‘Bluey’s World’: How a Cute Aussie Puppy Became a Juggernaut
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This is strongest in the "Sleepytime" episode which is based on the "Jupiter" movement of Holst's "The Planets" . . . honestly I have to skip this episode when it comes up because it makes me tear up so much, and most parents I know who also watch the show have similar reactions. "Sleepytime" is really art.
(For one, I realized we're both too harsh about kiddos getting dirty and making a mess. The other big thing was, it made me decide to make playground after kindergarten a priority more important than work.)
Beyond parenting, that story and song connected me with my own inner child, and had me realize I might be taking this "adulting" thing way too seriously. Work, play, it's still the same game - we're still just "racing those boats down the road to the end".
Can't think of anything else in my life that managed to break me down and put back together differently so quickly.
I make sure my kids hear it every so often, knowing that one day it will click on an emotional level and they realize what I truly mean.
The stately feel in "Sleepytime" may have fit the solar system motif and provided contrast to the earthy elements of the story.
I liked "Sleepytime" in part from the expression of letting go while being faithful. Bingo's letting her rabbit go did not mean a complete separation but an expansion (as a few additional rabbits came to help later) similar to a parent allowing a child to grow up and leave while affirming that the child is loved.
Bluey also has some similarity to Calvin and Hobbes in that some fantastic elements are not explained. E.g., in "Sleepytime", do Bluey and Bingo have a psychic connection such that they shared part of the dream or is there imagination/unreliable narration or some third option?
Now I can hear things a bit better, and Bluey’s music makes me think of that video every time. There’s so much going on melodically and yet they blend it so well that you don’t really notice. It’s amazing.
It gets me every single time.
Many bluey episodes are like this. But Sleepytime especially stands out.
My daughter likes to say "that makes me happy... and sad!" at the end of a particularly artistic episode, like Sleepytime, the wordless one where it rains, or the final episode ("The Sign" - the Citizen Kane of children's television).
Rain - https://youtu.be/U7Pvxqe2JvM
Rainbow - https://youtu.be/j1E8C_qLjbk
And sure enough, she was 100% right. It was like peak Pixar, entertaining for the little ones but very deep and full of incredible depth and emotion for the adults.
As a kid who grew up poor and moved around a lot as mom tried to make ends meet, this episode fucking obliterated me. Goddamn 36 year old watching a neighbor's kids having to explain that I'm fine, don't worry, to a couple of very confused littles.
My daughter's amazement that I can translate the French bits of dialogue from Jean-Luc were a joy, too. :-) But that made me appreciate the scriptwriting more -- because almost everything Jean-Luc says, Bluey _also_ says, independently, so it works if -- like my wife and kid -- you don't know a word of French.
I Know a Place (The Creek Song)
Love the music in Beach and Fruit Bat as well.
The next one about the voices is excellent too, so linking both. The care they put into both the show and the people involved is almost as touching as the show itself.
https://www.20k.org/episodes/thesoundofbluey https://www.20k.org/episodes/thevoicesofbluey
The music is great but many shows have great music. What makes Bluey stand out for me is their commitment to 'avant-garde' formal constraints.
Some examples:
- In the episode 'Faceytalk' they never once break from the perspective of the iPad.
- In 'Rain' there's not a single word of audible dialog.
- In 'Turtle Boy' there's lots of sign language. Remember, characters in Bluey only have four fingers. The people making the show rose to the challenge of creating proper dialogue using only signs you can make with four fingers. I imagine that's about equivalent to writing English text without the latter 'e'. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void)
The recreation sadly broke the strict rule of 'singe take / no cuts, iPad view only', but that drove home to me how great the original was.
They also break the 4th wall specifically by showing the animator's point of view in a really fun sequence at the end of Puppets, and it's just... such a treat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhvVl0CW670
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Wow, bluey team, not available. IN AUSTRALIA. Thanks.
YouTube is convenient, but it's not the only place where people might want to put their content.
I broke down in tears the first time I listened to it and paid attention to lyrics.
(Then I put it on a loop when everyone was asleep, and cried a couple times more. This episode combined with the song caused a major adjustment in my attitude to parenting pretty much overnight; it hit a nerve running that deep.)
The other big thing was, I grew so fixated about my own job and various adult stuff, that I actually kind of hated the playground, and often felt impatient when playing (wanting to get back to million unfinished adult things). I got stuck in a self-centered and rather sad mode of thinking, and with my wife going through her own hardships, we found it too easy to just let the kids do jigsaws or play with bricks, rather than playing with them or taking them somewhere.
