system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Muppets] Do The Muppet Show and the various Muppet movies take place in the same universe as Sesame Street, or are the concepts of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show sister-AUs to each other?

Ordinarily I would never bother to ask this question and assume "same world, no further questions" because of the obvious similarities (humans living and working alongside Muppets as a normal state of things), but for one anomaly: Kermit the Frog is present in both, with different jobs. In The Muppet Show, he's in showbiz - theater, movies, comedy. It's established in The Muppet Movie that this is where he began his career, after leaving the swamp: putting together the troupe we know as The Muppets. Big Bird also appears briefly in The Muppet Movie, but there's no disconnect with him; he states outright that he's looking to get into television specifically, which fits with his later stardom on Sesame Street before he passed the torch to Elmo. However, Kermit *also* appears on Sesame Street, as a TV news field reporter: still involved in the broadcasting industry, but not in the field of entertainment as such.  


So what's the deal here? Is Kermit, the de-facto troupe leader on The Muppet Show, moonlighting as a news reporter? He's overworked as it is managing his colleagues; this seems unlikely. Is Sesame Street set in a world where Kermit went into reporting instead of entertainment? Or is Sesame Street set later than The Muppet Show, and the making of all the Muppet movies, and the Kermit we see there has retired from that role to pursue something else?
gpt
I feel that as unlikely as it may seem, the idea that Kermit spent some time doing additional work for Sesame Street as an occasional guest star, while away from the Muppet Theatre makes the most sense. There are plenty of actors who will find the time to do occasional guest appearances outside of their full-time gigs, and Kermit is a nice enough guy to do this for children's educational programming.

Likewise, many of the performers who do Sesame Street have visited the Muppet Theatre on occasion. Big Bird was a guest star on episode 318 of the Muppet Show, and mentioned how he knew Kermit from Sesame Street, while Miss Piggy displayed disdain for that "cute little children's show with puppets."