Your Thoughts: The Street We Live On

[dwayne1115]

i like it

that sounds good but i think its our kids that can make the differect they need to hate elmo. hate him so bad they cant stand it. we really need to do somthing about that little red frury hhuhuhuhuhuu i cant satnd him. the show would be great wiith out him i am so anti elmo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Stulz]

Sad, But True...

My Girlfriend and I had the same reactions that most of you had. the 20th anniverary was special. This was C-R-A-P!

I disliked Elmo for awhile, I moved on and forgot why... Until Now. "Little red menace" was allowed to take over and therfore destroy the whole show (save for the 5min clips at the end)!!!

We both felt that if Sesame Workshop wanted to suck up (literally) so much time up with Elmo, why not just give him his own spin-off??!!?!

Isn't That a brilliant idea????? Why not have Elmo's world be a half hour block of 2- 15 minute sessions?

That way if you want to subject your kids to Elmo you can, AND you can have them watch SS which wouldn't be as Elmo centered.

During the special, I truly felt lied to by PBS' press release. Since SS is on public broadcasting I' am writing to them how disapointed I was in thier "35 anniversary special", I strongly encouarge others to do the same.

It's this kind of garbage that gives The Muppets and their fans a bad name. The street we live on indeed.... make that USED to live on...

 

[silentmikeny]

It was still good....

The special was still good, despite the little red menace jacking the show.
I grew up watching Sesame Street, as we all did, and I felt a little betrayed by the way he took over the show. He's cute and all, but practically a whole hour?! No way.

The time machine scenes were very touching...to see at least a glimpse of the scenes I grew up with....Luis and Maria's wedding, Big Bird learning of Mr. Hooper's ( remember he called him Mr. Pooper?) death, and so on.....and the clips from each year of the show (regardless of chronological accuracy) touched me. I'm not ashamed to admit I cried. Of course, most of it has to do with the fact that I recently learned I'm going to be a daddy for the first time, and watching this special made me realize I have a LOT to do as a parent, and that whole afraid thing.....but I am glad that Sesame Street will be around for my child, and I did tape the special for later viewing by said
child.

All in all, the special was very touching, and seeing scenes like Big Bird's nest being destroyed, and seeing Lily Tomlin sign "Sing"...they all brought back happy memories of my childhood.

Perhaps one day, CTW will see it fit to somehow bring back older episodes, and perhaps one day a medium will exist for us to view those, "Electric Company", "321 Contact", and even other stuff like "Newton's Apple". <sigh>

And hopefully, the producers will see the need to tackle the issue of a best friend moving away....hence, Elmo goes bye-bye. He's cute, but enough is enough!

 

[Firecat87]

I, too, was thoroughly disappointed in this "special"- if you can truly call it that. Is sesame workshop afraid of to steer away from Elmo? That's what the special felt like. I would have loved an hour long- or more- of nothing but old clips- they wouldn't even have to have anything else, just clips. The clip montage at the end was far and away my favorite part. Every time they started to go somewhere cool, the going back in time had such potential!- they came quickly back to elmo's world. I was very disappointed!

 

[Animal Jam]

Heck.Elmo takes up so much of sesame street,they could give him his own show!Elmo dominated the special,so why not give him his own show!it would be after sesame street so there would be more vintage muppet skits.

 

[Philo and Gunge]

I was mad about that they talked all about the time machine in the press release but then it was only in for 2 minutes at the end. It just seemed like watching the show at 8PM. At least in the 25th Anniversy specials I felt like I knew that it was the anniversery, great clips, etc. Here how The Street We Live On SHOULD have gone:
Cookie Monster is looking through the Sesame Workshop libary of shows for a hammer for a Letter Of The Day bit then notices all the old Sesame episodes and watches portions of them in a clip show format looking through stuff like Mr. Hooper's Death, The Adults First Seeing Snuffy, etc. In the end, he locks Elmo in their and forces him to watch Elmo's World over and over and over and see how he likes it.

 

[WiGgY]

When I read about the special, it said that Elmo spends the hour discovering Sesame Streets past. It sounded like a really good idea. I knew it would be an hour of Elmo's World, but I expected their to be a lot of old clips from the begining to the present. Instead, it's the regular style of Elmo's World with some tiny snippits at the end.