The song broke me down, and broke me out of my various mental loops, long enough to realize how deeply unsatisfied I am with how I act as a parent. Not just in the usual, system-2 "I realize my performance is suboptimal, I vow to improve it" way. I actually felt the weight of everything, of how much we, how much growth and happiness I am denying our girls, and it flipped something in me permanently that night. Adult problems were still there, but I suddenly felt I really want to play more, and I absolutely want to take them to playground, which became priority more important than work, and generally made me stress a little less about everything. And so I did stay on the playground the next day, and I loved it, and things really got better and happier for everyone from that day on.
Specific things: we stopped minding the sand that much - which meant we started going to the other playground nearby, that's mostly built inside a big sandbox. Kids love it. And I started to engage with some of the more absurd imaginary stories my older daughter comes up with, to her great delight. And ever since, there was no more "can't do X/Y/Z, daddy needs to finish something for work" - I decided that, in Muffin's words, "this is unacceptable!"[0].
It's hard to put into words. It probably all sounds mundane from the outside, but inside of me, the change was as profound as it was unexpected. Switches flipped, priorities realigned, emotions purged.
This was a big thing for me. But there's a lot of smaller things I took away from Bluey, too, that I feel makes me a better parent. It's truly a special show.
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For the 'industry trick' part you can get most of the benefit from going 'most of the way'. Ie you get almost the same wiggle room, if 90% of your scenes are without dialogue, and 10% are voiced.
For the artistic effect, there's a big difference between 90% and 100%. (Sparse dialogue is also a perfectly valid artistic choice, but it's doesn't make much sense to analyse it as '90% of a no-dialogue' piece.)
I've mostly come to appreciate 'pantomime' in web comics. Many comics go overboard with text, be that speech bubbles, thought bubble or narration boxes. It's always interesting to me to see an author work out how use the medium to its full advantage, instead of writing a novel.
The episode "The Sign" is an incredibly deep story from multiple angles.
Bandit is a fantastic role model and I have learned a lot from this pretend dog dad lol.
My father is deceased. I feel like a lot of the advice he would have given me, I picked up from watching Bluey.
This show is so good on so many levels.
ALLEGABLY!
The number of young men I saw come in and out of the lobby wearing Bluey t-shirts...
The kids are gonna be alright.
But sometimes he is literally fleeing the kids, to not have to play with them, instead of saying no.
(But from the avaiable alternatives, he is indeed the best role model that comes to mind)
She said it also really helps that they’re a bit older now. A 2 and a 4 year old have a much bigger age gap than a 6 and 8 year old.
All that said, she still doesn’t get much time pursuing her hobbies. She says it’s the after school activities that do her in now.
And yes, after a certain point more becomes easier - after all, one teacher can handle a class of 20+ students.
The hardest is when the oldest are too young to help with the youngest.
In any case I don't think either of those shows tries to portray the average - more of an ideal we should strive for on good days.
It’s also somewhat told from Bandit’s perspective (understandable given the author).
The episode “Burger Shop” is a good example of him not getting his way at the same time he does, even though he ends up admitting his experiment was a failure.
What's robotic ink?
.. along with an unintended cool in-joke about how dogs can't type.
I also can entertain my kids for 8 minutes a day!
I'm always impressed by TV or movies that can pull that off, usually one or the other of us finds the content uninteresting.
Bandit is the dad all of us dads wish we could be.
https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Bumbling_Dad
However, in the 80s there were still examples of mostly competent fathers, like The Cosby Show and Family Ties.
Are you restricting yourself to family sit-coms?
If not, there's plenty of characters in all kinds of media that just happen to be fathers and/or husbands and are treated normally.
But I agree with your general sentiment. That's one of the reasons I hate Peppa pig with a passion.
You might (or might not) like the treatment of Hilda's dad in the third season of the animated series.
Comedies often have some mockery built in, and comedies aimed at kids in particular like to take shots at authority, but there are a lot of examples I can think of in just the general-TV-millenial-vibe-y things I've watched over the past couple of decades. More than the "bumbling dad" type, I'd say, from things I've seen in the zeitgeist (I guess one recent super typical example is Rick and Morty, though everyone sucks there):
* Arrested Development: Michael is the most competent of the bunch. His father was also quite competent, if an asshole and eventual criminal. But, you know, that put the "sit" in sitcom...
