Little things we've noticed

[minor muppetz]

Yes, this trend is visible throughout the entire show's history.

1969-1979: Jim Henson, Frank Oz, and Caroll Spinney kicked things off for the first year; then Jerry Nelson and Richard Hunt joined in the early 1970s. Fran Brill was hired in 1970 and did recurring characters like Prairie Dawn.

1980-1984: Jim and Frank start to ease up from their SS duties, and Brian Meehl and Marty Robinson join the company to perform Snuffy.

1985-1990: Richard Hunt and Jerry Nelson's characters appear more frequently, and Kevin Clash starts performing Elmo. Jim Henson performs in more inserts as Kermit, Ernie, Guy Smiley, and Bip Bipadotta until his sudden passing in 1990.

1991-1999: Richard Hunt dies in 1992, and David Rudman becomes a key part of the cast as Baby Bear.

2000-2012: Kevin, David, and Marty carry the torch. Eric Jacobson, Matt Vogel, and Leslie Carrarra-Rudolph become mainstays as well. Caroll, Fran, Jerry, and Frank continue to perform thirty years after they began on Sesame.

2012-present: after Jerry's death, Matt inherits the Count (and Big Bird after Caroll's 2019 passing). Eric becomes the full-time performer of Grover, Bert, and Oscar. Peter Linz gains recognition for his performances as Ernie beginning in the mid-2010s. Stacy Gordon plays Julia, a character with autism.

And of course, Michael Earl was a main performer from 1979-1981 (he has said that during that time, he, Meehl, and Spinney were the only Muppet performers available on a daily basis), and in the late-1980s and early-1990s Camille Bonora was on quite a bit (though none of her characters really took off). I'm not entirely sure when Bonora left. I've vaguely heard that she retired and Stephanie D'Abruzzo was hired as her replacement, but the 40th anniversary book says D'Abruzzo joined in 1993 and I'm sure Bonorra performed some after 1993.

It seems like Steve Whitmire's availability was limited, but it also seems like he was heavily available between 1998-2004. While he mainly just did Ernie (and Kermit a few times), Ernie was in a lot of newly-taped inserts in season 30, and then in season 31 he started being involved in a lot of street plots (he was in some street scenes in season 30, but only one where he has a considerable speaking scene).

Season 30 brought us segments with the Muppets interacting with kids at schools - Ernie's Show and Tell, Monsters in Day Care, and Sesame Street Goes to Day Care. Part of me wonders why they didn't dump it all under the Sesame Street Goes to Day Care label (I guess they were able to do several with Ernie or Herry). It especially seems redundant that they have Herry in Monsters in Day Care but he also appeared in some of the Sesame Street Goes to Day Care segments.

 

[LittleJerry92]

Honestly the more I listen to “Do-Op Hop,” the more I think it could have easily been an extra How Now Brown song.

I mean, you pretty much have the Moo Wave cows with their respective singers, the new wave melody, and it was also a Chris Cerf song. Obviously it was written to be a Kermit song, but I think just as easily it could have had Cerf singing as How Now with Kermit hopping around as a background character (similar to Grover’s silent freelance moves in the Alphabet rap song with Ferlinghetti Donizetti).

 

[LittleJerry92]

I think I might have mentioned this before, but this also could have easily been a Little Chrissy song as well:

 

[minor muppetz]

I have recently been wondering if How Now Brown could have easily been replaced by Little Chrissy. Both characters sing rock and roll songs and both were voiced by Christopher Cerf. How Now Brown only did two songs, both from the same year, and both of which ran until the 1990s, so it's not like he was dropped because he didn't work as a character (though as primarily a singer, there's not much to him as a character). Most of Christopher Cerf's other characters were parodies of actual rock stars, while these two were original characters, of course the two How Now Brown tunes were not parodies of anything.

 

[LittleJerry92]

I mean, their whole schtick was to parody then-current 1980s MTV new wave rock music videos with flashy effects, and there’s only so much you can do in that style.

 

[MuppetSpot]

And so many songs you can write as well

 

[minor muppetz]

I mean, their whole schtick was to parody then-current 1980s MTV new wave rock music videos with flashy effects, and there’s only so much you can do in that style.

Weren't there still plenty of MTV new wave rock videos, regardless of how many different ways they were?

Maybe they could have done some more direct parodies of specific New Wave songs. Even though more direct song parodies were usually done by Muppet parodies of the actual singers (though Little Chrissy did do a number of parodies later - Cluck Around the Clock, Wet or Dry).

 

[MuppetSpot]

Like I said before there’s just so only many parodies you can write before feeling creatively bankrupt

 

[LittleJerry92]

I know one member has brought this up, but I think the group doing a parody of “Roxanne” by the Police could have been an idea. Have them playing out at a traffic stop with a traffic light going green to red, maybe have on-screen captions during the chorus (something like “Stop at the red light!”), maybe end the video with the camera closing in on the traffic lights.

 

[D'Snowth]

I just now noticed the neon sign outside Hooper's Store has been lowered quite a bit . . . I guess so it'll show up better on camera in low-angled shots maybe? I don't know.