Sesame Street Recap: EP001S01

So I know this kid who kept begging me to watch this show with her - it sounded a bit silly - just a kid's show with puppets - but it was actually a lot cooler than it might sound.

After opening with these rather charming but clunky animated clay dinosaurs, it starts off with Gordon (apparently one of our main neighbors, a very handsome African-American gentleman who lives at 123 Sesame Street with his lovely wife, Susan) introducing all of the characters to a little girl named "Sally", as well as "us", the viewers.

So, we meet Big Bird, who looks like a giant canary, and seems a bit dizzy. That or he is supposed to be a little kid.

Then we meet Ernie and Bert, who are typical NYC apartment dwellers:

They, in turn, introduce us to Solomon Grundy (this is starting to feel a little like The Saragossa Manuscript). I'm expecting Solomon Grundy to come out and introduce the next character.

Then we continue on the "wash"  theme with a short film, then Ernie again washing up.

(Very stream-of-conciousness/associative stuff.  This, along with the urban setting, makes me feel like Allen Ginsberg or Gregory Corso is in the back room writing sketches.)

It gets even more abstract with a bunch of dots blinking around the screen.

Then we get this "song of 3" thing,

Note Muppet creator Jim Henson in this.

Which has some blinding animation and some very annoying kid singers (really not a fan of that - this one comes across like a hyper version of that Frank Sinatra song about the little 'ol ant.) I sense though that the baker at the end is going to be reliably amusing.

Well, we go on a milk tangent, meet Oscar, a grumpy orange garbage monster, more animated clay animals, a bunch of stuff about over, through and through, more dots, and a song from "Oliver" (I left the room for a Pepsi at this point).

When I get back, we find Ernie again (sans Bert) buying milk (again!) from Mr. Hooper, who seems like a transplant from the Lower East Side. We get a "song of 2" song, some more animals, another 2 song,  then a gorgous "E" animation by the Hubleys, which is the highlight of the episode so far.

We get a slightly unmemorable sketch about a picture being hung up, and this great "token white guy" named "Bob" (how is that for a token white guy name?) showing Sally and Kermit the Frog how to make a W out of a dollar bill.

Wanda the Witch is an aliterative story that has an irritating animation flub at the end with a witch's face that is ostensibly in FRONT of a cauldron appears behind it. Otherwise, had a nice feel to it.

Carol Burnett comes out and makes a snappy one-liner, we stick with W until the end, get some closing credits and some groovy music.

From what I understand, this show is supposed to be like a media-savvy version of the federal Head Start program. I think it will do well, though they may want to consider stripping down the "sponsors" into a more digestible size (letters and numbers are the sponsers of the show, as opposed to advertisers.) This episode has the sponsors E, S, W, 2 and 3. In fact, the whole format is like that of a fast-paced network program, except educational and with no commercial interests. I am sure the jury is still out as to how the networks feel about this kind of co-option.

The kid loved it. I thought it showed a lot of potential. Who knows, maybe they will cancel it after a few months, because the kiddos miss their toy commercials and meaningless programming. We will have to see.