Sesame Street Parodies House of Cards As a Hilarious Reminder They’ll Always Be Relevant

Some brands just manage to stay important long past their peers. Betty White, for example, or the LA Lakers—if they’re doing something big, chances are you’re going to hear about it. They have staying power because they manage to stay relevant, and every time you almost forget, they drop Jay Z bars, like, “I’m back ’fore you had a chance to miss me.” Sesame Street is one of those brands. Sesame Street first aired on Nov. 10, 1969, and my parents remember the show just about as much as I do, and my kids will likely grow up on it as one of the only shows that transcend our generations. The brilliance of Sesame Street is its ability to adapt to popular culture over the course of four decades, all the while staying fundamentally simple at its core: “We teach letters and numbers, and our characters can do that with just about anything.” This week, Sesame Street showed its brilliance again by parodying the adult favorite House of Cards.

Entertaining both your child audience and the grownups that take care of them requires a special balance. Many of the best animated features of the past 15 years were those able to sneak adult jokes inside children’s stories. Remember watching Shrek or Monsters, Inc. and laughing at a completely mature joke? It might’ve been a sexual, political or cultural reference—something a 9-year-old wouldn’t understand—but there it was, hiding in plain sight. It went over kids’ heads, yet you were both laughing all the same despite it being for two separate r…