Sesame Street (Seasons 25-30, 33-present)

Sesame Street is a long-running American educational children's television series that combines live action, sketch comedy, animation, and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (formerly known as the Children's Television Workshop) and was created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett. The program is known for its images communicated through the use of Jim Henson's Muppets, and includes short films, with humor and cultural references. The series premiered on November 10, 1969, to positive reviews, some controversy, and high viewership; it has aired on the U.S.'s national public television provider PBS since its debut, with its first run moving to premium channel HBO on January 16, 2016.

Following the death of Jim Henson, things severely changed and the series hasn't shown signs of full recovery since. This article will mainly focus on seasons 25-30 and 33-present, which are considered the weakest seasons of the series.

Overall

 * 1) Quantity Over Quality: Like The Simpsons, the series has been running for way, way too long (it started in 1969), as it now has 51 seasons with over 4,590 episodes and counting. To be fair, the grand majority of the show is still good, but the show will often jump the shark because of this by introducing new characters and gimmicks (most of which are hit or miss).
 * 2) Sesame Workshop, the non-profit organization that produces the show, now wants to pander to little kids and can no longer accept that older people enjoy the show as much as children do. This makes the company look stupid.
 * 3) * To make matters worse, the Old School Sesame Street DVD volumes warn parents that the classic episodes of the show "are intended for grownups" and "that they may not suit the needs of today's preschool children" when there is absolutely nothing unsuitable in these classic episodes whatsoever.
 * 4) The show has overused Elmo (since the Tickle Me Elmo craze in 1996) and Abby Cadabby (since her debut in Season 37). From Seasons 25-37, Baby Bear and Zoe were also overused.
 * 5) * Speaking of Baby Bear and Zoe, both characters have no real personality.
 * 6) ** Baby Bear's speech impediment can get on your nerves. He even received his own segment in Season 31 called Hero Guy, which is just about him having an annoying sidekick who has his speech impediment and has obnoxious, high-pitched sound effects accompanying his movements.
 * 7) * Zoe was made specifically to be a marketable character, with even her fur color being chosen to complement Elmo's. Like post-Season 25 Elmo, she is unrealistically/ridiculously excited all the time. She is also obsessed with rocks and her relationship with Rocco is incredibly bizarre.
 * 8) * Abby Cadabby (introduced in Season 37) is overly cutesy, annoying, and unlikable just like Elmo. She exists solely for girls to have "a prominent and relatable role model" and nothing more. In many episodes, she uses magic to solve her friends' problems by casting spells (because after all, she is a fairy). That's not how the real world works! In real life, most problems can't immediately be solved by simple things like magic.
 * 9) ** One good example is in "The Cookie Tree", in which Cookie Monster realizes that cookies don't grow on trees and wishes he had a cookie tree. Then Abby grants his wish by making cookie trees appear all over Sesame Street.
 * 10) ** She even got a stepbrother named Rudy in Season 47, who is as annoying as Elmo.
 * 11) Much of Sesame Street's cast have been reduced to side characters, have had the majority of their appearances come from old, recycled sketches or rarely have big storylines.
 * 12) * The only Muppet characters Sesame Street has cared about for the longest time since Jim Henson's passing have been Grover, Elmo, Zoe, Baby Bear, Abby, Big Bird, Oscar, Cookie Monster, the Count, Snuffy, Telly, Bert, Ernie, and Rosita.
 * 13) ** Even so, the show has narrowed its primary focus on the Muppets to just eight characters as of Season 46: Elmo, Cookie Monster, Rudy, Abby, Grover, Big Bird, Rosita, and Oscar the Grouch.
 * 14) * Kermit returned to Sesame Street in 1996, years after his sketches stopped being filmed (even when he was taken over by Steve Whitmire), but has disappeared again since Season 40. Since he was bought out by Disney in 2004, Kermit can't be used anymore without permission from them.
 * 15) Many bad/average episodes, such as:
 * 16) * "Bert’s Pigeon Search". The title is misleading, with Bert only appearing at the beginning and end of the main storyline. Elmo and Abby are left to find his pigeon Bernice and think that every bird they find is her, even though that bird isn't.
