Wed, Oct 27, 1971
The third episode of The Electric Company starts out with the short vowel U as Morgan Freeman and assistant Stephen Gustafson spell out three words containing a U in the middle - fun, bun, and but. Rita Moreno then chimes in with four more - bus, bug, tug, and tub, all four of which she writes on a bus stop sign. She later sings the song "Unbutton Your Heart", a lovelorn rock song filled with "un" words like "unkind" and "unzip". Skip Hinnant's character Norman Neat, Man on the Street makes his very first appearance (his first four, in fact!) interviewing passersby about their favorite words. Another first: John and Faith Hubley's cartoon "True Blue Sue" makes its debut to introduce the topic UE to the show. Freeman shows up with another UE word: "glue", in big white letters which he glues to the wall. But perhaps he was a little careless with the glue - he winds up with his hands stuck to his workbench! Next, Freeman and Hinnant don sweaters with letters and recite a short poem about the letters Q and U. The QU sound returns in a game show setting - Wild Guess, featuring announcer Ken Kane (Bill Cosby) and host Bess West (Rita Moreno). Following that is more of the letter U, albeit its long sound, found in words like "dude" and "cute". You'll hear plenty of those kinds of words in the song "An E on the End", which introduces The Electric Company to one of its most popular topics - Silent E. While Tom Lehrer's famous song doesn't show up in this episode, two other famous animations do - one sees the Blond-Haired Cartoon Man (voiced by Mel Brooks) perform his "I am Cute Very" routine ("Who's the dummy writing this show?") and the other tells the story of a talking dog named Spot. Scanimate words include "pup" and "quake" and the last word is "quiet".