Are Parents Too Emotionally Invested in Bluey ?

Stephanie McNeal
·7 min read

Disney

The latest prestige television drama that is leaving fans in a state of emotional disarray is a cartoon for preschoolers. Yes, I’m talking about the Bluey episode “The Sign.”

For those who don’t have a child or don’t interact with the parenting internet, here’s a bit of context. Bluey, which premiered in 2018 and is now on its third season, is an animated series for kids about the titular Bluey—who first of all is a girl (you thought she was a boy because she is blue? Why don’t you unpack that!).

Bluey is a school-aged Blue Heeler puppy who lives with her dad, Bandit, mom, Chilli, and younger sister, Bingo (yup, also a girl!) in Queensland. Other characters include the family’s relatives, friends, and Bluey’s classmates, all of which are other breeds of dogs. In the episodes, most of which run less than 10 minutes long, Bluey and usually Bingo engage in pretend play, interact with their environment, banter with their parents, and learn such lessons as why cleaning up is important and how to practice patience and sharing.

On its face, Bluey is typical kid’s fare. But for some, it appears to be so much more. Online and offline, Bluey has developed a rabid fan base that is obsessed with the show’s message, its humor, its poignancy, its portrayal of modern parenthood, and its character development. And I’m not talking about the children.

“I like Bluey more than my toddler and it makes me sad,” wrote one superfan in the Bluey subreddit—180,000 members strong—a few years ago. The post filled up with understanding comments from other fans, one of whom said they didn’t actually have any kids but loved the show anyway.

There has been a lot written about what makes Bluey unique and beloved among kids shows, with critics from The New York Times and NPR singing its praises. In a 2022 article, The Guardian called its fandom a “cult” and a 2023 contributor to The Cut admitted, “I can’t stop talking about Bluey.” If you go onto TikTok, you can scroll past video after video, many with millions of views, breaking down everything from Bluey “Easter eggs” to complicated theories about just one episode.

This week the content has gone into overdrive over the Bluey episode “The Sign.” On April 14, the show released an “extended special” episode that runs for 28 minutes, more than three times its normal length. Titled “The Sign,” the episode has two plots that converge at the end: a wedding in Bluey’s family and Bandit’s decision to place their house up for sale and move the family to another part of Australia for a job opportunity (the “sign” in the title refers to the “for sale” sign placed outside their home).

Bluey is very upset by the prospect of moving, and it's clear her parents are not sure if they are making the right decision in uprooting their lives so Bandit can make, as he says, more money. Later in the episode, Bluey’s mom, Chilli, even admits to her that she doesn’t want to move either. At the very end, Bandit changes his mind and the family decides to stay in their home. Yay.

According to parent fans, the episode was so powerful because it demonstrated how emotionally fraught parenting can be. As journalist Sophie Gilbert wrote in The Atlantic, the decision Bandit and Chilli face is ultimately “inextricable from the existential questions of parenting.”

“What does a better life for your family look like?” she wrote. “What does money mean in value compared with all the things you can’t buy—connections, security, a sense of home? When do parental needs get to override those of kids? There are no answers in the episode, and no answers in life—just the assurance that what happens will happen, and that events might be influenced occasionally by the trickery of the universe.”

There’s also the way the episode was constructed, with callbacks to old episodes throughout and a sense of finality and change at the end. This led many fans to wonder if “The Sign” was actually serving as some sort of finale on the series, either for good or for some sort of extended hiatus, which Gilbert also speculated about in her piece.

That doesn’t seem to be the case, with producer Sam Moor telling the BBC the show has “more in store and we are thinking what would be next.” Still, Moor didn’t flat out confirm when or how the show will return, and the apparent question mark about the show’s future made the special episode even more poignant for fans. (Let me just say that there’s no way Bluey will not come back in some fashion, the brand is worth $2 billion.)

Despite understanding all of this on an intellectual level, the outpouring of sobbing parents and emotional tributes to the show on social media this week left me scratching my head. My toddler is still a little too young to truly follow Bluey, and even if she was into it, I can’t really picture myself sitting down next to her and being sucked into it to the point where I’d be crying over it (then again, I also never got into This is Us or Grey’s Anatomy).

As I saw video after video after post after post online, I wanted to ask other parents, hey, you guys okay? Why are you all this invested?

When I polled Bluey fans in my life, the overriding sentiment was yes, it’s really just that good. My colleague, Glamour executive editor Natasha Pearlman, says the show is “appointment viewing” for her family, and that it is “not just kids funny, but adult funny.”

“It's a show that we all genuinely love,” she says. “When we have family time, Bluey is what we turn on. We all know every episode because we've watched them so many times, and I also think it's changed the way we interact with our kids, and how our kids play—for the better. We're just much more imaginative parents in the way we play with our daughters, and they constantly reference Bluey in their games.”

And it’s not really surprising that adults are watching and engaging with a piece of kids programming on this level. The industry has been trending for years toward producing more shows that are both entertaining for kids yet intellectually stimulating for adults, Robert Thompson, the director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, tells me, citing shows like SpongeBob SquarePants as examples.

He says Bluey is a great example of this phenomenon, because it is as much about the experience of being a parent as it is about Bluey and her adventures. And when a parent and child can enjoy something together, it can create an emotional connection to the series.

“If someone is weeping in an episode of Teletubbies, that might be a little unusual,” he says. “But I watched ‘The Sign’ episode of Bluey, and I can imagine that if it was something that I had been watching with a child for the last few years, it would've been even more emotionally affecting.” Thompson adds that it's possible parents were also superfans of other kids shows in the past but didn’t have as public a place to talk about it as we do now with the internet.

Regardless, though, Thompson wants to reassure parents that if you are questioning your sanity for sniffling through “The Sign,” it’s perfectly normal to feel moved by a piece of art, even if you aren’t the main intended audience.

“I think sometimes some of the most relevant things we get about parenting [in pop culture] can be found in shows designed for kids, which can be very emotionally connecting for adults as well,” he says.

And maybe the lesson taken from the Bluey phenomenon isn’t that we need to try to copy its format, he says, but that adults need more pop culture content grappling with the complex emotions that come with being a parent.

“Maybe they should make the Bluey movie, but not make it for little kids,” he says. “Maybe they should make a Bluey movie for us.”

Stephanie McNeal is a senior editor at Glamour and the author of Swipe Up for More! Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers.

Originally Appeared on Glamour

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