Tube Talk: Bert has a talk show

Wait, what? Bert? The lov­able Sesame Street char­ac­ter renowned for being grumpy, ir­ri­ta­ble and half of the great­est com­edy duo of our gen­er­a­tion? HE HAS A TALK SHOW?!?

Damn straight. Just a few days ago, PBS re­leased the new YouTube clip “Con­ver­sa­tions with Bert,” in which the Mup­pet host takes a seat with some of Hol­ly­wood’s biggest stars. I’ve watched the in­ter­view many times through and can still hardly be­lieve this is a real thing. Bert in­tro­duces his seg­ment as bring­ing “the art of con­ver­sa­tion, the ex­pe­ri­ence of col­lo­quy, the ad­ven­ture of tête-à-tête to you from my round table of talk.” How ex­tra­or­di­nar­ily as­tute.

Dur­ing the first in­stall­ment, Bert sits down with Andy Sam­berg to dis­cuss the co­me­dian’s pri­vate life, imag­i­na­tion and the his­tory of socks. The clip is with­out a doubt di­rected to­wards a very young au­di­ence, but its humor still man­ages to res­onate with a col­lege-aged crowd. Bert’s hi­lar­i­ous non-se­quiturs and re­mark­ably ex­pres­sive eye­brow make the host thor­oughly en­ter­tain­ing de­spite his sta­tus as a Mup­pet.

Sam­berg joins in Bert’s humor as the two riff back and forth in one of the most en­dear­ing in­ter­views ever to grace the in­ter­net. And de­spite the humor and flu­id­ity, there’s still time for the duo to take a milk break by the clip’s fi­nale, be­cause noth­ing is more de­li­cious or nu­tri­tious than a car­ton of milk. Or so Bert says.

Hope­fully “Con­ver­sa­tions” be­comes an on­go­ing fea­ture from the Sesame Street crew. It’s fun and light­hearted, and as long as Bert brings on more co­me­di­ans like Sam­berg, I greatly look for­ward to later in­stall­ments. Not only does “Con­ver­sa­tions” bring pop­u­lar Hol­ly­wood stars to fam­ily-friendly tele­vi­sion, but brings an el­e­ment of nos­tal­gia and child­hood back to the hearts of older view­ers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxg113O_SRI&feature=player_embedded