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    Melissa Gorga Talks Sprinkle Cookies and ‘Real Housewives’ Ending

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    The feud between Melissa Gorga and Teresa Giudice, her “Real Housewives of New Jersey” castmate and sister-in-law, has been simmering for more than a decade.Giudice takes pains to point out Gorga’s perceived transgressions, citing rumors of infidelity, gold-digging and a past life as a stripper (all of which Gorga has denied) in fights that became recurring story lines for the show and that divided fans into Team Teresa and Team Melissa.A dispute in Season 3 (shot in 2011) came to summarize the innocuous events that could set off accusations of bad taste when Giudice complained to family and friends that Gorga brought a subpar choice of cookie to her holiday gathering. “She came to my house Christmas Day, and she brought me sprinkle cookies,” Giudice said, specifying that she preferred pignoli cookies, before adding: “Melissa. No one touched the cookies you brought. I threw them in the garbage!”Gorga used the dis as a springboard for Let’s Sprinkle by MG, a direct-to-consumer line of upscale butter cookies with sprinkles — running $29.99 for a box of a dozen — that she says has brought in over half a million dollars in revenue since its December launch. Beyond being a recurring reference on the show, the sprinkle cookies are also an offscreen calling card for audience members firmly on Team Melissa.The sprinkle cookies have become a calling card for audience members firmly on Team Melissa.Yael Malka for The New York TimesGorga and Giudice are no longer talking after a bitter last season that divided the cast so deeply that they could not gather to film the all-important reunion show. It’s uncertain who will return to the series, and there are whispers that the cast will be overhauled, as has happened with the New York and Atlanta franchises.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Nom Nom Nom. What’s the Deal With Cookie Monster’s Cookies?

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      If you have ever wondered what the “Sesame Street” muppet is really eating, we have the answer.Years ago, a reader wrote probing for details on a mystery that had vexed him: What’s the deal with the cookies that Cookie Monster eats?The email said nothing else. I chuckled and filed the note in the cupboard of my brain where such things go. Until I realized something: Me want cookies. And me want answers.Cookie Monster, for those of you who skipped childhood, is a classic muppet on “Sesame Street.” He is a scraggly, blue fellow with bulging eyeballs, who has for decades been singularly obsessed with chaotically chowing down on cookies. The crumbs end up almost everywhere except his mouth, an effect that looks like a high-speed blender without a top.The character was created in the 1960s by Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, for a General Foods Canada commercial. Cookie eventually moved to “Sesame Street,” where he presumably found a good rent-stabilized apartment.It turns out the cookies are real — sort of.They are baked at the home of Lara MacLean, who has been a “puppet wrangler” for the Jim Henson Company for almost three decades. MacLean started as an intern for Sesame Workshop in 1992 and has been working for the team ever since.Lara MacLean, a puppet wrangler for the Jim Henson Company and the maker of the cookies that Cookie Monster eats, at the company’s offices in Queens.Carey Wagner for The New York TimesOne of the ingredients: instant coffee. Also: pancake mix, Puffed Rice and Grape-Nuts.Carey Wagner for The New York TimesMacClean dips her hand in water and flattens the cookies. They need to be thin enough to explode in a shower of crumbs.Carey Wagner for The New York TimesThe recipe, roughly: Pancake mix, puffed rice, Grape-Nuts and instant coffee, with water in the mixture. The chocolate chips are made using hot glue sticks — essentially colored gobs of glue.The cookies do not have oils, fats or sugars. Those would stain Cookie Monster. They’re edible, but barely.“Kind of like a dog treat,” MacLean said in an interview.Before MacLean reinvented the recipe in the 2000s, the creative team behind “Sesame Street” used versions of rice crackers and foams to make the cookies. The challenge was that the rice crackers would make more of a mess and get stuck in Cookie’s fur. And the foams didn’t look like cookies once they broke apart.For a given episode, depending on the script, MacLean will bake, on average, two dozen cookies. There’s no oven large enough at Sesame’s New York workplace, so MacLean does almost everything at home.This leads to the occasional awkward interaction, such as when MacLean once had to make huge batches of cookies for a series of Cookie Monster film spoofs.“My landlord came in my apartment at that time and I had all these cookies around and I was like, ‘I’m really sorry, I can’t offer you a cookie.’ And he probably just thought I was really mean,” she said.After baking.Carey Wagner for The New York TimesApplying hot brown glue for the cookie’s chocolate chips.Carey Wagner for The New York TimesOn set, when Cookie is shooting, MacLean said the “best-case scenario” was for the crumbs to end up all over the place.Sal Perez, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” said, “You’ve got to be careful for the shrapnel that comes out when he’s munching on the cookie.”Cookie has been portrayed since 2001 by David Rudman, who took over the role from Frank Oz. Rudman’s right hand moves the mouth, which is eating, and his left hand holds the cookies. Both work in concert to break the cookies, which means the cookies have to be soft enough to fall apart.Jason Weber, the workshop’s creative supervisor, recalled Rudman complaining about a tough batch: “My hands are so sore. Don’t make them like this ever again.”Rudman said soft cookies are best, adding, “The more crumbs, the funnier it is.”“If he eats the cookie, and it only breaks into two pieces if it’s too hard, it’s just not funny,” he said. “It looks almost painful. But if he eats a cookie and it explodes into a hundred crumbs, that’s where the comedy comes from.”MacLean has perfected a recipe that is “thin enough that it’ll explode into a hundred crumbs.” Rudman said. “But it’s not too thin that it’ll break in my hand when I’m holding it.”The finished cookies. Not everyone realizes they are meant only for muppet consumption.Carey Wagner for The New York TimesSometimes shoots don’t go as planned. Cookie appeared on “Saturday Night Live” in 2010 when Jeff Bridges was hosting. During the opening monologue, Bridges sang a duet with Cookie. The cookie that Bridges was supposed to offer Cookie broke in Bridges’s pocket, so when he took it out, he only had half the cookie. So Bridges pulled out the other piece and improvised.“Not only a half, but a whole cookie!” Bridges said.Rudman responded as a delighted Cookie: “Twice as good!”Cookie doesn’t just eat the cookies. He eats the plate they are on and has recently expanded the menu to include fruits and vegetables. Occasionally he devours inanimate objects like mailboxes. There is a small gullet in his mouth, so Cookie can actually eat something the size of a small fist. Bananas, apples and small hats go down easy, but most of the cookie crumbs end up outside his mouth.Not everyone realizes that the cookies aren’t meant to be eaten. Adam Sandler appeared on a 2009 episode of “Sesame Street” and decided to share in Cookie’s delight by spontaneously eating a cookie with him on set.“As soon as the cameras cut, he was like, ‘Bleeeech,’” MacLean said.Rudman said he told Sandler not to eat the cookies: “I think he got caught up in the moment,”It’s hard not to. The 54th season of “Sesame Street” just premiered on Max. Cookie is almost 60, but the core of his character endures.“He has sort of this base instinct that I think all of us have, even the youngest of us have,” Perez said. “One of our first instincts is like: ‘We see a cookie. We see a thing that we love and we just want it.’” More

