Kill Your Television!

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The Boss Wants Ernie Whacked, and other sordid tales of Sesame Street

Sesame Street is a preschooler's show that has been running on America's PBS network since 1969, and stars many of the late Jim Henson's famous crew of puppets, the Muppets. As with all things wholesome, it garners its fair share of prurient innuendo. The most popular ULs regarding the show have a "real life" theme, implying that the creators of the show, the Children's Television Workshop, wish to introduce more adult and sophisticated dramatic scenarios to a show primarily concerned with communicating the existence of the alphabet and the numbers 1 to 20.

A popular legend is that CTW intends to "kill off" a character on the show, usually pegging Ernie, of the character duo Ernie & Bert, as the fall guy. Variations have it that Ernie has leukemia or AIDS.

Debunked: Some Muppet character (usually Ernie) on Sesame Street is going to be snuffed.

No one's killing any character off. See Urban Legends Archive: Ernie is Dying for definitive statements from CTW that debunk this rumor.

Debunked: Bert and Ernie are a gay couple.

They're puppets, not people. Their relationship is in a rather strange logical space if examined critically (they live together but are ostensibly unrelated children, and have no parents or guardians in evidence), but the creators of the show maintain that Ernie and Bert are just friends. See Urban Legends Archive: Bert and Ernie are Gay for details on Bert and Ernie's sexual preferences.

References:

• Urban Legends Archive: Ernie is Dying
• Urban Legends Archive: Bert and Ernie are Gay