The past few weeks have been Fallout released into the world, worried Baby Reindeer Netflix had another surprise hit and knew Shogun its end. But the most talked about season finale was one of a children’s series. A children’s series with a talking blue dog, to be precise.
Last Sunday morning the third season of Bluey, a preschool and children’s cartoon that can be streamed with us on Disney+. An event that caused an amusing fuss. Vulture made an entire special about what they described as “a cross between the moon landing, into the final battle Game of Thrones and the ‘Who Shot Mr. Burns?’ episode out The Simpsons”. Bloomberg Businessweek, not known for its interest in children’s cartoons, devoted a cover to it. Wrote five pieces The Guardian about it in one week, one of which was entitled ‘Paradigm-destroying’.
Currently, ‘The Board’ ranks twelfth on IMDb’s list of highest-rated episodes, just above ‘The Battle of The Bastards’ Game of Thrones and just below the last episode of Breaking Bad. What Glamour at other times inspired the question “His parents Bluey not taking anything too seriously?”
In their defense, it has been a panicky two weeks.
In children’s and preschool television.
Children laugh, parents cry
For readers who don’t have young children: Bluey is nothing less than a phenomenon in the TV world. It’s the series parents want their kids to watch. The cartoon series, meanwhile good for 153 episodes of seven minutes, is about the small, daily family life of four anthropomorphic dogs: mom Chilli, dad Bandit (Buster in Dutch) and their two puppies Bluey and Bingo, 6 and 3 respectively. (7 and 4 from season three.) Sometimes they play musical statues with the whole family. Sometimes the two pups spy on the workers in their garden. Sometimes Bandit puts his children in the bath and lets them decide when to get out. It is always beneficial.
Bluey is a creation of Joe Brumm, an Australian animator and father of two daughters, who poured his personal experiences and observations into a cartoon series, somewhere between Peppa Pig and Snoopy. He turned out to strike a universal chord. Two years after Bluey debuted on Australian television, Disney+ acquired the streaming rights and the world got to know the wagging blue dog. After which the success Friends-like proportions. The end of 2023 was Bluey responsible for a third of all TV streams on Disney+. At the beginning of 2024, it was the most streamed series in America. Not the most streamed children’s series. The most streamed series.
That’s absurd.
You should know that it is not so much children, but adults who are driving the hype. Starring Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes, Natalie Portman and Rose Byrne Bluey a notorious crowd of celebrity fans. Television critics rave about it Bluey. (Bluey is ‘the best children’s series of our time’, according to Vultureor ‘the best television series in the world’, according to The Guardian.) Among very hard fans Bluey has grown into an online cult, Taylor Swift style, in which parents with too much free time make video analyses, to easter eggs research and reveal fan theories. With a wink, admittedly: exaggerating is part of it Bluey-fandom.
There is also a simple reason for this. In an endless supply of gruesome, gruesome children’s television, from Paw Patrol until My Little Ponyis Bluey the only series that you as a parent can – and want – to watch. Episodes like ‘Sleeptime’, a cosmic dream with Kubrickian ambitions, or the wordless splendor of ‘Rain’ are seven-minute television masterpieces. And while children marvel at the games being played, from making a carpet island to playing musical statues, parents are presented with unexpected themes such as the difficulty of making friends after the age of thirty, permanent parental guilt and the complex anger-patience balance required is to get you a 6 year old and a 3 year old out the door on time in the morning.
Bluey can be viewed in two ways. It is the double game that, say, Pixar also excels in, but Bluey elevates it to virtuosic heights. Take ‘Onesies’, episode 135, in which Bluey’s aunt Brandy comes to visit after a long time. She has two onesies for the children: a zebra suit for Bluey and a tiger suit for Bingo. Not everyone is happy with that. Bingo has a tendency to disappear into her onesie persona, which means she hunts down her entire family like a tiger. Bluey is disappointed with her zebra suit: she wants to be a tiger too.
It is a good episode for children’s eyes because Bingo does crazy things, her dad participates tirelessly as always and the games can be replayed in real life afterwards. With adult eyes, something else has happened. The unfortunate gift is a silent indication that Brandy and Chilli have become estranged, something Chilli blames her sister for. Between the lines you can read something about the social distance between people that is sometimes difficult to bridge of and people without children. At the end of the episode we also learn why that happens. When Chilli explains to Bluey that you can’t always get what you want in life, no matter how hard you desire it, it dawns on her that she is no longer talking about a zebra onesie. Brandy can’t have children. ‘Onesies’ is an episode about the silent, unnoticed suffering of infertility.
Not it most current theme in children’s television, let’s say.
