Bert and Ernie Gay Rumor: Settled

frogboy4

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That's MY problem. not if they're gay or not, but NO Muppet character should ever marry each other. Not Oscar and Grundgetta (though, it would be great to see a grouch wedding... but 100% of grouch marriages would end in divorce... on purpose). Not even The Count and one of the Countesses (on the plus side, they get to count how many wedding guests they invite, and how many rose pedals the flower girl drops, but the Count isn't the settling down type). Having a baby, getting married... growing up like that is not for the ambiguously aged characters. Sure, Grover can't hold down a job, or at least has to take multiple ones for unexplained reasons... but that's as grown up as I want to see a Muppet character get.

Ernie and Bert, gay, straight, bi or otherwise are ambiguously aged kids as far as I'm concerned. Like Spongebob or maybe even Pee Wee Herman who IS an adult (though, he does show interest in Miss Yvonne, unlike the others mentioned).
None of the Sesame characters have been officially paired-up so it wouldn't really work here either. I still understand that guy's petition. I just don't agree with it.

However, if they want to change things up then why not have Grover replace the Old Spice guy for real. He's much better casting than Fabio! :super:
 

Drtooth

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None of the Sesame characters have been officially paired-up so it wouldn't really work here either. I still understand that guy's petition. I just don't agree with it.

The only pairs I ever see are unofficial... though, it's VERY hard to say what Grundgetta and Oscar share since they are grouches. What exactly is a grouch relationship? They'd argue and break up every day or something? They go for people who they actually don't like so they can have an unhappy marriage? That's pretty hard to define.

And Count's a freakin' playah! 2 Countesses?

Then again...I see the reason why Piggy and Kermit's marriage was never official. There's something about fictitious characters growing up and moving on that seems to give them a mortality. or at least it gets rid of some comedic tension... I almost WISH they were married to kill the annoying "will they won't they" and caustic love/hate relationship stuff, but there's something just so final about marriage that they just don't want to give a huge change to the characters.... but then again, look at Popeye and son, and you'll see why no one likes when couples are married off at last. Bad example, but still... yuck!
 

RedPiggy

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Drtooth said:
The only pairs I ever see are unofficial... though, it's VERY hard to say what Grundgetta and Oscar share since they are grouches. What exactly is a grouch relationship? They'd argue and break up every day or something? They go for people who they actually don't like so they can have an unhappy marriage? That's pretty hard to define.
When I did all that "grueling" research on YT for Oscar clips for my Father's Day in a Trash Can fic, I realized that Oscar's sense of Grouchiness actually forces him to live in a nice (relatively) neighborhood and do other things that, while he gripes about it, gets on other grouches' nerves. If Grundgetta shares this need to be different from other grouches, they might end up with a perfectly happy marriage, because to be different is precisely what Grouches do. :smile:
There's something about fictitious characters growing up and moving on that seems to give them a mortality. or at least it gets rid of some comedic tension
I'd accept that better had there not been married couples in Fraggle Rock (Doozer and Gorg). Nothing is more fun than writing Ma and Pa. The aversion to the married life, for me, is a sign of literary laziness, not avoiding a fundamental flaw that cannot be overcome.
 

CensoredAlso

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I'd accept that better had there not been married couples in Fraggle Rock (Doozer and Gorg). Nothing is more fun than writing Ma and Pa. The aversion to the married life, for me, is a sign of literary laziness, not avoiding a fundamental flaw that cannot be overcome.
Well the thing is, Ma and Pa Gorg started out as a married couple; it was integral to their characters from the beginning. But often on TV shows when a couple finally gets married, the story becomes less exciting because basically you've reached the climax the show has been reaching for all this time. Now what? Lol
 

RedPiggy

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But what does that teach the audience? Yay, we had the ceremony ... life is over? I mean, my own mother and millions of people like her, I'm willing to bet, never thought much past the party. Because of the laziness (and I continue to suggest that's what it is) of the writers, people are rarely given any role models for AFTER the party.

edit:

Maria and Luis got married ... A LONG TIME AGO. They weren't dropped immediately after the honeymoon. In fact, their wedding and subsequent history has always stayed with me to the best of my ability.
 

CensoredAlso

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But what does that teach the audience? Yay, we had the ceremony ... life is over? I mean, my own mother and millions of people like her, I'm willing to bet, never thought much past the party. Because of the laziness (and I continue to suggest that's what it is) of the writers, people are rarely given any role models for AFTER the party.
I know what you're saying. In real life, life goes on after marriage. And sometimes it is good for TV shows to get that across in a realistic, gritty way. But fictional characters aren't like real people. They exist to service a story. And if that particular story is a classic "Will they or won't they?" then once that's done, the characters have served their purpose. Now if you want to see more, you have to come up with a new storyline that's just as exciting and that's not easy, heh.
 

