'Bluey' Is Excellent Children's Television So Of Course Losers Are Complaining About It Now

By Andrew Sanford | TV | October 8, 2024 |

By Andrew Sanford | TV | October 8, 2024 |

What my children watch on television (if they watch anything) is a constant battle. It isn’t a battle with them. They’re good listeners and can (mostly) agree on what they like. The fight is between myself and what I find appropriate. I always want to introduce them to new things I watched when I was their age. The snag is that I had few restrictions on what I watched when I was younger. I also had a brother who was four years older than me. I saw some… stuff.

I’m not trying to show my kids The Shining or Halloween. They have seen Ghostbusters and The Nightmare Before Christmas. They are three and a half. Ghostbusters would definitely be seen as too mature for them, and depending on who you ask, Jack Skellington’s existential crisis would be too. They handled both movies well, but I’m always on the lookout for shows that teach them but don’t talk down to them. PeeWee’s Playhouse is great for this. In recent months, I’ve learned that Bluey is as well.

Bluey is a cartoon out of Australia about a family of dogs. The family is made up of Mum, Dad, Bingo, and the eponymous Bluey. Bluey is Bingo’s older sister, and they spend much of the show using their imagination and playing with their parents. It’s lovely. The show tackles things like sharing, difficult friends, love, and loss. It’s incredible. My wife and I have even watched a few episodes while our kids are sleeping.

Not only is Bluey good television, but I can see a difference in how my boys play with each other since they started watching it. Getting my twins to play together can be hard, but seeing the playful relationship between Bluey and Bingo has changed that. There’s also a sweetness between them, as they will refer to each other as “love” like they do on the show. It’s fantastic.

Before my kids started watching it, I was only peripherally aware of the show. So, I’ve managed to avoid hearing people complain about it, something that would have seemed absurd to me just a few days ago. I had seen people complain about Bluey in a “childish” way. I remember seeing a story about some knobs who made an episode of the show where the characters were murdered or some such nonsense and then those same knobs were made when they were sued to remove the offending cartoon. That kind of s*** will always exist, especially if something is popular.

What I didn’t anticipate was Bluey being assailed for its content. That argument, in my mind, could only be made in bad faith. Enter the writers at Glenn Beck’s media conglomerate, Blaze Media. A writer for that site recently published a piece about how Bluey is bad because it presents a loving father. I’m not making that up. The article posits that, since Bluey’s dad is often shown at home and playing with Bingo and Bluey, it’s an insult to classic families and fatherly roles and other horses***.

The article claims that parents should be alarmed that the father … plays with his kids. Again, not an exaggeration! They’re mad the dad plays! Now, I will be upfront and say that, as a father who loves and plays with his kids, I took this a little personally. The article’s message is ridiculous regardless of my status as a parent. At one point the author, Jeremy Pryor, claims he’s had people say it’s “absurd to criticize a cartoon.” Nah, man. Media of all kinds can be criticized, and cartoons are capable of wonderful things. Criticizing one for showing a dad can be affectionate? That’s absurd.