When JD and Jarrod did a live chat they responded to my question asking if they dislike modern Sesame Street.
Jarrod Fairclough: I like modern Sesame Street.
JD Hansel: Yeah, I don't really have too many big problems with modern SS.
Jarrod: I also don't watch it much though.
JD: Right, that's the thing, I'm not in the mood to watch it, it's not something I'm personally attached to.
Jarrod: Most of my SS watching is through their YT channel, and then when they do primetime specials, I get press copies of that, that's about it.
JD: Yeah, I watch a lot of the YT stuff, a lot of their parody stuff is really good, certainly if you go back a couple years to the Cookie's Crumby Pictures, some of my favorite SS moments come from CCP, like that stupid bit with Cookie Monster and a pita bread, "What you think, Pita? How should I know? I'm just a piece of bread." One of the stupidest lines in SS history and one of the most satisfying moments in the whole series, I love it! But, I think cause we do some amount of parody on our show that's in response newer SS stuff, on the podcast, sometimes we are doing jokes about Elmo being drunk and Big Bird being high and stuff like that. With Drunk Elmo, that didn't come from anything we noticed in any performance, that just came from a funny idea, me driving in the car doing voices, noticing I could do Elmo, noticing it would be funnier if it was a drunk Elmo. Which is a very fragile bit to do, you can easily see that going wrong and just being crude, stupid, not at all funny if not handled correctly, on something like Family Guy or something like that. So we had to do it carefully with a lot of knowledge about the character. I can't remember exactly how High Big Bird happened other than we talked before about how we think sometimes Matt Vogel's voice for Big Bird comes across as a bit tired or loopy. That's not ALWAYS the case.
Jarrod: And please don't take that as a disparaging comment. Like, he's an extremely good Big Bird.
JD: Yes, in many respects, he is an extremely good BB, it's just a different BB than the one that we're used to. I mean even when Caroll Spinney over the past 10 years has performed BB, it's been a quieter, more tired BB.
Jarrod: Which I think we can forgive, considering the man's 84.
JD: But also because you've got Elmo there, right? You've got Elmo as this huge force of energy on the show, he's the little kid who's got all the energy and who everyone's watching. So for BB to represent the older 6 and 7-year-olds in the audience, he's gotta be a little bit toned down. And it's nice to have a character who's a little bit more, I don't wanna say intellectual, but BB does seem like he's got a good head on his shoulders. And so that's fair, but every now and again, Steve and I do think BB sounds kinda high, and so we thought once we found out Matt Vogel was officially BB, why not go ahead and introduce our own high version of BB? Mostly just cause, we wanted something to compliment Drunk Elmo, we thought that would be funny.
Jarrod: And we've also discussed doing other things, where we thought "Are we going a little bit too far, are we now just repeating the joke?"
JD: Yeah, a lot of the comedy that we do on the podcast is a very fine line, because on one hand, we're doing parody of things and people that we really respect and really like, so we gotta make sure we're not ever being too mean.
Welcome to the Muppet Central Forum!
Back to the Rock Season 2
Sesame Street Season 54
The Muppets Mayhem premieres
Bear arrives on Disney+
Sam and Friends Book
