Betty Lou and Prarie Dawn Appreciation Thread

[FreddyTheDragon]

Cause Betty Lou should be appreciated! Who else was such a devoted friend to Grover? And Prairie Dawn was always one of my favorites. I'm convinced these two are sisters.

 

[superfan]

I do like Prairie Dawn. So precocious. She's the little girl in the school yard who wants to lead a group to play something she wants to play. Not bossy, just the group leader. Easily ruffled but persistent.
Betty Lou on the other hand...well, the most character development I'd seen of her (and I am sure to be corrected later) was when she had her dolly whose head kept popping off. What other skits has she been in?

 

[Vic Romano]

I'm so embarassed to admit that in my old age I always get the two confused

 

[superfan]

Prairie Dawn's the cute one.

Prairie: "Oh, welcome, oh welcome to our little play...", sandy blonde mid length hair and hangs out with Cookie in the Letter of the Day segments.

BettyLou: Yellow braids.

 

[GonzoLeaper]

Glad someone brought this up! I've always liked Prairie Dawn and Betty Lou, as they've always been part of the gang. But I have a question regarding the two. I'm pretty sure that Prairie Dawn is the predominant one who shows up now on Sesame Street and Betty Lou pretty much doesn't show up at all. Prairie Dawn is the kinda pink muppet with brown hair and generally a blue dress, right? Betty Lou is a slightly darker shade of pink (I think) and has blonde hair with pony tails. Am I correct in this description?
For some reason, I've noticed that in books the two characters sometimes look differently. Can anyone post some pictures of both of them in appearances on Sesame Street, just to help clarify things? I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

I can't say that I really remember seeing Betty Lou show up much on Sesame Street, but I like her as part of the gagn, as I said. I do recall a skit involving Betty Lou at a park and I think a boy anything muppet and the song they sing perhaps teaches Spanish? Kinda fuzzy on the details on that one.
As for Prairie Dawn, I certainly recall her being around a lot. She helped Big Bird and Telly with finding singers and dancers in The Sesame Street 25th. anniversary special. And I remember her the most for playing the piano at the plays that she wrote, which her Sesame Street friends would appear in. I believe Bert, Ernie, Herry, Grover (and possibly more) showed up in a production about parts of the face. I do remember Herry being a tooth. That same song Prairie sings ("Welcome dear viewers to our little show....") is the same tune and some of the same words that she sings for the "Art Show" on "Play With Me Sesame". It is nice to watch that every now and then (mainly to see really classic sketches being played) and also to see Bert, Ernie, Grover and Prairie Dawn as the main characters.

 

[Katzi428]

I've always loved Prairie Dawn too. She was such a cutie. (Hey Vic?Prairie's the one in my avatar)

 

[sAkora1]

I love Prairie and Betty. They are two of my fav muppets. :3

 

[JLG]

As far as I know, Betty Lou was one of those characters who for some reason was shown far more in storybooks and other merchandise than she ever was in the show itself. She seemed mostly to be confined to appearances in inserts here and there, and even then usually as a minor character in a crowd. (I like how these sorts of scenes used to speak volumes about how large SS's world was----a background crowd of Muppets might be comprised of one or two second or third-tier characters, like Betty Lou, and a whole bunch of random people we didn't know-----just like a crowd in real life!) She occasionally took the spotlight, such as that "Amigo, Amigo" song that showed up a lot in the 80s and 90s, but that seems to have been the exception. But in the mid 90s, there was an attempt to give her a more prominent role in Street stories, and she acquired a consistent performer for the first time (Lisa Buckley). But I don't think that lasted very long. (One such episode from 1996 can be seen at the Paley Center in NYC, in which she keeps excluding poor Telly from all her games because no boys are allowed.)

But if you read stuff like "The Sesame Street Dictionary," you'd be forgiven for assuming she was one of the main characters, since she's all over that book.

 

[dwmckim]

JLG pretty much got it. Betty Lou had actually been around from the beginning pretty much as a generic little girl character often traded between performers. (The main thing that set her apart and differentiates her from Prairie is the pigtails). This was taken full advantage of in books/merchandise to get more of a female presence in the Muppet characters. While Prairie later took off as a character with more of a defined personality, Betty Lou remained pretty much "generic little girl" and background character though there were a couple attempts to bring her more to the fore such as in the 80s with songs like Amigo and Exercise. Then as JLG touched on, they attempted to revive the character with Lisa Buckley and tried to actually give her defining aspects to her personality but that still was relatively short-lived.

 

[Drtooth]

Yeah, JLG is saying what I've been saying for some time. Betty Lou was a generic girl (often performed by a guy) when she started out, and somehow just became the generic girl that has more merchandise than a legitimate character. Like I said before...

Wolverine publicity rules out, and the skit is called Exercise with Grover. How is the character that unpopular and has more merchandise than Prairie Dawn?

When they tried to make Betty Lou a character, she was the flat Tom Boy character they always have to shove into a kid's show to prove that they listened to some group. Prairie Dawn, however, was a delicious little parody of the overly precocious little girl that you meet at every family reunion that you just wanna smack the parents of in the face because she won't SHUT UP! Ugh... really... YOU know someone like that, you secretly hate the fact she exists and you try to ignore them, but they keep coming up to you and saying "I can spell some archaic word no one uses that has too many consonants mushed together." In short, Prairie Dawn is the kid you refuse to go to a Family Reunion out of fear of seeing. Worse than the racist drunk uncle.

And Prairie is also funny as a straight woman in a comedy routine.