Sesame Street - The Humans

A slate of human regulars pull the zaniness of the Muppets back to reality. They were not always meant to serve this purpose. The show lost test viewers' attention during the Street Scenes, meaning Muppets needed to be added, to hide the fact it was educational.

Music teacher Bob has been on Sesame Street since its inception. He dated Linda the local New York Library librarian, who was the first regular deaf character on television. Linda owns Barkley, a Muppet dog. The Robinson family are an African-American family that includes schoolteacher Gordon, nurse Susan, and adopted son Miles. The Puerto Rican Rodriguez Family include Maria and Luis, who ran the Fix-It Shop, which was turned into the Mail-It Shop; Maria gave birth to daughter Gabby in the 1980s, and her pregnancy was covered on the show.

General store and restaurant operator Harold Hooper, played by actor Will Lee, was a mainstay at Mr. Hooper's Store. When Lee died in 1982, the producers opted to help their young viewers deal with the death of someone they loved rather than cast a new actor in the role, and the character's death was discussed in a landmark 1983 episode. Afterwards, Hooper's apprentice David took over, followed by later owners Gina, Mr. Handford, and Alan. Gina stopped running the store in the 1990s, to earn a PhD and became a veterinarian.

Mr. Noodle and his brother and sister, who appear only in Elmo's World are meant to provide a vaudevillian perspective on subjects, contrary to most of the show's current human characters (though reminiscent of such earlier insert characters as Buddy and Jim, Larry and Phyllis, and The Mad Painter).

Famous guest stars and various children from New York schools and day-care centers are a constantly changing part of the cast, including children who would later become celebrities, like actor Tyler James Williams, and rapper GM Grimm.

Over the thirty-seven seasons of Sesame Street hundreds, if not thousands of people have worked on the show's cast and in their crew, producing Street scenes or segments, or working behind the scenes.

We hope you found this interesting and would like to read more about Sesame Street. Click here for the tenth section in this Sesame Street series. Or, you can use the link below to return to our Reading Selections II page. You can look there for other reading that interests you. If you are unable to find anything there, we suggest you set out out on the great information highway, the Internet, and search for something that does interest you.

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