Your Thoughts: Sesame Street Season 40

[Rendal]

Format Suggestion

I was thinking about the block format. I think a slight tweek would make it a lot more palitible for all.

Rotate the mini-show's (Abby,Murry,Bert & Ernie) to take up one segment of the show. That would leave 9-12 minutes for additional inserts supporting the curriculumn. Right now the fact that they can only do one letter and one number insert shows they are too overloaded. So why not something like this.

Word on the Street
Opening
Street Story
Word of the Day
2 supporting inserts to the street story.
Letter of the Day
2 Inserts
Mini-Show
Number of the Day
2 Inserts
Random insert (Parody, etc..)
Elmo's World.


Probably overthinking this. But hey what else do I have to do. Oh yeah get back to work! ;-)

 

[ISNorden]

Episode 4188 in review

The Good Points:

• The street story felt like an abridged version of a classic plot: nursery-rhyme characters appearing on the street with problems, which the rest of the cast gradually helps them solve. It's a shame that 80% of the good writing gets crammed into the first 15 minutes, but beggars can't be choosers.
• A human character (Luis) plays a bigger role than usual...and gets an original song too.
• The "Flying Fairy School" story alludes to parts of the Pinoccchio story which some kids wouldn't know immediately. Not every 3-year-old is familiar with it, even in the Disney adaptation; it's good to teach that Pinocchio had more going for him than that lie-detecting nose. I can even understand why Sesame Workshop changed the whale-related part. (A whale swallowing the puppet-fairy would scare lots of preschoolers' pants off!)
• The in-jokes in that same segment about puppetry, especially when the transformed fairy needed help to move.
• The "Swan Lake/tutus" humor in the #2 segment. Judging by material like that, either more parents are watching with the kids again--or more preschoolers in the audience are gifted!
• As prime-time parodies go, "Mad Men" was reasonably good. I agree with the fans who think the men should have gone for "mad, sad, glad" instead of breaking the pattern with "happy"; Sesame Street used to do a lot of two-lessons-in-one sketches, and I miss that kind of depth.
• Elmo used a familiar tune other than "Jingle Bells" for his topic song at the end of "Elmo's World"; if only the writers would let him do that more often!

The Bad Points:

• Although I'm glad that they shortened "Murray Had a Little Lamb", it would have made more sense to drop the theme song instead of the guessing game. Part of the educational goal, after all, was learning Spanish words in context--now Murray hears only the phrase for "Irish dancing school".
• Only one letter sketch and one number sketch this episode...Murray's letter games are cute in a way, but they're no substitute for standalone clips.
• I've mentioned this in my last review, but I'll say it again because so many viewers agreed: there was too much of Murray in this episode. Introducing blocks, announcing things-of-the-day, and getting his flagship mini-show? One character was never meant to carry Sesame Street that way.
• If there was a classic Easter-egg bit in this episode, I completely missed it. Could one of the others here fill me in, please?

Overall Impression:

Much like the premiere, this episode had a few well-done parts which stood out from the mediocre background. Sesame Workshop isn't totally at fault here; they've been hit hard by the same recession as everyone else. They've also had to adapt to the way mainstream TV has evolved--the original idea was to teach through imitating network shows, after all.

Despite their problems, though, the Workshop producers have usually found a way to stay ahead of the competition. Here's hoping that they catch their second wind this season... *crosses her fingers*

 

[wiley207]

Well, the Season Premiere wasn't so bad. Good to see the season start off with a Big Bird-centered story instead of an Elmo-centered one, which seems to have been commonplace since 2002 (with some exceptions, such as last year's Telly-centered season premiere). It was good to see practically ALL the human cast together in an episode. Just like old times!

Seems that even though Bob is older, he still looks and sounds a lot like the Bob I grew up with in the early 1990s, which is a good thing; the same with Gordon. However, I can tell Luis, Maria and Susan all look a bit different now due to age, but I can still easily recognize them by their voices (ESPECIALLY Maria!)

And it was great to see Barkley make a new appearance again outside of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parades, too!

Anyone else also notice the new music cue they used for starting and ending the episodes? It was interesting how they did that; I mean, I was expecting the cue they used from 2007-2008 to last around longer, like when the Calypso-esque opening cue they introduced in 1993 lasted until 2006! But I didn't have a problem with that new music; in fact, what I liked best was the new nighttime closing music cue heard on the "Trash Gordon" segments or other bedtime-related closing bits (my personal favorite was Telly reading the "Three Triangles" story.)

