Sorry I haven't updated this blog for a long time. We're past the twenty-year mark of me starting to write things here regularly, so fire off the party-poppers, but it's a bit alarming to find I'm old enough to have been doing something for two decades. I'm an old man.
Coupled with this, I don't remember whether I've ever mentioned in this blog that I've got multiple sclerosis, but yes, that's a thing. It makes me into the kind of person who knows his NHS number off by heart to quote when people are delivering a new batch of medication to me every few months, and involves going for an occasional appointment with a nurse in the rehabilitation section of the hospital at lengthy intervals. It's very much like being Amy Winehouse, only less musical. But it's irritating when I always used to be the kind of young and active person who didn't see a doctor from one decade to the next.
So stay tuned if you're still keen to hear what Sniffer got up to in Daredevil comics of the late 1940s, because it's still coming, but excuse me if I indulge my more infantile side and talk about Bluey today.
See, someone on a forum recently ran a poll of favourite Bluey episode, and I stick by my judgement that "Shops" is the epitome of perfection for that wonderful cartoon. Just because it undercuts Bluey's habit of using heavily-scripted play sessions to deal with her issues by putting her into conflict with Mackenzie, who just wants them all to make things up as they go along. It's brilliant.
And as an honourable mention for sheer cleverness, you can't beat "Flat Pack". Capsule summary - Mum and Dad struggle to assemble a flat-packed garden chair while Bluey and Bingo play with the discarded packaging materials. Their playing represents the progress of life on earth, simultaneously on the macro scale of millions of years of evolution and the micro scale of a single human (cartoon dog) life. The episode ends with Bluey symbolically ascending to Heaven while Bingo leaves Earth to explore the universe. All in seven minutes, including opening and closing titles.
But someone else suggested the third-season episode "Cricket", which I hadn't seen before, and just... wow. I'm blown away, not for the first time, by this simple kids' cartoon. How do they manage to keep producing this kind of genius?
Bluey's dad Bandit narrates the episode in his characteristic way. "It was some kid's birthday, I don't remember who, and we were playing cricket." - which immediately makes this an episode that resonates with me. See, my brother's birthday is in the summer, and we had an important family tradition of the one whose birthday it isn't getting a 'little' present so as not to feel completely left out. It became a running joke that I'd always get a cricket set for my brother's birthday (bat, tennis ball and set of stumps). Which led to scenes exactly like what's happening at the start of this episode - an ad-hoc game of cricket that a handful of dads seem to be much more invested in than the kids, who are standing around or playing something else.
Bluey wants to play tig instead, but her dad insists that cricket is more fun. Rusty hasn't had a bat yet, so they call him over, and Bandit says they'll just get Rusty out and then play something else. "You'll never get Rusty out," says Bluey, matter-of-factly - and sure enough, Rusty nearly takes Bandit's head off with his fierce drive of the gentle first ball!
It turns out that Rusty is really good at cricket. The episode chronicles the dads trying to get the six-year-old out, starting out by taking it easy on him and moving on to throwing everything they can at him in an attempt to preserve their dignity, to no avail. And we flash back to see how Rusty got to be so good. He really loves the game, and plays it at every opportunity. Becoming an expert at placing his square cut so as not to break the kitchen window, dealing with the uneven surface of Jack's front yard, being allowed to play with his big brother's mates who bowl really fast and use a proper cricket ball - it's a story of dedication to the passion of his life and hard work at becoming the best he can be.
I was never really into cricket, despite the annual gift. I've no idea who thought I wanted a cricket set, but it did at least give the grown-ups an afternoon's entertainment in the garden every year. But the point of this episode is that Rusty is still me - it's me getting into memory competitions, and everything else I've been passionate about over the years. And the ending of the episode, as is so often the case with Bluey, is so wonderful as to make me shed a tear or two.
That there are people in the world who can produce this kind of masterpiece in the name of a simple piece of children's television entertainment will never cease to amaze me, and just goes to show that there's something generally right with the world. Go and watch it, right now!
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