Your Thoughts: The Street We Live On

Am I the only one that thinks that the audience desinigrated, not the show?

It's like my childhood never happened

That special was so disappointing. I wanted to cry. As others have said, waaaay too much of the new insipid stuff and only tantilizing crumbs from the past. It was as if the show's new producers were bitter that everyone loves the old Sesame Street more than the schlock they're churning out these days, so they deliberately decided to torture us.

I appreciate that it must be difficult sustaining the brilliant, crazy, non-didactic style of early Sesame Street, especially in the absence of Jim, Joe Raposo, Jeff Moss, and others of the orignal visionaries. And there's also the stifling presence neo-moralizers in this society who keep demanding more and more political correctness -- I would imagine that many of these inelegant changes in Sesame Street are results of demands made by those outside the show who think they know a better way to educate children. But it still makes me angry.

Do we really give 5-year-olds so little credit that we feel we have to oafishly drop the "moral" of something right into their lap, pre-digested? For example, don't we give children credit for being able to derive the lesson "you should love and include people who are different from you" from a skit that simply shows a physically disabled child playing with other children as if it's natural? The modern Sesame Street has decided that you have to beat this (and other P.C. topics) to death, without a hint of the old sweetness and imaginative flair. It's really sad. One of the things I was looking forward to when I had my own children was having an excuse to watch Sesame Street again. Y'know -- wonderful, whimsical stuff like

"We all live in a capital I" and
the Twiddlebugs hanging the postage stamp on their wall and
"Me and my llama" and
the crayon factory and
"Fat Cat Sat" and
"Would You Like to Buy an O?" and
Don Music and
the one-two dollhouse song and
Nancy the Nanny Goat and...

all sorts of brilliant, funky stuff that taught important things in a subtle way, and even dared to occasionally NOT TO TEACH ANYTHING AT ALL! GASP! I no longer can enjoy the thought of Sesame Street re-entering my life. After that 35th anniversary special, I can hear the nerve-shattering squeals of Elmo echoing off in my future, and it fills me with dread. My poor, poor unborn children. And their poor, poor mommy.

If any Sesame Street bigwigs haunt this board, I would just like to make a little request: please please please release those old fabulous Sesame Street episodes on DVD and my generation will gobble them up. This will make you vast amounts of mulah which you can then use to hire some decent writers for the show. (And restore Bert's monobrow to its former glory.)

Or if that's too pricey, you could just replay more of the old stuff -- it's not like this generation of 5-year-olds would know that they were watching low-tech hand-me-downs. They're kids with a whole world still to discover, and to them, magic is magic -- even if it happens to be wearing bellbottoms and a 'fro.

Marie

... I liked it. But, then again, I like Elmo, and I wasn't expecting much more anyway.

You have to understand, it's ONLY the 35th Anniversary. Who celebrates their 35th Anniversary with a HUGE party? The 25th and 50th Anniversaries would get the most attention. So, really, I was surprised they were going to even do anything for it.

Dr. Tooth, I'd be inclined to agree with you IF they didn't promote this as a real retrospective. The show was promoted as Elmo going back to look at Sesame Street before he was born. It wasn't like that. We were told one thing and given another.

There could have been much more compromise between old and new, especially since this was aired as a prime time special. If it was just the first episode of he season, it would have been great, but it was a prime time special. Obviously this was eant to be seen by adults. With that i mind, the show was ot done as well as it should and could have been. They just glazed over so much stuff.

I don't see why everyone's being so uptight about it being a primetime special... I mean, if it were a regular night, PBS would be airing "Ask this Old House" or a marathon of "Cooking with Jaques Pepan."

And it is not unusual for TV promos to be one thing, and turn out another. One episode of the new TMNT series was marketed to look like they were drvin mad by ghosts of their past, but it turns out all the footage they used was in fact from the opening, and the show was nothing more than a clip show.

Fox also does thisd with the Simpsons quite frequently... they always show a commercial using one 5 second gag, while the episode is something else.

And that kind of marketing ****** me off when it happenes with other shows too. It's false advertising.

The fact is, I taped this crud instead of the Simpsons, because I thought it was suppose to be good. Instead it was na hour of nothing. They didn't even introduce anything new for this season yet. The special should have been called Elmo's World XP.

Both Simpsons were reruns, I recall....

I was afraid that WGBH would do a voiceover as well! They always do, but they DIDN'T this time! I wonder why!

Also, I fainted when I saw Baker #10 as well, but the "10 bells" part of it I think was newly added. Wasn't it? I noticed the numbers were in a slightly different font.

Well Ssetta,WHYY does sometimes too.They only talked a little bit during the credits.

Why do you think they showed Mah Na Mah Na during the credits ssetta?

Probably as a nice surprise.

But you know what I always do? We get 4 PBS stations in our area, and the others don't really do that. I think you get another one where you live, too, NJN. Do they usually talk over credits?

You know what would be cool. A set of COMPLETE season DVD's of Sesame Street. Yes there would be a lot and you would spend thousands of dollers and hours of time on them. I just want to see the first episode (complete not just the opening part.) But if CTW made those I awould definetly buy them and it would support Sesame Street.

Maybe. The only trouble is, I'll have to wait until I'm 50 years old to see it. Is that what they mean by "Life begins at 50"?

ssetta,

NJN didn't air the special, but WLVT, Channel 39, aired it at the same time without the voiceover.

Hey Ryan,The Special did air this morning on NJN.

And was there a voiceover?

Cool. If you like Fisher Price Websites, check out this one:

http://www.angelfire.com/ab2/ablpph/


Yeah, Gordon only had his goatee for the first season. It may have had something to do with the other role Roscoe Orman was playing at the same time, an abusive pimp on All My Children (I'm not kidding). I read that Orman knew one role had to go and since the real bad guys don't last long on soaps anyway, he chose Sesame Street.

Back to Fisher Price, I'm really not sure why they didn't create a Bob Little Person, unless it was for the very reason that they didn't think he'd look much different than the generic Little Person Dad with black hair. A drawing of Luis in his Fix-It-Shop also made it on the lithos of the Sesame Street Playset and the Fisher Price Sesame Street Clubhouse has a heart with an arrow that says, "David + Maria".

Here is a list of all the Sesame Street characters made in the vintage FP Little Person style: Ernie, Bert, Big Bird, Gordon, Susan, Mr. Hooper, Oscar, Cookie Monster, Grover, The Count, Roosevelt Franklin, Prarie Dawn, Herry Monster, Sherlock Hemlock, and Snuffy.

I agree too. One reason that the 20th anniversary was so much better was because at that time, Sesame Street had not yet lost much of its essence. As I've said before, when Jim Henson died, it seemed like all bets were off and they just went crazy.

David's absence was explained by saying that he went to live on his grandmother's farm.

I have to disagree with that to a certain extent. The beauty of television, film, and videotape is that it allows actors to "live forever" to their audiences. Don't they still show Mr. Rogers episodes on television even though he died? Mr. Hooper, David, and all of the old characters could be used if Sesame Street just adopted the right format. Some shows could have flashback episodes with the characters REALLY talking about the old days. Or they could just make the radical move of rerunning old Sesame Street episodes at one time of the day and showing new episodes at another. Sitcoms have done this for years; I don't see why children's shows can't as well. JMO

I agree w/ Drtooth, Super Scoot, ssetta and MuppetQuilter I agree w/ all of ya'll. I loved it and if no one else liked oh well they need to stop wining about there not being enough Older clips. Just keep watching and u will. Watch the episodes. There was alot of the old clips last season. Keep this up and SS will end and then everyone will be disappaned. Take that and stick it where the sun don't shine! HA!