Elmo and Zoe are on an exercise routine. Singing vegetables and talking fruit have invaded the neighborhood. Miles has a new song. It is about broccoli. And, darkest of all, Cookie Monster has been stripped of his piles of quickly and loudly consumed chocolate-chip cookies.
Cookie Monster's gluttonous binges mirrored the insatiable furball inside each of us young viewers and eventually elicited an innate recognition of "too much" — an understanding much more powerful when arrived at personally. If Cookie Monster is now learning lessons of moderation in our stead, we'll have to learn our own lessons elsewhere.
No doubt I'm but one among many former children mourning Cookie Monster's diminished id, but the most frustrating part of this moderately tragic turn of events is that the Children's Television Workshop already had a perfectly righteous Captain Vegetable with his very own catchy theme song.
