of Ernie, blocking him completely. Ernie tries various methods of looking around her, none of which work, and at one point even attempts to sit in a very frustrated Bert’s lap. Finally, Bert asks Ernie what’s wrong, he tells him the problem, and Bert suggests he kindly ask her to remove her hat. Ernie follows Bert’s advice, and the woman very graciously agrees to do so…and instead places her hat in the seat to her

The Muppets 1.10: “Single All the Way”

Posted on Jan 15, 2016 in Henson, Shows, Television, The Muppets

Kermit, donning now his gay apparel.

After the previous triumphantly, brilliantly Gonzo-centric episode, “Going, Going, Gonzo,” I was extremely happy with The Muppets, the show having done such a beautiful, seemingly effortless character rehabilitation for everyone’s favorite Whatever following shortly on the heels of its skillful rehab of Kermit in the 7th episode, “Pig’s in a Blackout,” and Miss Piggy in the 6th, “The Ex-Factor”. In addition to that, whereas some of the earlier installments had found some difficulty maintaining the right tonal balance, retaining the bite of the classic Muppets without losing their heart, these demonstrated a show finally getting a handle on both its characters and material. At the same time, the 8th episode, “Too Hot to Handler,” was a bit of a step backwards in quality, albeit far from damagingly so, but just enough to give me momentary pause over whether the show had indeed

Sesame Street Ep #536

Posted on Jan 14, 2016 in Henson, Sesame Street, Shows, Television

A “quiet day” on Sesame Street!

And now we’re at the start of Season 5! My, these Sesame Street seasons fly by, don’t they? As with the fourth season premiere, rather than giving a blow-by-blow of the entire episode, I’m just going to be highlighting key moments, because again, no plot, little cohesion from scene-to-scene other than some thematic links, and to be honest, it’s getting a little draining. Revisiting the clips remains a great deal of fun, as does discovering and rediscovering moments within these episodes but watching them from start to finish is becoming a bit of a chore.

Again, I’m hoping that changes when I get to the ’80s episodes. Or, ideally, sooner! And again, you can follow along with this one yourself on

Sesame St S4: Highlights #2

Posted on Jan 12, 2016 in Guest Appearances, Henson, Julie Andrews, Sesame Street, Shows, Television

Today, I finish my coverage of Sesame Street Season 4 with a number of clips that I found via the show’s official YouTube channel. First off, another Martians clip, this time with our two intrepid explorers happening upon a grandfather clock:

Sesame St S4: Highlights

Posted on Jan 7, 2016 in Henson, Sesame Street, Shows, Television

Today kicks off Part 1 of my coverage of highlights from Sesame Street‘s fourth season. I watched all of these on the Sesame Street: Old School Volume 1 and the Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days DVD sets, and most of them I was also able to locate on Sesame Street‘s official YouTube channel, so I’ve embedded those here.

We begin with Old School and what is very possibly my very favorite series of Sesame Street sketches of all time, namely Sesame Street Newsflash, in which Kermit would “interrupt” the show in order to report “breaking news” “live”. Most often, these scenes would involve him being on the scene for moments from various fairy tales, which he would expect to go by the book, so to speak, but which would always end up being twisted and fractured in some crucial way. For example, this clip, in which Kermit reports on Rapunzel, which just so happens to be one of my very favorite Newsflashes (as a kid, I actually had a video compilation of most of these, and I remember this one extremely vividly):

Sesame Street Ep #406

Posted on Jan 6, 2016 in Henson, Sesame Street, Shows, Television

Grover and Big Bird demonstrate the end of the alphabet.

Today, we come to November 24th, 1972, the date of the 4th season premiere of Sesame Street (available on the Sesame Street: Old School Volume 1 DVD set). I’ve gone over many times before how Sesame Street in these early years didn’t have much of/any story structure holding the episodes together and given this, although I’ve done more thorough step-by-step recaps of entire episodes up to now, I feel that until I reach more cohesive episodes, it’s not really worth it for me to take the time to go over every single thing that happens in them. I think we’ve all more than gotten the point!

So instead, I’m just going to hit on the episode’s moments of genuine significance and/or any bits that stood out as being particularly interesting

Off the Street

Posted on Jan 5, 2016 in Guest Appearances, Henson, Sesame Street, Shows, Television

Flip greets Ernie and Bert.

Before continuing on with the fourth season of Sesame Street tomorrow, today I took a look at two guest appearances various characters from the show made in September and October of 1972, shortly before it began. The first, from Sept. 14th, is the Muppets’ 4th and final episode of The Flip Wilson Show. Whereas Big Bird, Oscar, Kermit, and some Anything Muppets visited Flip on previous occasions, Bert and Ernie show up this time around, and even reference a guest spot Flip had made on their show the previous year, although unfortunately I wasn’t able to track down that footage.

After a short prelude in which Bert is a bit nervous to perform, until Flip and then Ernie reassure him, and then Flip compliments Ernie on his