[Editor’s Note:] The following is excerpted from The Underground Mirror’s longform investigative series: Muppets & Mayhem: Turf Wars of PBS. Reader discretion is advised. This piece contains graphic alliteration, puppet-on-human tension, and phonetic trauma.
Fargo’s death sparks turf war between Sesame Street and Electric Company—Morgan Freeman, jungle vigilantes, and rogue gorillas circle the block. The alphabet will bleed.
He used to crack codes. Now he’s just a chalk outline.
Fargo North, Decoder, once the clean-cut cryptographer of The Electric Company, was found slumped against a graffitied stoop near 123 Sesame Street with a rubber duck shoved in his mouth. His decoder ring still clutched in one cold hand. The other? A note scribbled with a half-translated message: “ABC YOU IN HELL!”
Witnesses claim Fargo had wandered into Sesame territory, high on phonics, “spittin’ consonants like he owned the place.” He was last seen challenging the Count to a syllable duel and asking Oscar to “spell ‘compost.’, sucka!”
The police report is murky. Official cause of death: “Multiple puncture wounds, possibly inflicted by sharpened letter ’A’ or ‘V’, possibly death brought on by the letter ‘W’.” Unofficial cause? He forgot the first rule of educational street politics: Stay in your neighborhood.
A Fragile Peace Shattered
For decades, The Electric Company and Sesame Street lived in a tense but functional detente.
One taught reading; the other taught feelings and how to spell “cooperation.” But something shifted post-2000s. Budget cuts. Rerun wars. Elmo’s meteoric rise. Then everyone hit hard times when Trump cut funding.
“Those Electric kids came back all grown up,” says Gordon, retired from Sesame PD. “They had edge. They brought letters with fonts we’d never seen before.”
But the word is, Bert and Ernie run things now. Bert, the brains, cold and meticulous. Ernie, the face, all giggles and sudden violence. Rumors swirl of them running The Rubber Duckie Syndicate, moving vowels up and down the block.
The Last Days of Fargo
Fargo tried to modernize. He started hanging with the 2009-2011 Reboot Crew; Jessica, Marcus, Keith, Lisa and sometimes Paul the Gorilla. They told him it was safe to “cross platforms.” He believed them.
“He just wanted to help,” says Easy Reader, lighting a cigarette and thumbing the edge of a rhyming dictionary. “Wanted to decode this new world. Forgot that sometimes… the message ain’t meant to be read.”
Cookie Crumbs and Cover-Ups
There are whispers of a cover-up. Cookie Monster says he “wasn’t even there, man,” despite frosting residue matching prints at the scene.
Big Bird hasn’t spoken since the funeral. He just sits on his nest, eyes fixed to some distant horizon, muttering, “Snuffy tried to warn him.”
In Memoriam
Fargo North is survived by punctuation, long vowels, and the faint echo of chalk on slate.
A small memorial was held in the alley behind PBS headquarters. Attendees included a visibly shaken Linda (the only adult who remembers all of it), a former Prankster now in recovery, and the ghost of Grammar Rock.
The Mirror Reflects:
Tensions run higher than the price of vintage lunchboxes. Residents and precinct officials alike are concerned that Fargo’s death may be the opening shot in a full-scale franchise war. There are already whispers of retaliation. Morgan Freeman was seen polishing his old Easy Reader shades and murmuring, “Time to turn the page.” Jennifer of the Jungle has gone radio silent, last pinged heading toward Manhattan. Paul the Gorilla, long presumed dead, may have faked his own funeral. Sources say he’s “coming back for the S. Street Gang.”
Even Luiz from Sesame Street, usually a voice of reason, snapped: “Let those punk-ass bitches show their face at my bodega, I’ll cut them down!” Latest word is that Burt and Ernie are bringing in back up from the ‘Neighborhood of Make Believe’. Authorities are keeping an eye on King Friday, X the Owl, and the ruthless Henrietta Pussycat.
The mayor, caught between nostalgia and civil unrest, has formed a ‘PBS Peacekeeping Task Force’, chaired by LeVar Burton and flanked by Reading Rainbow veterans trained in de-escalation and cross-network diplomacy.
For now, the air is thick with tension.
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