Your Thoughts: Sesame Street Season 37

[BEAR]

Caught the Mr. Alan's School episode. It was pretty good. I also wondered why they didn't use Gordon since he is a real teacher, but since it was meant to be pretend it was extra funny using Alan having to split his time between his real job and playing school. Also, anything with Alan is usually entertaining. He is so awesome!

 

[BeckyDR]

hey The_Count, where are your thoughts on Monday's ep? you haven't posted them yet. well hasta luego chico.

 

[The Count]

Sorry Becky... Haven't had the time to post anything... Swamped with classes and posts here on the boards.

Will try to do something before tomorrow's episode airs.
And the sponsors for 4116 were L and 11 if you're keeping track.

 

[BEAR]

Ed, wanted to make sure you added the new characters from the Mr. Alan's School episode to your listings.
Alan's 2 customers, and a Muppet whale in Elmo's world along with a group of Doctors and birds at Big Bird's doctor's office. There was also a sketch (not sure if it's new cuz I never saw it before) with a bunch of different anything muppet monsters singing a song.

 

[The Count]

Thanks Bry. There's the Season 37 Character Questions thread for talking about the new characters.
Post there and I'll respond in kind.

 

[The Count]

Sorry it's overdue... My thoughts, by popular demand.

Episode 4116: Mr. Alan's Pretend Class.
This episode was an OK one... But it does feature the effort of making going back to school the focus topic for the season as a whole.
Elmo shows up wanting to go to pretend school, he has all his supplies but what he needs is someone to play the role of the teacher. He gets Alan to do it after pleading with the shopkeeper, the monster using puppy-dog eyes method of persuasion. Alan accepts and tells Elmo to draw a picture while he goes back to the store. Elmo insists on getting Alan to say "Good Morning" to the class and take attendance. Then Alan tells Elmo to draw while...
Back at the store, a nameless customer (Probably #3 for the list) shows up. This was Joey Mazzarino's voice, no mistaking that... But it was a good Adam Sandlerish sort of New York/Jersey/Jewish voice. This guy couldn't decide between the tuna or egg salad sandwich.
(Frankly, I would've left both sandwiches out there and have him take whichever he would eventually take, avoiding all the hassle).
Elmo calls Alan back to the class, Old Macdonald showing up and leaving his goat for a day of school. They start reading the book Tickle The Goat, the goat laughing when Alan tickled the goat in the book... Not so much when Alan tried tickling the goat itself.
A second customer, a high class dame, now comes up and is just as indecisive as the first guy. When she chose to have the tuna, that then left the egg salad for the first guy, and when he said he'd want the egg salad sandwich... Well, that made the woman change her mind, keeping the comedy, which wasn't that much of comical to me personally.
Next, two kids show up to sing the alphabet with Alan... The two customers blowing the celebratorial horn because they came to an arrangement.
Alan: Let me guess, you want me to cut the sandwiches in half so that way you can both have a half of each sandwich.
Male Customer: Oh, that's an even better idea.
Alan: Why, what was your idea?
Female Customer: It involved a tractor.
Now that was a nice funny little quip.
After cutting the sandwiches and leaving his customers to choose between milk or juice, Alan dashes back out to teach some rhyming after Little Joey the Elephant shows up. The funny part of the dialogue was how they kept refering to all the selling points of Alan's pretend school. It has an excellent rhyming program... It said so in the brochure.
The class rhymes words with "cat", "tall", and "dig". Little Joey rhymes "Albuquerque" with "cat" and "avocado" with "tall". Seeing how he took to each of his failures, it reminded me very much of Don Music banging his head on the piano the way the elephant kept stomping the street in frustration.
*Nod to you RHLC's reading this.
Finally, when his last turn with "dig" came... Little Joey: "Texas Two-Step. Oh no, I mixed up my dances. I meant to say "jig"".
The story then resolves itself with three little flourishes...
a. The customers say they've decided what they want... To go to Alan's pretend school.
Alan: But what about your lunch?
Customers: We'll have it for lunch at lunch period.
Funny little bit there.
b. Elmo hands Alan the picture he drew of his pretend school teacher...
Nice little heartfelt moment.
c. A bus driver then shows up with a busload of children ready for school.
Alan: But it's just a pretend school!
Bus Driver: Tell that to the children.
Children show up greeting their new teacher.
Bus Driver: BTW, heard you're up for Teacher of the Year... Congratulations.
Funny.