 * 17) * Episode 4199. In this episode, the Fairy Doctorperson tells Abby Cadabby she has a case of the "Sparkle Speckle Fairy Freckles". Her freckles sparkle, then they fall off. This storyline doesn't teach anything, which is unacceptable because Sesame Street is supposed to be an educational show. The episode has numerous unfunny moments, such as Baby Bear's underpants (which have a freckle on them) being shown to Chris and Abby. Cookie Monster also nearly eats a cookie with a freckle on it, which would've made him sick as well as Abby.
 * 18) * "Bedtime Story", the Season 46 premiere. Before going to bed, Abby is constantly told by Nina to change her bedtime routine so that she can calm down, which is very forced.
 * 19) Some of the characters were flanderized:
 * 20) * Elmo was flanderized twice (in Seasons 26-30, and again since Season 33) and became loud, hyperactive, unfunny, and childish. He often says "Yay!", giggles too much, and has become a Karma Houdini. His friends always let him have his way, no matter how he behaves. This is especially noticeable starting in Season 33, when his flanderization worsened.
 * 21) * Zoe became obsessed with ballet, which lasted until Season 49.
 * 22) * Telly (while still likable) became obsessed with triangles rather than just being fond of them.
 * 23) * Not even Big Bird (also while still likable) was safe from flanderization, but not in the actual show itself. In Journey to Ernie, he became a Steve Burns-like host. Luckily, this was short-lived as the segment ended in Season 37.
 * 24) Some gross-out humor; not just from Oscar the Grouch, but also at other times:
 * 25) * One Abby's Flying Fairy School segment exists where Blögg's stinky sock comes to life and turns everything that it touches dirty and stinky. The students then conjure up a washing machine to clean his sock.
 * 26) * Some of the imagery in Elmo's World is just weird, gross and at times disturbing. Examples:
 * 27) ** The mailbox in the picture quiz of “Hair” wearing Elvis Presley's hairstyle and briefly coming to life saying Elvis' catchphrase ("Thank you, thank you very much").
 * 28) ** Close-ups of teeth in "Teeth".
 * 29) ** A horse, a pineapple, and a clock each having literal hands in the "Hands" quiz.
 * 30) ** A birthday cake with a mouth in the "Teeth" quiz.
 * 31) ** A flower pot with a pair of lips in the "Mouths" quiz.
 * 32) ** The entirety of "Noses". An actual nose even visits Elmo's World.
 * 33) ** The segment "Mouths", not to mention Elmo putting on a pair of wax lips.
 * 34) ** Close-ups of insects in "Bugs" (depending on your view, at least).
 * 35) ** The segment "Feet". Almost all of it, not to mention the cartoon that features a girl who loves her feet and a literal foot named Bigfoot visiting Elmo. The whole segment also feels like it was made to pander to DeviantArt users.
 * 36) * The video Elmo's Potty Time is littered with toilet humor, not unlike the Bear in the Big Blue House episode "When You've Got to Go".
 * 37) ** There's a segment where a giant primate needs to pee and chases a giant toilet.
 * 38) ** Toilet paper jokes are made during a musical number.
 * 39) ** Kids shout synonyms for pee and poop.
 * 40) ** The video is sponsored by the letter P and the number 2.
 * 41) * The Elmo the Musical segment "Prince Elmo the Musical" has Elmo and a dragon fighting each other with their stinky breath. Elmo defeats the dragon with his breath by gulping down some garlic and Limburger cheese wedges.
 * 42) These seasons removed many older sketches.
 * 43) * It was announced in 2009 before Season 40 premiered that none of the classic (pre-1990) sketches would be featured anymore. Essentially, the late Jim Henson and Richard Hunt's presence on the show was obliterated.
 * 44) * The Alligator King's final airing was in a Season 37 episode, where it preceded Elmo's World.
 * 45) * Pinball Number Count last aired in a Season 33 episode.
 * 46) * Season 37 was one of the last seasons to show a Bert and Ernie sketch in every episode.
 * 47) Some of the songs are annoying, like "Old MacMurray Had an O", "The Closing Song" from Elmo's World, and "Brushy Brush".
 * 48) * Speaking of the "The Closing Song", it's just one word sung to the tune of Jingle Bells.
 * 49) * There are even spoofs of Justin Bieber's "Never Say Never", Icona Pop's "I Love It", and Pinkfong's "Baby Shark", despite them being awful songs, called "Measure, Yeah, Measure", "Me Want It", and "Cookie Shark".
