The many delights — and the disappointment — of the epic Bluey episode “The Sign”

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This is not how I planned it — I didn’t expect to be publishing something about Bluey so soon. The thing is, I’ve been meaning to write an essay about the series for a couple of years. I’ve outlined it, made lots of notes, I even have a headline: “The joy and pain of Bluey.” But I’ve put off actually writing it — mainly because it’s going to be a lengthy and involved piece, with a lot to say about all the things I love about this utterly unique show, and the things I don’t love about it.

It’s also possible I was putting it off because I know my criticisms might anger some among Bluey’s extremely passionate fanbase, and I just want to make sure my arguments are as clear as possible.

I was tentatively going make myself start working on this beast in a couple of months, during the winter here in Australia. And coincidentally — speaking of kids’-TV-related content — I have an article about Hey Duggee that I’m almost done with and was just about to click publish on (update: here it is).

But then along comes “The Sign,” the blockbuster new special episode of Bluey that’s turned out to be a major TV event this year. After I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days, I sat down to write up some quick thoughts about it for Instagram. Before I knew it I’d written a whole review in one sitting, and it was soon obvious it needed to be published here.

And it makes no sense not to publish something about “The Sign” when every parent in Australia is talking about it — and many who aren’t parents are too. So here we go.

Clocking in at 28 minutes (so, 21 minutes longer than a regular episode), “The Sign” is an ambitious work that’s already proven to be a pivotal moment for Bluey. It was hyped up on ABC Kids for weeks as if it was a preschool version of the last episode of Seinfeld. It might as well have been: Bluey is one of the most popular TV series in the world. The stats in this Guardian article made my jaw drop: it’s the second-most streamed series globally, representing an insane one-third of all TV views on Disney+.

Despite the fact that its target audience is preschoolers and their parents, Bluey also has many fans among Gen Z and childless millennials. It’s easy to see why Bluey’s creators, headed by showrunner Joe Brumm, felt it was worth the effort to treat the series’ massive fanbase to such an epic.

Like seemingly everyone in Australia, my partner, my son, and I dutifully gathered in front of the TV last Sunday morning at 8:02 am to watch the premiere of “The Sign.” There’s a lot to discuss about this episode; if I tried to get to it all, it would take you far longer than 28 minutes to read this. Let’s just say that at quadruple the runtime, “The Sign” has quadruple the amount of everything that makes Bluey great, and also quadruple the sentimentality and self-indulgence.

The longer runtime really works in that it allows Brumm (who wrote the episode, as he writes most of them) to craft a more cinematic narrative, with a more intricate plot and more on the line for the Heelers. As the episode opens, the family are preparing to host the wedding of Bandit’s brother Radley and Bluey’s godmother Frisky in their backyard. The episode was billed by ABC Kids as “the wedding of the year,” but it turns out the wedding is just a framing device: the real drama is about the Heelers’ iconic house.

As we found out at the end of the previous episode, “Ghostbasket,” the Heelers are selling their home. It turns out they’re leaving Brisbane because Bandit has landed a better-paying job “in another city” (we don’t find out where, which is weird given how detailed and realistic the show usually is). In the opening scene, a family of sheepdogs comes to view the house, and we soon find out they want to buy it.

It’s not hard to imagine their house has probably gone up significantly in value during this housing crisis. And by the way, I think it’s noteworthy that that the biggest-ever episode of Bluey is about housing and financial stress during Australia’s worst housing crisis in decades. I feel like I could write an entire article about this aspect of the episode alone.

Bluey is upset and angry about moving, as kids often are, and sets about trying to sabotage the sale by removing the “For Sale” sign in their front yard. She and the other kids can’t manage it; it’s too heavy for them to pull out of the ground, so she enlists Frisky’s help. Her fixation on the sign is cute and heartbreaking.