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      in Television

      Elmo’s Unhinged Rant About a Pet Rock Resonates With the Exasperated

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      A 2004 clip from “Sesame Street” surfaced on social media this week, drawing thousands of responses from viewers expressing that they could relate to Elmo’s sense of frustration.Elmo wants the oatmeal raisin cookie, which is on a counter. Next to the cookie is a rock.But as Elmo reaches for it, his furry red hand is stopped by an orange one that belongs to Zoe, another “Sesame Street” character, who is concerned for the rock, a pet named Rocco.“No, no, no — wait, Elmo,” Zoe says. “Rocco says that he wants the oatmeal raisin cookie.”And it is at this point that Elmo — a children’s character usually associated with innocence, lighthearted fun and playfulness — reaches his breaking point.“Rocco?” Elmo says, sounding astonished. “Rocco’s a rock, Zoe! Rocco won’t know the difference!”And when Zoe insists that Rocco will, indeed, know the difference, Elmo goes from incredulous to angry.“How?” Elmo retorts. “How is Rocco going to eat that cookie, Zoe? Tell Elmo. Rocco doesn’t even have a mouth. Rocco’s just a rock! Rocco’s not alive!”The video clip from a 2004 episode of “Sesame Street” circulated widely across social media this week, garnering more than eight million views and thousands of responses from people who resoundingly expressed that they could relate with an unhinged Elmo’s sense of exasperation.As the video got more and more attention, other clips of Elmo losing his patience with the rock began to appear, adding fuel to a raging internet fire as others posted about the fictional relationship — aghast, they said, at how Elmo had been gaslit all these years.There is the clip in which Zoe says she was late because Rocco had “to go to the potty,” and Elmo, pausing for a beat, responds with a flat, “What?”Another clip shows Elmo saying hello to a real hamster, only to be interrupted by Zoe, who directs him to also say hi to Rocco.Of course, Elmo was already a star on the internet before this week.The Elmo fire meme is often dispatched during chaotic moments. Other scenes of him in an adversarial mood have also circulated, such as one in which he throws a fit and starts to walk off the set of “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon” or one in which he bites and throws a talking block of cheese on a cooking show.Drake Amendola, 29, of Queens said that what he loved about the cookie clip was that he could tell Elmo was trying to be inclusive of Zoe and “her eccentricities.”“But you can just tell that like, every little inch he gives, she takes a mile,” Mr. Amendola said on Saturday.There is also a pandemic interpretation, Mr. Amendola said.The rock is a metaphor for pandemic denialism, and Elmo represents the vaccinated — those who, now in year three of pandemic life, are fed up with the false beliefs surrounding Covid-19.“Just the amount of times people try to convince you something you know isn’t true, no matter how many times you point out the obvious,” he said.For his part, Elmo said on Twitter that he and Zoe were still “best buds” but that he didn’t “want to talk about Rocco.”Dr. Leela Magavi, a psychiatrist in Newport Beach, Calif., said the clip helped divert the attention of children and adults from “their own pain and helplessness during this difficult time.”Many people “perceive Elmo as an amicable, loved character, so when they view his frustration and anger, it helps normalize their own feelings of anger and makes them realize that this is a normal human sentiment,” she added.To others, the clip is an example of selfishness.“We’ve all had an Elmo experience, either in college, in a class, or at work somewhere, from people who want to make everything about them,” said Alexiss Tyler, 27, of Kansas City, Mo.Jennifer Cretu of Snohomish, Wash., said her three boys — ages 8, 11 and 14 — believed that Elmo had been wronged, though her oldest, Liam, was able to sympathize with Zoe because he, too, once had an imaginary friend: Barack Obama.Her middle child, Silas, believed that the unhinged Elmo phenomenon could have been headed off by having the human character in the scene eat the cookies. “I mean, one is a rock,” he said. “And the other two are just puppets.”Liv Pearsall, who has 2.8 million followers on TikTok and makes videos highlighting Elmo’s bratty side, said that the “Sesame Street” characters have personalities and that Elmo sometimes displays his in “snarky, savage moments.”“It’s kind of like a combination of the nostalgia that we all have from ‘Sesame Street’ coupled with just kind of being shocked that he was so sassy,” said Ms. Pearsall, 22, of Los Angeles. “I think we all relate to that at times.” More