{"id":2611578,"date":"2026-06-07T06:08:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T10:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-critic-takes-the-measure-of-bluey\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T06:13:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T10:13:33","slug":"a-critic-takes-the-measure-of-bluey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-critic-takes-the-measure-of-bluey\/","title":{"rendered":"A critic takes the measure of Bluey"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fa-critic-takes-the-measure-of-bluey%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2611578&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/writer-on-feminist-website-says-her-marriage-is-being-ruined-by-third-wheel-joe-rogan\/\" title=\"Author on Feminist Site Claims Joe Rogan Is &#039;Destroying&#039; Her Marriage\">writer reflects<\/a> on how their children began watching *Bluey* during the COVID-19 era, initially suspecting the Australian show might promote politicized messaging such as pro-masking propaganda.After admitting they didn\u2019t check the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/exclusive-texas-a-g-paxton-ccp-may-be-the-biggest-threat-to-americas-freedom\/\" title=\"Exclusive \u2014 Texas A.G. Paxton: CCP May Be \u2018The Biggest Threat to America\u2019s Freedom\u2019\">show firsthand<\/a>, they argue that *Bluey* is largely nonpartisan and-on artistic grounds-among the best children\u2019s programming available.<\/p>\n<p>They then explain why they\u2019re writing about it now, noting that the show hasn\u2019t had new major episodes for a while and that their kids are at the point where they\u2019re eager to share <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/hollywood-celebrities-plead-with-movie-fans-please-go-back-to-theaters\/\" title=\"Hollywood Celebrities Plead With Movie Fans: Please Go Back To Theaters\">favorite moments<\/a> with them.The article describes several episodes (\u201cCamping,\u201d \u201cEscape,\u201d \u201cBumpy and the Wise Old Wolfhound,\u201d \u201cPhones,\u201d \u201cCircus,\u201d \u201cPass the Parcel,\u201d \u201cHammerbarn,\u201d and \u201cThe Sign\u201d) to illustrate how the series blends vivid family storytelling with themes like play, empathy, illness, technology anxiety, civic life, competition, and comparison\/jealousy.<\/p>\n<p>While praising *Bluey* for being a work of art rather than propaganda-able to hold contradictions without fully resolving them-the writer also acknowledges minor annoyances (including a progressive nod in \u201cThe Sign\u201d and an episode that treats nanny-state style rules without mockery). They conclude that *Bluey* works because it respects children\u2019s intelligence while still engaging adults, and that in modern times that\u2019s an remarkable achievement.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<article class=\"fn-body\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some months into the <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/covid-19\/\">COVID-19 pandemic<\/a>, I learned that my <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/children\/\">children<\/a> had begun watching the <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/australia\/\">Australian<\/a> cartoon series \u201cBluey.\u201d My first instinct was to deliver a sermon on <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/politics\/\">politicization<\/a>. Surely the Land Down Under, imposer of some of the strictest lockdown measures on the planet, would use its cultural export to lecture children on the benefits of indoor masking. Perhaps the show\u2019s anthropomorphic dogs would line up on-screen to get their \u201cjab,\u201d blithely queuing to embrace their destiny as wards of a medico-tyrannical state.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, reader, I had some concerns. What I didn\u2019t do, and should have done, was watch a few episodes myself to suss things out. What I would have discovered is that \u201cBluey\u201d<em> <\/em>is not only a (mostly) nonpartisan production but the best children\u2019s programming since Chuck Jones\u2019s masterly <em>Looney Tunes<\/em> shorts of midcentury. Whatever you have heard about the adventures of dad Bandit, mom Chilli, and sisters Bingo and Bluey, the reality is even more charming.<\/p>\n<section class=\"explore-more-section\" id=\"wex-recommended-widget\">\n<div class=\"magazine-container single\">\n<h1 class=\"magazine-title mt-2\">Recommended Stories<\/h1>\n<p>             <i class=\"fa-solid fa-play icon\"><\/i>         <\/div>\n<div class=\"explore-grid\">\n<div class=\"explore-card\">                         <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/entertainment\/4597308\/natasha-owens-drops-tds-song-music-video\/?itm_source=parsely-api\">                             <\/p>\n<div class=\"explore-thumb-wrap\">                                                                                                                                  <\/div>\n<h3>Natasha Owens drops \u2018TDS\u2019 song and music video: \u2018You tested positive\u2019<\/h3>\n<p>                         <\/a>                     <\/div>\n<div class=\"explore-card\">                         <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/4596337\/trump-announces-new-performers-of-greatest-rally-ever-on-june-24-rally-to-end-all-rallies\/?itm_source=parsely-api\">                             <\/p>\n<div class=\"explore-thumb-wrap\">                                                                                                                                  <\/div>\n<h3>Trump announces new performers of \u2018greatest rally ever\u2019 on June 24: \u2018Rally to end all rallies\u2019<\/h3>\n<p>                         <\/a>                     <\/div>\n<div class=\"explore-card\">                         <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/entertainment\/4594814\/pelley-updating-linkedin-hoping-begging-joe-concha\/?itm_source=parsely-api\">                             <\/p>\n<div class=\"explore-thumb-wrap\">                                                                                                                                  <\/div>\n<h3>\u2018Scott Pelley is updating his LinkedIn, hoping and begging\u2019: Joe Concha<\/h3>\n<p>                         <\/a>                     <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why write about \u201cBluey\u201d now? After all, the show\u2019s first season debuted on <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/disney\/\">Disney+<\/a> in early 2020, with subsequent runs dropping in the months that followed. No new full-length installments have been released since April 2024, and the forthcoming \u201cBluey\u201d movie isn\u2019t on my TV beat. The answer is that my children will not be watching cartoons of this or any other kind for much longer and were eager, now, to guide me through their favorite moments. A hard-bitten critic can resist much, but even he is no match for that incontestable logic.