* Luke from Gilmore Girls is pretty consistently more sane than Lorelai, turns out to be a good dad too IIRC; other fathers include a loser and a number of very successful businessmen, teachers, etc.
* King of the Hill: doing his best, often the most sane of the bunch
* Bob's Burgers: haven't watched a ton of this but from what I've seen Bob is a goofball but respectable and wholesome, kinda a Hank Hill. Not a lazy Homer
* Parks and Rec: Ben Wyatt is a pretty positive character
* Brooklyn 99: Terry is practically a superman of competence and seems to hold is own with his wife and kids. Holt is a supremely competent husband. Boyle is a goofball generally and in dating, but that does not really extend to his eventual marriage and child, where he seems to be doing quite well.
* Schitt's Creek: Johnny is the competent center of the family surrounded by comically exaggerated crazy wife + kids
Dramas seem even further away. Where do Breaking Bad or the Sopranos land?
I personally suspect one reason for the “bumbling dad” trope is the “classically ideal dad” is everywhere in stories, and thus becomes boring.
Subverting the conventional power figure is also played for laughs a lot, while Bluey doesn’t ask us to laugh at anyone.
Fathers are depicted as staggering oafs or well-meaning clowns, to be suffered by their wives and insulted by their children.
Classically ideal dads are so rare that this cartoon character is being lauded as one of the best examples of the ideal in recent memory.
Bluey isn't just good family programming. It is a snapshot of Australian culture and family values which would likely never be made in a world controlled by huge multinationals.
My daughters like bluey (ages 3-8). But they also enjoy many things on TV and bluey doesn't stick out that much.
On the other hand, I happened to be in the room for an episode where blueys dad is having a hard time making some sort of cake and bluey cleans up something to help him out without being prompted. I most definitely felt heard watching that episode.
Like there are no overnight successes, there are many prompts and maybe not the best strategies (such as “I’ll give you a dollar if you clean up”).
That's how a lot of successful children's movies/shows work in a way.
Have you ever rewatched older kids movies as an adult and realized how many adult-level jokes they slipped in that you never noticed as a child?
If you're asking parents to spend 1.5 hours at a movie theater, you better throw in some adult humor in there as well.
I think the proper way to do it is to include themes and/or characters that adults would relate with too. Ghibli movies are one example where this is done well (most of the time).
That's why Bluey is so popular. It's the only good TV program for adults that kids will also watch. (And I agree it's only super popular for adults, kids are way more into trash like Blippi.)
Sooooooo cute.
Fwiw my kids (9 - 12) watched every episode at least 4 times already by now. Especially my youngest thinks it's 10x better than anything else on offer. In terms of categories, there's basically Bluey, and everything else. Just to say, tastes differ.
I agree it's a great show for parents too but the idea that it doesn't stick out much for the kids doesn't resonate with me. There's so many details, so many layers, so much to discover.
When they were little they loved it because there were cartoon animals laughing and playing.
When they were slightly older they loved it because the jokes were funny.
And when they got a little older still, they loved it because the silly things the parents did in the show reminded them of the silly things us parents do. So they’ll often call out “that’s what you do daddy!” during the episodes.
The show is a work of genius because it feels like a slice of real life but packaged in a way that is entertaining for kids. So I do completely agree that it has a lot of appeal for adults too, and that definitely helps.
I also fully agree with the other posters saying how it’s an excellent model of top-tier fathering. It’s definitely helped me up my game, I’ve leaned much more into daddy-fun silly games, partly because Bluey gives you a bunch of games that you can copy (and your kids will understand), but also because it helps encourage spontaneity and improv. I think my best advice for dads with 3+ year olds is ‘watch Bluey’
At least twice he’s trying to get to work, so he doesn’t just work from home.
Our daughter is the same. Pizza girls and tickle crab are two of her favorite
The voice actor for Bandit, Dave McCormack, was not previously known as an actor or voice artist, but he has been known in Australia since the early 90s as an indie rock band frontman.
The band he fronted, Custard, started getting airplay on Australia’s national youth radio station, Triple J, in about 1993, and they became a staple of the live music scene - especially uni student bars, live rock pubs and summer festivals - for all the 90s. They quit in 2000 but reformed in 2009 and are still recording albums and playing gigs.
