Bert the Allowed Cloud ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

I'm sure you all agree: Anything to do with 'Sesame Street' is a laugh-out-loud riot! But now I'm much too old to use 'Sesame Street' sketches to learn letters and numbers. Instead I analyze them and speculate on them - like all adults do!

In this installment, we learn that Bert can be the very personification of an Allowed Cloud:



That sketch is said to be from 1973, but it ran for years. (The airing posted on YouPube seems to be preceded by a segment featuring the dogs with human hands, a concept that I don't think appeared on 'Sesame Street' until at least the '80s.)

As Ernie prepares to count the cups and saucers, Bert lapses into Allowed Cloud mode only 12 seconds into the skit. The fact that Bert had opted to buy such fine china even though he never throws fancy parties and has to constantly worry about Ernie breaking it reflects poorly on his judgment.

When you get to Ernie counting the second saucer (halfway through the clip), this skit becomes downright hilarious as Bert nearly loses his cool!

The sketch also seems to dispel the long-running urban legend that Ernie can only count to 6. (A similar legend says Bert can only count to 5 and thinks that any number higher than 5 is a massive hoax. But this is debunked by other sketches.)

The real highlight of this segment happens when Ernie prepares to put the dishes away. Ernie dances around the room with the fragile cups and saucers as Bert totally loses his shit! But then (spoiler warning) we discover that the stack of cups and saucers won't fall, because the ol' Ern glued them together!

In other words, that fine china is ru after all! It's always funny when valuable items in TV shows get ruined. But this time, instead of ruining the dishes by breaking them, Ernie destructs them by pasting them together.

I wonder if any young viewers ever tried gluing dishes together because they saw Ernie do it!

Reportedly, the portrait of the comedic duo falling off the wall at the end of the skit was a blooper. Producers of the ol' Ses left this blooper alone because it was so uproarious.

Bert and Ernie. Truly kings among men.