Drtooth

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Well the thing is, Ma and Pa Gorg started out as a married couple; it was integral to their characters from the beginning. But often on TV shows when a couple finally gets married, the story becomes less exciting because basically you've reached the climax the show has been reaching for all this time. Now what? Lol
The only married Muppets on Sesame Street are parents of the other kids. The Bear family, granted, is the only one seen regularly... but then of course there's Elmo's parents. Any other group of parents is only shown in the kid's books. And while there are some clearly adult Muppet characters, like Count vonCount, Oscar, and Guy Smiley and all of them, Ernie and Bert, no different from Cookie Monster, Grover, Herry, or Telly are ambiguously aged. The only characters with a set age (even though a lot of them are supposedly written to be a specific psychological age, though I still don't see it) are Elmo (Three and a Half... no one realizes how many Looney Tunes references they hide in there) and Big Bird (6, right?).

With Maria and Luis, they're human. They've aged since the show began. They were young adults when they joined the show, Maria was almost a couple with David in the early days, then they got married when the show producers thought it would be a nice way to talk about it, ditto when they had Gabi. And Gabi aged. Now, we know that puppeteers have died or left, and characters have been rebuilt, but other than that, they're frozen in time the way cartoon characters are. No greater example stands than Baby Natasha still being a baby.

When I did all that "grueling" research on YT for Oscar clips for my Father's Day in a Trash Can fic, I realized that Oscar's sense of Grouchiness actually forces him to live in a nice (relatively) neighborhood and do other things that, while he gripes about it, gets on other grouches' nerves. If Grundgetta shares this need to be different from other grouches, they might end up with a perfectly happy marriage, because to be different is precisely what Grouches do.
I don't know if it was just Carol or anyone else who came up with it, but he perfectly states the Grouch Paradox that being angry makes grouches happy, but being happy makes grouches mad, but then they're happy that they're mad. Something tells me that Jim and the rest weren't thinking how deep Oscar could be to begin with, and they just wanted a grump type of character... one that existed since, at the earliest, Grumpy the Dwarf. But then they came up with grouch culture, the paradox, their own special Grouch land... and that does add depth to not only a character, but a concept. Yet the concept is incompletely defined, so we make the rest up ourselves.

Maybe Oscar's the next level of Grouch... he hangs around with nice people because their happiness makes him more grouchy than hanging around with grouches... yet he does still eat grouch food.... that gets me to think, does a grouch constitution digest icky food perfectly because they've been eating that stuff forever, or does it give them very upset stomachs and intestinal pain which they like because they're grouches.

As you can see, grouch culture is a very interesting subject and it leaves so much for the fans to try and figure out... so I wouldn't be surprised if they have a happy marriage JUST because it makes them even more grouchy than a dysfunctional one.
 

Frogpuppeteer

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i usually just dismiss this as much as i dismiss the whole Cookie doesnt eay cookies anymore and oscars no longer grouchy..

mostly because its the general audience saying these things and once its engraved in their heads nothing you can say will change what they think, plus it just makes me look like some jerk fan boy if i go around forcing people to listen to the truth
 

Drtooth

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i usually just dismiss this as much as i dismiss the whole Cookie doesnt eay cookies anymore and oscars no longer grouchy..
The whole Cookie becoming Veggie Monster was something that was a mistake, but unlike the others, it was a bungle on behalf of SW, and the poorly crafted press release they sent to loud media outlets. They should have handled it better... or better yet, NOT mentioned it at all, since, let's be honest.... this segment didn't send everyone into a media panic...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMxpDbp51A

But this one did BECAUSE they advertised it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH9IO6iMO78

We live in a culture of noise makes news. They exaggerated something stupid in the press release, that is all. Now the Ernie and Bert thing was some dumb college campus stuff, like Shaggy and Scooby are stoners, and Daphne and Velma disappear with Fred for a reason during the show... basically MST3K sarcastic jibes that are harmless, that somehow managed to hit the hate circuit and turn into another "They're indoctrinating kids with their agenda... only WE'RE supposed to do that!" And it's as unfounded as Mighty Mouse snorting "coke" , in reality a flower that was obviously crushed, then handed to him by a sad looking homeless girl mouse. I'm glad no one caught the illegitimate love child of Pearl and the Cow joke in Mighty's Wedlock Whimsy :wink:. Maaaaan, that Ralph Bakshi!

I don't see the Oscar less grouchy bits. That's character evolution. He has been known to care about others since the Christmas Eve on Sesame Street special. And he went through various phases. Oscar is such a fascinating character, and I don't want to go through a whole character deconstruction, because he went from being a guy who yelled every time someone bothered him to having a grouch culture develop around him and the concept of Grouch.
 

frogboy4

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:stick_out_tongue::frown:I won't ever support this weird marriage petition for Bert & Ernie, but it upsets me how many people are rabidly peeved by the notion that the characters might have gay roots. Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant for intolerance. Ultimately I believe in Frank Oz' infamous wink and nod about this topic. I wonder how many people are upset about his statement about Miss Piggy's origin as a cross-dressing truck driver with delusions and self-esteem issues. :mad:
 
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