I'll have to go along with the other Baby Bear haters on this one. David Rudman's a great performer and all (we've seen it with Cookie), but just picture Elmer Fudd dressed as a bear babbling about porridge...
To be truthful, the character has been around since the early 90's. That's 20 years. We've had obsessions over porridge, getting mad at Goldilocks and drawing "Hewo Guy". If he disappeared, I don't think he'd be missed much. Telly could have some great storylines with Oscar again. Caroll and Marty have great chemistry, as we've seen in "Sneak Peek Previews" and "Ask Oscar".
As for Telly, I didn't used to like him, but the guy's grown on me over the years. It's great when Telly gets to do something besides talk about triangles. The scenes where he freaks out are wonderful! Just watch Telly making all those bracelets and shouting "Help me!" to Leela. The "mad scientist" rant he did was also a great moment. Telly is funny when he freaks out. So's Kermit. They just...work better that way.
Murray---Oh boy. I understand the idea of a Muppet being out in the real world (like Traveling Matt), but I think Sesame Workshop just tried too hard to make a character to compete visually and audibly with Elmo. I understand the educational value of the "visiting schools" bits, but why not have Grover do that...or Telly? (Telly might be the better choice because of the live hands). Murray gets all excited to do whatever with the kids, but having Telly do it, the process would be different. Like the early days with Big Bird, kids could feel like they're smarter than Telly and teach him things. I could see Telly being all nervous to try something new, then the kids build his (and their own) confidence by teaching him. Murray pretty much just laughs and smiles the whole time. Any mistakes he makes wouldn't be overcome with the same subtelty of character Telly would. Telly acts more like a kid. Kids get nervous and shy sometimes and that's why kids can relate to Telly. Murray is just a clown.
The framing segments...we can do without them. We ALL know that when it comes to teaching "near and far", one Muppet comes to mind: Grover. Murray doing "Grover's bit" is like Baby Bear saying "I love to count! Ah ah ah!"
All in all, I really think that Joey just wanted his own "Elmo". Give Murray a furcut at the barber shop and there's Elmo with a smaller yellow nose and a different voice. If Dorothy was "Muppetized", then we'd probably have an Ovejita-type character.
The Elephant---Nails on a chalkboard. Nails...on...a...chalkboard. It's a realistic, beautifully crafted puppet, no doubt about that. The puppeteering is done well, both when we see the elephant from the waist up and in full body shots.
But...
When creating new characters, why does it seem 'essential' to trump the last annoying voice with an even more annoying one? We talked about this already
in this thread. Dave Goelz, in his
one sketch with the elephant, did SO much better! With Dave, the character is at least tolerable to watch with a joke that works, even though it is one song.
Joey's elephant makes me have no guilt whatsoever in wishing an ivory hunter would visit Sesame Street.
Stinky the Stinkplant---Meh. It was just a one-note character. "Don't worry about me. I'll just wallow in self-pity." Looks like with Joey's current duties, maybe Stinky will be uprooted and thrown on the compost heap soon.
Mr. Noodle and other Noodles---Buddy and Jim revisited with voiceover interaction. In fact, David did this Mr. Noodle-type schtick
here, but much better. It works because it was just one clip out of thousands played back in the old days. If it was played daily, we'd have been sick of David.
Elmo=The Red Menace. I'll watch Elmo's World the day Elmo's email gets spam messages from fake weight loss programs and "winning numbers" from the Lybian lottery.
Convincing John