Your Thoughts: Sesame Street Season 40

[ISNorden]

Actually...

1 Ovejita dressed up as a kangaroo to help teach Spanish words + the alphabet would have to be used in the C sponsored episode. Kangaroo in Spanish = "canguro".
2 You can spell a whole word with just the letter K. Granted, it's a three-letter acronymic word, but still it might not be one SST would want anywhere near itself.
Hope this helps.

K is also for Klutz, which is what I feel like after that Spanish mistake...I knew there were some foreign words which kept the initial letter unchanged, but this time I misremembered one. (As for that "three-letter acronymic word", I agree whole-heartedly that it doesn't belong on Sesame Street; how long do you think it'll be before someone declares that Super K sketch racist because of the close-up shot of the cereal bowl? )

 

[The Count]

Heh, no worries about that mix-up ISNorden.
Probably about as long as it took to raise a similar claim against MadTV's sorority sketches.

 

[Drtooth]

how long do you think it'll be before someone declares that Super K sketch racist because of the close-up shot of the cereal bowl? )

A) Anyone else see the movie Bowfinger? You know what I'm talking about...

B) I dunno... took them 2 years to notice that Pox News bit.

 

[ISNorden]

Homunculus Zoe all through the street story. She really must not be a picnic to puppet either, as her movements seemed completely off compared to her normal sized counterpart. I wish they just used a regular sized Zoe in Abby in Wonderland... it wouldn't have been such a hassle. And frankly, that's a lot more upsetting than the whole Kismit the Toad fiasco. That was 3 appearances. We have a whole season of homunculus Zoe.

So, Great street story, virtually everything else was a rerun. other than the word of the day and the letter and number intros were reused, right up to Murray's sounds of the street bit.

I know the curriculum this season focuses on nature and eco-friendly behavior, but does Sesame Workshop have to recycle so much material? I too felt disappointed after the street scene ended--that had a well-chosen plot, realistic "kid logic" from the party guests, and a cute musical number at the end. But wall-to-wall reruns almost everywhere else? Ugh...

Something kinda disappointed me... they had a kid wearing a periodic table of the elements shirt in the "What's on me that begins with B?" link. I really wanted Murray to point to the kid's shirt and say, "B- Beryllium!"

That would have worked if the game weren't called "What's on Me that starts with B"...or if different people took turns as the wearer. As it is, I'm surprised no one mentioned Murray's boxing gloves; was that answer cut for time?

Seeing muppet Ernie and Bert would be a bigger treat if they either made new small skits, or showed something older. I've seen "In My Book" so many times now.

I agree 100%; there's got to be a classic Bert and Ernie sketch that doesn't look TOO outdated to air this season!

 

[Drtooth]

That would have worked if the game weren't called "What's on Me that starts with B"...or if different people took turns as the wearer. As it is, I'm surprised no one mentioned Murray's boxing gloves; was that answer cut for time?

Probably because they're actually blue mittens, not Boxing Gloves. i thought they were at first, until I got a good look at them.

 

[Drtooth]

If the Baby Bird didn't wind up going crazy and eating everything, especially with that brilliant scene with Cookie Monster ("Me gotta respect that! Well done!"), it wouldn't have been half as interesting as it was. Not really much I can say about it. But that Baby Bird was something. And we got Ol' Big Bird in there too. Though you'd think he would have understood the little bird. And the large bird clinging on to Chris, trying to feed him a worm just sold it.

Abby rerun again... I hope they're out of reruns to rerun and we see a new episode soon. Hopefully, they're rerunning them in a certain order so they'll be spread out all season, not like Murray had a little lamb, and how it was in obvious reruns on the halfway point.

Bernice makes an appearance in Ernie and Bert. Not really the best one they've had so far, but at least they touched (lightly) on the subject of poaching and abducting rare animals for pets.

I really really hope we don't have a lot of "sponsership" by double digit numbers this year. I'd hate to see them use that stupid kids painting a mural series for the trillionth time. A lot of these double digit number segments are just totally lame.

I still don't get the Chase the Cheese thing. Yeah, ESPN parody and all... is it supposed to make fun of the fact that ESPN doesn't show any actual big sports or something? And the ones they do show are nonsensical crap? Something like that?

And while it's certainly not new, I loved seeing Romeo and Alphabet again. Especially the clearly improvised "HEEEEEEEYYYY AlphabE-E-E-E-E-E-E-T" reference.

I don't really pay all that much attention to the end sponsors... I hear them and all, but do you think that Murray's just dubbed, reusing the same footage with him just saying a different letter and number? There's just something off about how he said it today.

EDIT: Anyone else kinda... well... suspicious that today's episode had a 5 minute film that just so happens to be about Eggs, and they had the Egg Council as actual sponsors? I find that highly suspect, myself...