 * 50) Repetitive and forced curriculums. The HBO seasons are the worst offenders, as kindness, reducing stress, and friendship are overused.
 * 51) * Sesame Street dealt with a lot of things in the past—not just social skills—but also counting, the alphabet, colors, shapes, science and nature, and even mature topics like death and marriage. It still does to this day, but the show has shifted its primary curriculum from math and literacy to social skills.
 * 52) ** Because of this, the alphabet and counting are only mentioned once in most episodes. Number and letter sketches that aren't the letter/number of the day songs have also been shown irregularly since the show moved to HBO in 2016.
 * 53) Some poor morals:
 * 54) * After Hero Guy cries in the Hero Guy segment "Pirate Ship" because Baby Bear forgot to draw some water, Baby Bear congratulates him and says "Your sadness saved the day, Hero Guy!" Basically, the segment teaches kids that crying will solve all their problems.
 * 55) * As mentioned above, Elmo tends to have his way no matter how he behaves.
 * 56) Many terrible direct-to-video compilation videos and TV specials that tend to revolve around Elmo, Baby Bear, Zoe, and/or Abby. While not all of them are bad, a lot of them are, such as:
 * 57) * Kids' Guide to Life: Learning to Share
 * 58) * Cinderelmo
 * 59) * Kids' Favorite Songs
 * 60) * Kids' Favorite Songs 2
 * 61) * Elmo's Potty Time
 * 62) * Elmo's Christmas Countdown
 * 63) * Kids' Favorite Country Songs
 * 64) * Abby in Wonderland
 * 65) * Being Green
 * 66) * Elmo's Alphabet Challenge
 * 67) * When You Wish Upon a Pickle
 * 68) * Elmo's Playdate
 * 69) The color scheme is overly bright.
 * 70) Some of the voice acting is poor:
 * 71) * Abby Cadabby (introduced in Season 37) has a whiny, scratchy, and overall very irritating voice. The same goes for most of the other characters puppeteered by Leslie Cararra-Rudolph.
 * 72) * Matt Vogel (puppeteer Caroll Spinney's understudy from 1997 to 2018, and Big Bird's primary performer since 2018) sounds mediocre as Big Bird, as he makes his voice fairly deep and mature-sounding.
 * 73) * Count von Count now sounds rather forced after he was taken over by Matt Vogel.
 * 74) Several inappropriate moments in a kids' show:
 * 75) * The Journey to Ernie segment "Jungle" shows a mostly furless tiger taking a bath, which is weird and disturbing.
 * 76) * The Elmo's World segment "Bath Time" has a cartoon where Bubbles Martin is taking a bath, but thankfully only her face and arms are shown.
 * 77) Many of the street stories and sketches are more out-of-context than before and have nothing to do with anything; such examples include Elmo's World (which is not about numbers or letters but about daily life), Abby's Flying Fairy School, and the street scenes in Episode 4120 where Baby Bear tells an elaborate story about him and his family in space.
 * 78) * The street scenes, speaking of which, are often times too dense and wacky. "The Kindness Kid", where the B-plot involves Grover making a huge mess at Hooper's Store, is one of the worst offenders.
 * 79) * Elmo's World and Abby's Flying Fairy School are terrible segments that took up a quarter to nearly half of the show's runtime in total (Seasons 40-45 are the worst offenders of this).
 * 80) ** On the subject of Elmo's World...
 * 81) *** Elmo has been flanderized to become even more loud and obnoxious than usual.
 * 82) *** The "la-la-la-la" song is super annoying. It can also make the "la, la, la-la-la-la" song from The Smurfs sound decent.
 * 83) *** Elmo talking about the same subject the whole time may get on your last nerve.
 * 84) *** Speaking of subjects, the whole segment isn't very educational. It often revolves around things that are impossible for kids to learn about like balls and shoes.
 * 85) *** Dorothy is a useless character who does nothing but swim in her fishbowl.
 * 86) *** In every quiz, Elmo will talk down to the audience and treat them as if they had the mind of a pea.
 * 87) *** The music is incredibly annoying and painful to hear, given that it's mostly kazoos and horn instruments.
 * 88) *** The CGI is very cheap-looking, even for the late 1990s and 2000s. It looked even worse in the first ten episodes, which all aired as part of Sesame Street's 30th season.
 * 89) *** The Noodle Family can't do most of the things that Elmo asks them to do right. They are also extremely immature and hardly act their ages.
 * 90) *** The cartoons that Elmo watches are repetitive, often involving the Lecture Lady and/or "The Girl/Boy Who Loved (Topic)".