They’re worth checking out [1] if you were into quirky 90s bands like Ween, Dino Jr, Flaming Lips, Ben Folds Five, etc. Full of grungy chords and riffs but mostly major key, happy/fun/funny compositions and lyrics. Very high energy and entertaining. Some nice slower jangly country ballads thrown in there too.
I think they’re the only band I ever stage-dived to, so I guess technically I’ve been “on stage with Bluey’s dad”.
Most music lovers in Australia now in their 40s knew of them, and I’m sure it was a factor in the casting to tap into the nostalgia of the people who are now parents of the kids Bluey is aimed at.
[1] It’s all on Spotify/Apple Music etc. Wisenheimer and Wahooti Fandango are their peak albums and Apartment, Lucky Star, Pack Yr Suitcase and Singlette are the songs that best convey their vibe.
Sure enough same guy, played at a pub down the road from us last year or so.
Very musically talented guy. It's so strange being a younger Australian and realising that we don't have to import fame/stardom from America. We got talent right here.
> we got talent right here
You have no idea how right you are. Or maybe you do… There are writers and musicians and … every kind of talent on par with anything anyone else in any country has ever done.
It was extremely eye opening for me to listen to TripleJ or whatever station I would tune to after hearing some American pop junk, and hear music I’ve never heard, before or since, by bands I never heard before or since, play some of the best music I have ever heard, every single day I was there. And, that music was unlike a lot of other stuff on the radio, which was so refreshing. So new! So good! And so much!
My girlfriend (who was Australian and is why I moved there) pulled out her CDs and I was lost in them for weeks.
I was roommates with a guy, and worked with him, for six months before he texted me and told me to turn on the radio. Three minutes later I heard his voice followed by 45 minutes of the best DJ mixing set I have ever heard. He composed the best music I have ever heard, live, by ear, and it was something he did every damn week.
Australia is fucking amazing.
But tbh Triple J’s Like a Version blows it out of the water
Especially giving artists the leeway to try genre switching
Like Denzel Curry covering Rage Against the Machine for instance
King Stingray does Coldplays's 'Yellow' https://youtu.be/sr3iI8gg2fo
Denzel Curry does Rage against the Machine's 'Bulls on Parade' https://youtu.be/ZY4ywyFXdik
- Someday (Julia Jacklin cover of The Strokes)
- Love (CHVRCHES cover of Kendrick Lamar)
- Feels Like We Only Go Backwards (Arctic Monkeys cover of Tame Impala)
- Do I Wanna Know (CHVRCHES cover of Arctic Monkeys)
- Believe (DMA's cover of Cher)
And speaking of Australian childrens TV and Like A Version covers, the Wiggles covered Tame Impala's Elephant (bet you didn't expect that one!)
Australian covers go back further in time, of course ...
The Wiggles famously covered AC/DC's It's a Long Way to the Shop (If You Wanna Sausage Roll)
and Rolf Harris infamously covered I Touch Myself originally by the Divinyls
These, and more, prompted by guest appearence's on Andrew Denton's Musical Challenge and collected on a couple of records (today on youtube etc.).
Indeed you do. A random stab at TripleJ Unearthed is enough to find an artist/band that's well above the world average.
I don't know if it's the remoteness or dangerous animals that is the reason for this, but Australians sure know how to make music.
Custard/McCormack are Brisbane-based and Bluey has been produced from a Brisbane studio since the very beginning. The writers/producers would have known and liked his music and voice, and probably someone there already knew him personally. Bluey is shown on ABC in Australia and Custard has always had lots of airplay on ABC TV and radio stations.
Love Custard with my heart and soul. Thanks for bringing them up Tom Howard!
I know that song/line well and remember mentions of Custard being “banned” by Triple Z in the band’s early days, but I can’t find any details. Do you know why they banned/smashed their music?
We’ve known Paul and David from custard for a long time now. Only time we ever talked about that was waaaaay back, around 1996 when we interviewed David for Semper, the UQ newspaper.
(“We” is my wife and I… girlfriend back then)
I too wrote for my campus newspaper - Monash Caulfield. I didn’t interview Custard (I did interview Snout, Earthmen and Atticus). But in some shoebox in storage are some Kodak instant camera prints of me and my uni mates with Dave and Matt when they played at our campus in 98. Such a wonderful time to be young.
Snout were v good.
He uses his normal speaking voice for Bandit, and you can very clearly hear the same voice when he's signing most of the Custard stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP_LSm7FjRI
Wisenheimer and Wahooti Fandango are still both great albums (...and then I moved overseas and drifted out of the Custard orbit). For anyone with kids firmly in the Bluey demographic, I bet you could really confuse them by playing Custard at them.
