Re: Favourite and Least Favourite Doctors, Companions, Anything!

On 2025-07-18 17:02:08 +0000, Melissa Hollingsworth said:

Verily, in article <105cqpt$1tn6c$1@dont-email.me>, did
YourName@YourISP.com deliver unto us this message:

 

They are two boys who live together in the same room, with twin beds.
The taller one goes to school and the shorter one does not.

 I can't say I've seen Bert going to school, but then I definitely
haven't seen anywhere near every episode. I do know Bert and Ernie did
a parody of Harry Potter at one stage and went to Wizard School in the
claymation animated series "Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures".

 Sounds like you watched a much later era than I did. Claymation didn't
even exist in the 70s, when I watched Sesame Street, and Harry Potter
didn't exist until I was well into adulthood.

The claymantion series was a spin-off show in 2008-2010, not actually part of Sesame Street

You can't evaluate the original era by watching episodes from decades later.

No, but they was the only example of Bert and Ernie going to that I know of.

They were clearly children. The adult characters had last names and
jobs, while children had first names

Most of the character, puppet of human, were usually called by just their first names.Mr Hooper was one of the exceptions, probably out of politeness / ettiquette for him being an older person. Other human characters were simply Gordon, Luis, Maria, etc., although they of course did have last names.

and (in most cases) school. Bert used to come home from school and answer Ernie's questions about it, programming preschoolers to think that school would be fun and interesting.

You may be right. As I said, I haven't seen every single episode of the shows they've been in ... I haven't even seen the "Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures" show either, but know some little bits about it.
BUT there is no official statement about the age of the characters. The Muppet Wiki page mentions that Bert has an identical twin brother named "Bart" who is a salesman, so Bert might be a teacher at a school.
<https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Bert>
<https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Bart>
It seems more likely they are adults sharing the apartment.

He also explained a lot of other things to Ernie. Nobody ever *said* things like "Here are the two brothers, Bert and Ernie, the siblings!" because that's not how normal people speak. We didn't need to be told they were brothers any more than we needed to be told that Mr. Hooper was the owner of the grocery store -- of course he was.

Everywhere official or even semi-official says they are best friends, rather than siblings, although there is nothing to say siblings cannot be best friends too.

I once heard a younger person assert that they must be adults because he
saw Ernie dusting, and I laughed out loud. The culture has changed so
much that we no longer remember children used to do chores. Also, just
to fend it off, children also used to go places without adults. We used
our bikes and our feet. They're not "acting like adults" because they
went places by themselves. They're acting like children of the 70s.