The Non-Parents’ Guide to Bluey

I turned to Kathryn VanArendonk today to help me understand why nearly everyone is talking about Bluey suddenly. 

Hello. I’m so confused about Bluey. Can you explain for our non-parent readers what’s going on here? Here’s everything I understand: There’s a … show about an Australian dog. And every child is basically forced to watch it. And it’s kind of good? And now something WEIRD has happened.
Yes, Bluey is an Australian kids’ show about a family of dogs that has somehow transitioned into literally the most streamed show in the world. Not most-streamed children’s show. Most viewed minutes of any show. And kids are forced to watch it because it is the exceedingly rare children’s show that parents actually love, but no kid would describe themselves as forced to watch it because also kids think it is frickin’ hilarious.

Okay, I feel like I’m missing out.
Calling it “kind of good” is like calling the sun “kind of bright.” Obviously, there are all different ways of measuring these things, and some glasses-pusher is bound to wander over and be like “but actually if you were the same distance away from Betelgeuse, you’d find that” etc., etc. But Bluey is so absolutely inescapably immense in the world of kids’ TV, and I think even its detractors will happily admit that it eats most other children’s programming for breakfast. And I agree. I think it’s near miraculous how good it is for kids alone, and that accomplishment is then compounded by how fantastic it also is for adults. If I were teaching narrative-theory classes right now, I’d be teaching Bluey. And then yes: SOMETHING WEIRD HAPPENED.

Is the weird thing weird for parents or weird for children? Are kids everywhere sobbing?
It’s weird for both! It’s arguably more weird for parents, I think. The standard Bluey episode is seven minutes long. “The Sign,” which came out this weekend, is Bluey’s first special-length episode. It’s 28 minutes, and it’s a culmination of all of Bluey that has come before. Do not watch this first. Starting with “The Sign” is like starting with “Made in America.”

You refer of course to the series finale of The Sopranos.
Yes, obviously these are comparable shows

I’m listening with an open heart. Also I realize now I wish almost all TV was seven minutes long.
“The Sign” is still a great episode of Bluey in tons of ways, but it’s a lot trickier than these episodes usually go. Seven minutes, the standard Bluey, is like this gorgeous, gemlike little bite full of mood and a premise and a few turns and all kinds of feelings, and it’s crammed in there in a way that seems completely implausible for that kind of run time. But 28 minutes, which is the run time of “The Sign,” gives them both the room and the expectation for a different kind of story, and the episode itself is big and significant enough that it will feel weird for the show to just go back to its status quo. The general idea is the Heeler family has decided to move to another city, which would be either the end of the show or the end of the show as we have known it. In the same episode, Frisky is getting married to Uncle Rad, except Frisky has also been blindsided by news that Rad wants to move away.

This sounds Sad and Big.
At the end of this episode, there’s this very emotional, sweet wedding scene, then in the very last seconds the dad, Bandit, decides actually they will NOT move away, they’ll stay exactly where they are, even though the reason they were going to move is that he got a better job.

This is giving me feelings, and I don’t even know what’s going on.
Yes, it’s LOVELY, and also every parent who has had to move their kids is … pissed.

So they just undermined every parent who has tried to manage a complicated life situation. 
Bluey is such a great way to process feelings about all kinds of hard shit when you’re a kid, and having this enormous moving episode that ends with this child wish-fulfillment scenario is … it’s rough, man. I do think there’s a way to read this as arguing that sometimes our ambition and desire for “better” is actively at odds with the incredible lives we already have. Which: Yes. Great. Onboard! A lovely message. But it’s so much more common that you do, just, have to move, and also moving is not the end of the world! Change has to happen in some form or another for everyone.

So a real “live by the screen, die by the screen” moment for parents here. And there’s been no messaging about what this episode means for the show? They just “did a thing.”
The meta context! Which is, what’s happening to Bluey? Joe Brumm, the creator and one person who is improbably responsible for writing nearly all of Bluey’s over 150 episodes, has been wondering for quite some time what the long-term life of this show is. It’s voiced by children, who are aging and whose voices are starting to sound older. It’s inspired by his own kids, who are also getting older and whose life experiences are no longer as directly relevant to the writing. Maybe it’s time to end it? Or make it into a different kind of show with new, younger protagonists? And if this episode is a way to end or transition the show, all my issues with it as a bad moving parable go away. Because endings are hard and everyone will want to remember this family in their home forever! But if instead it just … goes back to normal. Disney is saying nothing about this except that “there will be more Bluey.”

An interesting comms decision.
They could mean, “We’d like to make a Bluey movie as the real ending!” Which the creative team has also hinted they’d like to try. They could mean Bluey will come back but now Socks and Muffin will be the main characters! (They’re Bluey and Bingo’s cousins.) Or they could mean “We have asked Bob Iger to fly to Australia and prostrate himself on Joe Brumm’s doorstep in order to convince him to keep making this show exactly as it is forever, and he hasn’t agreed yet but we’re ready to airdrop more gold bars on Brisbane until he says ‘yes.’”

It sounds like kids are getting an adult dose of uncertainty.
I don’t know how much kids are getting of the uncertainty! The episode feels very final and complete if you don’t have all the backstory context. But definitely kids who have moved or have feelings about moving have noticed that ending. My kid did! We had to have a whole conversation about Remember that we moved and it was totally fine? We have more space in our house now? You have swings? And she was like, but they were so SAD. And I said, YES, but then they would’ve learned all the good things about their new house! She was not convinced.

Even though she knows!!
Yes! Honestly that is the power of Bluey right there because they are so much better at making strong emotional arguments than I am capable of having at 4:30 p.m. on a Monday while trying to empty the dishwasher.

Well, this has been equally informative and distressing.
Excellent. In exchange, I ask that you watch a single standard-length episode of Bluey, possibly the one called “Camping.”