Seems the old schoolers who refuse to watch anything related to the show are coming out of the woodwork to whine about how terrible this is when if this wasn't publicized, they wouldn't have known or cared about the older cast leaving. And frankly, yes, this is conflicting to me. They were being phased out for years, only appearing now and then. Gordon who was the most prominent adult on the show is the most noticeable loss here. He actually appeared regularly up until recently.
Now, here's where the conflict part sets in.
On the one hand, this is a show that we've grown out of multiple times over by now, that is to say a fleeting demographic and the intended audience doesn't know or care who these people are. On the other hand, even though Sesame Street went through so many temporary cast members, the staples have been with the show for years, if not the outright beginning.
Sesame Street only recast Gordon, Mr. Hanford, and some of the child actors over the years, rather than their entire cast. Most kid's shows would have replaced Maria every 10 years with a new 20 something "Maria" and called it a day. While I'm not really a fan of them working specifically to get younger, hipper looking adults into the show to somehow cater to the new audiences, it's a lot more honest to focus on new actors playing new characters than to keep changing the actors of old characters. Though in Gordon's case, it took them a while to get Roscoe, who I think we can all agree is Gordon.
Yet, I can see why they'd want to get younger actors in, considering that when the show started out, Bob, Gordon, and Susan were all the young adults of the show themselves. Maria, David, and Luis were added in as the younger adults when the original three stopped being the young adult big brother figures and started to outright become parental figures. And in years, they became the older uncle figures and then the grandfather figures. A show lasting as long as Sesame Street is unprecedented! And as much as we can recast Muppets and they're essentially the same but sound different, the human cast members are far more subject to mortality than a fictitious monster. Elmo was there at the birth of Gabi. She's well into young adult hood now and Elmo's still 3 and a half years old. It's not like anyone thought this thing was going to last 10 years, let alone almost a freaking half century.
However, the way they're just firing them en masse is callous. They should always have a place on the street, if not frequent, then at least recurring and smiling and waving in establishment shots. Let the parents and adults that tune in from time to time because we love the Muppets that much know they're still living there and are a part of the community. None of these guys need to work on Sesame Street regularly. They can do all the speaking engagements, album releases, convention appearances, and books both behind the scenes auto biographies and kids' bed time stories they want and make a nice living. But we want to know they still live there and can be seen from time to time. Sesame Street is a street, albeit a fictitious one, we don't like the idea of the residents being pushed out because the rent goes up. There's enough of that in real life.
But that's not the big disastrous event that will ruin the show. True, there are things I really don't like about the new format, especially the letters and numbers of the day getting such a backseat and the unwelcome backpedal of Elmo's World reruns. The show is starting to really show its budget they blew on recurring celebrity segments and parody skits. I don't know if letting the older actors go is age discrimination or budget, but the latter seems painfully likely. Even with HBO's wad funding them. Side note: If HBO were in charge, we'd have the adults recast with B list Hollywood stars, and an even more extreme focus on Elmo.
In the end, the best I can say is, of course a 47 year old preschool show will change overtime. It's been consistently produced, rather than going away and being rebooted. We saw the changes happen slowly because it was constantly on, unlike The Electric Company where the difference are more apparent because it went away for a few decades. Heck, look at Scooby-Doo. Wanna know why a show that old managed to get away with the same basic premise for years? They routinely changed the format to something stupid, only to pop back up with "fake ghost mystery" every other series. Sesame Street, again, came out in a time when there was nothing, it's still around at a time when there's everything. The show changed as soon as the second season, and continued to change here and there. It's what's kept the show on for as long as it did. But we don't have to like it, just understand it.
But, I'm no fan of the ex-HIT guy coming in and making the show for the youngest demographic again. I do like the lessened reliance on parody segments (when your press release starts to say that there's a game that's a parody of Simon Sez or "We parody the girl scouts and their cookies," that's kind of a pathetic reach), I hate the condescending reasons for it. I can see why a younger, less prone to passing on (47 years, remember?) cast is preferable for longevity, but hate the fact that it happened with one fell swoop. I can understand the need to reuse old Elmo segments (old enough to freaking vote), but wish they'd find another way to save money and reuse older stuff. I also understand that the parents watching the show with their kids grew up with Elmo's World, but feel for the 70's and 80's kids. In the end, it's a TV show with an important job they've been doing for so long, you'll go mad from how old you really are, and to survive in a world of Nick Jr, Disney Jr, ABC Mouse, DVD's, cheap internet videos, apps, Sesame Street has to run cheaper and on the dime of a major cable channel that has Game of Throne money to work with, but won't give them.
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