What I really appreciate about Bluey is that it’s one of the few children’s shows with a really great and relatable Dad character. The Dad in most children’s shows is either barely present or a total idiot that nobody respects.
Bluey may have done more for fathers (and families) than anything in recent history. So many are dealing with fatherhood without having a role model themselves, and everything on TV being "fat dumb lovable idiot" sitcom-types.
The episode "The Sign" is an incredibly deep story from multiple angles.
I like bandit, but for a role model he spoils his children a bit too much I think. He allmost always does what the kid wants and not what he actually wanted to do. Well, he is also good at integrating it, like when he is doing exercises with the kids instead of weights.
But sometimes he is literally fleeing the kids, to not have to play with them, instead of saying no.
(But from the avaiable alternatives, he is indeed the best role model that comes to mind)
Speaking for myself, that's exactly what makes it relatable. My kid consumes all my time if I let him. And, I often have to remind myself, this age is special and very short - my hobbies and 'rest' will be available again soon. I think the hard job of being a mom is well understood, documented, portrayed in media, etc. But, as a dad, I'm expected (by my kid) to be a tireless playmate matching his energy levels, playing his games, being imaginative and creative in my play, etc. and I don't think that type of parenting is well portrayed in media. My wife and I have spoken about it several time as we've fallen into pretty traditional gender roles and she's "cool with cooking and cleaning every evening, because [she] can't play the way [I] do" and it's equally exhausting after a long day of work/life/adulting.
I hear & see a bunch of my friends who have an only child struggling with this. My sister has four kids now (which is crazy). She says that in many ways it’s easier with more kids, because they play with each other. She barely ever plays with them at all (which is a bit sad). But because they have each other, she gets to spend all her time being the adult in the room. It seems to be working out - her kids are doing great.
She said it also really helps that they’re a bit older now. A 2 and a 4 year old have a much bigger age gap than a 6 and 8 year old.
All that said, she still doesn’t get much time pursuing her hobbies. She says it’s the after school activities that do her in now.
For the record of everyone, having multiple kids (3 in my case) is a thrill, and it helps much that they can play with each other instead of having the parents as a sole source of attention. Go have kids, they’re awesome :).
Watch carefully. There are many times he says no and the kids just listen - often outright. But many times he gets his way with a distraction - the “game” the episode is named after.
It’s also somewhat told from Bandit’s perspective (understandable given the author).
The episode “Burger Shop” is a good example of him not getting his way at the same time he does, even though he ends up admitting his experiment was a failure.
Oh, I didn't mean to imply he never says no and I like his elaborate educational games, they are truly inspiring. Just that quite often I get the feeling, I would just say no and that's it. I love playing with my kids, but not always. And I also don't like to fight with them sonthey accept it, but bandit often seems to avoid the fight by saying yes.
He also normalizes farting in your kids’ faces. More seriously, Bluey is so enjoyable because the characters have dimensions and seem way more real than just about anything else on TV.. at least that you’d watch with kids.
The dad is who you want to aspire to be when you see his relationship with his kids. Definitely sighup’d my idea of parenting after watching a few episodes
Yup. Makes me think of that episode where they were racing and Bandit just blatantly cheated to win. A low point for him, but only makes him more relatable.
In the Flatpak episode, he rolls his eyes and states, "I'm not taking advice from a cartoon dog!" The episode is mostly about how Bluey takes after the parents in a game where she's raising Bingo through adulthood while they also go from fishes through dinosaurs to modern humans, er, dogs.
The writing in that episode is insane when you consider how much they managed to pack into such a short run time. The entire evolution of life and the building of society complete with religion, the story a parent raising Bingo before seeing her head off as an adult and then dying, and also two parents fighting over cheap furniture assembly and then making up. It all happens in just a few minutes and much of the story will certainly go over the heads of many young children watching the episode, but it ends up being perfectly enjoyable to everyone anyway.
