Almost everybody knows the way to “Sesame Street.”
The venerable children’s TV series, which premiered in 1969, enters its 55th season Thursday on Max. The new season comes at a turning point for “Sesame Street,” arriving weeks after Max parent company Warner Bros. Discovery announced it would not renew its distribution agreement with Sesame Workshop, the organization that produces the show. Episodes of the show will remain on the streaming service through 2027, and Season 55 will air on PBS this fall.
Despite the upcoming changes, the show’s mission to educate and engage its young audience remains the same.
“At ‘Sesame Street,’ we pride ourselves on trying to create content that feels very necessary and urgent of the times,” says “Sesame Street” executive producer Sal Perez.
New characters and segments have been a part of the evolution of the preschool program over the decades, and to that end, this season will center around an emotional well-being curriculum and how to give children “the tools to talk about their emotions, to name their emotions and to understand what it is that they are feeling and how to deal with it.”
The topic may resonate with young viewers in Los Angeles, as the region reels from devastating wildfires that have affected many families, including ones who had to evacuate, lost their homes or loved ones. (Sesame Workshop has a website with resources on how to talk to your children about emergencies and how to prepare for them.)
This season of “Sesame Street” will focus on emotional well-being, and we get to Elmo experience a range of feelings.
(Richard Termine / Sesame Workshop)
This year’s narrative theme will also lead viewers to see furry, lovable Elmo in a way they haven’t before. Elmo, perhaps the most childlike of the Sesame Street Muppets, gets to show a range of feelings.
“Elmo is sort of the conduit to our audience in a lot of ways,” Perez says. “Kids have all kinds of emotions. They can be happy-go-lucky, but oftentimes they get angry or frustrated. This season, we feature some of those things. We don’t shy away from it.”
It’s part of an effort to show characters modeling positive examples of having and dealing with “very real emotions,” Perez says.
In the season premiere, Elmo gets upset when Rosita’s beach ball knocks over his block tower. He yells at Rosita and exclaims that he wishes they had never played the beach-ball game. A volcano puppet appears to teach Elmo how to take deep, volcano-like breaths, explaining to the little red monster that when you’re angry, it can feel like lava bubbling up inside.
“We think about what is going to make something memorable to a child,” Perez says of the volcano puppet, who will come back throughout the season.
It may be the most emotion Elmo has ever expressed. “I feel like we are pushing him in some ways,” Perez says, before adding with a laugh: “I don’t want to say this is the only time he’s ever been angry. We all know how he feels about Rocco.”
Other segments this season will show Bert upset when Ernie throws him a loud party that he doesn’t want; Rudy’s disappointment when he can’t go to Fairy Camp with his stepsister; Cookie Monster’s nervousness about the first day of cooking school; and Abby getting frustrated when she struggles to learn how to tap dance. The episodes will endeavor to make kids comfortable with their range of emotions.
“We were really trying to be sensitive about what language we use,” Perez says. “There’s some really common language you might use when someone is telling you what’s wrong. Your first reaction is, ‘Oh, it’s OK.’ That sort of language we don’t want to model, because it’s not taking into account the person’s feelings. We want to be able to model for kids how to validate someone’s emotions.”
Michael B. Jordan with the Count. The actor is among the guest stars this season.
(Zach Hyman / Sesame Workshop)
As in previous seasons, a slew of celebrities will stop by to interact with the residents of Sesame Street. Reneé Rapp is featured in the premiere, singing that “feelings are real, so let them show.” Later episodes will include several of-the-moment celebrities: Michael B. Jordan, Noah Kahan, Samara Joy, Jonathan Van Ness, Billie Jean King and Chris Stapleton. Jordan, who was on the show as a child, will be part of a Kwanzaa segment. Kahan will perform a song about being kind to yourself and was also part of a social media segment where he interacts with a stick puppet, a reference to his hit song “Stick Season.”
This season will also see the introduction of “Mecha Builders,” animated STEM-themed shorts that feature robotic versions of Elmo, Cookie Monster and Abby. “When we do bring animation into the show, we think about what is going to be something that feels different and what is something that we just can’t do in live-action,” Perez says. “Thinking of our characters as mecha versions of themselves really allowed us to play with them in a much different sandbox.” The premiere episode finds the trio using a megaphone to understand how sound travels, and another segment has them figuring out how a net will stop a soccer ball from getting away.
What comes next for “Sesame Street” and its distribution once the deal with Warner Bros ends is still unknown. “Hopefully, we will have more news to share relatively soon,” Perez says.
For now, the “Sesame Street” team is at work on Season 56. Viewers will notice some changes next season, particularly more of a focus on core characters, including Elmo, Abby, Cookie Monster and Grover.
“In Season 56, [we are thinking about] what are the characters we want to be a little more consistent with in the stories that we do,” he says. “But characters aren’t going away. We are going to see Big Bird. We are going to see Bert and Ernie and everybody in the neighborhood in a lot of different ways.”
