#FULL LENGTH SESAME STREET EPISODES TV#

#FULL LENGTH SESAME STREET EPISODES TV#

Sesame Street taught me one enduring lesson: to always expect TV to mean something. Now, when I watch Mad Men, and Don Draper impulsively cheats on his wife with a flight attendant, I react emotionally, but I also do what Kermit taught me - consider what Don's behavior means. I could laugh at Cookie Monster, but learned that there was something to take away from his behavior, too. Watching Kermit deftly manage Cookie Monster's problem with impulse control, I was inspired to think about what I was watching. But every moment on Sesame Street was designed to be educational, so even its ridiculousness had a very clear point, like when Cookie Monster ate Kermit's props. The pinnacle of its mix of fantasy and gritty reality came when Big Bird learned about the actual death of the man who played the character Mr. Mister Rogers looked right at me as he talked. I watch and write about TV for a living, and it's all Sesame Street's fault.Īs a kid in the '80s, I'd sit on the living room floor eating raisins, ready for my first appointment TV. Executive producer Parente calls the new developments 'content as assets.' In other words, it's easier to move a computer generated figure into video games and cell-phone video.Īndy Dehnart Blogs About Reality TV At Now, Ernie and Bert are clay-mation and the fairy Abby Cadabby is computer generated. Sesame Street's producers have come a long way from worrying about whether their Muppets should talk with their human characters.

It's calm and predictable for kids, especially the 2-to-4-year-old audience that Sesame Street is now drawing, says Carol-Lynn Parente, the show's executive producer. One long story might be followed by 10 minutes of Ernie and Bert, after which Elmo gets his 15-minute block. The new season of Sesame Street has a bunch of little shows within the show. 'Instead of having the children experience the narrative as a 15-minute story.' 'We were breaking up the narrative,' says Rosemary Truglio, the head of research at the Sesame Workshop, a non-profit organization that used to be known as the Children's Television Workshop. But with the advent of the VCR and DVD, it became clear that kids could watch one story for long periods of time. At the time, researchers thought the unpredictability helped to hold kids' attention. Segments varied wildly in length and subject, and you could never quite tell what would happen next, or how long it would last. The early Sesame Street was based on variety shows like Laugh-In. 'So they pulled back the characters and went back to the street.' 'We ended up with too many characters and too much going on,' says author Louise Gikow. Noodle on an 'Elmo's World' segment from the show's 39th season. When everyone started watching, it needed to be brighter.Įlmo with actor Bill Irwin as Mr. Carrol Spinney - or maybe the Grouch inside of him - says, 'It looked a little more grungy, and frankly I loved it grungy.' In the beginning Sesame Street was aimed mainly at urban kids who didn't have the preparation to start school.

There's a nice dappling of fake sunshine on the set, the graffiti is gone, and the sound of cars in the distance has disappeared. If you only watched Sesame Street in the early years, you'll be surprised by the look and feel of the program today. Over the years, as Barney, Dora, SpongeBob and others tugged away at the Sesame Street audience, producers started to plan some major renovations. But with the success of the program, other characters began moving into the television neighborhood. With only a few exceptions, Sesame Street had the children's education market to themselves for years. Appearance isn't everything if the characters feel real, Sesame Street insiders say, kids will follow them through whatever changes they make. But after a while, Spinney had a revelation: Big Bird wasn't stupid, he was just a child. Big Bird was originally payed as a dim-witted adult with a dopey voice. Characters Maria and Luis were married on an episode in 1988.Ĭarroll Spinney, the man who gives voice to Big Bird and Oscar, calls the first episode of Sesame Street 'amateur hour.' That's because the Muppet characters were so raw. As the show went on, it tackled a whole range of life issues. When it began, the focus of Sesame Street was on learning numbers and letters.

Full length sesame street episodes