I was one of the premier watchers of Sesame Street. When it first came on the air, I was just the right age to watch it, and I did watch it – sometimes twice in one day. It was a different show back then. They’ve made it a lot more PC. For instance, there was a song on Sesame Street when I was watching that went something like this:

One of these things is not like the others.
One of these things just doesn’t belong.
If you guessed this thing is not like the others,
Then, you’re absolutely right!

The word “thing” was generally replaced by a more specific noun, such as “shape” or “toy”. But, I think sometimes the word was “girl” or “boy”, and then we were excluding people from groups.

So now the song’s more elaborate, where you look for one of two or three groups to include the thing in question in. I don’t know if anyone will remember the new song 37 years hence, but I kind of think not. Progress must be made, I suppose.

Another disappointment is the disappearance of the running gag about Snuffleupagus, the Wooly-Mammoth-looking character who, for years, was seen only by the children and Big Bird. They’d try all sorts of things to keep him there until an adult arrived, but he always seemed to amble off before anyone over eight could see him.

I heard this gag was dispensed with so as not to encourage imaginary friends, but I don’t know for sure. It kind of seems unlike an enterprise that always encouraged imagination. Maybe it was the adults’ disbelief that didn’t sit right with the SSPB (Sesame Street Powers that Be).

The biggest change in the Sesame Street format, however, was the introduction of Elmo. I hated him. Perhaps “hate” is too strong a word. But he rubbed me so far the wrong way that I could get sent back ten paces just by hearing his voice. The red furball was bubblegum sweet, innocent, and without a single vice to his name, unless not having a vice is a vice. Plus, Elmo never used pronouns, even when talking about Elmo. (This might be my stickler showing again!)

The other Muppet characters all had their vices, but Elmo had only his wide-eyed naiveté. Cookie Monster had his cookie obsession, The Count needed his numbers, Oscar was the anti-Elmo before there was an Elmo, and Ernie and Bert were as mismatched a pair of friends as you could hope to meet. Elmo had none of that. Worse yet, because so many kids and parents loved him, I knew he wasn’t going away.

I’ve finally started to understand the phenomenon. Elmo wasn’t as naïve as I might have thought. Elmo, you see, knew The Secret, hidden from the masses for centuries, and only recently brought to light by author Rhonda Byrne. Long before her book came out, he’d secured about fifteen minutes of the Sesame Street program, or about 25% of the broadcast, and still made regular appearances during the rest of the show. I don’t have the statistics to back this up, but he must have more airplay on a typical Sesame Street show than any other character.

How did he manage this? Well, his end-of-show segment, called “Elmo’s World”, is all about the Principle of Attraction. He starts the show thinking about a topic, and, from there, things just keep happening. The visitors who come by, the email he receives, and even the local cable TV schedule, all cooperate. Elmo does choose the channel to switch to, but the channel always exists, and there’s always a short show, right on topic, starting right when the TV turns itself on.

Elmo’s mastery of The Secret is not complete. He still has perennial trouble with the window shade that gives him access to Mr. Noodle. He has similar trouble opening the drawer, and you have to think that Elmo is attracting some of the negativity to himself by expecting to have trouble. Elmo also tends to associate with people who don’t give him positive results. He asks three-year-old level questions of a baby, and almost never gets a meaningful answer. He also spends an inordinate amount of time working with Mr. Noodle to get a satisfactory result, when small children reliably deliver without any issue.

But you can’t argue with his overall success. Day after day, he starts with a thought, and makes that thought into an educational segment that PBS keeps paying for again and again. He unites people, animals, and animate objects (things that can talk) toward the goal of expressing this thought, attracting elements of the universe and defying probability at every turn. He is a catalyst. The universe works for him.

Finally, I have to admit that he doesn’t irritate me so much anymore. He keeps my daughter occupied, and probably isn’t completely rotting her brain. He may even be good in small doses. He lets other people talk, and they usually use pronouns. Maybe, at one point, he thought about acceptance, and he attracted mine. I still don’t love him, though.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 10th, 2008 at 9:45 AM and is filed under Steve Thinks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.