Studio Skits

During the early production pilots and test episodes of Sesame Street, after the puppet and cartoon segments were finalized, the format for the framing segments was still in question. Producer David Connell invited Clark Gesner, author of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, to create a pilot for these framing segments with his own inserts intersperses. These segments focused on J.J. and Sheila, two children whose inner thoughts were literalized. When J.J. becomes angry with Shiela, he fantasizes about hitting her over the head. This confuses viewers about whether an event had happened or not. Head writer Jon Stone also objected to the "very clean and high tech, plastic looking" aesthetic of the sets. Although Gesner's inserts, usually involving dots and hands, were kept, the framing concept was abandoned in favor of Sesame Street. The original pilots