Little things we've noticed

[YellowYahooey]

I think fans thought Roxy Marie was meant to replace Sully, and I guess I thought she debuted in season 24 instead of 23, but it is interesting they added her while Richard Hunt was still around, but I guess they knew Richard Hunt didn't have much time left and were already preparing.

David Rudman took over Sonny Friendly before Richard Hunt died, but just yesterday I thought up a theory on why they recast Sonny Friendly. He wasn't really used that often, and he wasn't in many inserts (I think just What's My Part?, where he's not even in that much), so it's not like the kids would be exposed to how he previously sounded (unless they taped one of the old episodes). Though he was in The Alphabet Game which was still in print at the time (I wonder how well-selling that one was).

So I'd like to ask, did Sully get retired after Richard Hunt died? Considering Biff had a niece, Roxy Marie, this further proves that Biff was an older Muppet, revealed to be turning 40 in a Season 26 episode.

 

[MuppetSpot]

So I'd like to ask, did Sully get retired after Richard Hunt died? Considering Biff had a niece, Roxy Marie, this further proves that Biff was an older Muppet, revealed to be turning 40 in a Season 26 episode.

No, he was just used less often.

 

[minor muppetz]

I had noticed that Sully appeared a few times in seasons 24-26 but not that many (and as a kid back in 1994, I thought he was being used more), while Biff appeared without him a lot more. But looking at episodic appearances, I was surprised to see that Biff also didn't appear at all in seasons 27 or 28 (unless he was in some inserts, or unless there are additional appearances from that era that the wiki just hasn't noted in his filmography page). And very few old segments with Richard Hunt as Sully aired after season 23 as well, most of them ones where he's just in the background (I was surprised to see that the alphabet segment did air sometime in the late-1990s). I think I've already noted this before a few times.

 

[minor muppetz]

It seems like Roosevelt Franklin was used the most reguarly/frequently after Matt Robinson stepped down from his role as Gordon.

In the first season, he had three songs, in the second season, he had Roosevelt Franklin Spells His Name, and I can't think of any other real notable appearances he made in seasons 1-3. The AM might have been dressed and made to look the same, or he might have been in the background (and one of the AM cheerleaders from the F Cheers sketches looks like him in a cheerleaders outfit, while one of the characters from Going for a Ride looks like him in a hat).

With Matt Robinson having a hand in the characters creation and doing the voice, I feel like he would have wanted to do more with the character sooner. Maybe they didn't really expect the character to take off and just did him in a few segments, but then it's also odd that the majority of the characters big appearances before Robinson left came from the first season and then he was on much less. Seems like he should have just been a one-time character, or maybe used twice the first season, and his appearances per season grew from there. Seems he wasn't used much until the elementary school was introduced in season 4, after Robinson left the role of Gordon and his behind the scenes involvement on the show behind.

Makes me wonder if they didn't plan on him being a main character (especially since he was voiced by a cast member) but then suddenly the four songs got a real good enough response from test audiences that they decided they wanted to include him more.

Since Robinson was only doing the voice and would likely only be needed for voice recording sessions maybe one day a year, I can't decide if it'd make more sense for him to do several Roosevelt segments in a day or to just do one segment a season.

EDIT TO ADD: Doing some research, I saw that The Year of Roosevelt Franklin album came out in 1971, a year before the classroom segments began, at that point he had led four songs and I don't think he did much else. And this was before any other Muppet got their own album. Did Matt Robinson want to put out a Roosevelt Franklin album, and the albums popularity led to more Roosevelt Franklin sketches? Was he actually relatively obscure then, despite giving him an album, and that's why they had the album cover promote him as "Gordon's friend from Sesame Street", to help sell copies?

 

[D'Snowth]

I know a lot of us have reached a point where we can clearly discern a certain performer's vocals in a chorus or backing of various different Sesame songs.

For me, I can clearly pick out Kevin Clash's vocals in the backing of "Love the Ocean":

 

[D'Snowth]

Am I imagining things, or is Oscar actually crying at the 4:50 mark?

 

[DatH]

Am I imagining things, or is Oscar actually crying at the 4:50 mark?

Probably
Of course he'd excuse it as sun getting in his eye, or he was trying to stifle a sneeze

 

[minor muppetz]

Is it just me, or does it seem like, around season 10, when they started to get more performers to be on the Sesame Street set on a full-time basis, a lot of the newly-introduced characters were primarily used in street scenes and rarely in inserts? A lot of characters during this era were only on the show for one or two seasons, I guess by putting them only in street scenes, there weren't really any inserts with the characters to continue running (though the street scenes could re-air a season later).