Meanwhile Frisky storms out and threatens to call off the wedding. Rad had neglected to tell her that he intends to move away from Brissy to take a job “out west” (as established in an earlier episode, Rad is an oil worker). She finds out about this impending upheaval when Rad and Bandit’s brother Stripe blurts it out awkwardly while they’re setting up the wedding decorations.

Of course it’s entirely valid of Frisky to be angry about not being consulted about this at all. It’s hard for me to imagine messing up this bad with your fiancé, but then again some dudes probably are this shabby, so it’s not like it’s unrealistic either.

“Why didn’t you tell her about the move?” Bandit asks his brother. “Because clearly I’m not very good at this?” is Rad’s embarrassed reply. It’s one of those exchanges on Bluey that feels strikingly like a real conversation.

Chilli seems to sympathize with Frisky — she seems troubled about moving house too. We suspect she’s compromised her own happiness for the sake of a better material situation, and then later she comes right out and admits that. “Of course I don’t want to leave, Bluey,” she tells her. “You took your first steps in that house.”

To be fair, Bandit doesn’t seem happy about the move either, but we wonder how honest their conversations have been.

This gives the whole thing the feeling of a series finale (even though it isn’t). The prospect of the Heelers selling their beloved home, which is so integral to the series it’s practically a character, creates high emotional stakes. It’s not only that Bluey fans have spent the past six years feeling like they’ve inhabited this house. Anyone who’s moved away from home and left behind family and friends and precious memories for the uncertain hope of a better life would find this quite wrenching. I certainly did.

Desperate to find her mate and save the wedding, Chilli takes Bluey, Bingo and their cousins Muffin and Socks on a wild-goose chase around town. These scenes, with their many funny twists and turns, mother-daughter conversations, and soul-searching along the way, are delightful and very sharply written — worthy of any TV show for grownups (okay, that’s a low bar, but still). My partner and I were already shedding tears during these scenes, and my son was spellbound by the suspense. When Frisky appears in the background at the juice shop and gets away unseen by Chilli and the girls, my son got so excited he was yelling at the TV.

An example of how good the writing is: because Bingo and both cousins are along for the ride, Bluey has to sit in the front. It’s her first ride in the front seat — a special moment for her, showing that this seven-year-old we’ve gotten to know so well is growing and changing on us even as the story carries her towards the unknown. It’s subtle but powerful, especially if you’re a parent and you’ve gone through these things.

Throughout the episode there are many Easter eggs for longtime viewers (old and young), adding to the sense that the series is wrapping up (even though it isn’t!). There are appearances from Flappy the butterfly, Greeny the green balloon, and lots of other little visual references and gags.

I can’t get to all the wonderful bits, and I can’t detail the gorgeous artwork and animation, with its trademark desaturated colors and rich visual depiction of life in Brisbane. One of my favorite parts is the wedding reception, which functions as an interlude amidst the drama. The Heelers dance to the track from “Dance Mode” (another Easter egg pointed out by my son). The way they animate the dancing is so cute and it’s all just perfect in capturing the release of emotion after a wedding.

I love that they show the grownups drinking at the reception, some of them heavily. For a kids’ show, Bluey has always been pretty upfront about that aspect of Australian life.

Now we get to the pointy end of this review. Having set up this very touching story about loss and acceptance, Brumm completely bungles the ending.

Major spoilers follow!

One of the problems I have with Bluey is that it lacks restraint, especially at the end of each episode, when they beat you in the face with syrupy music cues and heavy-handed life lessons. This gets worse the more the show becomes a cultural juggernaut and Brumm and his team seem to feel the need to play up to the show’s importance. Bluey is so much better when it’s more lowkey, exploring little aspects of day-to-day life from the perspective of a child (and her parents), but its own creators seem to forget this.

Last year’s “event” episode, “Cricket,” is so corny it feels like an ad for shaving cream. I also have an issue with the way it shunted Bluey herself aside so it could foreground a blokey sports narrative, but that’s a longer conversation. I much prefer “Slide,” an episode that quietly premiered one week earlier, about Bingo’s efforts to protect the little bugs that crawl onto her water slide. It’s so unassuming and sweet, everything Bluey should be.

