One of his thoughts was “to have a character that the child could live through,” a Muppet who was representative of the audience. “Big Bird, in theory, is himself a child,” said Jim, “and we wanted to make this great big silly awkward creature that would make the same kind of dumb mistakes that kids make.” To make things even more interesting, Jim and Stone decided on another character that was nearly the antithesis of the wide-eyed, innocent Big Bird: a cynical, complaining grouch named Oscar. “Oscar is there because we didn’t want a bland kiddie show,” said Stone. “We didn’t want to let it
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