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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

Canadian culture infiltrating the world, one pup at a time.

Though Bluey is definitely the better product.

I only recently saw Bluey for the first time (only one of my kids is still, barely, in the demo for it).

God damn it’s good. It’d be a solid choice for a lazy Saturday afternoon of getting baked and zoning out on TV, even for those without kids. Mellow, funny, you get little wins to root for, and some fun bits that go over kids’ heads. Rare for a show targeted that young to be as appealing to (or, at least, tolerable for) adults. Far better than, say, Daniel Tiger, which is already well above the bottom tier of that kind of show.

[edit] incidentally, I think Fred Rogers would have been disgusted by all the heavy-handed auto tune in Daniel Tiger. Giving kids a wildly incorrect model of what ordinary, real human singing sounds like strikes me as the kind of thing that would have prompted him to bring down the “no” hammer on his own show in a damn hurry, if someone had suggested it. Bugs me every time I watch it.

I also love Bluey but I think we might be somewhat biased, because it clearly makes an effort to cater to adults as well (most chapters can be seen as being about parenting, and sometimes contain non-obvious lessons for parents). Perhaps from the viewpoint of a child it wouldn't be so superior to other cartoons.

Although it does have the quite objective advantage of not being overstimulating. Most current cartoons look overwhelmingly overstimulating for me as an adult, and move at such a fast pace that in some I can barely follow the action, and we throw them at small kids...

My kids really love this show, coincidentally it's even on at this moment. Regarding the parenting lessons, they resonate with the kids as well. There was an episode after which one of our kids compared the story of an episode with something that happened in our household and it gave us a nice chance to talk about it on their level. The Bluey writers really do a terrific job. My kids never learned a lesson from Paw Patrol, except wanting to buy their merchandise.

Mom and I had a really emotional moment when 4yo was getting incredibly discouraged that he couldn’t hit the baseball but his older brother could. And 6yo just went to him and said “it’s okay! Run your own race.”

A kids show that can include a moment about pregnancy loss for the parents is quite the thing to behold.

Yes. This show is on another level.

There are entire episodes of Bluey that are pretty much therapy for parents. And there’s episodes that celebrate being a parent. There's even episodes that bring tears to my eyes every time, even having seen them half a dozen times.

- Baby Race

- Bike

- Camping

- Flat Pack (how do they tell a story that deep in six minutes?!)

- Sleepytime (yep, welling up just thinking about it now)

- Rain

- Granddad

My three year old wants to watch sleepytime every day and somehow I don’t mind it.

> and move at such a fast pace that in some I can barely follow the action, and we throw them at small kids...

I love animation so I end up watching a ton of cartoons and I have to agree that shows these days can move way too fast. You can tell a whole story in a 5-15 minute episode, but telling a story well in that time takes serious talent and I'd love to see what talented writers like that could do with a story that had room to breathe.

It matters a lot less for shows with little if any continuity but serious story telling needs a lot more time. I'd feel better about it if there were a bunch of animated shows with 40-60 run times to balance things out.

One good thing I'll say about hyper-fast paced animation is that it forces the audience to fill in a lot of blanks on their own. That could engage a kid's imagination if they take the time. I get the feeling that it's the older audiences who tend to go nuts with that though.

Bluey is by far my kids' favorite show, FWIW.

> Perhaps from the viewpoint of a child it wouldn't be so superior to other cartoons.

My friend's son LOVES Bluey. When it's on TV or a phone he'll stare at it without blinking for as long as it's on. I didn't notice it until another friend asked why he was crying and his dad told us he just doesn't blink when Bluey is on.

Just to clarify, I didn't want to imply that it cannot be great from the viewpoint of the kids. Just that for most parents it tends to be the uncontested best among shows for that age, miles ahead of any competitor without a second thought (an opinion that I myself share) while for kids it's probably just one more that some may prefer while others don't.

My son does like it quite a lot, and it prefers it to many others such as Dora, Spongebob, Paw Patrol or the infamous Peppa Pig, but he will choose PJ Masks or Superkitties over Bluey, and those two I find... not very good, to be honest. Especially Superkitties.

