Deena and Pearl

[Drtooth]

Deena and Pearl, at least from this segment, are a pretty meh pair of characters. But I'll have to see how the other segs are to judge them as a whole.

It seems there's a good mother/daughter Pre-Sesame Beginnings concept that could have came out of this. This may not be an impressive sketch on a comedy level, but there's something about the interaction of a nurturing mother figure trying to calmly deal with a rambunctious monster toddler. Some of the humor in this seems geared for the parents watching with their younger ones, especially how Deena started screaming for her bottle as soon as both started to finally go to sleep. I get an "ammiright?" from the writers here.

That said, I do like the comparison to Leslie Mostly. I still don't get that sketch series at all. Deena and Pearl at least may have a subtle connection to parents saying "this is your kid, you've dealt with this, you continue to deal with this, you can see humor in this situation." Leslie Mostly seems like a not that great idea. It's essentially trying to do Kermit the Frog: Ace Reporter's job without what made any of that funny. Leslie was too unflappable and uninteresting (at least in that one segment that finally surfaced).

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

[QUOTE

It feels kinda out of place for Sesame Street (not quite as much as Monster Clubhouse, though), and more like some sort of preschool based Muppet project unrelated. Somehow, I get the feeling whoever wrote this came from the experience of having a fussy toddler that wouldn't sleep at night.[/QUOTE]


I dunno, I kind of think Monsters Clubhouse fit pretty well in the season that it was in.

 

[Drtooth]

Monster Clubhouse was too hyperactive and nonsensical to really fit in with the series. It was met with various kinds of "whaaaaat?!" in the fandom when it first popped up, then of course general annoyance.

I don't think it was by any means a bad skit, but it felt much more like spinoff material, and even like it was a lost series of sketches for Nick Jr's Muppet Time.

 

[cjd874]

I wonder how well the duo would have interacted with other major characters. One YouTube comment came from somebody who remembers first seeing Deena in a scene with Telly (which may or may not have been her first major scene). Muppet Wiki has a still of a scene with Deena and Olivia (the episode does not yet have a page, but I think it will soon), and the 40th anniversary book has a behind-the-scenes photo of her with Luis. I wonder how this duo would have interacted with Big Bird, Oscar, Ernie and Bert, Cookie Monster, Grover, and Herry. I wonder what an interaction between them and Leslie Mostly would be like (since they are all rare characters not seen in English for many years who have recently been seen again, and a number of fans feeling they were dull).

It wouldn't have been possible. Frank Oz and Jerry Nelson were working on the Muppet Show and various movies in London at the time, so they probably wouldn't have done street scenes in the limited time they had on the Sesame Street set. They would've stuck mostly to shorter inserts (e.g. Bert & Ernie bits, Grover the Waiter, songs like Fuzzy and Blue, etc.) Still interesting to think about the possibilities, though.

So I found this classic photo from 1981. Even though I staunchly believe Deena wasn't a major character, I'm not sure how she ended up in this one alongside Big Bird, Oscar, Cookie Monster, and the Count. She's supposedly been in a bunch of street scenes, but none of them have seen the light of day in years.

 

[Daffyfan4ever]

While by no means do I like the thought of dredging up an 11 year old thread, Oscarfan posted one of their rare skits on YT.

And...eh...I kinda get why they're rare now.

It feels kinda out of place for Sesame Street (not quite as much as Monster Clubhouse, though), and more like some sort of preschool based Muppet project unrelated. Somehow, I get the feeling whoever wrote this came from the experience of having a fussy toddler that wouldn't sleep at night.

Thanks for sharing, Drtooth. Seems like Deena makes Ernie look like somebody who's easy to room with. Lol. So is her voice how Elmo used to sound when Brian performed him? Just curious about that.

Oh, sorry. I looked it up. Brian was Pearl and Karen was Deena. Disregard my last question.

 

[minor muppetz]

It wouldn't have been possible. Frank Oz and Jerry Nelson were working on the Muppet Show and various movies in London at the time, so they probably wouldn't have done street scenes in the limited time they had on the Sesame Street set. They would've stuck mostly to shorter inserts (e.g. Bert & Ernie bits, Grover the Waiter, songs like Fuzzy and Blue, etc.) Still interesting to think about the possibilities, though.

I didn't expect them to have interact in street scenes. Actually, lately I've been wondering if maybe Jim, Frank, Jerry, and Richard were a little less available in season 12 than usual, even though there are segments with their characters that are known to have debuted then. This season sort of brought us new characters similar to their characters. Deena and Pearl are similar to Ernie and Bert, Warren Wolf is a substitute reporter to Kermit, and all of Countess Dahling von Dahling's appearances we've seen do not feature The Count with her. I feel like the point of hiring more performers to do street scenes was so there could be a bigger Muppet presence on the street more often, but could it also be possible that they decided to create a few characters who were similar to characters who couldn't appear as often?

Of course, with all these new characters, I wonder if the classic performers felt less pressure to be on the set as often that year as they might have the years before and after (of course I don't know for sure that Jim, Frank, or Jerry spent more time on the show in seasons 11 or 13, but I do know that Richard came back to the show on a more full-time basis in season 13, which was one of the reasons Michael Earl was let go).

 

[Drtooth]

A Street story with Deena just surfaced in another thread. If you didn't catch it, here it is.

The only thing keeping me from saying "And they say Jar Jar was bad" is the fact that Karen does an excellent job performing such a lame character, and it's at least something that she had a regular character on Sesame Street. And while I'm sure it's all coincidence, Deena seems to have similar if not the same hair as Karen's other, better, and more beloved character Red Fraggle. Those little yellow strands in the fields of red fuzz are unmistakable.

 

[minor muppetz]

Those scenes with Deena and the adults are interesting. In the one with Maria, it's interesting how she's excited about having a sleepover with Deena, only to be annoyed (anyone here feel that way when they found out that a clip was online?), and she seems to be more annoyed than Pearl was in that one clip we saw. And in that clip with Olivia, where she sings "It Takes Time" and gets Deena to be calm, I don't know what to make of the ending, can't decide if it's a funny aesop amnesia or if it's annoying.

 

[Oscarfan]

And in that clip with Olivia, where she sings "It Takes Time" and gets Deena to be calm, I don't know what to make of the ending, can't decide if it's a funny aesop amnesia or if it's annoying.

The "joke" is that Deena thinks the song only applies to sunflowers. So, she tries a different kind of flower.

 

[Daffyfan4ever]

Those scenes with Deena and the adults are interesting. In the one with Maria, it's interesting how she's excited about having a sleepover with Deena, only to be annoyed (anyone here feel that way when they found out that a clip was online?), and she seems to be more annoyed than Pearl was in that one clip we saw. And in that clip with Olivia, where she sings "It Takes Time" and gets Deena to be calm, I don't know what to make of the ending, can't decide if it's a funny aesop amnesia or if it's annoying.

I don't know. It seems like Olivia always had more patience with the Muppets than Maria.