Yeah that stood out to me as well. There’s a kind of reverse-bechdel test where you can ask yourself to find any portrayal of a husband that doesn’t include mockery of some kind. And you can actually go back pretty far with it - it seems like that general trend began in the 70’s. Like you have I Love Lucy, which was a bit of a sexist show in its own right of course, but the husband wasn’t portrayed as incompetent. I can’t think of a more recent example, aside from Bluey.
I think Tim Allen's character from Home Improvement was unique in that he was a father who frequently made comedic mistakes, but that they resulted from over ambition or carelessness rather than standard stupidity, and his "pig headed machismo" was often a bit of an act rather than who the character really "was" as evidenced by his ability to be thoughtful and sensitive after he learned lessons.
I believe that Happy Days started the trend in the 70s, with Mr. Cunningham being portrayed more realistically than earlier TV fathers. Allegedly (I can't find a source) an executive said "He doesn't look like a father. He looks like my father."
Hal from Malcom holds up pretty well, quirky and flawed of course, but all in all a great father and husband. though it’s admittedly been a while since I went through it.
Comedies often have some mockery built in, and comedies aimed at kids in particular like to take shots at authority, but there are a lot of examples I can think of in just the general-TV-millenial-vibe-y things I've watched over the past couple of decades. More than the "bumbling dad" type, I'd say, from things I've seen in the zeitgeist (I guess one recent super typical example is Rick and Morty, though everyone sucks there):
* Arrested Development: Michael is the most competent of the bunch. His father was also quite competent, if an asshole and eventual criminal. But, you know, that put the "sit" in sitcom...
* Luke from Gilmore Girls is pretty consistently more sane than Lorelai, turns out to be a good dad too IIRC; other fathers include a loser and a number of very successful businessmen, teachers, etc.
* King of the Hill: doing his best, often the most sane of the bunch
* Bob's Burgers: haven't watched a ton of this but from what I've seen Bob is a goofball but respectable and wholesome, kinda a Hank Hill. Not a lazy Homer
* Parks and Rec: Ben Wyatt is a pretty positive character
* Brooklyn 99: Terry is practically a superman of competence and seems to hold is own with his wife and kids. Holt is a supremely competent husband. Boyle is a goofball generally and in dating, but that does not really extend to his eventual marriage and child, where he seems to be doing quite well.
* Schitt's Creek: Johnny is the competent center of the family surrounded by comically exaggerated crazy wife + kids
Dramas seem even further away. Where do Breaking Bad or the Sopranos land?
Add Keith from Veronica Mars to the list— he’s an absolute rock for her and manages well the balance between being protective while also letting her go her own way.
I like it for that reason. It's one of the few shows that we can watch as a family with the kid laughing at the kids and me paying more attention to the parents.
I'm always impressed by TV or movies that can pull that off, usually one or the other of us finds the content uninteresting.
I remember reading somewhere that one of the motives for Bluey was to encourage Australian fathers to be more involved with their children. As a father myself, I recall many times watching the show and being like “damn that’s a good dad.”
True, even back in my day the closest thing to a father figure would have been Steve from Blues Clues. But he was always coded more as an uncle/big brother instead.
I've seen parents complain that it sets an unrealistic expectation for parents. That nobody could spend all their time entertaining their kids whims and games the way Bandit does and how you don't often see the parents really putting their foot down or even having to work. I think some of the push back is guilt/regret that it can't always be like that. It's better to see it as something to aspire to when possible than an expectation that things will be like that all the time.
The show is also careful to show the parents struggling at times too and tries to encourage parents.
The misunderstanding here shows that we need to be careful with in-jokes and references in an asynchronous medium. Even among people who have consumed the media in question. It's even worse with the general public (or even just general HN public).
No. We don’t need to make conversations so boring as to allow you and your robotic ink to completely unambiguously understand them. For every one person that didn’t get this obvious Bluey reference deep in a Bluey thread, I’m sure that 100 more DID get it.
