(Jewish Group) Fifty Years of 'Sesame Street'

My husband Jonathan’s two earliest memories are watching the moon landing and watching the premiere of Sesame Street. My own (very slightly later) childhood recollections include being hypnotized by Sesame Street’s 1970s trippy hand-drawn animated segments. Perhaps you, too, remember “The Madrigal Alphabet,” with those psychedelic morphing fairies and crayfish. Or “The Pinball Game,” which taught us about the number 12—sung, I learned just today, by the Pointer Sisters. Or the perky Ladybugs’ Picnic, in which those hip hippodamia “talked about the high price of furniture and rugs, and fire insurance for ladybugs.” Or what about the recurring “Jazzy Spies” cartoons, with vocals by Grace Slick and ever-shifting visuals of freaky wizards, devils, elevators, and trenchcoated creepers? Or that flower-bedecked, sitar-driven, Maharishi counting number that made us feel like tiny George Harrisons, though we didn’t even know it yet! In my family, we had to lunge for the set whenever that klutzy baker came on, because my little brother Andy would start sobbing every time the poor fellow tumbled down the stairs, splattering his five fancy fruitcakes, seven pumpkin pies, or 10 chocolate layer cakes. A sensitive soul, Andy could never be convinced the baker wasn’t hurt. Since I’m pretty sure we didn’t have a remote control yet, the rest of us had to be quick.

This year, Sesame Street turns 50. PBS, its original home, aired a celebrity-stuffed birthday celebration last weekend that, sadly, barely touched on what made it special. Yes, it was fun (if a little frustrating) to have Patti Labelle do a pastiche of snippets of classic numbers, touching to see Solange’s tribute to the classic “I Can Remember (Bread, Milk, Butter),” and meaningful to have Lucy Liu explain that the show helped her learn English. But there was entirely too much Meghan Trainor and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and entirely too little depth or grit. The few seconds of Patton Oswalt’s favorite Sesame Street memory—watching Stevie Wonder and his band play “Superstition” in 1973, on a much less manicured street than the one later generations grew up watching— felt authentic and chaotic and funky in a way nothing else in the special did. The final few seconds, in which Grover asked Kate McKinnon, “You wanna move in?” and Kate looked away, murmured a weirdly slow “yeaaaahhhh,” and curled her tongue, had more quirk and personality than the rest of the special put together.

Also, since I am bitter, the “new” voices of Count von Count, Big Bird, and Oscar made me want to cry.

For me, Sesame Street was never about its famous visitors (though I do fondly recall Madeline Kahn dueting with Kermit on “Sing After Me”). It was about the regulars, human and Muppet, and the glory of a diverse, rundown yet homey street in which folks of all stripes could learn and hang out together.

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