Howdy folks! Remember last year when I made a video collecting all the times Roscoe Orman as Gordon welcomed us to Sesame Street with his patented “Oh hi!”? Well, I’m back again with another tribute to a beloved Sesame Street human cast member. This time, it’s the eternally wonderful Sonia Manzano, aka Maria!
As alluded to in the article for the Gordon video, I think Sonia as Maria is hands-down the best at doing the “exasperated take to the camera” thing all the humans used to do. So, shortly after the Gordon video came together, I knew the next one would have to be a collection of Sonia’s trademark on the show. I knew how I wanted it to be, but I just never got around to actually start producing it.
That is, until I was recently able to attend a screening of the new documentary about Sonia, Street Smart: Lessons from a TV Icon (read our review here!). To my delight, Sonia spends a minute in the film talking about doing those takes to the camera. She remarks that it was how she understood the role of the humans of the show, playing the straight man to whatever Muppet is next to them, and it also acts as a way to communicate with the parents watching with their kids. So, seeing the documentary officially acknowledge it meant I finally had to knuckle down and fire up Final Cut.
A couple of general notes before we get to the video:
- This is not a comprehensive collection of all her takes to the camera; it’s set to a two-minute song, and there’s no effective way to present them all. That also would have required me to scrub through several hundred more episodes of the show, and Shane ain’t got time for that! This also isn’t necessarily a collection of “the best ones,” they’re generally ones I picked from the episodes I did scrub through, but I made sure the ones I picked were good!
- I saw a number of comments regarding the Gordon video saying “Roscoe’s not dead” or “You made me think he died!” since the title included the word “tribute.” You can pay tribute to people who are living! It’s a pretty common thing to do!
- This video unintentionally also turned into a tribute to Maria’s many different hairdos over the decades.
But enough (Fix-It) shop talk, let’s get to the video! If you enjoyed it, let me know! And if you didn’t enjoy it, feel free to make a frustrated face into whatever camera is nearest you!
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By Shane Keating – [email protected]