Seasons 25-30

 * 1) The street set looks more clean and artificial in Seasons 25-29, and they did too many pointless changes to it (for example, adding a playground and a daycare center run by Gina) due to competition brought on by Barney.
 * 2) To make room for Elmo's World in Season 30, the street stories only take 40-45 minutes to be resolved instead of the usual 60.

Seasons 33-39

 * 1) Season 33 introduced a new format with new recurring segments like Journey to Ernie, The Spanish Word of the Day, The Letter of the Day, and The Number of the Day. More sketches such as Global Grover, Global Thingy, Trash Gordon, and This Is the Game Today were later added. This format is terrible for how structured and formulaic it is, as well as the street stories now only taking 11-15 minutes to be told.
 * 2) The 2002 opening sequence is cheesy (depending on your view).
 * 3) The spin-off Play with Me Sesame is horrible. It's way too lighthearted (granted, Sesame Street is a pretty optimistic and upbeat show, but still) and has absolutely no appeal to older audiences.
 * 4) Curly Bear (voiced and puppeteered by Stephanie D'Abruzzo) is a very useless and pointless addition to the show. She serves no purpose at all.
 * 5) Hoots the Owl tries to get Cookie Monster to change his diet in one sketch from Season 36, which has caused some controversy.
 * 6) Annoying transitions, most of which consist of tiles appearing and disappearing one-by-one.
 * 7) The Fix-It Shop was replaced by the Mail-It Shop in Seasons 33-36, though it came back in Seasons 37 and 38. This is disappointing since Luis and Maria, who own both places, are very skilled at repairing things.

Seasons 40-45

 * 1) The format has changed again, being modeled after preschool blocks like Nick Jr., Playhouse Disney, PBS Kids (which ironically airs the show), Sprout (which also ironically airs the show) and Qubo. Murray Monster also started hosting the show because that's DEFINITELY what it needed from the get-go and dominated roughly one fifteenth to one eighth of it with various sketches. He even went as far as to announce the sponsors at the end of each episode. Both his character and voice were annoying.
 * 2) The segments have become lethargic.
 * 3) The clothes Murray wears in the segment "What's On Me That Starts with (Letter)?" make him look more odd than funny. There's even been a time where he's had on a bib, a bonnet, and a blanket.
 * 4) Miles and Gabi disappeared in Seasons 40 and 43 respectively without an explanation.

