Reused Street Stories

[SCOOTER_101]

Over the years there have been many episodes of Sesame Street. Over 4,000 shows. Therefore as I recall many episodes have been remade. Here are a few examples.

In Season 22 there was a 2 parter about A Hurricane On Sesame Street. Big Bird, Oscar, and Snuffy all have to stay at Maria and Luis's. Oscar's Elephants throw him up in the air while he's in Maria and Luis's Livingroom, over and over again. This part is funny. Then Luis reads everyone a story in the livingroom. Oscar peeks out his trashcan while he's reading it with a mean look on his face (this part was cut out when these 2 episodes were rerun in Season 24) I think at the end of the episode Big Bird wants to sleep with Maria and Luis cause he's scarred of the Hurricane, and they let him, then Snuffy comes in and wants to do the same and he wraps his Snuffle around them all. The next episode that comes on shows everyone cleaning up the day after the Hurricane. Big Bird discovers that A Giant Shoe has Landed on his nest. Yes a Giant Shoe. It is discovered that the old Woman who lived in a shoe who had so many children she didn't know what to do had landed there, and liked it so much that she decided to stay. Big Bird was so devestated that he wouldn't have his nest anymore. But at the end of the episode The old woman made her Children Spagetti and Garlic Bread for supper and the garlic made Snuffy sneeze so hard it blew the shoe right back to Mother Goose Land so she had to go back to her old home. Now exactly 10 years later they do a similar 5 part episode where Big Bird's nest is completley destroyed during a Hurricane.

And there was a Water Shortage episode that was in Season 23 (1992) that was very similar to the one 9 years earlier from 1983 that many of you probably saw on Noggin. It even starts out the exact same way in Hooper's Store with Telly Gordon and Big Bird, only of course Mr. Handford is running the store and not David. But there is scene with Oscar and Slimey conserving water exactly like the one in 1983. So you know this is a definite remake.

Does anyone else know of any remade episodes?

 

[Xerus]

I remember an old episode in the 70s where Oscar was preparing for his brother Ernest's visit. Oscar decorated his trash can nice and put on nice clothes and combed his hair just to annoy his brother. Ernest decided to strike back by being nice back to him. Maria and some of the other adults were surprised seeing two grouches being nice to each other and they could tell the grouches were unhappy about it. So they went to Hooper's and bought the grouches a bucket of ketchup, peanut butter, and sauerkraut mixed together. The two grouches started fighting over it bringing them back to their normal grouchy selves.

And they did a remake of that episode in either the 80s or 90s. Only Maria was replaced with Gina.

 

[mikebennidict]

hate remakes. what's the point of them?

 

[Dantecat]

I don't know mike but I don't like them much at all because I originally like it how it was back then.How come you don't like them mike?

 

[ssetta]

I can think of another:

"Elmo in Numberland" from 1990 (Season 21). It was where he wrote a book himself about doing things with all the numbers from 1-10. He read the story to Maria. The ENTIRE episode was redone 10 years later in Season 31. It was interesting that they would do something like this in 1990, because back then, he was nowhere near as popular as he is now. For number 2, he went to a 2-2 clock, and for number 7, he sang about "Seven Goldfish", which was later used as an insert. Then, for the number 10, he put his own face in the back of the book, so he was in the 0 in "10." These were only some parts of it. He did stories for all the numbers 1-10.

There was another one where they didn't re-do the whole episode, but they DID re-do the first street scene. In Season 25 (1993-94) there was an episode where Elmo and Merry were looking at some pretty flowers in the park. They thought about picking them, and they asked Jamal if he wanted to pick some with them, and he said, "No, and I don't think that you should pick them either" because there was a sign that said "Please do not pick the flowers" because they were for everybody to look at. He then explained why people shouldn't pick the flowers, because they were for everybody to look at. It wasn't the subject of the whole episode, just the first street scene. But then, in Season 31, they re-did the first street scene with Elmo, Telly, and Luis. But this was an entire episode about plants and watering flowers. It's interesting how they did this sometimes.

 

[MuppetDude]

There was one episode in 1997 that was about "Many Monsters". There wasn't a plot; just a bunch of random monster segments.

A few years ago the episode was remade. (Both included Zoe playing the Alphabet Song on the piano, and an introduction with a monolith-esque "M" while the theme of "2001: A Space Oddysey" playing.)

 

[SesameMike]

I remember two remakes from the 1970s.

In one, Big Bird is making a wooden birdhouse, one about the size you'd expect for a wren or a sparrow. One of the adults asks what it's for, and BB says it's a gift for his old bird friend/cousin who he hasn't seen in years. The friend approaches, and the bird seems to have grown up since he hasn't "seen him in years" -- he's actually about half as tall as BB himself! No way he can fit in that tiny thing. Big Bird then gulps and says to the adult, sheepishly, "Here's a nice birdhouse for your pet parakeet." This was remade a year or two later, and the second time, BB actually named the parakeet the adult owned (I forget the name). Although I remember at least one other episode in which Susan mentioned owning a pet parakeet (when BB tried his hand at selling birdseed in a low-level pushcart of some sort) I don't recall ever seeing said bird on the show.

In the other, Oscar has a grouch guest over staying in an adjacent trash can. At nightfall, they sleep up at the top of the can, making use of pillows stuffed with rocks that Oscar fashioned. But Oscar's guest, being from a farm, feels out of place in the city with its noises and has trouble sleeping. So Oscar goes to retrieve a tape recorder (large model with separate reels). The guest can't figure out how making even more noise will make things quieter. That is, until Oscar presses "Play". The tape is a recording of assorted farm animals that Oscar made when he last visted him, and the guest promptly falls asleep. Of course, the adults all emerge in nightclothes to complain about the noise. This situation with the tape recording of farm noises was redone a short time later with Big Bird's overnight guest, and could very well have been from one of the same remake storylines I described above.