The Electric Company

Performers

Selected sketches

• "The Adventures of Letterman": Premiering during season two, "Letterman" featured the work of animators John and Faith Hubley, written by author Mike Thaler. The title character repeatedly foiled the Spell Binder, an evil magician who made mischief by changing words into new words. It featured the voices of Zero Mostel, Joan Rivers, who narrated the segments, and Gene Wilder. In his book The TV Arab, Jack Shaheen criticized the portrayal of the evil Spell Binder as a negative racial stereotype; he found this disappointing, as PBS shows such as Sesame Street gained a reputation for appropriate portrayals of ethnicities.
• "Five Seconds": Halfway through the show, viewers were challenged to read a word within a five- or ten-second time limit. In seasons three and four, in a send-up of Mission: Impossible, the word would self-destruct in a Scanimate animation sequence after the time expired. In seasons five and six, the viewers had to read the word before a cast member did.
• "Giggles, Goggles": Two friends conversed while riding a tandem bicycle or performing some other activity together. One would humorously misuse a word and the other would correct her, with the process being repeated several times until they returned to the original word.
• "Here's Cooking at You": A send-up of Julia Child's cooking shows, with Judy Graubart playing Julia Grown-Up.
• "Jennifer of the Jungle": A Borscht Belt-style parody of George of the Jungle '', with Judy Graubart as Jennifer and Jim Boyd as Paul the Gorilla.
• "The Last Word": Shown at the end of season one, a dimly lit incandescent bulb with a pull-chain switch was shown hanging; the voice of Ken Roberts would gravely state, "And now, the last word." A single word would appear, usually one that had been featured earlier in the episode. An unseen cast member would read the word aloud, reach his/her arm into the shot, and turn the light off by tugging the pull chain.
• "Love of Chair": A send-up of Love of Life in which Ken Roberts, who was also the announcer for Life, would read a Dick and Jane–style story about a boy sitting on a chair and doing simple things, concluding by asking questions in a dramatic tone followed by "For the answer to these and other questions, tune in tomorrow for...'Love of Chair'." "Naomi" was an in-joke reference to Naomi Foner, a producer on the show during its first two seasons; Foner went on to become an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and the mother of Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jake Gyllenhaal.
• "Mad Scientist": Monster parody with an evil scientist and his Peter Lorre-esque assistant Igor, who tried to read words associated with their experiments.
• "Monolith": Animated short, set in outer space and used to introduce segments involving a phonic. A large, rectangular pillar of rock, was shown disturbed by aliens or astronauts, then shuddering and collapsing during a music bed of the entire opening fanfare of Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra. The letters of the phonic would appear from the clearing dust, and a bass voice would pronounce it. Similar segments for "Me" and "Amor" were featured on Sesame Street. The "Monolith" segments were almost entirely animated and directed by Fred Calvert and produced at Fred Calvert Productions.
• "Pedro's Plant Place": Featured Luis Ávalos as a garden-shop proprietor who incorporated words into his planting tips, accompanied by the plant-language-speaking guard plant Maurice.
• "Phyllis and the Pharaohs": A 1950s-style doo-wop group, with Rita Moreno singing lead and the male adult cast on backup.
• "Road Runner": New cartoons featuring the Looney Tunes character and his pursuer, Wile E. Coyote, produced and directed by Chuck Jones, which reinforced reading skills with words on signs encountered by the characters; used occasional sound and verbal effects.
• "Sign Sing-Along": Often the last sketch on a Friday, these films featured signs with words accompanied by a sing-along song. They were sung once through; viewers supplied the lyrics the second time, while a trumpet-and-bassoon duo played the melody.
• "The Six-Dollar and Thirty-Nine-Cent Man": A parody of The Six Million Dollar Man in season six, with Jim Boyd as Steve Awesome, Luis Ávalos as Awesome's boss Oscar and Hattie Winston as the General; the other adult cast members played villains.
• "Slow Reader": Animated or live-action shorts in which a slow reader was given a message to read by a delivery man. Each message had advice that he needed to follow, but because of his inability to sound out the words, he often wound up in trouble.
• "Soft-Shoe Silhouettes": Two people in silhouette, one making the initial sound of a word and the other the rest of the word; the two then said the word in unison. The soft-shoe music itself was composed by Joe Raposo, one of the Children's Television Workshop in-house composers at the time.
• "Spidey Super Stories": Short pieces debuting during season four and featuring Spider-Man foiling petty criminals. Spidey was never seen out of costume as his alter ego, Peter Parker, and he spoke in speech balloons for the audience to read. A spin-off comic book, Spidey Super Stories, was produced by Marvel Comics from 1974 to 1982.
• "Vaudeville Revue": Skits and songs presented in variety-show style on stage, with music fanfare and canned applause; also called the Stage.
• "A Very Short Book": Sometimes the last sketch of the episode. A cast member read a nursery rhyme or story, turning the pages of a book that showed both the sentences and film footage of the action. The stories usually had a humorous ending that was different from the original.
• "Vi's Diner": Lee Chamberlin played the proprietor of a diner where customers read simple menus to place their orders.
• "Wild Guess": A game-show send-up with announcer Ken Kane and host Bess West, in which the contestant would guess the day's secret word. When the word was not guessed, West would give three clues as to what the word was.

  Selected recurring characters

• The Blond-Haired Cartoon Man : a character who would read words appearing on screen. However, they often showed up in the wrong order or made no sense. Thus, the character would resort to correcting the words.
• The Blue Beetle : a bungling superhero who often made matters worse instead of better when he tried to help; he often challenged Spider-Man.
• Clayton: a claymation character, animated by Will Vinton during season six, who commented on the previous skit or introduced a new concept.
• The Corsican Twins : twin swashbuckler brothers who taught phonics. Whenever either brother hurt himself, the other one felt the pain and reacted accordingly.
• Dr. Doolots : a parody of Doctor Dolittle and Groucho Marx who used words to cure his patients.
• Easy Reader : a smooth hipster who loves reading and is associated with Valerie the Librarian and Vi in her diner. The character's name was a pun on the movie Easy Rider.
• Fargo North, Decoder : an Inspector Clouseau-type detective who decoded scrambled word messages and phrases for clients. His name was a pun based on Fargo, North Dakota.
• J. Arthur Crank : a plaid-wearing grouchy character, who interrupted sketches to complain when spellings or pronunciations confused him. His name is a reference to movie producer J. Arthur Rank.
• Lorelei the Chicken : an animated chicken who appeared in live-action scenes. She was a caricature of actress Carol Channing.
• Mel Mounds : a disc jockey who introduced songs, usually by the Short Circus.
• The Monsters: Werewolf, Frankenstein, and Dracula.
• Millie the Helper : an eager-beaver trainee working at various jobs. She was the first to shout, "Hey, you GUYS!"—a phrase that was eventually incorporated into the opening credits. The character's name is likely a reference to a character on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
• Otto the Director : a short-tempered film director, a take-off of Otto Preminger, who tried in vain to get her actors to say their lines correctly, with the help of a cue card to highlight the word they kept missing.
• Pandora the Brat : Bratty-but-lovable blonde girl who tried to outwit the adults around her.
• Paul the Gorilla : the sidekick of Jennifer of the Jungle; named after head writer Paul Dooley.
• Vincent the Vegetable Vampire : a send-up of Dracula who was obsessed with eating vegetables.