Question. Did we need the "How does Cookie Monster eat a cookie?" segment that went on forever? No. Did we need the "Grover, Big Bird, Maria, and Elmo's Friends channel" with the poorly drawn and written cartoon? No. We didn't even need the JTE segement, though I understand why that was in there. But the JTE segment sucked. What were kids suppose to learn? There was no problem solving from what I remember. Just nursary rhmes and some counting. And frankly, I don't think kids know those rhymes anymore.

Global Grover was actually quite good and interesting. Eric did a fine job with Grover as always, but Grover looks like crap now. What happened to him? He went all plushy and fake looking. Grover doesn't look like that at all.

I have a chair was ruined! It's nice to have the song, but why did it need CGI like that? The original is far more relateable to kids. It seemed to be updated just for the sake of updating it.

What the heck was with that B&E segment? Those celeberty caeos sucked. Seth Green? Larry King? Dr. Phil? Why? It seemed unplanned and out of place. Just odd. I know Whoopie likes to work with the muppets, so I see why she was in there and at least she did something some what entertaing, and I remember that lady with the card board wings so that was nice, but most of the others were crap.

When they finally did the segments from the past, they didn't do them right. The Mr. Hooper segment was far too short and no one learned anything. I was hoping to see something longer because I don't really remember Hooper at all, but he got nothing. Grover just says that it's Mr. Hooper and that he owned the store. That's all. Nothing about what his friendship with Big Bird, nothing about the years he spent on the show, nothing about what happened to him. NADA! They should have shwon the FULL clip of Big Bird dealing with Hooper's death instead of the little clip at the end saying he's not coming back. If i didn't know better I' think he just went on vacation. It was handled poorly. And the other clips weren't anything too special at all. We saw Maria and Luis's wedding (kind of) which was ok I guess. We saw Gabby being born and Miles as a baby, but nothing indepth or special there either. So much more could have been done. At the very least show the clip of Kermit and Rowlf thinking up Sesame Street. I'm sure JHC hcould have given them permission back when the "special" was filmed.

We know they were allowed to have Kermit on there because we saw him at the very end. Why not more of him? One not ONE full KErmit segment. How about Muppet News or "On My Pond" or something? Why not have Kermit show up in Elmo's World and introduce some early stuff? I know Kermit is owned by JHC, but I would bet that permission would have been given

I was sadly dissappointed. There was a lot of potential to make a great special for kids to watch with their parents and it just didn't work. It was a celebration of Elmo for 45 minutes with some celebration of the past near the very end. If JHC still owned Sesame Street, I think something better would have been made. I KNOW that if Jim Henson were alive it would have been done right.

 

[BornBlue]

Well, I agree with just about everyone else. I wasted an hour of my time. And an hour of my father's time.

I watched this at my parents' house and subjected my dad to an hour of Elmo's World. I am actually slightly embarassed. I would not have been ashamed to watch a retrospective special at 25 years of age, but I am still red in the face for watching an entire hour of Elmo's World.

How do we get Sesame to tone it down with the Elmo?!?

 

[Daffyfan4ever]

Well, I haven't watched it yet. I was hoping to watch it with my family when I'm home during Easter break, but from what I read so far, I guess it's not too much to look forward too. I know what you mean though. I really liked the 20th anniversary special with Bill Cosby where they showed clips of the Mr. Hooper death episode and the adoption of Miles. I guess the reason the special was the way it was because they didn't want to do the same thing over again.

 

[puppet builder]

35 and Still Going...

The 35th anniversary show was good, though have to admit it could have been better.

The Elmo is segment is WAY TOO LONG. The character is great, but an adult can only take about ten minutes of that before it's a turn-off, or tune-out. Similarly, kids will too...

And it prevents all the other characters (human and puppet alike) from having depth. They come off as two-dimensional and lacking depth. But I know (forgive my not mentioning everyone), but Bob Maria, Big Bird and everyone else has ability and depth. It's all about the song, dance, and interaction!!!!

The show won Emmy's for having that depth and transcending generations. Brew a strong pot-o-joe... It's time for the Workshop to find it's roots. The talent is already there and/or within reach. Develop, find and invest in the strong sketch writing for all of the characters (human and puppet), animators and Raposo-esque songwriters/musicians.