Anyway, the end of “The Sign” makes “Cricket” seem minimalist by comparison. It’s so over-the-top melodramatic, and the cloying, crescendoing music is just too much. This is not a knock against Joff Bush, who’s a brilliant composer; we’re talking about filmmaking choices here. The music interferes with the emotion of the scene, rather than bringing it out — and there’s a melancholy pop song (“Lazarus Drug” by Meg Washington, who also plays Calypso) to telegraph all the emotion for you in case you missed the point. To be fair, lots of grownup TV shows do this kind of thing too (and I hate it).

But this time the sappiness isn’t even the worst of it. Through the most unrealistic, improbable plot twist, the sale of the house falls through. I kid you not, the sheepdogs who bought the house, but were disappointed it didn’t have a swimming pool, randomly see another house with a pool, and decide to buy that one instead. Even typing it out again I still can’t believe the cognitive dissonance. We desperately wanted a pool but we bought a house without one anyway, because we thought it would be more fun and suspenseful to cancel the sale the first time we saw a house with a swimming pool somewhere else, especially if it was from a distance through a coin-operated telescope.

But never mind, everybody gets to be happy in the end! The Heelers get to keep their house! The wedding goes forward and Rad calls off the plans to move out west, so Frisky gets a happy ending too!

There are several other smaller happy endings for supporting characters: we find out Brandi is pregnant, and Winton’s dad moves in with the Terriers’ mum after years of being divorced and unhappy. They really pile it on.

I found all this not only corny, but actually dishonest; it left a bad taste in my mouth. It’s such a forced and smarmy cluster of happy endings that it feels like they’re about to reveal it was all a dream of Bluey’s — she’ll wake up and find out the house is still sold. But no, that’s the real ending.

Brumm had a chance to do something pretty complex and brave for kids’ TV, or any TV, and end it on a bitter note, or at least to have it be open-ended. This would have been more affecting and more relatable — not to mention more tearjerking. It was right there and he blew it. It’s like he didn’t believe there could be redemption or hope without a fantasy happy ending.

The theme of breadwinners who are men (Bandit and Rad) making career moves that impact the whole family certainly complicates the issue. Frisky states this out loud, telling Chilli she’s moving “because your husband wants you to.” I don’t want to discount this feminist angle; I’m sure there were many wives and mums cheering the ending.

But if Brumm were more honest about exploring the gender disparity in these kinds of big life changes, then Chilli should have been involved in the resolution, instead of the miraculous deus ex machina that decides the issue. There have been many other episodes of Bluey in which the most important scene is a conversation between Chilli and Bandit. This wouldn’t have been beyond the scope of the show — far from it, it would have been Bluey at its best.

I can’t help but compare “The Sign” to “Ribbon Alvida,” the (unofficial) last episode of Sarah & Duck — to me, the greatest and most underrated series for young kids ever made (yes, I think it’s better than Bluey). In that episode, from 2017, Sarah finds out that her friends and nextdoor neighbors, the Ribbon Sisters, are moving away because their family’s circus, which they perform in, is leaving town. Sarah is sad about this, and then due to some miscommunication she thinks she’s missed her chance to say goodbye, which makes her even more sad. Finally she and Duck track the Sisters down just as they’re leaving. She gets to say a quick goodbye, they exchange gifts, then they’re gone. It’s beautiful the way it’s handled, and it makes me cry every time I watch it. Sarah experiences loss, but she learns from it, and she’s happy she at least got to see her friends one more time and let them know what they mean to her.

So it is possible to introduce complexity into stories for young kids, or to teach them that things don’t always go their way, or that at some point in their lives they’ll have to let some loved ones go.

