SST: Playing Jacks

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

Today's Sesame Street Tuesday is brought to by my sister Amy, because it was her birthday on Sunday and because she gave me the idea for today's clip. I called her the other day and she said that she had suddenly remembered an old Sesame Street clip when she was doing laundry and a sock fell behind the washing machine where she couldn't quite reach it. Her description of the clip didn't ring any bells, but I looked it up and immediately recognized it. However, when I was little I never realized just how melodramatic and hilarious this whole thing is:



This is so hysterical on so many levels that I feel like it needs to be broken down and analyzed:

0:00 - The organ introduces itself. It will become a dear, dear friend over the next 1:42.
0:02 - That poor boy's New York accent is so thick he can hardly spit out his line.
0:11 - Big sister scoffs from the window! Ouch!
0:17 - That is some serious melodrama, folks.
0:26 - "Use dis!" Love that kid!
0:30 - 0:40 - The organ plays the "dejection" leitmotif as the kids make a beeline for the spots where they had been blocked to sit. Real natural, kids.
0:40 - What do you know? The trash can girl just happened to have a big, honkin' magnet in her back pocket! And not just any magnet, but the most clichéd-looking magnet ever, straight out of Plato's World of the Forms.
0:43 - Why would she think that it is a horseshoe? It's even less likely that she would have an old horseshoe in her back pocket. Plus, these New York kids have probably never even seen a horseshoe in real life before.
0:48 - "So waat?" Everything that boy says is solid gold.
0:50-1:13 - The world's longest knot-tying scene ever, even requiring assistance from big sister, who seems to have lost all her snarkiness. The scene comes to a dead stop, but it is resuscitated by the magnet girl's emphatic mission statement, "I'm gonna get that Jack!" She even put her hands on her waist, so you know she's going to get it done.
1:16 - This is suspense of the highest order. It reminds me of the scene in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train where the villain is straining to reach through the sewer grate to grab an incriminating cigarette case. Too bad he didn't have a big, fat horseshoe magnet on him!
1:22 - 1:30 - Wow, that's quite the celebration, considering the whole Lost Jack Crisis of '77 only lasted one minute and ten seconds. (Yes, I did look up the date that this originally aired, 4/11/77, and yes, I do know that I'm a big nerd.)
1:32 - The magnet girl had to take a few seconds to process the enormity of her achievement before she could bust out her triumphant line, "We got the jack back!"
1:34-1:42 - Wait a minute - isn't it still Magnet Girl's turn? She was on threesies! Maybe losing a jack results in losing a turn. That sounds fair.

I bet they don't show this clip on Sesame Street anymore because today's kids wouldn't even know what jacks are. But maybe there's a jacks game on the Wii or something. Hey, that idea has potential - a Wii game with jacks, marbles, four-square, tetherball, and all the recess classics. Much controller-waving fun to be had.

Luckily, my sister's story also had a happy ending. She was able to retrieve the lost sock with much patience and a pair of tongs. However, she forgot to mention if her ordeal also had a melodramatic organ accompaniment. In any case, if would have been a lot easier for her if only the sock had been made of metal.