I'm surprised they (i.e. record companies) haven't been trying to push Custard more, given there's a large fan based just waiting to be tapped. It would be fun to see Bandit do karaoke of a Custard song, or sing a few lines when he was in the shower, or just doing chores, etc.
Turns out it's on sale now too: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=tOzwEAAAQBAJ
This is a modern translation of what Marcus Aurelius said in "Meditations", his private diary. This particular paraphrasing and interpretation is by Ryan Holiday, a modern stoic with many books on the topic to his name. You would enjoy them.
The original quote:
"In one respect man is the nearest thing to me, so far as I must do good to men and endure them. But so far as some men make themselves obstacles to my proper acts, man becomes to me one of the things which are indifferent, no less than the sun or wind or a wild beast. Now it is true that these may impede my action, but they are no impediments to my affects and disposition, which have the power of acting conditionally and changing: for the mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid; and so that which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act; and that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road."
Meditations, 5.20 Marcus Aurelius
the authors created a great character in rusty
And yeah, absolutely amazing episode.
It's brilliant at every level. Such a perfect piece of television, told in this flawless 7 minutes.
Bluey reduced most of them to tears in episode 47 of season 3. Directed right at them and if you’re not a cricketer it will be tough to see why it’s extraordinary. Just a huge wow of a piece of writing for those of us who grew up with the game and its associated culture.
In Bluey, it’s all great, all of it. But the writing is something beyond that.
YouTube, need to watch them carefully and catch the YT algorithm trying to insert bad videos.
I have been mainly relying on Epic & PBS Kids - but feel an expansion is needed.
Which is a whole other thing in this age of streaming.. when they know you could just pick something else, they will immediately complain and ask for that instead of just needing to accept what is being shown.
We've been using the Dude Perfect app lately. It's got ads, but it only features a select few YouTubers that focus on kid friendly content. And everything is screened by a real person. So it lets our kids watch YouTube without the "endless trash" content feed.
It would be better for everyone if Google would turn YT Kids into a manually curated service. I think that even Google would benefit from getting more people trusting YT Kids. But unfortunately having humans in the loop is not the Google way, so it will never happen.
Usually I've found that kids quickly get bored of some of the other apps we've tried here, but I've seen them stick to Kidzovo for much longer. Maybe worth a try. Good thing about PBS or Kidzovo is that they dont have me looking over my shoulder like Youtube or Youtube Kids does.
We don't give the kids much TV time at all, maybe an hour a week, but it's nice knowing they can just pick something themselves, and we don't have to worry that it's decent
We mostly use YouTube for Ms Rachel and watching music video clips (from the Sing movies and Disney movies). I don't know how it is in the US but here in the NL Netflix has licensed a whole bunch of great kids shows and we don't really use any other apps because of that.
I have since tried using only interactive apps that would encourage kids to participate actively rather than just passively watching. When I'm around, I'll do that anyways, but it helps if the content is itself interactive.
I really like Kidzovo. They curate huge amounts of content for kids from different creators and provide this cute little owl called Ovo, that's like the child's friend on the app and every minute or so it pops up and engages kids in these mini games that get them to do activities related to what they are watching like find & tap on something or use their voice to answer questions. They also have a huge bunch of coloring sheets & jigsaw puzzles.
Usually I've found that kids quickly get bored of some of the other apps mentioned here, but I've seen them stick to Kidzovo for much longer. Maybe worth a try.
You watch and approve everything in advance or don’t let them watch at all.
Alphablocks, numberblocks aren’t bad. Hey Douggie is ok.
There is decent stuff on YouTube havfunlearning or similar but you’ve got to play projectionist.
I've also periodically open their ipad and p;lay educational videos to get them on their homepage. Youtube will still stick videos of 40 year old adults acting 14 and doing weird stuff. I still need to be near them whoever they use Youotube.
- Aty and Ui, two pet otters in Japan. Their owner has made tons of videos showing what they eat, how they play, and the different rivers they visit. All dialogue is in Japanese and English subtitles. My kid now loves otters, I explain different things about animals or Japan to give context, and I get to practice reading Japanese.
