Permit me to introduce you to a couple of our Irish friends. The big purple one you see on the left in the picture above is Potto Monster. He’s a jovial, caring, slightly neurotic inventor. The redhead with the big ears on the right is Hilda the Hare. She’s a rambunctious and energetic Irish Hare. And they’re the best friends who populate Sesame Tree, our adaptation of Sesame Street, produced for the children of Northern Ireland.

‘Potto’s Heard of Cows,’ episode 7 of the second season of Sesame Tree, centers on a pop-up book of animals, which creeps-out Potto to no end. When he turns a page and up pops a white, wooly sheep, Potto shrieks and ducks for cover.

“What is it, Potto?” Hilda asks.

“That sweater has a face!” Potto cries.

(Of course, as this is a series made for Northern Ireland, the clothing item is called a “jumper,” not a “sweater,” but I’ve translated it to a more local, American dialect for the sake of this blog.)

 That sweater has a face. A pretty amusing joke, if I do say so myself. Not that I wrote the joke or anything, but I did have a hand in its creation, by killing the originally written joke.

As Sesame Workshop’s Associate Producer on the Sesame Tree series, part of my job was to help train the local Irish creative and production team in all things Sesame: the unique Sesame model, process, culture, characters, attitude … the whole shebang. The goal being that the finished product, Sesame Tree in this case, feels like a cohesive part of the “longest street in the world,” Sesame Street.

Part of this training process includes reviewing and commenting on early drafts of scripts. My colleagues and I make a concerted effort not to be overbearing in our comments, and we take special care to be sensitive to the differing social and cultural norms of the country we’re producing the Sesame adaptation for. Even so, it is inevitable that sometimes a joke is going to get killed.

In this case, the originally written joke didn’t involve a sheep at all. It was a jellyfish. Originally, Potto turns the page of his pop-up book of animals, and up jumps a picture of a jellyfish, at which he screams in fright.

“Potto, it’s just a jellyfish,” Hilda says to him.

“A jellyfish?” Potto responds, “But it looks like a sneeze!”

It looks like a sneeze … a jellyfish looks like a sneeze?

When I first read the joke in the first draft of the ‘Potto’s Heard of Cows’ script, I had to pause a moment, and think about it. Yes, I realized, if the sneeze results in the release of a large amount of mucus, I guess it could look a little like a jellyfish. And indeed, once I had thought about it for a while, I thought it a funny idea, if also a little gross. During the script review meeting with Veronica Wulff, Sesame Workshop Producer, and Natascha Crandall, Director of Educational Content, we all were of the same mind: kill the joke.

“Sorry, Danny, snot jokes aren’t very ‘Sesame,’” my kill comment began in our first draft notes.

“Let alone the fact that we can’t expect the young audience to connect the idea of a sneeze resulting in so much snot that it happens to look like a jellyfish – an animal a lot of children might not even recognize. Please use an animal more normal to a child.”

And like that, the jellyfish became a sheep, and the sneeze became a sweater with eyes. It was simpler, and funnier. A joke that was originally too abstract for our young audience became more accessible, all the while maintaining the absurdity of Potto Monster’s character. In my mind, our comment had done Danny Nash, the writer, a favor. It had resulted in a better joke. The episode turned out to be one he could be proud of. Everyone seemed happy with the change, and no feathers had gotten ruffled. Production moved on. The Sesame Workshop international adaptation process had worked again.

Or so I thought.

“You killed my favorite joke!” Danny told me with exaggerated outrage.

It had been about two years since ‘Potto’s Head of Cows’ was first broadcast, and it had receded well into the back of back of my memory of past projects. Danny was visiting New York, so I’d taken him to one of my favorite Greek restaurants, well off the beaten path of Times Square tourists. Now Danny had decided to interrupt this casual dinner amongst former colleagues to confront me about something that’s been eating at him for a long time: I killed his favorite joke. The jellyfish looking like a sneeze was his favorite joke!