In fact this isn’t even a bold new concept for Bluey: at the end of the first-season episode “Copycat,” the little budgie that Bluey rescues dies at the animal clinic — a quietly wrenching moment early on in the series that demonstrated how nuanced and real it could be. If that one ended like “The Sign,” it would be like, “I’m sorry, your little budgie died… oh wait, the budgie is still alive!! Woohoo!!”

I made these points in a thread in an ABC Kids parents’ forum, and some people agreed with me, but I got a lot of pushback too, which didn’t surprise me. Criticizing Bluey in certain forums is like criticizing someone’s favorite sports team.

One person asked why I had a problem with the Heelers deciding that money isn’t the most important thing to them. I didn’t ask them if they’re rich and never have to worry about money, but I was sure tempted.

A couple of others said that this had happened to them, that they’d had the sale of a house fall through — that was their lived experience — so it wasn’t fair to call “The Sign” unrealistic. Cool. My lived experience includes being devastated by moving with my family to another state when I was a teenager. This is why the opening scenes gripped me so much (and, incidentally, why Inside Out makes me cry from beginning to end).

Most of the time, for most families, this is how it plays out: the move goes forward, and you make the best of it, or you don’t. We live in a world where people — especially working-class people — make big life decisions because of money. Most people don’t have the option of deciding that money isn’t the most important thing to them. It’s actually really tone-deaf to dismiss this given the reality for so many people in Australia and around the world right now during this economic crisis.

But either way, the point here is not whether a sale falling through happens from time to time. It’s not even whether the episode has a happy ending or not. Happy endings are fine, if they’re earned. In this case, the ending betrays the drama set up by the narrative. It feels false.

A justification that I’m already tired of hearing: many commenters have said that the happy ending is explained by something Calypso tells the kids at school early in the episode. She says stories always have happy endings because “life will give us enough sad ones.” First of all, this is a really corny line (it doesn’t help that Calypso is one of my least favorite characters, and, as a hippie teacher at a Steiner school, the most likely to be an antivaxxer).

Beyond that, the parable-like story that Calypso tells the kids is actually better and more nuanced than the end of the episode itself. In that story, the farmer experiences many ups and downs in his life, each time saying, “We’ll see” — and, significantly, it’s open-ended. The final “We’ll see,” leaves you certain there will be more ups and downs. “The Sign” only has ups and ups.

So reminding us of Calypso’s story just reminds us what a cop-out the ending is.

Like I said, mine is a contrary opinion, and certainly there’s been overwhelming, gushing support for the ending among most fans, but I’m not alone in thinking this way. This Mamamedia review calls out the falseness of the happy ending:

The ending, with the sudden reverse, felt like a shying away from a hard part of life, which Bluey is typically known for not doing…

Because for so many kids in Australia, there is no surprise twist ending. There is no change of mind by the buyer and no change of heart by the adults who are making decisions. Many kids around Australia have been faced with a move, sometimes by their parents’ choice, sometimes by the economic need to follow where the jobs are, the affordable houses are, and the study opportunities are.

It’s surprisingly spot-on for Mamamedia; I hope the writer got paid more than $50 for this. She goes on to talk about her own experiences moving house as a teen, which I can relate to. However I don’t fully agree with this bit: “To have them be able to see their experience reflected in Bluey’s story, not as a bad ending to be avoided, but as the start of a new adventure, could have been really special and healing.”

This Guardian review argues the same point:

It particularly hit a nerve for me as our family has to move from our rental soon — a situation many families are facing during these difficult times. We have spent a lot of time talking about it with our five-year-old — a Bluey superfan. We have explained that while he may feel sad, change often comes with opportunities and he will hopefully grow to like his new home even more.

As I watched him dissolve into tears as the Heeler family got in their car to drive away from their empty house — then later jump for joy when they decided to stay — that seemed to all go out the window. Later, online, I read comments from other parents who also felt let down by the messaging.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with admitting that moving is actually an unhappy experience for a lot of kids. But maybe Bluey isn’t ready for that kind of downer — and anyway, compared to what actually happened onscreen, it would have been a vast improvement if the move went ahead and Bluey learned to accept it.