- MIKAN, a channel with videos of "marbles" animated using a basic physics engine. There's no dialogue. There are races, factories, battles, and even a tower defense match. It helped him learn colors. Nowadays, he gets up and practically dances while cheering for his favorite colors. Indoor exercise isn't so bad. Some of the videos that aren't on YT Kids can be a little scary for toddlers (like alien abductions, not the dreaded shock schlock that pops up on YT).
- 5MadMovieMakers, a channel with marble runs and Hot Wheels tracks. No dialogue, just short clips of creative tracks with background music. My kid now loves coming up with his own marble and Hot Wheels tracks now (though he's still not good at planning out the whole thing to actually work).
I understand the concerns about using YT Kids as a babysitter. When he gets a tablet at my parents' and decides what to watch, it's things like cars driving over paint-filed balloons or the typical group of bros overreacting to a different stupid thing each week.
Usually I've found that kids quickly get bored of some of the other apps we've tried here, but I've seen them stick to Kidzovo for much longer. Maybe worth a try. Good thing about PBS or Kidzovo is that they dont have me looking over my shoulder like Youtube or Youtube Kids does.
For some good real world marble runs
Jelle's Marble Runs: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSmWeUDtr9fATQqT2c0am...
Murmiland: https://www.youtube.com/@Murmiland
Usually I've found that kids quickly get bored of some of the other apps we've tried here, but I've seen them stick to Kidzovo for much longer. Maybe worth a try. Good thing about PBS or Kidzovo is that they dont have me looking over my shoulder like Youtube or Youtube Kids does.
Websites and businesses are much harder to predict. You might have the next Google, or you might have the next Pets dot com.
I take role playing with my daughter more seriously now.
I used to feel a little uncomfortable being really silly (hard after a stressful day).
Now I try to embrace how silly she is and try to play along. It takes A LOT more concentration.
What a wonderful show. Contrast this with Cocomelon, which is basically screen crack for kids.
I hate that my daughter watched one second of Cocomelon!
It's refreshing to see shows like Bluey that are thoroughly modern, but produced with old-school values: respect kids' intelligence, show positive role models, be realistic about feelings and conflict, and keep everything low-key and don't amp the kids up.
It's timeless, everyone gets a laugh (including parents) and is a "show about nothing" (just the daily lives of family dynamics).
As a parent, I really appreciate the show and no other show can compare.
(For those who haven't seen it, it's more akin to a family sitcom than a traditional kids show/cartoon)
That’s a really good way of describing it.
It really does have that kind of vibe to it.
There's always at least one game in every episode. It hit me early in my fever dream of a binge watch: even the intro is itself a game. One of the many simple "freeze"/"simon says"/"red light/green light"/"musical chairs" variants (the show calls it "statues" in one episode), dance while the music plays and freeze when the music stops and if you move while you are supposed to be frozen you lose. (I cheered loudly at the first episode where Bluey doesn't win the intro game. It was a lovely reward for never skipping the intro.)
There's so many good lessons about games as a lifelong tool scattered across nearly every episode, as a part of what makes the family dynamics so bright and exciting.
- Hilda on Netflix - more appropriate for 9+ year olds but my 5 year old loves it. Has some genuinely scary moments though especially the later seasons - The Gruffalo, Stick Man, Snail and the Whale, etc - based on the books - Avatar the Last Airbender - for older kids but has one of the best character arcs
https://www.naturalhabitatshorts.com/shorts
We quote this one especially all the time. https://www.naturalhabitatshorts.com/shorts?pgid=ku471zfv-b9...
"Gerald... That's not a proper hello."
"Jason, get in there."Steven Universe is a similar and fantastic show. Maybe a little more mature, particularly in later seasons, but I'm more than happy to let my young kids watch it. I didn't particularly enjoy the follow up Steven University Future however.
For Younger kids, Puffin Rock is unbeatable in my book.
Or, maybe it's the best show for the parents. I'm literally watching it by myself after my kid goes to bed.
I really appreciate that the show doesn't hesitate to include some ordinary parenting interactions like Muffin took Stripe's phone and he chased her through the whole house, and Bandit making shenanigans.
It COULD have ended with a timeout and then Muffin being sulky and then cheering up, but it didn't.
It COULD have ended with "Mom's right, Dad's wrong," but it didn't.
It ended with gold.
(The use of the cousins to display other child activities is also brilliant, they can have "bratty Muffin" without forcing Bingo or Bluey to be "overly bratty".)
They don't have to show the ukulele but showing it confirms Muffin's characteristics.
They don't have to show Bandit stretching himself at the beginning of the episode, either.