 

[wiley207]

Regarding that Baby Bird episode, I thought the Placido Flamingo book by Richard Hunt was a clever touch! As was Caroll Spinney's cameo appearance in the episode about Stinky's birthday.

As for the new "Murray Has a Little Lamb," sure we still have the annoying extended opening theme, but I'm glad they cut short the "guess which school" portion of the skit to shorten the length. Besides, "Abby's Fairy School" is our problematic "Murray Has a Little Lamb" for this season (Didn't they say next season the Abby CGI skits won't be shown every episode? That wouldn't surprise me.) They tend to run a length of 7 to 10 minutes, unlike "Elmo's World" which is always 18-20 minutes.

And it was nice to see a new "Grover Rides Fred the Wonder Horse" skit, if it's not a rerun from last year. It even sounded like Jerry Nelson was voicing Fred!

 

[dwmckim]

Something kinda disappointed me... they had a kid wearing a periodic table of the elements shirt in the "What's on me that begins with B?" link. I really wanted Murray to point to the kid's shirt and say, "B- Beryllium!"

The funny thing is i would be surprised if Joey didn't actually do that in an unaired outtake.

It's odd about their use of reruns; not just within a season but their use of reruns from past seasons...i mean using repeated sketches is hardly new for SST - they've done that from the beginning (when they had to fill 130 episodes with a limited number of segments) up to and after the big block format change. Almost all SST episodes over its 40 years has been a mix of old and new. But what seems odd is that is assembling the new episodes, it appears they don't even think about how the fact that there are only 26 episodes a season now means that not only do this seasons' episodes get shown OVER AND OVER AND OVER again but they're also being rotated with episodes from the last couple of years which had already been (and continue to be shown OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER) again. So showing stuff from season 38/39 - even 37 can ultimately result in overkill. And if the standard young child is anything like i was (and i'll admit i was in many ways not the model of a typical child), they do get bored after a certain point. I could watch the exact same episode of SST twice in one day when i was the target age (back when you wouldn't expect to see that same episode reran again for a long time) but if i saw it again - or a sketch from it soon after, my attention went way down unless it was a MAJOR favorite.

 

[Drtooth]

This thread brought to you by the letters R and E

It really seems like an annoying cost cutting measure to me. Seems that if they alternated JTE and MHLL last season, we wouldn't have run into multiple reruns of Murray last season, and then having to see them re-re-ran this season, especially since we've seen the reruns in reruns of the previous season which they'll rerun this season to fill out the time. And, to quote an obscure Japanese cartoon character only I know or care about... RE RE RE no REEEE? (If you knew what I'm talking about, you'd crack up now)

I re-re-really think they should give the last season's clips a re-rest to stop the re-repeats of repeat segments we've seen in the repeats, that we'll see in future repeats. Preschool Musical was fun last year, and every single time that it's been seen since last August, but to see it again in a supposed "new" episode id kind of a drag. I might as well move the subject before the R button breaks off the keyboard completely...

The fact we have a 26 episode season is bad enough, add to the low budget they've had in recent years that keeps going lower (thanks to PBS... I do NOT like their management as of late. That person needs to Resign... another Re word). That means they have to keep reusing segments. But unless you have 26 separate segments, or only plan to use half of them and withhold others for the next year, it's not a smart idea to make the segment an everyday occurrence. Routine or no routine. I don't expect any classic clips to be used on the show any time soon, but there's plenty of stuff from the late 90's/early 00's that would fit perfectly into what they're doing. We are seeing that this year with the aforementioned Romeo and Alphabet, but I don't think they're doing it enough if we're seeing Preschool Musical again so soon.

I'm glad that they only could use Joe Hundredguy once.

 

[Daffyfan4ever]

I sort of lost track of where we are here. I saw the baby bird episode today and I thought that was a good one, I was hoping Big Bird would have a part here. I thought it was interesting that he mentioned his Mommy Bird, because I thought the only relative he knew of was Granny Bird (well aside from Alberdo and distant cousins like that). I did catch the Richard Hunt/Placido Flamingo reference. That was neat. I also liked the part where the bird tried to eat Slimey.

It really seems like an annoying cost cutting measure to me. Seems that if they alternated JTE and MHLL last season, we wouldn't have run into multiple reruns of Murray last season, and then having to see them re-re-ran this season, especially since we've seen the reruns in reruns of the previous season which they'll rerun this season to fill out the time. And, to quote an obscure Japanese cartoon character only I know or care about... RE RE RE no REEEE? (If you knew what I'm talking about, you'd crack up now)

JTE? They haven't had that in the last few seasons. I think you probably meant B & E's Great Adventures. But you're right, but I think they're doing better with those alternations this year. Now the question I'm curious about....

Who the heck is this RE, RE, REEEEE Japanese character? You might be keeping us up all night with that one. Lol.