It’s wild to imagine how many kids out there are going to argue with their parents about moving because of this episode, or get bewildered and upset when the move doesn’t fall through.

There are a bunch of other entirely reasonable criticisms of the ending from online commenters screenshotted in this Tiktok (though the creator herself says she loved the ending).

In just six years, Bluey has become one of the great Australian cultural icons, in part because it shows life for ordinary Aussies with more honesty and detail than just about any other show ever has. The family outings to Hammerbarn (Bunnings), the Chinese restaurant at the local shops, the way Chilli drinks white wine at barbecues, the way Bandit calls his daughters “mate,” the jokes about the dunny, the tradies, the chats with your kid on bin night, that one episode where you glimpse a Wiggles poster but the Wiggles are dogs.

I love all this so much, and it’s why so many people consider it such a godsend in kids’ entertainment. That comes through in the way we talk about the characters and their lives with the utmost seriousness, as if they were friends. If you’re a parent and you watch Bluey regularly, I know you’ve had this kind of conversation. “Bandit is a great dad, and he loves the girls to death, but he’s a bit slack too.” “True, he leaves Chilli to be the serious one and make all the decisions while he’s sneaking off and watching the cricket.”

Sometimes it’s hard to remember it’s technically a show for four to eight-year-olds — though it’s increasingly defined by fan service for the grownups, which I think is part of the problem.

In the brilliant latest episode, “Surprise,” which dropped by surprise one week after “The Sign” (ABC Kids sneakily listed an old episode in its place on the schedule to conceal the secret), there’s a great bit when Bandit is overwhelmed trying to play two separate games with the girls. His assignment involves looking after Bingo’s pretend babies (in the form of stubby coolers) while being pummelled relentlessly with Bluey’s ball blaster. Eventually he collapses exhausted into a fetal position on the floor. “Oh, Bluey!” Chilli says cheerfully, “This is what parenting is like!” It made me do that thing where you’re crying and laughing at the same time. It was actually such a relief to see the show get back to being its lowkey self after the grandeur and the disappointment of “The Sign.”

It was a great reminder of why this show matters so much — a reminder of the joy of Bluey. That fetal position is very familiar to me. You better believe I wrote this article in stolen moments here and there during full-time childcare duty over the school holidays. I have skin in this game.

The same day I watched “The Sign,” I attended a rally for Palestine here in Sydney. I saw more than one protest sign with Bluey on it, including one that said “Bluey is for Palestinian kids too.” When a fictional character is depicted on protest signs in such a wholesome way, that’s when you know they’ve reached icon status. It says something about how important Bluey is to people everywhere, and not just the white working-class Australians it portrays with such loving accuracy.

For all these reasons, people get deeply invested in Bluey. The fans are very defensive, even possessive about it, and they really don’t want to hear criticism of it. Most media coverage of the series is fawning boosterism; I’ve found very little critical analysis of it. It’s to the point that it’s news when a review is “less than positive,” as shown in this Reddit thread.

Maybe people feel that because it’s a show for kids, it isn’t fair to be hard on it? As if you’re actually criticizing the six-year-olds who love it? Or maybe they think it deserves a pass as a product of the small Australian film and TV industry achieving massive worldwide success.

But to me, Bluey’s greatness — and its enormous popularity — is the very reason it deserves to be taken seriously. Loving a series doesn’t preclude being critical about it. If it’s one of the most popular TV shows in the world, and if it’s presenting to the world a certain idealized narrative of working-class family life in Australia, then these are things worth discussing.

There are so many other things to talk about with Bluey — so many great things (Faceytalk, Chunky Chimp), so many problematic things (Unicorse, the cringy stuff about the military). They’ll have to wait, because if I keep going, this will turn into that deep dive I promised above. Watch this space!

If you enjoyed this piece about Bluey, you may enjoy some of my other articles about kids’ TV — most recently my list of the 15 best Hey Duggee badges.

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