As for the segments...
I'm not entirely too big on the letter/number of the day intros. But at least we're not getting reruns of the Cookie Monster/Prairie Dawn and the Count's Organ skits! And Abby's Fairy School, while a cute idea and segment, does hog up a LOT of time. Nine minutes... that's almost twice as long as "Murray Has a Little Lamb!" But at least "Murray Has a Little Lamb" is not in every episode this season. The last thing I need in this new format is having to hear Puerto Rican-rappers shouting "Murray Has a Little LAAAAAAAAAAMB" in every episode. Again, I LOVE the "Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures" segments, though while I prefer the characters as puppets, it's nice to see them in claymation too, and finally after having heard about them all these years, they finally make it to American TV last year as segments on the show!

An Elmo's World segment on frogs; this meant a Kermit reference was inevitable. And the way it was held over was a sure sign it was bound to happen. And it did! Kermit's cameo was a nice touch, and it was great to see Kermit in new Sesame Street material since 2001!

I'm not too big on Murray's way of announcing the sponsors at the end. It reminds me too much of "Trash Gordon" or those Season 38 closing bumpers when Abby Cadabby would announce the sponsors.

The new closing credits are nice. I was actually kinda half-expecting them to simply reuse the credits from 2007, but then again, it would've been somewhat out of place, like the 1992 closing credits appearing on the 2002-2006 episodes with its new opening sequence. Though ending the credits on Elmo was a little overkill, because the SesameWorkshop logo at the end closes out with Elmo!

But then again, as for the new formula here, I'm not surprised this happened. I mean, back in 1969, I'm SURE the show's producers were certain that the format the show had during that time wasn't going to be around forever. This new format is almost as jarring as the "Around the Corner" or the 2002 blocks bit.

 

[Drtooth]

I liked seeing Kermit too but since i knew that Elmo's World: Frogs was an unaired holdover from earlier, i can't honestly judge it as a 40th season piece.

I really wondered about that. And I have 2 theories on it bot being held over for that specific reason. Theory 1: they did the entire segment without Kermit, and really wanted to get him in there, and had to haggle with Disney to get him in there, and it wasn't ready for season 39 for that reason... or more likey, theory 2: There wasn't a single new Elmo's World segment announced this year for budget reasons, and they wanted to have at least one new segment for the season, which would otherwise be nothing but EW reruns.

 

[dwmckim]

Since my local station started reformatting widescreen shows to fill the screen this year (which doesn't make sense for a show like Sesame...if part of its goal is letter recognition and reading, it doesn't help the intended viewer when parts of a word gets chopped off to the side), i didn't notice any hidden gem unless it was something that got cropped. I found some things i personally wouldn't count since they're kind of weak and really stretching it (like one of the puppets from Abby's School having a Super Grover-esque helmet but i don't think that was that deliberate a nod because of its commonality). The closest i could come up with was Murray quasi-riffing off of Grover's Near and Far bits. Also in the closing credits (which aren't episode specific), you have Bert starting to Do the Pigeon as they cut away from E&B.

Today's episode flowed a little better than yesterday's in terms of balance of segments - we got a puppet E&B from season 37! But wow - even with it shortened, when you have a Murray/Lamb segment in the same episode, it really is too much Murray. I hate to say this and i'm not suggesting this was actually the case but the end result is the show feels like Joey taking advantage of his promotion to head writer and trying to use this new format to force his character into Elmo-level stardom.

After both episodes, it looks like part of the "style" for season 40 is every single sketch beginning/ending with a dizzying blurred whoosh. Thumbs firmly down.

Something that hit me watching the latest episode...in addition to the puppets, we're seeing the Muppet characters represented as animation, claymation, and CGI. I can see the show wanting to show off a little and take advantage of the latest "toys" in animation and maybe they feel the different mediums might intrique children and capture their attention but i can't help wondering if the whole thing will backfire. Puppets are very special to children in the way they respond to them (as evidenced by the original testing 40 years ago that led the producers to include Muppets as part of the street segments). Children - and even those dealing with autism - have such a strong almost inherent reaction to puppets...can you replace that connection and interest with CGI? I think a child can recognize the difference even if they can't define it with words and when you pluck a NINE MINUTE CGI segment in the middle of a show that seems out of place, i wonder if kids may get bored or feel slightly unnerved or cheated. Elmo's World is really too long for an individual segment (and over the years it's gotten longer with more recent ones actually over 19 minutes) but at least it (a) has lots of "little pieces" within it including films, cartoons, Elmo's emails, etc and (b) the lead character is constantly directly engaging the kids watching talking straight to them. I really don't see Abby's Flying Fairy School lasting long unless SW decides to take some of the segments that double as their own productions internationally and air them outside of SST on a cable station domestically as part of a block of programming.

