Happy Birthdays and Sunny Days

With the potential for Mr. Rogers to nearly disappear from the airwaves, it's nice to see something else continue an unparalleled run on TV.

Why 'Sesame Street' still counts
Monday, August 11th 2008, 1:26 PM

I like the number 39 because Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella wore it.

It also seems to work pretty well for television.

Jack Benny, one of the great TV personalities, had a running gag about never getting older than 39.

The greatest sitcom ever, "The Honeymooners," is most famous for the 39 episodes it filmed in 1955-56.

This morning "Sesame Street" enters its 39th season, having lost nothing except its newness.

CLICK TO SEE CELEB STARS ON "SESAME STREET."

"Sesame Street" is such a part of the culture that to anyone born after 1965, Oscar and Bert and all the others are family.

So they rarely surprise us anymore.

But they do still delight.

This latest season kicks off with a show featuring "Telly Monster and the Golden Triangle of Destiny," a spoof of "Indiana Jones."

Many of its younger viewers won't get the Indiana Jones reference, or the hat. But they'll have fun, while their parents will find it at worst painless and often charming.

That's probably one reason "Sesame Street" has lasted so long. It doesn't overreach and aim for blinding brilliance with every line.

While it doesn't condescend to kids, it also recognizes that's what they are: kids. Sometimes they just want silly.

In one scene, when Texas Telly is looking for the Golden Triangle of Destiny, he gets a hint that it may be underneath something in the Laundromat.

An energetic search follows, during which piles of socks and neatly folded shirts are randomly tossed into the air and scattered on the floor. There, they are forgotten despite the pleas of Leela, an Indian-American, the show's newest cast member, who joins this season.

If "Sesame Street" went strictly by the rulebook, Telly and his cohorts would go back, pick up all that laundry and put it back neatly where they found it.

But if doesn't happen in life, "Sesame Street" figures, maybe sometimes it shouldn't happen on the show, either. There's always a little anarchy in the lives of children, however hard parents try to order, coax, plead and pound it out of them, and there's still a little anarchy on "Sesame Street."

"Sesame Street" doesn't shy away from good deeds, of course. When Telly finds the Golden Triangle of Destiny, he decides not to keep it but to donate it to the Museum of Triangular History so everyone can enjoy it.

Nor do the writers forget that however endearing we find the cute parts, their show's core mission is to teach fundamental things like letters and numbers.

This episode features the letter "L," and tempting as it might have been for the writers, it never slips in even a remote reference to the fact there's another L-word show out there in another part of television.

There's plenty of time for that later. On "Sesame Street," the fundamental things apply.