On Sunday night, I accidentally stumbled onto a PBS documentary celebrating 30 years since the end of the absolutely wonderful children’s series The Electric Company.
For people my age, growing up hooked on PBS and TVOntario programs, The Electric Company was just mindblowing. A kid’s show that was hip, funny, sarcastic…AND educational? A kid’s show that included Bill Cosby AND Rita Moreno AND Morgan Freeman in the cast? A kids’ show that used SPIDERMAN as part of its reading program? A show that took pop culture references and transformed them into stylish educational tools, be it 2001-A Space Odyssey or Easy Rider (or should that say Easy Reader…uhh…uhh…uhh!)? We’re talking lots of wow factor on display…
In short, we thirtysomethings have something special to cherish in The Electric Company…and watching clips and animations from the episodes brought it all back for me…so much so that I howled with pleasure at each and every sketch that I re-lived, whether it be Fargo North, Decoder…or Count Dracula taking a bubble bath in his casket…or special guest star Grover getting directions from Crank and Vi in order to get back to Sesame Street!
So, in honour of the thirty years since the end of the show (and its mega-successful arrival on DVD), here are two clips, courtesy of YouTube. Enjoy them as much as I did…and for those of you too young to remember, consider it a taste of the kind of shows that scarred me for life. 
(1) The complete season 5/6 opening credits…the ones re-run for over a decade, and the sequence most of us remember!
(2) One of the great Spiderman segments, that started in season 4 and became a regular part of the program…to my geeky delight!
