I don't know if this is the right place to bring this up or if I should just start another thread (but then I'm not sure what a good title would be), but has anyone noticed that although Jerry was always there, it seems he was given less characters in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, yet his existing Muppet show characters were also being underused in the 1990s?
He was given many recurring characters on Sesame Street throughout the 1970s, and then after The Muppet Show began it seems like he hardly got any new recurring characters, though he often performed one-shot characters. Maybe part of it was due to Sesame Street getting so many new performers, perhaps making it neccessary to give new major characters to the newcomers. After all, during the 1970s, there were only six major performers on the show (though it seems that even with less performers Jerry got three out of every four new characters). I think the only new recurring SST characters he got afterwards are Two-Headed Monster, Mr. Chatterly, and H. Ross Parrot. For a good chunk of the 1980s Jerry Nelson was the lead on Fraggle Rock, and I think his time on Sesame Street might have been limited during this period (when making an Old School Vol. 3 contents wishlist I found myself having trouble thinking of many segments that feature Jerry's performances). Kathryn Mullen and Richard Hunt were the only other performers who were major on both shows, but even then, Richard focused more on Sesame Street (his Fraggle Rock characters being absent from just as many episodes as they appeared), and I don't think Kathryn had any recurring Sesame characters at all.
Then Jerry Nelson was a major performer on The Jim Henson Hour, his only major character was Beard, who didn't seem to be too prominient until the last few episodes. His past recurring characters hardly appeared on the show, but he got many one-shot roles, and even a few great on-screen roles. Following the deaths of Henson and Hunt most of their characters were retired for a long period of time, and yet Jerry's characters seemed to be underused. He took over as Statler, whom he did perform once before Richard took over, and yet Statler seems to be his most-used TMS character during the 1990s (and even then, there was a four-year gap between Jerry and Dave's first Statler and Waldorf performance and their second). Robin was used quite a bit a little, mainly in productions aimed at younger audiences (the Muppet Babies "Yes I Can" video intros and Muppet Time). Floyd's most major '90s appearances seem to be on the few original Muppet albums that came out in the '90s. Other characters just popped up or stayed in the background. Statler was his most major character on Muppets Tonight, and his only new character was A. Ligator (who was really just his announcer voice with a recurring puppet attached to it), and again like on The Muppet Show and Jim Henson Hour many one-shot characters. He was also quite major in all the '90s Muppet movies, but usually his most major roles were created for the movies (well, technically the ghost of christmas past was created for the original Christmas Carol...). With the deaths of Jim and Richard they seemed to increase the roles of a number of characters (with Rizzo finally becoming one of the main five at the time and Bunsen and Beaker being a bit more major than they were in the 1980s), it's a shame they didn't also expand the roles of some of Jerry's characters, like Lew Zealand, Pops, and Dr. Strangepork (while Robin and Camilla seem to have been less major then).
The Jim Henson Company did many new shows throughout the 1990s, and yet Jerry Nelson was hardly part of any. He wasn't on Dog City, The Animal Show, or Bear in the Big Blue House, and I don't think he was on Dinosaurs (I think he was on The Secret Life of Toys, though).
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