Cookie Monster is Rust Cohle and Elmo is Frank Underwood in Sesame Street’s latest TV parodies

Since its inception, Sesame Street has taught its preschool audience lessons in phonics, arithmetic, and primitive computer animation. But the show has also smuggled a stealth history of television into its curriculum, through TV parodies like “Miami Mice” (which teaches the concept of adventure), “Mad Men” (all about emotions), and “Twin Beaks” (an introduction to the unspeakable mystery of the ethereal and the duality dictating the destiny of every living soul. Also: Puns). Recent TV history is the main thrust of the Entertainment Weekly-commissioned video below, in which a spoof of the Emmys enables rapid-fire send-ups in the category of “Best Monster in a Drama, Miniseries, a Mini-Drama, or Sherlock.” (Sick PBS-on-PBS burn, Sesame Street.) Cookie Monster’s innate obsessiveness makes him a good fit for True Detective’s Rust Cohle, but the video’s true stroke of genius is casting Elmo—who started life as an anonymous, unloved Muppet, but climbed his way to a prominent position among a group of famous monsters while talking about himself all the time—as House Of Cards’ Frank Underwood.