It's said that Telly's personality was quickly changed after this, but aside from the television obsession, I don't see much difference (his personality here isn't that different from how he acts when he's calm). How ironic it is that his first scene has him panicking over something (needing to plug the television in). But I could easily see today's Telly having the conversation he did with Mr. Hooper and David.
I do wonder what they were thinking, giving him weird eyes when he was supposed to spend most of his time looking at the set, making it harder to see his eyes (at least he moved his head from the camera to show off his spinnign eyes).
I was surprised that they actually showed what was on the set. Does anybody know whether the television footage was from a Sesame Street film insert or something? It sort of looks like a local news promo, but we don't really get a good look at it. I'm not sure how difficult it would have been back then for Sesame Workshop to show a pre-recorded image on a TV (I didn't see a VCR equipped with that television). Surely they wouldn't have just had the TV on whatever was showing at the time (I would imagine that to be a clearance nightmare).