Thoughts on the lack of adult human characters on Sesame Street?

[GroverFan22]

Hi all. Long time Muppet fan and forum-reader, first time poster.

I’ve recently been nostalgically looking back on my Sesame Street viewing days.

I’ve been struck by just how few adult human characters there are on the show. I’m younger than a lot of users here, but when I was growing up, Sesame viewers still had the chance to see characters like Gordon, Susan, Bob, Luis, Maria, Gina, etc.

Now the only three adult human characters regularly on the show are Alan, Chris, and Nina. This simply doesn’t seem like enough, especially with regards to female characters. Where once there were Maria, Susan, and Gina filling the role of “adult surrogate parental figure to the Muppets”, the role is now exclusively held by Nina. Even when it comes to men, Alan and Chris are the only ones. They have brought back Roscoe Orman occasionally over the past year or so but that’s pretty much it.

All the other well-known human character actors who used to be on the show are either no longer involved or deceased.

Should there be more characters introduced to fill the void? What archetypes should they fill?

 

[eurbane]

the kids prefer the muppets better. The adults will remember the humans on the show.

 

[Daffyfan4ever]

Well, there's also Frank and Dave, but neither of them really had that big of a role other than being Mia's two dad's. So yeah I see what you mean.

 

[LittleJerry92]

I mean is that a surprise? The characters that will stick out more are other children and more importantly, the Muppets. Who small children with very early brains will see and relate to easily.

 

[datman24]

Kids have always preferred the Muppet to humans. The whole reason why the Muppets were integrated into the street scenes was because they were bored with just the humans. Yes, they did once play a bigger part in the show than they do now, but keep in mind, they were doing over 1000 shows a season back then. Now that some of the Muppets have their own parents who are recurring characters (ie: Elmo's parents), the humans kind of seem useless now.