Or we could put it another way: If CTW had a throw away ageist mentality in the 70's, Will Lee would have gotten fired long before he died.
Maybe, but then again no one knew the show would have lasted 10 years, let alone almost fifty. I'd assume if Will
did make it a few more years, he probably would have retired voluntarily. The thing is, I think we essentially forget how old this show is and how many cast members left it in its history. And the one thing I think we all can agree on is that any other show would have routinely replaced their Bobs, Marias, and Gordons every 10 years when they started pushing 40 with younger 20-somethings, preferably 20 somethings they can pass off as teenagers. Why, Maria and Luis and David seem to have been brought in to be the younger hip teen figures as Bob and Gordon were the youngish father figures back in the 70's. Same deal with Gina in the 80's and Gabi and Miles in the early 00's. Sesame Street never really replaced anyone outside of the odd child actor and Gordon a couple times after Matt stopped playing him and the other guy failed to connect with viewers. And we've had
that Gordon ever since. On the one hand, we tend to forget all the
younger audience members that leave because they have career opportunities elsewhere. Heck, it was Gedde Watanabe's
only respectful role in the 1980's. And he was there, what? Two, three years.
Here's the deal with this. I hate it too, it does smack of ageism, how SW handled this was clumsy, callous, and fanbase enraging. But here's the howevers. While Gordon and Luis were still kinda prominent on the show, Bob just managed to pop up maybe once a season for a cameo. These older guys seem to have been phased out for the past 10 years now, but they still managed to appear a few times before the show focused mostly on Chris and Alan. The thing that honks me off is that they
finally found a good place to put Luis, as the proprietor of a bike repair shop, even giving him a couple street stories, only to do this. But I think we're focusing too much on three actors, when the fact of the matter is, they let a few more actors go in the process. Mando seems to have left of his own volition for another career, but I don't see why Leela had to go as well. But the biggest however comes in the form of one word.
Budget.
The show was starting to really hemorrhage money for multiple reasons. We've had
less regular cast members the past 10 years than we've seen in the show's history. That can't all be chalked up to ageism. Sure, some left to pursue other things, but if you watched the last 10 years of the show, the lack of budget and trying painfully to remain relevant when we have at least 3 cable channels devoted to preschool programming. All the budget seems to have gone to celebrity appearances to get parents to remember that Sesame Street is still a thing, and not the flashy loud cable toy commercials like Dora they can toss their kids at to shut them up. I don't want to go on that tangent, but come on...Sesame Street did
not exist in a vacuum. This season of the show, before they even had the HBO deal, we only had 3 recurring adult human cast members. I can see the argument of kids not paying attention to characters old enough to be their grandfathers, but why did everyone else but Chris, Alan, and the new girl leave? I do
not see why they couldn't keep Bob, Roscoe, and Emilio around as the once a season pop up and "I exist" before they disappear from the rest of the season, nor do I see the need for Leela just...disappearing the way she did. Other than their severe lack of money.
So basically it sucks this is happening, this is a very bad way they handled things, but on the other hand, 47
freaking seasons.
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