Grover
Template:Infobox Sesame Street character Grover is a Muppet character on the popular television show Sesame Street. Self-described as lovable and furry, he is a monster who almost never uses contractions when he speaks and sings (except on rare occasions).
In his earliest appearances, Grover was originally named Fuzzyface by fans depicted as having dark green fur and an orange nose. By the second season of Sesame Street, this was changed to the more familiar puppet with blue fur and a pink nose (although the original puppet was used for the initial appearance of Grover's mother). Grover's birthday is October 14.
Appearances
"Super Grover"
In one series of segments on Sesame Street, Grover changes into his alter-identity "Super Grover". A parody of Superman, this monster superhero goes out to fix things, but doesn't always prove helpful. He wears a medieval knight's helmet and a cape emblazoned with the letter G tied around his neck.[1]
Charlie's Restaurant
Another of the more frequent skit segments featuring Grover involves him taking a series of customer service jobs. One of his customers is always Mr. Johnson, a mustachioed customer who invariably becomes frustrated at Grover's poor service and/or his (Grover's) insistance that he is serving him properly.
The first Grover-Mr. Johnson series of skits, set at "Charlie's Restaurant," aired in the early 1970s; here, Grover is employed as a waiter and Mr. Johnson is his customer. The skits followed the same basic premise: Mr. Johnson would order a menu item, Grover would serve the customer, a disagreement results (usually) as a result of Grover's mistakes, and Grover attempting (often, more than once) to correct the mistake with varying degrees of success. Under this backdrop, the skits served to teach the childhood audience basic concepts such as same and different, big and little, hot and cold, the alphabet, following directions and patience, among other things.
Repeats of the "Charlie's Restaurant" series of skits aired for many years on Sesame Street. In the years since, new Grover-Mr. Johnson skits have been produced, with Grover taking other customer service jobs and Mr. Johnson as his hapless customer. Every time, Mr. Johnson recognizes Grover as "that waiter from Charlie's." Grover's jobs have ranged from that of a taxi driver and a photographer to a flight attendant and singing telegram artist. One skit parodied the ABC television series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in a segment where Grover began remodeling Mr. Johnson's home against his express wishes.
Other segments
Grover also has an instructional persona who wears a cap and gown to provide educational context for simple, everyday things. His lessons are often wrong, leaving himself open to correction by a group of kids or Muppets. This, combined with the failings of the Super Grover character, means that Grover is very self-conscious and timid. He is often a source of slapstick humor and often accidentally injures himself.
Early in the series, Grover would often greet Kermit the Frog by running up to him and yelling, "Hey, froggy babeee!" and then giving him a hard slap on the back, which knocked him over.
Global Grover is a more recent series of segments in which Grover hosts a trip to a foreign country to learn about their culture and customs.
Grover is the favorite character and subsequently the nickname of Amy Abbott (Emily VanCamp) in the TV series Everwood. [1]
Mother
"Grover's Mommy" plays an integral but often unrecognized role on Sesame Street. She has been seen almost exclusively in print, including the many illustrated books starring Grover. She was also occasionally seen in photographs, as a photo puppet, such as on the cover of Volume 4 of The Sesame Street Treasury. Over the course of time, her appearance has fluctuated greatly.
While Grover's mom is a regular character in Sesame books, his father is almost entirely absent. There is only one reference to Grover's Daddy in the Sesame canon, and it's spoken in passing, with Daddy offscreen.
Her earliest known appearance as a Muppet is a 1970s sketch in which Grover speaks to the audience about being afraid of the dark. At the end of the sketch, his mom (Frank Oz) enters his room to kiss him goodnight. Another early appearance (circa 1981) involves his mother (Kathy Mullen) coming into the bathroom while Grover is telling the audience about how to take a bath.
She has recently appeared (performed by Stephanie D'Abruzzo) in a brief Elmo's World sequence (from the "Families" episode), with her son as his alter-ego Super Grover, as her own alter-ego, "Super-Mommy". Grover crashlands, screaming "Moooommy!" and his mom follows yelling "Soooonny!" crashing on top of him. They recover, acknowledge each other, and both faint.
In A Celebration of Me, Grover (performed by Eric Jacobson), Mrs. Monster[2] attends a benefit dinner in her son's honour.
In her first appearance in puppet form, she was gray-green in color. In later appearances, she was blue.
Books
In the 1971 children's book The Monster at the End of This Book, Grover goes to great effort to keep the reader from turning the pages of the book, because there is a monster on the final page. Despite Grover nailing pages together and building a brick wall to block access, eventually the reader does reach the end, where it is discovered that Grover is the monster at the end of the book.
In 1974, Grover went on a learning expedition in Grover and The Everything In The Whole Wide World Museum. He tours rooms such as "The Long Thin Things You Can Write With Room", as well as "The Things That Make So Much Noise You Can't Think Room". Grover wanders through "The Things That are Light Room", returns a rock to "The Things That are Heavy Room", and just when he wonders whether it is possible to have a museum that holds everything in the whole wide world, he comes upon a door labeled "Everything Else", which opens to take him out into the world. As of 1996, Publishers Weekly ranked the book at seventy-nine on their list of best-selling children's paperbacks.[3] It was written by Norman Stiles and Daniel Wilcox, and illustrated by Joe Mathieu.
International
Sesame Street is modified for different national markets, and Grover is often renamed.
- In Germany his name is Grobi, a possible diminutive of the German grob, meaning "rough" or "rude".
- In Portugal he is Gualter (Walter).
- In Spain he is called Coco.
- In Latin America and Puerto Rico, he is known as Archibaldo.
- In Brazil he is known as Arquibaldo, although recent broadcasts retain the name Grover.
- In Norway, he is known as Gunnar.
- In Egypt, he is called Antar.
- In Indonesia, he is called Gatot.
- In Israel, he is called Kruvi, which is a play on the word kruv ("cabbage").
- In Turkey, he is known as Açıkgöz, meaning "leery".
- In the Netherlands and Sweden, on the other hand, he remains Grover.
References
- ^ a b Associated Press interview Grover steps into 'Sesame' spotlight by Christy Lemire, April 10, 2003
- ^ "Whose sock did Mrs. Monster find?" Let's Get Dressed!, 1989
- ^ "All-Time Bestselling Paperback Children's Books". Publishers Weekly. 243 (No. 6). New York: Cahners Publishing Company: 30. 1996-02-05. ISSN 0000-0019.
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