Sesame Street Week - Day 4

In case you haven't noticed, Sesame Street is still making new episodes. I honestly have really lost track of the show over the past 7 years or so. In 4th grade I became a bit bitter about how they dumbed-down the show with it's format change from "magazine" format to more consisting "programming blocks" of sort format and really only turned back for the season premieres. Season 40 was one I had to see. I'm going to go through my views on each part of the show one-by-one.

Street Story: I'm going to be honest, I hate having the street story thrown into one ten-minute clump at the very beginning of the show. For a show called Sesame Street, it seems like they are trying to distance the show away from the street too much. Thankfully, the street story of Big Bird contemplating leaving Sesame Street was good. It was the closest thing we got to labeling the show as 40. The guest star (whose name escapes me at the moment) was pretty entertaining to watch and Big Bird getting his name wrong constantly was a nice homage to Mr. Hooper. I also loved that Big Bird's suitcase had Hawaii, Puerto Rico, China and Montana stickers. Plus, we got the return of Barkley.

Murray Monster as our host: I'll admit it, I love Murray. He's such a great character. Joey Mazzarino has made the character his own. Though I find it surprising that Mazzarino doesn't like putting the character on the Street (which gets me wondering, if Sesame Street ever does a third theatrical movie would Murray be in it if he doesn't really exist on the street?), he does make a nice real world host for the rest of the show.

Abby's Flying Fairy School: Abby's cute. That's all I have to say about her. This segment is long, dull and isn't all that entertaining. The CG is nice but this eats up way too much of the show.

Traction Jackson: I don't get why the guys at Sesame Workshop love this character so much. Back in my day, Tarah was Sesame Street's resident wheelchair-bound child and she was a great character for two reasons: (1) she existed on the Street and interacted regularly with most of the main characters and (2) was just Tarah Schaeffer playing herself. With a CG character, it kind of loses a bit of that positive role model factor and there is just not much to his personality. Sorry, Traction. He's just not my cup of tea.

Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures: I'm a sucker for claymation, so I thought this segment was pretty cute. I honestly don't remember too much from it but the animation is nice and Bert and Ernie translate well to the claymation look. I would prefer the puppets but with Steve and Eric off working on Classic Muppet stuff at Disney, this is a great substitute.

Michelle Obama's insert: She plants a garden with Elmo and some kids. Not too much to it.

Elmo's World: Frogs! Normally, I fast-forward through Elmo's World but this time something too nearly everybody completely by surprise. For the first time since 2001, Kermit the Frog appeared in new material on Sesame Street on a piece on where frogs live. Very exciting stuff, but beyond that... nothing new to report. Elmo is still in his world.

Sesame Street has now been a mixed bag of various shows. The spark is still there but it's not used to it's full potential. It's here in bits and pieces throughout this episode. Barkley's back, Kermit's back, Big Bird's previous trips are aknowledged. But too many main Muppets are missing (Oscar, The Count, the puppet Bert and Ernie) or downplayed to ensemble roles (Cookie Monster and Grover). I'm sure this gets better as the season goes on but the show has become pretty unbalanced between the good and the bad.

One more thing, let me just say I love the subtle homages to the show's past in the street scenes. They are all great.

Tomorrow: I end the week with my own personal opinions on Sesame Street's 40 years as a whole.