How Sesame Street Made Me Cry as a Sophomore in High School

Representing Difficult Life-Lessons in Children’s Television

From Teletubbies to the Disney Channel, children’s television teaches many things. Unfortunately, beyond your basic “behave and be nice” narratives, heavy topics aren’t often the focal points of these shows.

They especially aren’t the key focus for audiences as young as the ones SW’s Sesame Street are geared towards.

In the earlier days of the show, Sesame Street was faced with the tragedy of losing cast member Will Lee, one of the first four human characters to be a part of the series. Will Lee died on December 7, 1982, after 13 years as Mr. Hooper, original general store owner to Hooper’s Store. He started work on the series from the very beginning, when the show was first aired on public broadcasting television stations in 1969.

The loss of Lee was devastating to cast and crew, but the loss of Mr. Hooper was a complete other hurdle to conquer. Whereas many other shows may have chosen to write off Hooper’s character by saying that he had moved, quit or retired, Sesame Street producers made the decision that they would instead use Lee’s passing as an opportunity to teach young audiences about the difficult topic of death.

When I stumbled upon this information through the rabbit hole of YouTube, I was definitely struck. Imagining young kids coming to terms with the forceful definition of death via one of their favorite T.V. characters is a difficult thing to sit with. But after watching a clip of said episode, I did feel like I hadn’t felt the full intensity of what happened. To be fair, how harsh could a kid’s show truly get? It wasn’t until reading comments of those who had witnessed the episode in real-time, as well as other parents and people offering their ideas that I realized what a fascinating thing Sesame Street had truly done.

Sonia Manzano was a writer on Sesame Street, and played the character Maria from 1971 to 2015. Her comments on the episode really made me see a whole new side to the event. Right off the bat she described the episode as one of the “high points of the show’s career.”

Hold on, what? How could the death of a beloved character have been a particular “high note” to anyone? But Manzano brought up compelling points to explain that these TV shows geared to teach kids important life-lessons shouldn’t skip out on one of the biggest life-lessons of them all: death.

The amount of research and care that went into the script for that episode surprised me as well. It had covered the heavy topic from many angles, in ways that were undetectable to me upon first watch. Manzano explained that after researching and pulling together all the information out there for kids about death, experts and child psychologists were called in to help comprehend what it was kids thought about death, and what it was that worried them. They put those concerns and wonders into the simplest of terms, so that it was clear and digestible. They answered the most prominent questions, a main one being “who is going to do for them what this person used to do?”

In the episode, Hooper’s close friend Big Bird spoke on all these children’s behalf, and asked these important questions for them.

When describing death, Manzano simply stated,

“It just is. There’s no opinion about it. It just is. Why should we not illustrate it, explain it?”

That is a very good question. Why not? Why shelter something so key? Why shroud heavy topics in seemingly taboo mystery? Does it not only psych kids out more if there is no platform for discussion or understanding for these heavy topics? I for one, realize the importance. As a child who personally used to freak herself out over death, without even allowing myself to have a true grasp on it, I perhaps would have liked some of Big Bird’s questions answered too.

Which makes me wonder if children’s programming is actually getting worse at communicating these large issues. Sesame Street of yesteryear evidently was on the right path, but where are they today? And additionally, when I would grow up watching reruns of 1987 Full House that warned against drugs, alcohol, and abuse, I would flip back to the Disney shows of present-era and see a dearth of that same representation.

So are children’s shows getting worse at preparing kids for hard things they’ll encounter as they grow up? Have their life-lessons become too shallow? One may pose the argument that some topics are simply too heavy and should be reserved for shows marketed for teens and up.

Truthfully, there is a threshold for these things — but Sesame Street knew that. They weren’t gruesomely blunt, they simply answered the questions they knew kids were asking. Perhaps starting small and young is actually the right way to go. Early exposure will lessen the stress of tough concepts, and hopefully make things easier for kids as they experience them. Life doesn’t wait, nor does hardship discriminate. Preparing kids for life (and death) when they are still little is a touchy subject, but it is one that should be deliberately handled. Don’t let them be a stranger to the world around them.

Sesame Street just passed 49 years on the air as of November 10th this year. Next year it will be turning 50. Personally, I applaud their ability to spread love and learning, even when it gets to the more difficult topics.

Kids are smart, intuitive, and above all, they are our future. What we teach them matters, and they will come to know that better than anyone else.