The Australian children's cartoon Bluey has been in the news a lot lately. Disney is planning to add Bluey attractions to its theme parks and cruise ships. The show will be getting a full-length feature film with an expected release date in 2027. The show's creator, Jeff Blum, will also be leaving the production of the show in order to focus on the creation of that feature film. Will the show be the same without him? Who knows?

More interestingly, people on social media freaked out when Bluey was nominated for the US Critics Choice awards for 2023's "best animated series". Its competitors were Harley Quinn, Bob's Burgers, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Star Trek: Lower Decks, and Young Love. Many people were upset and (in some cases) "offended" by a children's cartoon being nominated alongside those other, more serious, "adult" shows. They argued that Bluey could be a nominee for "best children's cartoon", but that it should not be a serious contender for "best animated show".

Bluey was nominated for "Best Animated Series" in 2023, alongside Harley Quinn, Lower Decks, and others.

Those people are wrong, because whether you're a child or not, Bluey is a fantastic TV show. It is full of heart and clever writing. It also excels at visual storytelling, making the most out of its short run-times (each episode is less than 8 minutes long) to tell densely-packed (but easily-digestible) stories. It has plenty of silly episodes about children doing child things, but it also has some genuinely moving episodes that should be enjoyable to people of all ages.

To put this into a context that more of my readers would probably understand, when Bluey is at its best, it features emotional moments that make me tear up like the most sentimental episodes of Futurama. Think of moments from Futurama such as the epilogue of "Jurassic Bark", with the dog waiting outside the pizza shop for Fry to return. Or the twist in "Luck of the Fry-ish" when Fry finds the memorial to his "brother" on Mars. Or the montage at the end of "Leela's Homeworld" when we get to see all those little "happy coincidences" that followed Leela around through her youth. Or the ending of "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings", when Fry performs his opera for Leela. Bluey is full of those sorts of moments, and whenever they come around, the show absolutely nails them, every single time!

And I think Futurama is an especially apt comparison because so many of Futurama's best, most tear-jerking moments are about the relationships between family (or in some cases, pets).

season 4, episode 7. © Fox

season 4, episode 2. © Fox

The only cartoon that I can think of that has as much heart as Bluey is Futurama.

Yes, it's true that you probably won't relate to Bluey as much if you aren't a parent. But there's also plenty here for siblings to relate to. Or if you have ever been a care-giver or baby-sitter for a young niece or nephew.

Similar to Pixar movies, Bluey is loaded to the brim with jokes, sight gags, and content that adults (parents in particular) will relate to and be amused by. Whether it's the messiness of the backseat of the car, or being kicked by a child sleeping in bed with mom and dad, or noticing a few extra gray hairs or rolls of fat, adults will see themselves and their family reflected in many of Bluey's expertly-crafted scenes. The show also does not shy away from talking about (or at least hinting at) very adult and serious topics. Several episodes focus on growing old and dealing with declining health. Other episodes touch on infertility and failed pregnancy. Yet others are about the stress or anxiety of starting a new job. Everything may be filtered through the perspective of the children, but adult subjects are brought up, and they can sometimes hit very hard.

So yes, Bluey is really that good! It deserves to be nominated for every award that it is nominated for. I haven't watched all the shows that were nominated against Bluey, so I cannot speak as to whether Bluey deserves those awards more than the other shows, but it definitely deserves to be in the discussion.

Last night, the first episode of the reboot/sequel to Carl Sagan's acclaimed series Cosmos premiered on FOX and National Geographic Channel. I'd been anticipating this show since it was announced last year, as the original Cosmos is one of the best educational programs that has ever been produced. This show is hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, whose passion and charisma makes him an excellent communicator of scientific ideas (right up there with Bill Nye) and fitting successor to Sagan.

The new "cosmic calendar".

In this premiere episode, Tyson gives a brief tour of the solar system, recounts the story of Giordano Bruno, and introduces the viewer to Sagan's classic "cosmic calendar". The information presented in this episode is very high-level. I'm hoping that this is due to the introductory nature of this first episode, and that the remaining episodes will go into much greater depth and detail. However, I fear that the one-hour format will be too constraining for Tyson to provide any information of substance. Sagan's original series was made up of thirteen episodes each two hours long, and that format gave him the opportunity give more than just an introduction to a given topic, providing specific details on the evidences and experiments that lead to the discoveries he presented. Will Tyson have the time in later episodes to provide more information than one can get from the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article? I hope so.