When did the era of 'street stories' begin?

[CherryPizza]

Just watching the five episodes on the first 'Old School' volume, it seems that that in those early years there wasn't much in the way of continuing stories in the 'street' material (except for the first episode, with the rather thin story of showing Sally around the street).

About when did the show start to have the stories that ran throughout an episode, and were broken up by the films, animations and Muppet sketches?

 

[minor muppetz]

I'm pretty sure that the early years had both street stories and episodes with no major street plot. The secodn episode has a plotline in which Oscar moves away from Sesame Street, though I don't know how many scenes there are on this plot.

There's quite a few season 3 episodes that appear to have plots, though I also don't know how focused the plots are. There are stuff like the rainstorm episode (I don't know if that should be considered plot focus or not), the opening of the L and R Fix-It Shop (initially owned by Luis and Rafael), Antonio's birthday (I don't really know who Antonio is... this episode featured the "Biendivido Song" shown on the 40th anniversary set), Big Bird getting blackmailed by Bad Barney (no, I don't know who that is) into doing chores for him, Oscar fearfully awaiting Tough Eddie to tell him something... and I am pretty sure that even in the 1980s and 1990s there were episodes with no major street story, though they were more common by then. Episode 3154 has a plot involving Ruthie trying to get rid of Little Boy Blue's horn, but I think that plot only lasted three scenes, and it also included a few scenes with Biff and Sully at the park (the final one connects it to the Little Boy Blue plotline).

 

[mikebennidict]

Don't know if anyone noticed the opening for the episode of Antonio's birthday I put in the Classic SS Youtube section but done anyone know the answer to this?
http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showpost.php?p=793593&postcount=1556

 

[JLG]

From the small number of 70s episodes that have seen the light of day in recent years, it seems that many episodes didn't have a focused plot. There were definitely some that had stories, but they tended to either be thin and unfocused, or only three or four scenes long instead of lasting the whole episode.

I know that was changing by the mid-80s, when we not only saw hour-long stories but even entire story arcs. (Maria & Luis marrying and having Gabi, and the Slimey's 1997-98 trip to the moon).

But I have a couple of 1992 episodes (technically the 1991 season), and they're similar to late 70s episodes----mostly random street scenes, with a short story thrown in lasting maybe three segments.

 

[minor muppetz]

Recently somebody at Muppet Wiki has gotten quite a few season two program guides and has been making edits based on those guides. And it seems like quite a few season two episodes had plots (of course there's no way of knowing how much of the episodes featured the scenes related to the stories). There were such plots as the adults not knowing who owns the garage (and those guides don't provide an answer), Gordon trying to figure out what's in a package delivered to Susan, Oscar deciding to become nice, an ice cream machine installed on Sesame Street, and Oscar starting his own postal service.