has sesame street out lived its usefulness?

Re: has sesame street out lived it's usefulness?

I love sesame street. But the problems are far worse than the red menace (Elmo).

The characters have become brands, rather than characters. They are simply logos used for whatever purpose. Gone are the days where Bert and Ernie showed us that best friends didn't always like each other.

has it gotten that bad? no more skits of them trying to fix a TV together?
I was flipping channels and came across a random episode. the one skit was of hansel and grettel trying to find their way back to big birds nest. it wasn't horrible...but it had no.....uhmph to it. it was just...get the point across three or for times...nothing more. where as with a classic kermit skit, jim and the others ad libbed plenty.....and threw in a few adult jokes while they where at it to keep the parents entertained.

skits like this, for instance....
'it's not easy being green....' ' yeah, you noticed, huh?'
 
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Re: has sesame street out lived it's usefulness?

My fav was a tie between Big Bird and Ernie. Then it was Oscar then Grover. I always thought it was well balanced between education and entertainment, I really liked the humans skits, always good stuff. I haven't watched it in a while but I do remember noticing every skit was 5-8 mins long up until the last 15 mins, which every minute of that 15 was Elmo's World. Then I noticed that kids didn't pay attention and just waited for Elmo! I also seen that parents had kids who would write on walls with crayons, and WHO does that? Yes, the furry red monster is all about making his world entirely from crayons. I would have to catch a few episodes to see how it is, but entertainment wise, it seems different than what I grew up with. But which show doesn't keep with the times? I guess it aims for today's children and whatever they are into lol.

"Darn you kids! Turn down that hippie music! Oh its new Sesame Street? Turn it down anyway!" :lol
 
Re: has sesame street out lived it's usefulness?

I remember being a kid and just not being able to figure out how Ernie's mouth and both hands could move at the same time! I knew they were puppets but it just never occurred to me that there would be two people operating one muppet. Also, it wasn't until later on that I realized that Big Bird actually has a 'dead' arm with a wire running to his head so that the arm moves when his head moves.
 
Re: has sesame street out lived it's usefulness?

Aside from the gigantic block of Elmo time, the other problem I have with SS is how much recycling they do. I've got 2 little kids, 5 & 2, and have watched it with both of them. Though not very much with the younger.

Really, there seems to be only about 10 minutes of new content per episode, on average. The remaining hour is simply rearranged material from the last several years. Sometimes the screen switches from 16:9 to 3:4 proportions, because it goes back that far. And there's gotta be less than 10 segments of (frickin') Abby's Flying Fairy School, yet they insist on including it EVERY episode.

I know their profit margin is minimal, but if you want people coming back, you've got to generate new content. I think that's the best part of this HBO thing.
For us, though, it's more likely I'll just throw in a disc from the "Old School" collection.
 
Re: has sesame street out lived it's usefulness?

It has gone down hill since we were kids, now it's a tool to push the politically correct agendas and train kids to be sheep like most PBS shows anymore. I stopped watching it in 84/85 too when I grew out of it.
 
Re: has sesame street out lived it's usefulness?

Aside from the gigantic block of Elmo time, the other problem I have with SS is how much recycling they do. I've got 2 little kids, 5 & 2, and have watched it with both of them. Though not very much with the younger.

Really, there seems to be only about 10 minutes of new content per episode, on average. The remaining hour is simply rearranged material from the last several years. Sometimes the screen switches from 16:9 to 3:4 proportions, because it goes back that far. And there's gotta be less than 10 segments of (frickin') Abby's Flying Fairy School, yet they insist on including it EVERY episode.

I know their profit margin is minimal, but if you want people coming back, you've got to generate new content. I think that's the best part of this HBO thing.
For us, though, it's more likely I'll just throw in a disc from the "Old School" collection.

To be fair, though, they did that back in the good ol' days, too.

Let's count the segments that'd repeat themselves:

- The Martians. (Nooooopenopenopenopenopenope.....Yupyupyupyupyupyupyup)
- The two-headed monster that'd pronounce two halves of words.
- The chef dropping X number of pies on himself.
- Onetwothree FOUR FIVE six seveneight NINE TEN ELEVEN TWELVE!!!
- Grover serving a hamburger to that blue headed guy.
- Kermit as the reporter wearing the raincoat.
- The typwriter. (Numenumenu...)

I mean, they didn't always do the same word or object or whatever, but the segments probably were recycled umpteen gajillion times, or featured variations that were so slight that our parents might've thought every episode was the same episode.


I'd say the biggest shakeup was when Sesame Street confronted all children with the prospect of mortality when Mr. Hooper died. Which I remember crying about as a wee lad in 1983.
 
