PHOENIX –
A little blue dog with an Australian accent has captured the hearts of people around the world.
She is the main character of “Bluey,” a children’s show consisting of seven-minute episodes that have captivated children and adults alike. This week’s release of its longest episode yet, at a whopping 28 minutes, sparked widespread appreciation for the show, even among those who are neither young children nor parents.
“Bluey” follows an Australian girl in blue heels who, along with her sister (a girl in red heels named Bingo), navigates her days between home and school. It’s a favorite among children for its playful humor, but it also appeals to adults who remember childhood.
“My childhood experience wasn’t the best, so I’ve always been identified with shows where life is good,” says Miriam Neel, who lives in Colorado. “‘Bluey’ parents allow for imagination and creativity and really engage with their kids, and I wish I had those experiences.”
Neel is 32 years old and has decided not to have children of his own. She says the show has become part of her morning routine and is often a preferred choice for background noise when she works from home.
“I’m not going to speak for the entire generation, but millennials find solace in cartoons. It’s what a lot of us grew up seeing,” she said. “And if I’m going to spend time watching something, I’d rather watch something that doesn’t make me afraid of the world, like any of the ‘Law & Order’ shows.”
“Bluey,” which now has more than 150 episodes, premiered in Australia in 2018 and began streaming on Disney+ in 2020. It was also adapted into a digital series where famous fans like Bindi Irwin and Eva Mendes read some of Bluey’s books. folk tales. and a live theater show that travels around the world.
Colored pencils around a drawing of ‘Bluey,’ the character from the Australian children’s television show, on a drawing pad on Friday, April 19, 2024 in Phoenix, Ariz. (Cheyanne Mumphrey/AP Photo)
The show has also won multiple awards, including the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Children’s Television Drama every year since 2019 and an International Children’s Emmy Award.
The series offers a child’s perspective on morning routines, errands and chores, while giving viewers a glimpse into what life is like for parents through mother Chilli and father Bandit.
This week’s special episode, “The Sign,” explores the emotions surrounding topics that resonate with both children and adults: moving, marriage, infertility, and relationships after divorce. In addition to these universal themes, the episode concludes the third season with Easter eggs for the most dedicated fans.
Lindsey Schmidt, 40, says the continuation of the program makes her family look forward to more.
“There are so many references to previous episodes,” says Schmidt, who lives in Ohio with her husband and three children. “The shows we watch regularly with our children do not reflect our lives like this show does. These anthropomorphic dogs feel like us.”
But there are mixed feelings about the end of the episode (SPOILER) in which the Heeler family cancels their move. Some families who move frequently for work consider this unrealistic. Meg Korzon, 31, is in the process of relocating to the other side of the country with her four children because her husband is in the military. This is her seventh move in 10 years.
“I was hoping it would be an episode that aligned with the realities of life, our lives, as a military family,” he says. “I was selfishly disappointed because it could have been an episode about change and growth.”
But the show doesn’t shy away from other difficult topics, and that’s part of the charm for adults, too.
“As a parent, you aspire to be as good parents as Chilli and Bandit are. They always have a great way of talking to kids about problems,” says Schmidt’s husband, John, 40, adding that the couple often refers to episodes when trying to explain things to their children.
The series has touched on topics such as aging, death, and making friends in adulthood. It has also featured a character who uses sign language and another with ADHD.
Jacqueline Nesi, an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, notes that “Bluey” promotes self-regulation and conflict resolution in children and engaged parenting and patience in adults.
This image released by Disney+ shows a scene from the television series ‘Bluey’. (Disney+ via AP)
“We see them overcome some of the challenges that we, as parents, might also face. And at the same time, they offer a good model for different parenting skills: asking open-ended questions to facilitate children’s creativity, using natural consequences when they misbehave, actively playing with them and letting them take the initiative,” she says.
The show has also done a lot to expose kids to the world of animation, flaunting different styles in the episodes “Escape” and “Dragon,” offering a nearly voiceless episode in “Rain,” and breaking the fourth wall in “ Puppets,” where the show pauses briefly to zoom out and create just a couple of seconds of animated frames.
It is also credited with attracting dogs, and not because the characters are the same species.
Research has said that dogs have vision similar to that of red-green color blindness in humans, meaning their color spectrum is limited to blue, yellow, brown and shades of gray, which happen to be the colors of the Heeler family. According to Rover, there were also more pets named Bluey, Bingo, Chilli and Bandit across the United States last year.
Therefore, it’s pretty safe to say that “Bluey” has cross-species and cross-generational appeal.
“I used to tell people, what do ‘The Sopranos,’ ‘The Wire,’ and ‘Breaking Bad’ have in common? They all have lower IMDb scores than Bluey. It used to be like that anyway. I watched all these great shows, but I think ‘Bluey’ is still one of my favorites, maybe because I have kids. But I put it up there with all of them,” says John Schmidt, admitting that he and his wife watched the episodes without his children.
Schmidt says the episode made a good tie to end the season and would otherwise make a perfect series finale.
“I’m excited at the prospect of Bluey no longer having new episodes,” says Schmidt. “But we’ll see.”