Tell me about it: as I said a few posts ago, any kid who tries to bounce a birthday cake or feed his toy train a snack has developmental problems worse than anything a parent could blame Sesame Street for!
I dunno... being the pig I am, as much as I'd love to eat a cake, I sometimes wanna drop it out of a window to see it become a nice, grouchy splatter...
But it seems anything that was intended as a running gag or inside joke they're stuck with, and they can't remove without fears of the kids getting restless. For the trillionth time, I once did some number crunching, and If you cut out a lot of the junk, EW would run 5-10 minutes long, instead of 15.
And did I ever tell this story? One time I was watching Sesame Street, and EW was on... at one point, there was some tape error on someone's end, and the screen froze, and Elmo's laugh was echoing over and over, like a stuck record....
.....
.....
and I didn't realize something was wrong until 5 minutes later.....
So even small cuts should happen.
I still think spinning EW off would work if they put it on directly after SS every time they air it...
I'd guess that was partly because of worried parents complaining, and partly because so much research goes into an episode. Sesame Workshop has early-education scholars and child psychologists taking a fine-toothed comb to every detail. That's usually good for the show; but eventually a staff member will analyze the wrong thing to death, or place blame where it doesn't belong. (Why do you think they turned Cookie Monster into an amateur nutritionist? ) Overreaction can ruin anything, even a TV show.
I've been saying that for years. it's a shame the child psychologists and professionals that once helped shape the show have totally misshapen it.