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Re: has sesame street out lived it's usefulness?

To be fair, though, they did that back in the good ol' days, too.

Let's count the segments that'd repeat themselves:

- The Martians. (Nooooopenopenopenopenopenope.....Yupyupyupyupyupy upyup)
- The two-headed monster that'd pronounce two halves of words.
- The chef dropping X number of pies on himself.
- Onetwothree FOUR FIVE six seveneight NINE TEN ELEVEN TWELVE!!!
- Grover serving a hamburger to that blue headed guy.
- Kermit as the reporter wearing the raincoat.
- The typwriter. (Numenumenu...)

yep, all too true. don't forget the guy who may or may not have been jim henson dressed as a chef (but was def voiced by him) falling down the stairs with a cake. that used to scare me as a kid.....even though you knew he was ok at the end ;o).

but at least the above skits, most of the time like with kermit the reporter, and grover the waiter, has something unique in them to make them memorable. these modern skits don't seem to have that.
they even re animated the 'stick of butter, loaf of bread and container of milk' skit and it looks worse than before...
Nowhere NEAR as charming as the original hand animated one..
 
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Re: has sesame street out lived it's usefulness?

Well, the "charming" quality is probably more a matter of nostalgia and adult perspective. I'll bet in 30 years, people who are kids today will be complaining about how AI-animated cartoons are nowhere near as good as the good ol' human-using-a-mouse CGI shows they loved as kids.

Anyway, Sesame Street -- like much of children's television -- is steeped in repetition. I think it's probably better to say that it's more about providing consistency and predictability for kids, which allows them to feel as if they're grasping the concepts, and are gaining mastery of the world around them. I don't have a problem with repetition per se. It's repetitive annoying things that, well, annoy me. I mean, say what you will, but the Pinball song was freakin' catchy. Whereas a lot of other kids music...sucks.

This is why I bought my friends copies of They Might Be Giants' album Here Comes Science, and the Caspar Babypants album when they first had kids. If you have to listen to kids music, it might as well be decent.
 
Re: has sesame street out lived it's usefulness?

Well, the "charming" quality is probably more a matter of nostalgia and adult perspective. I'll bet in 30 years, people who are kids today will be complaining about how AI-animated cartoons are nowhere near as good as the good ol' human-using-a-mouse CGI shows they loved as kids.

Anyway, Sesame Street -- like much of children's television -- is steeped in repetition. I think it's probably better to say that it's more about providing consistency and predictability for kids, which allows them to feel as if they're grasping the concepts, and are gaining mastery of the world around them. I don't have a problem with repetition per se. It's repetitive annoying things that, well, annoy me. I mean, say what you will, but the Pinball song was freakin' catchy. Whereas a lot of other kids music...sucks.

This is why I bought my friends copies of They Might Be Giants' album Here Comes Science, and the Caspar Babypants album when they first had kids. If you have to listen to kids music, it might as well be decent.

I agree, let's face it Mr Rogers had a formula to his show too even if the subjects were different daily. Once in a while he'd shake things up by going on a tour of a place in Pittsburgh to see how things were made (even up until he retired) so that was like a special treat. I always liked his show better than Sesame. Actually I used to watch PBS all day and a lot of the shows were public broadcasts for schools so I'd see sesame and rogers in the morning and then science and art shows (the art chest?) in the afternoons when schools would show the episodes live.

Not sesame street but the good old days of PBS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1KRC1TYvhw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaNe_iVcYIM
 
Sesame Street doesn't resemble the show I watched in the 80's AT ALL. Now when my kids turn it on, all I see is Elmo and Abby, and they are super obnoxious characters. That's about it. Not the show I grew up on for sure.
 
Re: has sesame street out lived it's usefulness?

The inside secret is The Count kind of lost it one day and they had to make changes after this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Wd-Q3F8KM

Hahahahaha! I remember this! Is this the oldest thing on the intarwebz, or that the "Farting Preacher"?

Regardless, god bless Sesame Street for exposing kids of all ethnicities to KLEZMER music!

*edit* But seriously, and on topic: "Sesame Street" began it's decline when it started condescending to children, instead of talking to them to like people.
 
This is gonna sound weird...but well with me that's normal.

I never watched this as a young kid but for some reason when I was like ten until maybe twelve I watched it,or was that at thirteen? all I know is I did not watch this when I was supposed to but a bit older.

However I've never watched it since,I do remember I found the muppet show funnier as a kid,Swedish Chef!! still haven't watched any of that for years.
 
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I keed, I keed!
 

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