Sesame Street Lost Episode - Suicidal Mr. Johnson

I really suck at openings to stories so excuse this lackluster intro, so anyways you all probably know about Sesame Street right? It's a show where muppets teach children basic Preschool essentials in a fun and entertaining way, anyways the reason why I bring up Sesame Street is because back in the year 1999, I worked at PBS Kids Studios as a production member on Sesame Street, my job was to watch an episode days before they air on television is a room full of test audience members, which were children, almost every single time an episode was shown in the test screening room, the reactions were all positive, well... except for one time...

The entire Sesame Street staff was running out of ideas for episodes, this was mostly due to the fact that they had very recently made the Sesame Street movie "Elmo in Grouchland" so everyone had no ideas for the season 31 premiere episode, some of the staff even considered that we cancelled the show all together and have the movie serve as the series finale, all of us were about to agree on that idea until a knock was heard at the door, I was the one to open the door and what was behind the door was 2 VHS tapes, one of them was entitled "Episode 3851: Big Bird and Elmo Develop a New Dance" and the other VHS tape was simply called "Sesame Street Episode 3851" with no other names attached, I brought both VHS tapes to my co-workers and showed them, they all seemed pretty glad that we have received our season 31 episode at such a short notice, although we seemed to have 2 potential episodes that could be the premiere episode, so to decided, we played both of the tapes in 2 testing rooms at the same time, I was assigned to be the note-taker for the mystery VHS tape, so as soon as we got the children test audience, the projector played the episode upon the big screen.

The intro played as normal and all the kids were excited to see the brand new episode, they all got their popcorn ready, the episode started off not with a main muppet, but a secondary one, which was Mr. Johnson, a character I thought they only used for skits and not the main plot, even the kids looked a bit confused about this, but I shrugged it off, I actually liked Mr. Johnson, he is definitely my favorite secondary muppet character on the show, Mr. Johnson greeted the viewer at the start just like how every Sesame Street episode begins.

"Oh hi! Welcome to Sesame Street!" Mr. Johnson said in an unusually happy tone, "I hope you don't mind me telling you this, but today is the day where that lousy Grover will finally quit his job at Charlie's Restaurant ohoho boy I can't wait, I will finally be able to eat in peace! To celebrate, I've decided to go there right now, and order a delectable apple pie! mm mm mmmm!" The plot of this episode seemed out of place for a Sesame Street episode, I did some extra note taking for this.

The scene transitions to inside of Charlie's Restaurant where Mr. Johnson is at his usual table, humming to himself with joy. "Oh boy I can't wait for my food to come, waiter! Can you please take my order now? I'm hungry!!" Mr. Johnson demanded, just then a familiar furry blue muppet walks up to him, "hello there, your exceptional waiter Grover is here!" Grover exclaimed happily, Mr. Johnson was obviously not happy about this, "Oh no! It's you again!" Mr. Johnson replied with disgust "I thought you said you were going to quit being a waiter today!" "Well you see my loyal customer, I just wanted to stay here one more day as I am not quite at enough money to pay for my retirement plans, but I am sure I will be able to raise enough money as soon as the day is over" Grover explained, Mr. Johnson scowls with hatred "Uggggggh, alright listen, I want an apple pie just like mama used to make, and you better not mess it up!" Mr. Johnson told Grover sternly, "Okee Dokee! Alright Charlie, he wants an apple pie just like mama used to make! Come on make it snappy!" Mr. Johnson placed his hand over his face "Ugggh, why is it always him? Don't I ever get anything else but him?" Mr. Johnson said to himself in an annoyed tone, just then, Grover appears with a pie in his hand, however Grover cannot stop himself from all slipping, and then he accidentally lets go of the pie and it lands right onto Mr. Johnson's face, "O-Oh I am sorry sir...." just then Grover bursted out laughing and as soon as all the patrons at the restaurant noticed they all laughed at him, the muppets laughing at Mr. Johnson was Elmo, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Telly, Zoe, The Count, Baby Bear, Bert, Ernie, Oscar, Kermit, and many more, it was all very out of character (besides Oscar) for them to do this, and I could feel Mr. Johnson's pain, instead of him being angry like usual, he instead slowly walked out of the restaurant, sobbing to himself with everyone laughing at him in the background, it was really depressing.

The scene transitioned with a shot of Mr. Johnson's house, once we saw what was going on inside, Mr. Johnson was sobbing on his bed, I was extremely weirded out, the sobs sounded so real, it was like the voice actor was actually crying, Mr. Johnson started to get darker and darker as the sound of static started to play in the background, eventually Mr. Johnson was so dark that he was completely black, however the place where his eyes were supposed to be were replaced by huge gaping red eyes, this was extremely frightening and some of the kids began to cry, the static only grew louder, I tried turning down the volume but even at 1% volume it was still ear piercing, the scene then cut to black as the static sound came to a halt, the scene that came after that shown Mr. Johnson in the bathroom with a bottle of bleach, "I can't take this anymore, I have no friends, my wife left me, and then I get publicly humiliated, that's it, I have the most miserable life on Sesame Street! This is the last straw, I'm ending it all!" Mr. Johnson said while weeping in a painful tone, almost instantly after speaking, Mr. Johnson chugs the bleach down and drinks it all until there is not a single drop of it left, he then started to make choking noises as he fell to the ground, he was throwing up blood until finally he slowly closed his eyes and remained motionless on the floor, dead, the episode ended, there was no skits or segments, no number and letter of the day, not even any end credits, it just ended right there.

Many of the kids have already left the room, the few who decided to stay were curled up onto the floor, crying in fear at what they just witnessed, I left the room and my co-worker was waiting for me outside the test room, looking pretty angry, he asked me why all the kids from that room ran out screaming and crying, I decided to lead him back into the test room where the episode was shown, the whole place was empty except for us, and I told my co-worker to watch the episode from the start to finish, I ran out of the room as I didn't want to see the episode twice, once he had finished watching the disturbing episode he was furious, he contacted the higher ups at sesame workshop and demanded an explanation to that episode, unfortunately not a single person had any answer and were all very confused, each one of them gave the episode a watch and they had no idea where it came from or how it was made, we were all left clueless.

The only explanation I have come up with is that some madman pretended to be a director for an episode of Sesame Street and told all the muppet's voice actors and the puppeteers to do this episode, and the result was this horrifying episode, that could explain why the episode was so much more different compared to other Sesame Street episodes, and it also explains the lack of end credits. Whatever the true explanation was, we all have agreed that my explanation was the most logical, we have decided to air the proper Sesame Street episode 3851 and we locked the other VHS labeled as episode 3851 into a vault with all the other unaired Sesame Street episodes like "Snuffy's Parent's get a Divorce" and "The Wicked Witch visits Sesame Street" and we vowed to never show any footage of that episode ever.