A lot of new characters of the early 1980s, particularly short-running characters, were used a lot more in street scenes and hardly in inserts. Characters like Aristotle, Mona Monster, Ferlignhetti Donnizetti, Dexter, Professor D. Rabbit, Barkley (maybe as often as characters like Big Bird or Oscar appeared in inserts), Bruno, Countess von Dahling, Gilbert and Sullivan, Countess von Backwards, Poco Loco, and others.

When it comes to short-lived characters who mainly appeared in inserts, all I can think of off-hand are Leslie Mostly and Pearl. A few seem more half-and-half. Telly and the Honkers were in a lot of inserts as well as street scenes as early as season 12. Deena seems like a sketches character but appeared a lot more often as a solo character in street scenes than as part of a duo with Pearl in inserts (only four segments, and only one is known to have been repeated so far). Elmo is an interesting case. As the wiki's proto-Elmo page says, whenever he appeared in inserts during the Brian Meehl/Richard Hunt eras, he was treated more like a generic Anything Muppet monster and performed by whoever, but when he was in street scenes, he was named Elmo, had a regular performer, and had something of a personality. And then when Kevin Clash took over, he almost immediately started appearing in inserts in that form (okay, it took a season before Clash was performing Elmo in inserts, but he got at least three in season 17).

Another interesting case is Dr. Nobel Price. During his first season, he was in a few Newsflash segments while also appearing in street scenes, but after season 12, he only did one more news segment, while he continued being a "street scenes character" for another 8 years. Forgetful Jones and his crew are another interesting case, as season 12 had them in an almost equal amount of inserts and street scenes (well, Buster wasn't in any season 12 street scenes), and it would continue to be this way through season 23, but I don't think any of the season 12 Forgetful Jones segments re-aired on the show after Richard Hunt took over the role. And they waited until season 16 to remake some of the sketches so Hunt would be Forgetful - but it looks like only two of the Michael Earl segments were remade.

On another topic, it's clear that when some of the early Monsterpiece Theater segments had their Alastair Cookie portions redone, they were all done in the same session, as the chair is green in those, but otherwise the green chair wasn't used in MT (not in original versions of segments). I would think that in the 1990s, they'd have Frank Oz do several MT segments in a day (whether they just did the intros on those days or did the entire segments). It's a little weird that they did not re-shoot them on a day when they were doing new Monsterpiece Theater segments (unless they specifically wanted something to allow people to identify if it's an altered segment).

 

[minor muppetz]

Haven't really paid attention to how many more season 16 episodes need pages on the wiki, but of the three humans to start believing in Snuffy that season - Gordon, Maria, and Linda - Gordon seems to be the one most enthusiastic about seeing that Snuffy is real.

There's an episode where Gordon is about to get in the car with Susan and Big Bird calls him over to his nest to see Snuffy, only for Susan to mention they're late and both Gordon and Big Bird agree he should meet Snuffy at a later time. And there's one where Big Bird is invited to Snuffy's cave and Big Bird invites Gordon to go with him, only for Granny Bird to call and invite Big Bird over that same night, and when Gordon asks for directions to the cave, Big Bird has trouble describing (couldn't Big Bird walk Gordon to the cave at a later time?), and of course there's episode 2042, where Gordon expects to meet Snuffy and sits by Oscar's can, doing all he can to make sure he doesn't miss seeing Snuffy (and still misses out, while Oscar ends up seeing him instead).

I haven't noticed any guides involving Maria or Linda trying to see Snuffy. There is episode 1966, where Maria willingly goes to Big Bird's nest when told Snuffy is there, and I'm thinking she actually hesitates a bit before entering the door (despite believing Big Bird now). There's probably some instances not yet guided, though. And maybe it was hard to write Linda believing in Snuffy (and I might be wrong - after all, they were able to write for her for the three decades she was a regular). It's also interesting with Maria, as in season 15, she was sometimes shown having signs of believing in Snuffy already, or at least was less mean/annoyed when Big Bird brought him up.

 

[minor muppetz]

In the last day I've been watching some YouTube videos of people reading some of the books inspired by Follow That Bird, including Count All the Way to Sesame Street, and one of the only FTB-inspired books I couldn't find such reading videos of is Big Bird Visits the Dodos, but I saw a few images of pages in a Google search. And I noticed something in both Count the Way and Visits the Dodos that does not appear in the finished film, something that must have been cut (whether filmed or just in the scripts).

Both books show the Dodos having messy table manners. This probably would have been part of the montage from Big Bird's letter. Seems like it'd be an interesting concept, though I wonder if it would have been hard to do right on film.