Again, trying to approach this by getting in touch with my inner child and trying to watch this through the lens of how my younger self would respond to the new episodes, and the prevaling thought is that the show doesn't feel as "welcoming" overall - Sesame Street feels less like a place or a community that the hour is tying together. Sesame Street seems like this place at the beginning of the show that goes away to other places for the rest of the hour. Watching as a child during the original format, i knew that if something was on that i may not care as much for, it would only be on for a short time and then there would be more of my Muppet Friends being silly and fun...and even that didn't always stop me from running in a closet and hiding when a "yuchy film" or one of Bob's sappiest songs came on. Child D.W. watching present format doesn't have that assurance that the good stuff will be on real soon - on the contrary the more boring stuff could very well go on FOREVER and maybe i can even take a nap while i'm hiding in the closet instead of intently listening for a Henson or Oz sounding voice - or worse - maybe even not even staying tuned for the hour doing something totally different! As a kid, you "knew" that the Whole Reason for Commercials was so that you had a short break to go to the bathroom or grab something from the kitchen (or go put your empty bowl and silverware back in the kitchen) but they were just a couple minutes. With current Sesame, you have LONG segments where you you feel like you can write the Great American Novel during the time if you didn't care for it. You may go to the bathroom and not feel like you have to hurry - AND have time to get a snack while studying every item in the fridge AND maybe take a walking tour of the entire house AND call your best friend on the phone AND AND AND...

 

[lalaluvsgrover]

I didn't care for Murray's segments either, but I can't complain, as I know they're trying to give Joey a regular characters as well... not to mention, he's the new head writer as well, so he's probably going to try to write a lot for Murray.

BTW, did anyone besides me notice that Bert's line in the "Great Adventures" theme had been changed from "This is kinda kinky" to "This is kinda catchy"? I know some people have complained about that, but this just proves how many perverts/sick-minded people there are out there as THERE'S MORE THAN ONE MEANING TO THE WORD "KINKY".

In the original Bert & Ernie's Great Adventure song - Bert says "this is kind of kicky" not kinky.
But there was so much confusion - and that's why it was changed to catchy.

I don't know how I feel about the episode. I loved seeing Kermit on it - and my 2 year old son is ecstatic that there is more Murray. But I was disappointed they didn't have the 'Murray Has a Little Lamb' segment.

And I agree with the people who said the new Abby segment was too long. But then I also didn't care for it overall.

Otherwise I thought it was good. I wouldn't mind seeing more vintage Sesame Street like they have in all the other episodes. Too much new and computer animated stuff.

And that's all.

 

[Erine81981]

4188: CowMonster Pair

I have to admit that i had already seen this storyline only because of the DVD "Elmo's Animal Adventures." Three of the stories are all from this season. It was ok but when i first saw it, it was pretty good.

The segments were ok. Too much Murray but what can you say. He's the newest monster muppet. The Madmen was pretty funny and i noticed that the main Madman sounded almost like Frank Oz. Was that him? Oh well.

I thought the Cookie Monster animated part was pretty cute and fun to watch. Now as much as the puppet version would have been but still pretty cool. That's my two cents.

 

[antsamthompson9]

Everyone, I found Kermit's appearnce on Elmo's World:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fskkIj5Om00. I'm glad I did, because I had to go to school and I missed it.

 

[wiley207]

The Madmen was pretty funny and i noticed that the main Madman sounded almost like Frank Oz. Was that him? Oh well.

Yep, that was Frank Oz!

 

[The Count]

Hey guys... Looks like I'll be depending on this thread and the Wiki for Season 40. Just got the bad news that it's Daylight Savings Time's fault Sesame's not in the current schedule. This is why I've long said that DST should be reversed from Fall Back/Spring Forward to Spring Back/Fall Forward.