Which also gives it its second nickname Bluey becomes clear: The Children’s Series That Makes Adults Cry. At least half of the articles about Bluey are about the funny emotional effect on the parents. “At the end of one Blueyevent, I am always hugging and comforting complete strangers,” said Joe Brumm. This is partly due to the sleep deprivation of the specific target group. (People with young children cry at everything.) Partly that’s because Bluey relies on a specific kind of melancholy, the same as that of Calvin & Hobbes. It’s the idea that watching your children grow up is a wonderful, magical time that no matter how hard you try, you can never hold onto it. It’s for children Bluey a series about talking blue dogs. For adults it is a look at their own family.
Last episode ever?
Which gives you enough context to understand the drama of the past few weeks. It started with the announcement, a few months ago, that a 28-minute special would be released for the very first time in April: ‘The Board’. Initially this created a lot of enthusiasm, but week after week that started to dwindle. Rabid fans pointed out online that something strange was going on with Bandit, in Bluey-known as the best dad of all time. In ‘Stokvogel’, episode 144, where Bingo makes a sand bird, he was unusually impatient with his daughter, as if he was annoyed. In ‘TV Show’, episode 148, a brilliant comedy through the eyes of a security camera, he goes to a pharmacy to buy vitamin pills because he is not feeling well. Something was bothering Bandit.
To be clear: we realize that this sounds ridiculous.
Fear turned into panic when a week before the big special ‘Ghost laundry basket’ was released, episode 151. What started as a normal episode, in which Bluey and Bingo play grannies, ended with a plot twist with The Red Weddingallure. When the camera zoomed out at the end of the episode, it showed a ‘For Sale’ sign in front of their house. Bluey and Bingo’s house was for sale. What seemed to confirm the worst of the fan theories: ‘The sign’ might be the end of Bluey could be.
The exaggerated reactions that followed ‘The Board’, in which Bandit indeed wants to sell the house because he is changing jobs, should be seen in that light. The remarkable length. The symbolism of the house. The many references to previous episodes. The built up tension. The moving ending. ‘The Board’ felt like a final piece. “Bluey just pushed a generation of parents over the edge,” headlined The Huffington Post. “Why the whole world is weeping,” wrote The Daily Beast. “Everything comes to an end. Also to Bluey”wrote Vox with the necessary sense of drama.
Or ‘The board’ actually the end of Bluey is is not clear. The fans have been in television purgatory for two weeks. Another surprise episode followed, but it shed little light on the situation. The producers denied that the series is over, but at the same time did not want to say anything about the future. On Reddit, a former Lodo Studio employee testified that Bluey that no new episodes have been approved in the past three years and no one is working on season four. No one currently knows if Bluey has a future – and what it would be.
That sounds strange for a series at the peak of its popularity, but it is precisely that crazy success that has created the dark clouds. The value of Bluey, including merchandise, toys and a theater show, is currently at 2 billion dollariedoes estimated, thus Bloomberg Business Week. A multiple of what Bluey was worth when BBC Studios almost carelessly secured the worldwide rights in 2017. Presumably that is what complicates negotiations for new seasons. While Australians do not want to be spoiled by BBC Studios again, Disney would like to own and exploit the rights themselves, now that their brand is synonymous with a young generation of children Bluey. And amid all the tug-of-war, Joe Brumm tries to maintain creative control over his brainchild.
And then there is that other, unavoidable factor that plays a role: the test of time. The Australian child actors, whose identities have always been kept secret, are getting older – something that also starts to become noticeable in the final episodes. Joe Brumm has previously indicated that he had to pitch some voices up to make them sound younger. At the same time, his own daughters are now 12 and 13 and the era of fantasy games is behind them, which means that his barrel of inspiration is running dry.
With ‘The plate’ seems Bluey to have come to a crossroads, where the way forward is not necessarily the best. Maybe likes Bluey indeed better off for the series Paw Patrol changes. Now that the franchise has not yet been milked into sandwich boxes and theme parks. Now that the episodes are not yet written by interchangeable screenwriters who have to meet a quota. Now that Bluey and Bingo still sound like Bluey and Bingo. Perhaps the moment of farewell has come. Because that is the lesson that a generation of parents has learned in recent weeks. Children don’t stay four and seven forever. Not even talking puppies.
Children’s television can be brutal.
Bluey can be seen on Disney+.
Four Blueys for beginners
1 Bedtime
S02E09
The classic. Avant-garde television about Bingo who tries to stay in her bed all night, ‘like a big girl’, but goes on a cosmic trip in her dreams.
2 Camping
S01E48
Bluey makes a French friend at the campsite, with whom she plays every day. Until one evening she says ‘see you tomorrow’ and he ‘Non, pas demain matin. Au revoir, Bluey’ replies. She only discovers what that means the next day. Heartbreaking.
3 Rain
S03E18
A silent film of seven minutes in which Bluey does nothing but play in the rain. Children’s TV at its most experimental.
4 Cricket
S03E47
The episode with which Bluey last time it made the entire internet cry. No knowledge of cricket is necessary to understand why.
