Back in 2009, there was a Mad Men parody where neither a single curse word flew from their lips nor glass of whiskey drew to them. Instead, the bit explored feelings.

Homelamb was the Homeland we’d all prefer:

Another bit spoofing MTV was so retro that it actually included music:

It’s good news that the show’s young viewers (and their attendant parents) are still getting exposed to the show’s tradition of high-concept comedy, but one can’t help but notice that the set looks a little nicer now. Oscar is living in a recycling bin now and Grover’s apartment has stained-glass windows. That calls attention to the fact that the show has effectively been paywalled.

As Quartz’s Mike Murphy noted a couple of weeks ago:

It’s not just the set that has gone upscale: A show created to educate as many children as possible, as Gawker’s Tom Scocca noted, will now be broadcast first to a premium cable network with a US subscriber base of about 28 million households—about a fifth of the total. HBO costs about $20 a month, depending on the cable provider, or $15 month for online streaming service HBO Now.

The shows won’t be coming to PBS, where they’ll be shown for free, until nine months later. With luck, these parodies will still be fresh by then.

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