Also the multi window camera is a bit unique but fun. I'm surprised how they managed to pull that out without making a whole mess when Muffin starts running.
And that final sad flip and dive ... pocketbooks not yet BORN felt that one.
They flew under a lot of people's radar, but was quietly one of the most brilliant set of modern animations. They are well made, packed with jokes, weird, are a love letter to Chuck Jones era cartoons, and managed to bring back personalities to all of these corporate characters.
It comes from the minutiae and details of childhood psychology. To a small child, a pair of new red boots is so much more than a pair of red boots.
It's not only relatable to kids, but the magic is that it reminds me what it's like to be a kid, and helps me relate to them.
I've got a few copies stashed away for when my kids are a bit older, and I'm glad I do, as the kids sections of the local b&n is dire
"Rain" is my favorite. The shots, the story, the music, the lack of dialog. "The Sign" was my biggest tearjerker.
Also, I came across this musician who makes great EDM remixes of Bluey songs, I recommend checking him out: https://www.youtube.com/@MicJaiy/search?query=bluey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEQHiJVH79o
One of the things he talks about is something other commenters have mentioned - It's just as much a show for the parents, and in some cases, directly addresses the parents, but not in a fourth-wall-breaking way. They're not really talking to the parent, but it's one character talking to another, but it's drawn so that the character is looking at the viewer.
Zero entertainment executives in the USA would ever allow a show to be made without their own shitty changes stapled on.
<a>episodes that made me want to cry </a>It also has enough silliness to keep them engaged without being didactic! And enough inside jokes that parents can have a laugh as well.
It may very well be the best family show for small kids.
https://www.20k.org/episodes/thesoundofbluey
Neet to see something start from a idea and grown to be so big and still manage to keep humble.
I am fairly sure that the episode "Handstand":
https://www.bluey.tv/watch/season-2/handstand/
... in which Nana can't actively help with the party, and nobody will take the time to watch Bingo's handstand, is an intentional homage to an (at the time) award-winning Ariston TV advert from 1970s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUVs7vXNZiw
Its video-game themed music, and ground-breaking video editing, looping a clip while adding more and more characters and action each repetition, was mind-blowing ~40 years ago.
E.g. they both claim to have invented the style of coffee called a Flat White:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_white
Pavlova is a popular fruit-and-meringue dessert invented by... let's be neutral: one of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlova
Allegedly it was named for, or inspired by, the ballerina Anna Pavlova:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Pavlova
This itself is in turn a reference to another fruit-based dessert named for a classical music performa -- the Peach Melba:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peach_Melba
That was named in honour of opera singer Dame Nellie Melba:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Melba
... who was from Melbourne. (Pronounced MEL-bun by its locals, I'm told.)
But there are already so many great episodes!
2. The sign
3. Sleepytime
4. Old ladies
Some good shows I found for my son:
* Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood - spiritual spinoff from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
* Elinor Wonders Why
* Word World
* Peg + Cat
* Numberblocks and Alphablocks for learning about numbers and words
* Guess How Much I Love You
* Trash Truck
* Hero Elementary
* Mecha Builders
* Stillwater
* Sid the Science Kid
I really enjoyed the adaptation of El Deafo on AppleTV. Its brilliant use of audio effects to explain the evolving technology of the little girl’s hearing aids had me in tears.
1. they are designed to be part of a curriculum and so they build across episodes. 2. Every so often the songwriters decide to remind you that they are capable and not just ripping off old songs like other shows do.
All that said, I have been known to adjust the playback speed on YouTube to get the total play length of Bluey to a convenient length for a given situation.
The kids in the show are just kind of annoying, needy and of out of control. Things I don't want my kids to emulate. The parents feed into it and treat the behavior like it's ok. I also don't feel like the stories have particularly great takeaways for kids most of the time.
It's a minor gripe but I really find the staccato melodica theme song full of awkward pauses to be quite grating.
Everyone is free to like what they like. You are free to love Bluey. I just wish people would stop trying to make us like it, and stop making us watch it.
> kind of annoying, needy and of out of control. […] The parents feed into it and treat the behavior like it's ok.
Not how I would characterize it.
and there are episodes like Cricket where it is nothing but kids behaving ideally and overcoming real challenges
However, a sizable portion of the episodes short runtime is Rusty smashing a cricket ball against the side of his parents house, visibly damaging the siding, with zero on-screen repercussions. That's exactly the sort of thing I don't want my child emulating, and the show makes it seem like it's an ok behavior.
