Sesame Street hasn't been the same in years, but yeah, it jumped the shark when Elmo became THE Muppet.

Honestly, I used to hate Elmo too. I'm not a parent, I grew up with a pre-Elmo Sesame Street, and I never did understand all the Elmo hype about a decade ago. But a few months ago I watched that documentary called "Being Elmo" about Elmo's puppeteer. And the guy is awesome. I actually like Elmo now, but I think it's only because I feel like I know the man behind the muppet now. And it helps if you watch outtakes with celebrities and see the more non-G rated stuff.

ampersand wrote:Sesame Street hasn't been the same in years, but yeah, it jumped the shark when Elmo became THE Muppet.

It isn't the same because several years ago (2002, if memory serves) they did a study of the demographics watching Sesame Street, and found it was like, 1-2 years younger than it had been 20 years before. So they retooled the show to target the age group that's actually watching the show. Hence moving from Big Bird (~6 year old) to Elmo (~4 year old).

Sesame Street does a ton of research to try to figure out how to help kids watching the show, so I really have a hard time criticizing changes they make. It's not just some marketing exec arbitrarily making decisions, they're actually pretty carefully thought out.

It's not the first time they changed things dramatically, either: Snuffleupagus started off as Big Bird's imaginary friend that the adults couldn't see, but they realized that it wasn't sending a good message that there were things that you hide from adults, so they made him "real".

Speaking of Elmo's poor grammar, that fact it kinda surprising really. I mean, Sesame Street is suppose to be educational, so why would they have one of their predominant characters using poor grammar and not have him being corrected?

I'm waiting for "Textspeak Elmo."

The Rickrolling parade float wasn't Sesame Street, it was Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Although I can see how Cheese's screeching voice can be mistaken for Elmo's screeching voice.

barawn wrote:It's not the first time they changed things dramatically, either: Snuffleupagus started off as Big Bird's imaginary friend that the adults couldn't see, but they realized that it wasn't sending a good message that there were things that you hide from adults, so they made him "real".

That's not quite accurate. Snuffy was always real, but through shear force of running gag he always had some excuse to leave in a hurry right before somebody other than Big Bird was about to see him. Therefore nobody else believed he existed. This, by the way, took place during the years that I was a young child watching Sesame Street. What they eventually decided, and I didn't hear about this until years later, is that it's not good to portray adults as people who will not believe you when you tell them the truth. Therefore Big Bird executed a clever plan to trap Snuffy long enough for somebody else to see him and they swept the running gag under the rug.

FireAza wrote:Speaking of Elmo's poor grammar, that fact it kinda surprising really. I mean, Sesame Street is suppose to be educational, so why would they have one of their predominant characters using poor grammar and not have him being corrected?

How much bad grammar does Elmo actually use? He refers to himself in the third person, but that's not actually poor or even bad grammar. It's basically stylistic. Other than that I can't think of much, actually.

Now, Cookie Monster's grammar is definitely poor, that's true.

I just keep thinking about how my almost 2 year old son has never really watched Sesame Street or much of anything for that matter. We just have him play with toys instead.

And if you're really brave, you'd make him play with a box!