Sesame Street Saturdays - Season 40: Week 4

Please welcome back our good friend Shane Keating (Oscarfan) for his next installment of reviews from Sesame Street's landmark 40th Season!

Alrighty now! Another week of shows, another review! #4200 will not be included, unfortunately.


EPISODE 4198 – MARY, MARY QUITE CONTRARY

STREET SCENE
Gordon finds Mary Mary Quite Contrary, from the nursery rhyme, digging dirt around Oscar’s can. She intends to build a garden there, complete with silver bells and cockle shells and three pretty maids all in a row (who pot out and sing whenever they’re mentioned). Oscar, annoyed, asks her to move, but since she does the contrary of everything she is told, she refuses. Gordon then tells her that flowers grow in a garden, and not bells or shells. She plants a bunch of pretty flowers (with help from her assistant, Mother Goose). This gets unneeded attention from Alan, Gina and Bob, who love the smell and look of the garden. Oscar tries squirting her with Fluffy, but his water helps the flowers grow. He grabs his BlechBerry and calls up Hairy Hairy, the grouch version of Mary Mary. She puts stinkweeds and skunk cabbage in the garden and brings pigs. This causes commotion, which Oscar loves. Mary learns he wants the garden to stay, making her leave (since she does the opposite). Once cleaned up, Oscar is glad to have the pretty flowers gone, but he’s still stuck with the singing maids.

Hidden Gem: Gordon’s newspaper features a cover story about the Falling Baker from the Number Song series from season 1.


HIGHLIGHTS

• Jennie and Abby make a garden using magic
• A cartoon about the letter Q. A kingdom page proclaims Queen Quagmire is approaching and gets annoyed by a quacking, deadpan duck.
• Ernie cleans up his toys to help remember where he will keep Rubber Duckie (new music added).
• Zoe, Abby and Rosita show “between”

CONCLUSION
Oscar has always been my favorite character, so when there’s a whole street story about him, I get giddy. The story was very funny and chaos is always a good comedy trick. The Q cartoon is one of my favorite modern Sesame cartoons, and the reused Ernie and Bert sketch was good too. The “Just Between Us Girls” sketch was all right, not really funny though (it seemed like an unfunny remake of a similar sketch with Telly, Zoe and Elmo).


EPISODE 4199 – SPARKLE SPECKLE FAIRY FRECKLES

STREET SCENE
Alan watches Elmo and Abby play as her freckles being sparkling. She calls the Fairy Doctor-person (another variation of Joey M.’s Fairy Godperson), who concludes she has the “Sparkle Frackle Fairy Freckles”, claiming they will soon come off and hide, being masters at camouflage. To get them back on, they all need to say the magic phrase “Fricka, fracka, Freckle back-a”. Abby’s freckles come off and begin flying all over the street and hide on things with small circles on them. As they look, they find the 6 freckles on a box of cereal, Rosita’s flower drawing (and her signature), Baby Bear’s underpants (much to his embarrassment), Leela’s nose ring and Cookie Monster’s cookie.

Hidden Gem: During the freckle chase scene, music inspired by the “30 Dots” cartoons from 1969 is played.


HIGHLIGHTS

• Prairie Dawn hosts “American I” (from season 38)
• A film of 6 people dancing in the park
• Cab Callomouse shows “here” and “there” in song.

CONCLUSION
The street story was alright. The rest of the episode was practically nothing but repeats. It’s a shame that “American I” is the only Prairie Dawn thing we’ve seen all season. Frankly, I never cared for the Cab Callomouse cartoons, mostly because they went on for a while, like “Live at the Lunar Lounge”. However, his song was short, so I didn’t mind much.

I‘m not done with summaries, so see you next time!









The Muppet Mindset by Ryan Dosier.