Children copy things they see. If you're going to show a child doing something they shouldn't it needs to be at the very least shown in a negative light.
All the show needed to do was have the final couple seconds of the episode be his mom standing next to the damage yelling "Rusty!", it would have made for a good comedic closer and shown kids that it's a problem.
Houses are meant to be lived in. Sometimes we spend from them to achieve other goals.
...
> Everyone is free to like what they like. You are free to love Bluey. I just wish people would stop trying to make us like it, and stop making us watch it.
Based on these comments, is it possible your friends are trying to give you a subtle hint about your own parenting?
> “How you going, Bingo? I can feel my sausages burning,” Bandit implores. Bingo replies, “I started just doing a wee, and now it turned into poo.”
> “I’d never seen a children’s show talk about real life like that,” says Kay. “I thought, ‘This is charming, funny and real.’”
From https://theonion.com/next-episode-of-girls-to-feature-lena-d... Next Episode Of 'Girls' To Feature Lena Dunham Shitting Herself During Gyno Exam While Eating A Burrito
> “When a naked Hannah dribbled hot sauce all over herself in front of the doctor, shit in every corner of the office, cried, became angry with the doctor, had sex with the doctor, finished her burrito, had sex with the doctor again, shit herself again, and then realized who she was really angry at and sexually attracted to was Adam, I just closed my eyes and said, ‘Thank you.’ These are real girls with real bodies doing things that real girls do.”
Ooof fiction teaching Idealism. From Nietzsche to Plato, its agreed, fiction corrupts. One day the floury idealism will be seen not to work, and the damage will have already been done.
I've seen Bluey, it was funny, it taught some general concepts... but if my kids are going to watch TV, why not Bill Nye the Science Guy or similar?
Remember that these children's characters are corporate mascots, not friends.
When I was a kid I thought this was somewhat dodgy science fiction. As an adult in the age of Cocomelon and Skibidi Toilet, I'm not so sure.
Hearing some of the things my elder daughter hears from other kids in the kindergarten, I sometimes wonder if we haven't jumped into some bizarro alternate universe.
I'm looking forward to hearing the story of the animator that got inspired to go into the field by watching Skibidi Toilet. It's going to happen.
There are shows geared to teach science in appropriate ways to kids in this same demographic. But that's not the point of Bluey -- it's modeling an ideal family, in a way that's understandable to young children, while being relatable for their parents to watch and appreciate along side with them. They represent a loving, functional family, that likes to have fun, and sometimes has hard issues to deal with, that children get to see. For some families it's an unattainable ideal, and for others it's a mirror of a modern 20-30yo parents raising young kids, complete with modern situations.
It's hard to stress out just how perfectly they nail a show that both kids + parents can watch, that they both find enjoyable, in this demographic, without pandering, or being annoying about it, because it's such a rare find.
The praise this franchise receives is extremely well deserved.
This comparison almost makes me wonder if you have kids.
Might as well have said ‘watch masterchef instead’.
I think people are reacting because Bill Nye is not even remotely in the same category. It has a different kind of value, and frankly it’s not as important as the kind of value kids get from Bluey.
It’s very nice if kids learn science. Great even. But the most important things kid can get from TV shows (if anything, it’s okay to watch things for fun as well) is to learn social skills. Bluey has a lot of that, and it does it without being annoying about it like Daniel Tiger. It’s a good balance
Real-world ethical problems tend to be much more complex than those presented in fiction, but that's exactly why we need fiction to provide us with the building blocks via easier-to-understand case studies.
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Storytelling, allegory, dramatic dialogue, compelling narratives, and 'myth making' can have different goals - sometimes it's to teach the glory of science. Other times it's about social relationships and how to be a functional human.
Bluey works so well because the combination of kids' entertainment with adult themes and storylines portraying positive role models feels unforced - some folks may not enjoy it, that's fine.
"We must stop making up stories. Now, have you heard about how we're all sitting in a cave watching a shadow-play of the actual reality happening outside the cave?"
The teaching fails, not because she doesn't understand but because she and Bingo end up making up the fantasy of the game. (To the point that sacrificing a piece is a shock and abhorrent).
It ends up with the mother intervening, beating the dad at the game and saying "Work on the heads later, for now, just hearts."
So to you, I say: Bill Nye, yes. Bluey, yes too. Each in their own time... If the kids feel like it.