Highlights:
1 Film/Song: "At School".
2 Letter of the Day: L, repeat, the one where Cookie Monster (sounded like Frank to me) sings some snatches of music to keep the cookie out of his mouth.
3 Silly song about the letter L with L-words sung by a group of operatic monsters, and somebody named Murray.
Unsure if Murray was an AM or the unnamed monster from Season 36, since they were both voiced by Joey with the almost-identical voicetone.
4 "Shake Your Rattle & Roll" by Baby Fats Domino, great to see that again.
5 "In My Room" by Ernie, though I conceed what others are saying that maybe they should get other clips with Ernie and maybe Bert into the rotation.
6 Global Grover: Different ways to get to school, with Sidney Camel, Grover trying to mount his steed only to carry him to school instead, and the song by Jerry Nelson.
7 Number of the Day: 11. The Count counted a girl named Gale or Kale as others have said, not sure, hopping 11 times... He also commented how she was a hopping machine and couldn't stop.
8 The Postage Stamp animation aired, showing the number of the day. This is the one where a hand uses a pen to write a 7, a 9 bounces past a basketball player, and I think this large totem head spouts an 11 out of its opened maw.
9 Elmo's World: Doctors, new!
This was a truly great episode of Elmo's World... Why? Because we got Big Bird as part of the little substory embedded into the segment.
Big Bird shows up at the beginning, saying he was off to his checkup. Then some doctors showed up. The SS duck showed up throughout the segment, trying to pass itself off as a ducktor.
The usual EW fare then followed... Nice to let Drawer watch the film segment at the midway point for once.
The E-mail! Big Bird showed up again, reasoning as to why the waiting room was named that, given that he was just there waiting to see the doctor. Nameless female, not sure who/what she was by Fran pops up, and then the ducktor examines Big B.
The oversized canary comes back, just before the guests... His checkup went fine. Elmo's done watching the Doctor Channel, Andrea Martin's animated character having finished a silly dance called "Do the Doctor".
An unnamed doctor says: "Doctors, the furry red monster will see you now."
An eye, foot and animal doctor introduce themselves.
EW ends with the usual blah-blah song.
10 Trash Gordon: Planet Very Hairy, repeat.

Lowpoints:
1 Suzy Kabloozy, Judges say 11!
Ugh.
2 The fact that Spanish and Sign Language Word of the Day haven't been used so far. Would hate to see those gone.

There was a segment in the middle about this woman explaining to us about bones and muscles... Good informative segment... Though they could've used other skits like the song "Bones" by my namesake or the X-ray machine sketch with Kermit and Herry.
Oh well, waiting for today's episode.

 

[MuppetDude]

Let us know ASAP. I won't be able to see the show until around 4:30 PM due to my college schedule.

 

[The Count]

Let you know what buddy? Well, regarding 4117... Let's just say it was a J-rrific episode. Not so much for the street story, though it was OK, but for the sketches added in it.

Look for Don't Want To Live On The Moon with Aaron Neville and Jim's Ernie.
New sketch with my namesake at the golf course.
Funny Trash Gordon segment.
And the best of all, the parody of Man of La Muncha.
Will post more detailed thoughts later.

 

[Daffyfan4ever]

Crap. I missed that one, because there was a mistake when I read the TV listings for my local station. I hope they don't make that mistake again, or I'd be missing quite a few eps. I did watch the Snow White ep on You Tube. At least the street story. I missed that when it aired. I'll have to go back to the previous post about that one and see if there was anything I want to look for next time they run that ep.

 

[Drtooth]

Today's episode wasn't that good... when a Human character turns to the screen and says "This is going to be an interresting day" you can tell the episode is either going to be really good, or really lame.

I cannot stand Aaron Nelville massacring... er singing "Don't want to live on the Moon" with his odd feminine bass voice in an Earthquake style. The get up it's time to play segment was particularly heinous, but I'll save that for another post. ANd they showed the bloody horrible "Fruit dance"

One high point... the "Jitterbug" is the exact same bug puppet used in the Elmo in Grouchland movie. Somehow... I think it is the exact same puppet, since it looked a little dirty, as if aged by lack of use.

HOWEVER... The Man of La Mucha, about a boy eating with his family singing a parody of "THE Impossible Dream" (not nearly as funny as John Cleese singing it on TMS... but nothing is) was well done, and the Count golfing made me extra depressed the SS toy line is dead for want of a Golfing Count, plaid cape varient. Very good skit, though.... I always said that the Count should get out of his Castle and count things around town, ever since the second season of the Number of the day segments.

BTW.... you may be interrested to know, GUY SMILEY is one of the spectators in the back ground of that skit. It truely is him, no mistake. He says nothing, but he's still technically in the show. Now, I wonder why they never think to have older characters not saying anything put into the background of skits. Much like they did with current muppet movies. At least it would be a nod to the fans.