Snuffy's Parents Get A Divorce - Choosing An Approach

Choosing An Approach

Crafting an episode from the topic required adjustment from both the performers and production crew alike. The first obstacle was determining how to address the issue in a narrative, and whether to use the Muppet characters or the human cast. Producer-director Lisa Simon publicly reported on the difficulties: "We hope to get to it by the end of the season. It always takes us a while to figure out how to do an issue appropriately, from a child's point of view ... With puppets, it's slightly less frightening ... The kids have somebody to identify with. They see the puppet characters have feelings and work through a difficult issue many of them will have to face." Veteran cast member Jerry Nelson noted that "Now we delve into things like divorce that are likely to affect small children very heavily. We didn't touch those things before."

According to Bob McGrath, a decision was finally made to use Muppets, and specifically the family of Mr. Snuffleupagus:

They once tried to deal with the subject of divorce. They knew they couldn't do it with either of our married couples—Gordon and Susan or Maria and Luis—so they tried it with Snuffleupagus, writing a show about his parents getting divorced. They wrote a whole show and taped it, and it was just devastating for test groups of kids. So they just threw the whole thing in the garbage and never tried it again. It was just too difficult a concept for a 3-year-old.