Little things we've noticed

[minor muppetz]

It seems like whenever Bruno makes a live appearance or appears on location, he's on rollerskates. Makes me wonder if he ever rollerskated in a scene on the regular street set.

 

[LittleJerry92]

While Jeff Moss provided the voice for the brother in "Listen to the Bells", it looks like Richard Hunt is doing the puppetry.

 

[D'Snowth]

I know we tend to be a little critical of Jerry Nelson's puppet manipulation, but this is one example that is really noticable and stands out with The Well-Clad Wolf - something that I noticed even as a kid and not quite as astute to puppetry:

 

[LittleJerry92]

I noticed that myself even at a young age.

Even in general, when I was oblivious to puppetry movements, I noticed how some chararacters (whether they had Jerry's voice or not) had a very unique way of slow movement. Then it finally caught up to me when I started to actually pay attention more.

 

[minor muppetz]

Thinking about the Old School DVDs and Sesame Street Classics on iTunes, it seems like Sesame Street Classics has a more random selection of episodes. Of course it helps that the Old School volumes all stick to the format of season premiers (and quite a few of them do seem like notable episodes, even without their status of starting the season).

With Sesame Street Classics, the first and tenth season premiers are the only ones included (I'd like to say maybe they were preparing in case more Old Schools were released, but then again, those two were also on the Old School sets), I think the only other really noteworthy episode included is Telly's debut episode. Volume 1 included episodes from season 20, they could have included the episode where Gabbi is born, and volume 2 includes episodes from season 15, they could have included episode 1839. There are some episodes from season 25 that seem noteworthy (like Susan and Gordon staying at the Furry Arms Hotel), though maybe just to me. For season 1 episodes, they could have included the episode where Big Bird wants to go to day care, which is what led to Caroll Spinney deciding Big Bird is a child.

Of course Sesame Street Classics does include a lot of great classics that have otherwise never been released on video (I have difficulty considering them video releases, I feel I'd be more accepting if it was a physical release or a specially-assembled compilation), they've given us a lot of episodes that didn't have information on the wiki (all the season one episodes had some info on the wiki, very few of the others didn't have so much), and we also got a number of sought-after inserts (whether we just needed to see them in English or at all) and inserts we'd never heard of (and there are some that, while I wasn't really familiar with their existence, I took notice of because of the releases), more rare stuff than the Old School sets gave us (of course I'm not talking about the bonus "classic cuts", though I think Sesame Street Classics even has those beat in terms of former rarities). And both Old School and Classics do contain a lot of well-known classics that many fans are familiar with.

If the Old School releases were a random assortment of old episodes as opposed to just season premiers, the episode selection might feel just as random. Or maybe they'd primarily include episodes fans would expect (the first episode, Mr. Hooper's death, Maria and Luis get married, Snuffy is seen, maybe Miles getting adopted, maybe Gabbi being born, maybe some episodes that feature a celebrity in the main plot, maybe selections from some of the multi-episode trips). And if there were to be a new boxed set of classic Sesame Street episodes (one that doesn't follow the Old School format), I wonder if they would just be physical releases of the episodes in Sesame Street Classics (and maybe some of the '90s episodes currently airing on HBO).

 

[LittleJerry92]

Since I noticed Cerf provides some vocals for the lavender Alphabeat in "Count It Higher", I was wondering if maybe it was because Hunt couldn't get some of those high notes.

 

[D'Snowth]

I'm thinking that cigar box Ernie gave Bert for Christmas is the same one Charlie used as his cigar box banjo.

 

[MuppetSpot]

I think Kevin is performing the puppet of Polly due to the mouth wiggling. I know that Fran Brill did the vocals.

 

[LittleJerry92]

I always thought the same.

 

[minor muppetz]

I was looking at the "what links here" feature on some photos at the Muppet Wiki, which can show all wiki pages that include pictures from certain Sesame Street segments.

Since there's pages for every episode since season 20, with only a handful of post-season 20 pages with incomplete rundowns, I was curious about the last time either of Pee-Wee Herman's appearances aired on the show. I figured the last appearance of either would have been season 22, maybe season 23 (though if those were planned to air that season, there would have been time to pull them, considering all the negative affects to Pee-wee's Playhouse surrounding the arrest of Paul Reubens).

But then I saw that both The Pee-Wee Alphabet and the first celebrity version of Put Down the Duckie last aired in season 21 episodes (unless they were part of those few episodes that the wiki has yet to put in full info for), a year before the controversy that ended the character for years.

Yeah, there's so many segments that many were bound to not get around to airing during certain seasons while not being dropped, but it is interesting. Pee-wee's Playhouse was still a big show during the 1990-1991 season, so a Pee-wee Herman segment woudn't have been outdated, and Put Down the Duckie was a rather popular song. In fact, I saw that the second celebrity version first appeared in season 24, two years after the last appearance of the previous version (and the original non-celebrity version didn't air during those years). Considering the replacement clips featured clips and alternate takes from the end credits of Sesame Street, Special, it's not like they had to shoot new footage of celebrities singing.