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-paywall\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u201cBluey\u201d follows the adventures of the Heeler Family \u2014 dad Bandit, mom Chilli, and sisters Bingo and Bluey. (Courtesy of disney+)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A few episodes will give the flavor. The first season\u2019s highlight, \u201cCamping,\u201d sees our heroes leaving urban Brisbane for a holiday in the Australian bush. There, 6-year-old Bluey meets and befriends Jean-Luc, who speaks only French and must communicate through the universal language of play. Having planted a sapling together, the two youngsters depart after a few days with their respective families. Yet a lovely postscript reveals that \u201cBluey\u201d returns with her own children decades later. Who should greet her, beneath a now-soaring pink trumpet tree, but a grown-up Jean-Luc?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cEscape,\u201d a top installment from the second season, sees Bandit and Chilli dropping Bingo and Bluey off at Grandma\u2019s on the way to a second honeymoon. Backed by a temporarily primitive animation style, husband and wife take their offspring through an imagined world in which Bingo and Bluey first chase and then evade their parents, a perfect representation of childhood. Once again, a closing scene introduces something new to ponder. \u201cI don\u2019t know where you get your ideas from,\u201d Nana tells Bingo and Bluey, while watching them draw. Adults and children alike will know the answer: Bandit and Chilli have handed down something precious. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBluey\u201d often imparts that kind of lesson \u2014 or, more precisely, a lesson of that size. In \u201cBumpy and the Wise Old Wolfhound,\u201d Bluey and company stage a skit for a hospital-bound Bingo, teaching us along the way that everyone gets sick at times. (This is the <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >famous \u201cbum worms\u201d episode<\/a>. Ask a child.) Meanwhile, the third-season episode \u201cPhones\u201d juxtaposes the faint absurdity of app culture with the reassurance that \u201ckids are still kids.\u201d In what is perhaps the show\u2019s most explicitly political episode, \u201cCircus\u201d from season two, Bluey and Bingo frolic while their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/black-lives-matter-curriculum-is-bludgeoning-black-history-month\/\" title=\"Black Lives Matter Curriculum Is Bludgeoning Black History Month\">parents vote<\/a>. By putting our young protagonists in the path of a playground autocrat, the show tells a hard truth about the artificiality of the civic world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the most part, Bluey\u2019s values are those of a cosmopolitan liberal: Embrace the \u201cother\u201d; be open-minded in all things. Yet the show is also fundamentally conservative, portraying with clear admiration a traditional nuclear family enacting conventional norms. To my delight, the production is often merciless in its skewering of the bubble-wrapped childhoods now prevalent in the West. In \u201cPass the Parcel,\u201d the series\u2019s single best episode, a democratized party game is reborn as a winner-take-all struggle. \u201cThis isn\u2019t the \u201980s,\u201d a bemused Bandit tells the gamemaster. For a few minutes, however, it is.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because the series is a work of art, not propaganda, \u201cBluey\u201d inhabits these contradictions rather than resolving them. Even as it concedes that Australian parents may be \u201craising a nation of squibs,\u201d the show goes out of its way to evoke the special problems of the social-media age. Take, for instance, Bluey\u2019s cry near the end of \u201cHammerbarn,\u201d a season-two episode in which the sisters learn that comparison is the thief of joy. \u201cI can\u2019t be happy with what I\u2019ve got when what she has is better,\u201d Bluey says of Bingo. Has anyone ever spoken more accurately for a generation? <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite what these examples may suggest, \u201cBluey\u2019s\u201d commentary is rarely pointed. More often, it operates on the level of smirking irony, as if to remind us that life will not allow us our certainties forever. Later in \u201cHammerbarn,\u201d an installment set largely in a hardware store, Chilli instructs her children that \u201cstuff costs money [and] there\u2019s no magical place where everything\u2019s just free.\u201d An amusing follow-up shot, however, sees Bluey and Bingo discovering the paint-swatches aisle. There, everything is, in fact, just free.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/premium\/4582623\/scary-stories-to-tell-seniors-netflix-the-boroughs\/\">SCARY STORIES TO TELL SENIORS <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The show is not without small annoyances. \u201cThe Sign,\u201d from season three, features a benevolent reference to a minor character\u2019s two moms. Progressives just can\u2019t help themselves. The same episode portrays without scorn the ridiculous nanny-state laws governing where one\u2019s own child can ride in one\u2019s own car. One might wish, throughout, that \u201cBluey\u201d mocked more severely the liberal pieties that govern the social world. For that, I suppose, we will have to wait for another cartoon. Or watch <em>The Simpsons<\/em> at its best. There was a show that knew how to have fun. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Does \u201cBluey?\u201d In its different way, yes. Indeed, watching the show in recent days, I have been shocked by how smartly the series is conceived and put together. \u201cBluey\u201d is not secretly \u201cfor adults,\u201d as the cynical cartoon refrain often goes. Rather, it <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/entertainment\/\">entertains<\/a> young children without treating them like idiots. In 2026, that\u2019s good enough.<\/p>\n<p><em>Graham Hillard is the TV critic for the <\/em>Washington Examiner<em> magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During COVID, my kids started watching Australia\u2019s \u201cBluey,\u201d and I worried it would push politics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":956,"featured_media":2611579,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/LA.TV_.061026.jpg?w=696","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[16414,80952,50916,52130],"class_list":["post-2611578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-animation","tag-bluey-2","tag-review-2","tag-television-2"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/LA.TV_.061026.jpg?w=696","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/956"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2611578"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2611582,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611578\/revisions\/2611582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2611579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2611578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2611578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2611578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}