I was completely set aback.

“Your favorite joke? Really?”

So I repeat the standard line that we’d established with our script notes two years previous: It was a good joke – funny – for adults. But Sesame Tree was for kids, and jellyfish just aren’t familiar animals to most kids, and the idea that a jellyfish might look like a mound of snot would be even less familiar.

“Unfamiliar to American kids, maybe.” Danny told me.

He proceeded to explain a joke which only the Irish – whether child or adult – could properly get.

Danny asked me to imagine a parent and young child in America, walking along a beach and coming across the familiar sight of jellyfish, slimy-looking sludge, washed up onto the shore.

“What’s that?” the child asks.

The parent, being playful, might answer: “Why, it’s seal snot.”

To which the child would laugh at the silly idea and say, “No it’s not!”

(And maybe the parent, if cheeky, would reply: “Yes, it’s snot!”)

“But that joke would not happen like that in Ireland.” Danny continues.

“In Ireland, seal snot is exactly what that jellyfish on the beach is. Exactly!”

Once Danny has made sure that he had me completely confused, he continues.

“In Irish – not in English – in Irish, the name for jellyfish is ‘smugairle roin,’ which literally means ‘seal snot.’ It’s a joke, embedded in the Irish language itself!

So, in Ireland, when a parent and child walk along a beach and come across jellyfish, a parent can say: “Look! A seal must have a cold!”

And the child would get it!

(And maybe the child, if clever, would run with the joke and say: “Yeah! He’s sneezed all over the beach!”)

With that explanation, all was clear to this ignorant American, and I apologized to Danny for killing his favorite joke.

A darn good joke it was too. Seal snot, and all.

The Sesame Workshop Blog

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Sesame Workshop CEO Melvin H. Ming and Takalani Sesame's Kami

Throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia there are numerous health risks that threaten women and children. Diarrhea, pneumonia, malnutrition and obesity extend across borders and impact millions. That’s why we are reaffirming and deepening our commitment to the United Nation Secretary General’s Every Woman Every Child movement. The movement aims to mobilize and intensify global efforts to improve the health of women and children around the world.

In addition to its support for Every Woman Every Child, Sesame Workshop is seeking to collaborate with organizations to help support an unprecedented new global health initiative, “Healthy Children, Health Lives Around the World.” Through this program Sesame workshop will aim to improve the lives of millions of women and children by harnessing the power of educational media and the enduring charm of the Sesame Street Muppets to promote health awareness, knowledge and positive health choices globally.

As part of our support for Every Woman, Every Child, Sesame Workshop has produced a public service announcement featuring Kami from Takalani Sesame, the South African version of Sesame Street, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“I am deeply grateful to Sesame Workshop for lending its creativity, passion and global popularity to Every Woman Every Child, which is working to save millions of lives,” said Ban Ki-moon. “I am proud to partner with Kami and her friends, who can advance the global health agenda around the world in ways I never could.  I hope others will join our global movement for the health of every woman and every child.”

Sesame Workshop’s approach brings together local educators, child development specialists, researchers, producers, writers, and artists to develop programs that meet the developmental needs of children in a particular country or region. In Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, we produce multimedia initiatives promoting general health and hygiene. In South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria, Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland and Lesotho, our multimedia campaign is working towards ensuring parents, children and educators have all the information they need to combat HIV and AIDS as well as respect those already afflicted. And in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and China, our multimedia approach is working to make sure that parents and children have all the information necessary to practice water safety, hygiene and good nutrition.

“For 43 years, Sesame Workshop has been making a meaningful difference in the lives of children by addressing their critical developmental needs through innovative and engaging educational content,” said H. Melvin Ming, President and CEO of Sesame Workshop. “We’ve reached hundreds of millions children and families in over 150 countries worldwide, including many who would otherwise have no access to early childhood education.”

Click here to learn more about the work Sesame Workshop does to improve the lives of children around the world.

The Sesame Workshop Blog