The Skillz Report

"C" Is For Cookie: Best Video Ever

 

(originally written 11/27/11)

 

 

(jumps on stage, rips microphone from terrified girl)

Cookie Monster’s “C Is For Cookie” video from Sesame Street may well be the best music video of all time!

Hear me out.

 

It begins with CM on-screen ready to educate us on words that begin with the letter C. True to character—which is key to this video’s greatness—he opens the lesson with “Cookie” as starting with C. As music begins to play, CM decides any other words that begin with C are totally unimportant and irrelevant, and proceeds to sing...

 

“C is for Cookie, that’s good enough for me,

C is for Cookie, that’s good enough for me,

C is for Cookie, that’s good enough for me,

OH, Cookie Cookie Cookie starts with C!”

 

So far, I’m into it. The tune is kind of catchy. The point is very clear: CM has no use for any other “C” words besides cookie. He is direct and unapologetic about his feelings. As someone who watched Sesame Street religiously in his youth, I know that CM simply does not care about anything except cookies. He doesn’t hide or sugarcoat that truth. He does not pretend to be someone he is not. And I dig that. Far too often, people waver from their convictions when they become inconvenient or unpopular. This is why I’m no longer a Damon Bruce fan. 

 

But I digress.

 

As the song progresses, CM shows us that not only does cookie start with “C”; if a bite is taken, it can also look like a “C”. It would take a weirdo to bite a cookie in such a way. Challenge accepted. 

 

Finally, CM sends us home with a little help—four additional monsters who have apparently been idling in the shadows all this time are revealed, and they harmonize over CM’s final two choruses. Cookie Monster is so serious about his message that he went out and recruited others to assist in delivering it. He needs us to understand that cookie starts with C. (About those “others”: one is Grover, one is Oscar, and…who? It seemed a little weird. Kind of like having two no-name audience members joining Shaq and Kobe on the Price Is Right panel.)

 

The very best part is the ending. It had me genuinely applauding, and I don’t mean like when bored Dems applauded the end of Bill Clinton’s infamous Convention speech back in ’88. (I’d print excerpts from said speech, but I’m not here to talk about the past.)

 

Immediately following CM’s high note on the final line, he does it. We all knew he was going to do it. He knew he was going to do it. There was no way he wouldn’t do it. Cookie Monster loudly, violently and unabashedly smashes a cookie down his throat as if it’s his first meal in months. There are bears devouring coyotes in the forest far less noisily and far less messily.

 

It is beautiful. CM loves his cookies. He doesn’t care who disagrees or disapproves. He’s a rebel with a cause: teaching us that cookie, cookie, cookie starts with “C”. Best…video…ever.