Sesame Street Season 46 Episode 4610 - Say Thank You to Your Face Day

[Phillip]

Episode 4610 - Say Thank You To Face Day
HBO Premiere: Saturday March 12, 2016
PBS Premiere: Monday November 21, 2016

Elmo helps Abby, Grover, and Telly figure out how to say thank you to our nose, eyes, and mouth all at the same time. Also featuring Cookie Monster's Smart Cookies-That Face and Elmo's World-Noses. Brought to you by the letter F and the number 9.

This episode features an all-new street story.

If you saw "Say Thank You to Your Face Day" please like this post and share your thoughts below.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

I'm actually starting to get a bit annoyed that Abby and Elmo have to be in every episode now.

 

[antsamthompson9]

I was happy to see the 2-headed Monster be in the cold open. I was worried that the cold open would be limited to the core characters. This gives me hope that even though we may not see Ernie, Bert or Zoe in a street story, they'll at least be in a cold open. I was really happy to see Baby Bear. The best part of the street story was the catchy gospel song. The new Smart Cookies was good. I liked that Figby was in love with the supermodel Giselle Biscotti. Stephanie's performance of her was hilarious.

 

[D'Snowth]

I'm actually starting to get a bit annoyed that Abby and Elmo have to be in every episode now.

Well, again, they're trying to condense the regular Muppet cast down to a "core six," of which Elmo and Abby are a part of . . . but then again, we got to see Baby Bear and Telly today, and I don't believe they're part of the core six.

For me, this episode was disorienting, if only because it took place almost exclusively in Abby's garden, which is still kind of unfamiliar territory - it kind of makes me wonder if Dutch kids felt like this whenever Sesamstraat made all of the drastic changes to their locale: especially when it was turned into like the inside of a giant toy box instead of a street.

Other than that, I don't really have anything else to say about this episode: the plot was interesting enough, and it served as a creative way of teaching what each parts of our face do (wonder why nobody thought to say thank you to your ears for hearing things like music and such).

While I still think the excessive use of chromakey and CGI is unnecessary, I'll admit they're getting better at it: Smart Cookies was very enjoyable . . . but who puts pepper on a danish? A biali, maybe, but a danish?

 

[antsamthompson9]

I just wanna say even if people have seen the episode online, they should still see it on PBS. Because before the closing song is a fun bit with Cookie Monster and Rosita. I hope to see people post their thoughts on this episode after it airs tomorrow.

 

[CoolGuy1013]

So, Say Thank You to Your Face Day. I really don't have much setup for this one. So is this episode something you'll need to see to believe? Probably, but in a good or a bad way?

Ladies and gentlemen and everything in between, this episode actually starts with a first. A cold open featuring none of the core 6 characters SW confirmed prior to the start of the season. It features the 2-Headed Monster (in what is likely one of the last things featuring Joey as the right head) showing the parts of the face. This is also the first cold open to feature a human in it (Chris in this case). Other than those things, it's nothing special.

The episode itself, starts with Chris and Elmo taking selfies (*groan*). After Chris leaves to go to work, Grover comes along, dressed as a nose for some reason. Some reason is actually because it's apparently "Say Thank You to Your Nose Day", a day celebrating all the things your nose does. He points out Baby Bear smelling and Alan breathing for examples, and we get the episode's song. To be fair, this one's not actually that bad, especially since it's short. We'll be hearing more of it throughout the episode, though. Then see Abby, who argues it should be "Say Thank You to Your Eyes Day", since she prefers their ability to see. She uses Cookie reading a book for example. And here's a really stupid thing.
Abby points out that if the book was really sad, one could use their eyes to cry. What makes this stupid is that the book Cookie was reading was called "The Really Sad Cookie". I assume that there was a previous draft of the episode where Cookie did cry at the book, and Abby pointed it out as another great thing eyes can do. Otherwise, the people working at SW are dumber than I thought.
And as I pointed out earlier, the song gets reprised (or should I say, reprEYESed). And pretty much the same thing I just talked about twice before happens again, only with Telly wanting a day to praise the mouth. As you'd imagine, the three of them start arguing over what day it should be, until Chris breaks it up. He proposes a day to celebrate all 3 parts at the same time, and this gives Elmo an idea to create the titular holiday. Cue yet another reprise. And to add insult to injury, they take another selfie.

And now, the letter of the day, F. And for the first time in a surprising while, we get a "letter" segment. And even though this is only the 3rd "letter" segment in the HBO era, we'll be seeing a lot more of these than actual letter segments. In fact, this is really the only season with real ones (with a few exceptions). Much like most "letter" segments, this segment is pretty boring. Moving on.

Alright, Smart Cookies! I don't quite get why everyone hates these segments but me, but that's not important right now.
Anyway, if you remember my first review, I mentioned that there are 2 types of Smart Cookies segments. The 2 I discussed previously were both Type 1 (Cookie gets 3 clues and must put them all together to get the solution). This, however, is our first Type 2 segment. Type 2 sees Cookie only getting 1 clue, and Figby pulls up 3 things that could potentially solve the problem. Cookie goes through each one before eventually finding the right one and "solving" the problem.
The segment itself features them having to stop the Crumb from invading a photo shoot. As you'd imagine, Cookie fails to and the Crumb unleashes a "Sneeze Danish", which makes the model in the photo shoot sneeze off parts of her face. The only clue the team gets to stop it is that they need something that one would use to clean the house. As you'd imagine, Cookie screws everything up (in a pretty funny manner) until realizing that they need a vacuum cleaner, which sucks up the danish. Unfortunately, after they leave, the vacuum also sucks up the model's face. That was the best part of the segment to me. It gave me such a good laugh.

Anyway, the number of the day is 9, and we get nothing. Moving on.

And after that, we get another badly cropped, badly edited, and all around badly thrown in EW repeat. This time, it's the Noses episode. I actually remember watching this one frequently as a kid, as I had a homemade DVD featuring 4 full season 38 episodes (I actually had 2, but that's not important). One of them was Sleeping Grouchy, the episode this segment debuted in. Other than the sentimental reasons, though, there's really not much I can say about this segment I haven't already ranted about in my previous reviews. I did kinda like the "Pinnochielmo" thing Dorothy imagined, as that's really the only thing I remember from my childhood viewings of the episode they didn't edit out.

All in all, there's really nothing much to this episode. It's fine as it was, but it could've been a whole lot better. Then again, it could've also been a whole lot worse. This one gets yet another 6/10. Nothing much I really hated here, but nothing much to bump it any higher, either. Stay tuned for next time, when I review "Abby's Fairy Garden".