The Electric Company 1973 | S.3 E.37 | PBS 12/11/73 | It's The Plumber, Letterman, Spidey | Noggin

Show 297 (Season 3, Episode 37) of the original The Electric Company which originally aired on PBS on 12/11/73. Recorded from Noggin in 2003 via Comcast Cable in Eugene, Oregon.

Teaser "Today on The Electric Company, you'll see the... (winner)."

Cast A football player (Jim Boyd) learns about the word "win" from three cheerleading girls.

Cast In the white mist, Carmela sounds out words with the short I sound in them, which are "dig," "pig," "wig," and "big."

Scanimate Animation "big wig" word animation

Film Rita buys fish: "If It Swims, We Have It."

Scanimate Animation "Grin" animation with different facial looks.

Cast/Song Roberto sings about the word "Grin," until eventually, he gets hit with a pie.

Cast Winnie uses "WIN-" to build bigger words.

A Very Short Book "Chicken Little"

Bumper "The Electric Company will continue right after this word: ("Winter")"

Cast "Oh Silent E" song (part 1)

Cast Bill helps Lee change a "kit" to a "kite" by adding an "e" at the end.

Cast "Oh Silent E" song (part 2)

Cartoon A father buys his son a kite, but the boy gets confused by misreading his present as a "kit" instead of a "kite." The father corrects him on this, saying that his kite is really his gift, not a kit.
(Animated by John and Faith Hubley)

Cast "Oh Silent E" song (part 3)

Cast Silent E Rap: Tim/Time, Win/Wine, Hid/Hide

Cast "Oh Silent E" song (part 4)

The Adventures of Letterman All Washed Up

Cast Crank tries to discuss punctuation marks.

Cast J.J. notices fireman running to put out a fire while also using punctuation.

Fargo North Fargo tries to decode Kelly's message "Your desk is on fire.," but Kelly doesn’t understand how to punctuate that sentence, until Fargo decides to use an exclamation point in the sentence to make more sense. After decoding it, it turns out the Fargo's desk turns out to catch fire momentarily.

Cartoon Every time the plumber says "It's the plumber. I've come to fix the sink.," the parrot always says "Who is it?"

Teaser "Tune in next time when you'll see Crank catch this word: (jet)."

The Electric Company is an American educational children's television series produced by the Children's Television Workshop (CTW, now known as Sesame Workshop).

The original cast included Morgan Freeman, Rita Moreno, Bill Cosby, Judy Graubart, Lee Chamberlin and Skip Hinnant. Most of the cast had done stage, repertory, and improvisational work, with Cosby and Moreno already well-established performers on film and television. Ken Roberts (1971–1973), best known as a soap opera announcer (Love of Life; The Secret Storm), was the narrator of some segments during season one, most notably the parody of the genre that had given him prominence, Love of Chair.

Jim Boyd, who was strictly an off-camera voice actor and puppeteer during the first season, began appearing on-camera in the second season, mostly in the role of J. Arthur Crank. Luis Ávalos also joined the cast at that time.

Cosby was a regular in the first season, and occasionally appeared in new segments during the second season, but left afterward. Segments that Cosby had taped for the first two years were repeatedly used for the remainder of the series run. Similarly, Chamberlin was a regular for the first two seasons, and her segments were also repeatedly used throughout the show's run. As a result, they were billed as cast members throughout the whole series run.

Added to the cast at the beginning of season three (1973–1974) was Hattie Winston, actress and singer who later appeared on the sitcom Becker. Beginning in season four (1974–1975), Danny Seagren, a puppeteer who had worked on Sesame Street and also as a professional dancer, appeared in the role of Spider-Man; Marvel Comics published Spidey Super Stories that tied into Seagren's appearances as Spider-Man in character, who never spoke aloud or unmasked himself.