Season 46-present

 * 1) These seasons worsened most of the problems stated above.
 * 2) The show has been reduced from an hour-long format to a half-hour format, as it now has to fit the increasingly short attention spans of children. Now half of the show consists of the main storyline, while the other half is sketches like Abby's Amazing Adventures, Cookie Monster's Foodie Truck, Big Bird's Road Trip, The Letter/Number of the Day, and so forth.
 * 3) Gordon, Bob, Susan, Maria, Luis, and Gina have all but disappeared from the show and feel like they were all completely written out. They're never even mentioned in these seasons as if they never existed in the first place (although they did return in Sesame Street's 50th Anniversary Celebration).
 * 4) The sponsors are no longer announced at the end of each episode.
 * 5) The Monster at the End of This Story and “Furry Friends Forever” weren’t that good. “The Monster at the End of This Story” is a sappy, overly saccharine special about how the support of Grover’s friends Elmo, Abby, Rosita, and Cookie Monster help him get through everything. "Furry Friends Forever" is also overly sentimental.
 * 6) * Speaking of which, the animation (while pretty fluid) kind of looks like a poor man’s version of Unreal Engine 3 implemented.
 * 7) The show will try to be hip with the kids at times. For example, there is now free Wi-Fi at Hooper's Store and the Elmo's World revival has a talking smartphone named Smartie.
 * 8) The show has almost completely done away with the spoofs and guest appearances by celebrities, as less than 30% of parents now watch Sesame Street with their children.
 * 9) Caroll Spinney, who performed Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, was diagnosed with dystonia in 2015. As a result, he would only voice Big Bird and Oscar instead of puppeteering them. This unfortunately didn't last long, as the characters would be entirely performed by Matt Vogel and Eric Jacobson starting in Season 48; a year before his death, Spinney also retired from puppeteering.
 * 10) Season 52 introduced Elmo's new pet dog Tango.
 * 11) Charlie, introduced in Season 50, is a Mary Sue and a know-it-all.
 * 12) The street set looks even more fake and colorful than before.

Overall

 * 1) Many of the retired characters mentioned above still occasionally appear, usually in street scenes and certain sketches.
 * 2) Most of the street scenes, sketches, etc. without Baby Bear, Zoe, Elmo, or Abby are still pretty good. There are also some in which these characters are not the main focus but are still present (like the week-long "Hurricane on Sesame Street" arc).
 * 3) * Despite being repetitive, Trash Gordon is not a bad segment.
 * 4) There are some good episodes that have been spotted.
 * 5) As the show goes on, it has managed to tackle more and more mature themes such as war, autism, hunger, foster parenting, divorce, and HIV/AIDS.
 * 6) The voice acting (except for Big Bird and the Count after they were taken over by Matt Vogel, Elmo, and Abby Cadabby), special effects, and puppeteering are still outstanding as always.
 * 7) The majority of the characters aside from Baby Bear, Zoe, Abby, and Elmo are still likable. In fact, Season 26 introduced Suzie Kabloozie—one of the greatest Sesame Street characters of all time; created by Mo Willems who would go on to create Sheep in the Big City.
 * 8) * Speaking of which, the series was also a launch pad for other animators such as Craig Bartlett (who went on to create Hey Arnold!) who did "Arnold Rides His Chair" (involving an early version of the title character) and John R. Dilworth (who went on to create Courage the Cowardly Dog) who did "Noodles & Nedd".
 * 9) Some of the show's charm is still present.
 * 10) The series redeemed itself during Seasons 38 and 39, although it once again dropped in quality in season 40.
 * 11) Besides the gross-out humor, the comedy is still hilarious.
 * 12) Elmo reverted back to his original personality in The Adventures of Elmo In Grouchland and retained it in Seasons 31 & 32 (excluding Elmo's World). Unfortunately, his flanderization returned in Season 33 and he hasn't recovered since.
 * 13) The CGI in Elmo's World improved slightly in Seasons 31 and 34, but that isn't saying much.

Seasons 33-39

 * 1) Gordon, Bob, Susan, Maria, Luis, and Gina still appear sometimes.
 * 2) At least some pre-1990 sketches were still shown.
 * 3) The street set (somewhat) returned to its old inner city roots in Seasons 38-45.

Seasons 40-45

 * 1) Elmo's World left in Season 43.

Season 46-present

 * 1) Elmo the Musical ceased production in 2016.
 * 2) Sesame Street's 50th anniversary Celebration was a great anniversary special.
 * 3) Despite them now being few and far between, there are still parodies like Sharing Things, Sesame Street Presents the 80s, and Pre-School Musical—the former two of which were released online.
 * 4) Nina is a likable character.
 * 5) While still terrible, Elmo's World did get massively redeemed in 2017, making the segment's runtime last for only 5 minutes.