Your friend's son has great taste in cartoons, although not blinking might be taking it a bit too far :)

There's a new one in the mix too, called Pupstruction, which seems to be Disney's "this is legally distinct from paw patrol" entry. Watch Disney Junior and you'll see a lot of Bluey and Pupstruction.

Bluey is still king to me, but Pupstruction being centered around construction rather than law enforcement is a positive distinction in my eyes.

There seems to be a weird popular misconception about Paw Patrol being some sort of police recruitment propaganda for toddlers. I've (unfortunately) had to sit through hundreds of episodes and it really isn't. The police dog is not particularly treated as a main character as all of them are given pretty equal screen time and storylines (out side the recent film, which does focus on him). And even when the episodes do focus on Chase it's barely police work, certainly he doesn't go around pointing his gun at immigrants. His main ability as a police officer seems to be that he has a megaphone.

Indeed. And even if it had some police propaganda, this wouldn't be that bad anywhere in the developed world except the US. The perception of police spending most time harassing minorities and exacerbating humanitarian crises? That's a US problem. Literally no one else has it. Which is what makes the attitudes to LEO that US exports sad, and perhaps even dangerous.

> The perception of police spending most time harassing minorities and exacerbating humanitarian crises? That's a US problem. Literally no one else has it.

France just had weeks of riots because the police shot Nahel Merzouk [1] due to similar dynamics that have been developing in France since at least the Algerian crisis [2]. I don't know if "spending most time" is a fair characterization of French minorities' perception but the antagonistic relationship between police and minorities is far from a US only problem.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahel_Merzouk_riots

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961

I think that merely the fact that people are bothered enough to riot shows that the problem in the US is much more extended, where shootings by the police were such an everyday phenomenon that the biggest reaction you'll get is an extra-high shrug.

The French do love a good riot but don't forget that the George Floyd protests just a few years ago were the largest in US history - during pandemic lockdowns, no less. They devolved into something resembling riots in only a few cities but "extra-high shrug" is hardly how I'd describe that series of events or the other smaller protests since. The Minneapolis ones only wrapped up in May of this year after the criminal cases were resolved.

I think with US suburban sprawl it's just a lot easier to ignore what's going on in the cities.

Ah, interesting, I may be wrong then. I remember the George Floyd protests, but didn't know of any more recent.

Well, also, it is _France_; proud tradition of very large dramatic protests and riots going back over two hundred years. It's kind of their thing. French farmers routinely shut down whole cities when they're vaguely irritated about something; it's unsurprising that protests around more serious and emotive matters than France enforcing an EU ban it was already meant to be enforcing on a pesticide get a bit dramatic.

I don't know if that's just a France thing, I remember here (Greece) ten years or so ago, when a police officer shot a teenager, and the whole country was in flames for a week from the riots. There are still marches and protests every year, on the anniversary.

> And even when the episodes do focus on Chase it's barely police work, certainly he doesn't go around pointing his gun at immigrants.

If he did go around pointing is gun at immigrants that would be the opposite of police propaganda wouldn't it? Most young kids don't interact with police directly, so nearly everything they know about police comes from the media they consume. The question comes down to what kids need to learn about police and what role media plays in that education. Families in certain communities have been educating their children on how dangerous police are for a very long time.

Is it better to introduce an idealized version of police to kids and let them learn on their own that police are dangerous or is it better to present police in children's media realistically so that they're prepared when they see their 8 year old classmate thrown to the ground, handcuffed, and arrested because they acted up in class or so they understand when they see protesters march past their house because police officers beat and murdered another person on camera without consequences?

I suspect that it's better to show kids what police are supposed to be like before introducing them to the harsher reality we live in, but I can't blame people for looking at shows like Paw Patrol and thinking that it's giving kids a very unrealistic view of policing at a time when they should be increasingly made aware of the issues and the risks they face.

> the harsher reality we live in

as terrible as it is if we focus on the whole developed world “we” is just a tiny minority (even in the US, just unfortunately not as tiny…)

> unrealistic view of policing

so maybe they could do a separate version for Americans?

Bluey is just very different.

You can tell that it is made with love.

I think if my daughters weren’t watching it, I would watch it alone.

>Canadian culture infiltrating the world, one pup at a time.

Maple syrup was already here

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