Plus: Water and energy rations in Latin America, rap music's newest feud, and more
April 18, 2024 [View in browser]( Good morning! Did you see a child or parent crying a little bit this week? The possible end of the beloved children's show Bluey is probably to blame. Whether you have a child or not, you too might be crying after editorial director Bryan Walsh's explanation here today.
âCaroline Houck, senior editor of news [still image from a bluey episode] Ludo Studio Bluey as we've known it could be over. That's what makes it great. If you happen not to have children or have been living under a rock, let me introduce you to someone. Her name is Bluey. Sheâs a 7-year-old who lives with her younger sister Bingo and her dad Bandit and mom Chili in the bucolic Australian city of Brisbane. Also, sheâs a dog â a blue heeler, to be precise. And a cartoon. And sheâs really, really big. The brainchild of Australian animator Joe Brumm, the kidâs cartoon Bluey premiered in its home country in 2018 before taking the rest of the world by storm. In 2023, Bluey was the [second-most popular streaming show]( in the US, where it was watched for 731 million hours. But a better measurement of Blueyâs power is in the mindspace of its tens of millions of young fans and the wallets of their parents, who bought enough books, dolls, albums, juices, cookies, and [even theater tickets]( to make the Bluey brand [worth an estimated $2 billion](. (As Bluey herself might say, thatâs a lot of [dollarbucks](.) Which is why the most recent episode of Bluey, which hints at a possible ending for the show, was so shocking â not just to her multitudes of adoring kid fans and their parents, but to the major [media companies]( like [Disney]( that are banking on a never-ending supply of content like Bluey. But like childhood itself â for both children and the parents who watch them grow â nothing as perfectly beautiful as Bluey is meant to last forever, unchanged. Which may be the lesson the show was trying to tell us all this time. Bluey, explained You have to watch Bluey â and you absolutely should â to really understand what makes it so superior to the vast, often-polluted river that is childrenâs TV content. Itâs funny in a way that 5-year-olds and 45-year-olds can appreciate. [[ratio] ]( But what pushes Bluey into the realm of the masterpiece is Brumm and his colleaguesâ ability to thread real-life themes into their richly realized childhood world. [Aging parents](, [infertility](, [parental fighting](, [sibling rivalry](: Each of these complicated subjects gets its moment in between the games of keepy-uppy. And not in a didactic, Afterschool Special sort of way. The lessons Bluey has for children and parents alike arenât told; theyâre lived. You can see that for yourself in the most recent episode, which dropped globally on April 14, a 28-minute special titled â[The Sign](.â Bandit has gotten a new job, one that Chili tells the kids âcan give them a better lifeâ â but it requires selling their beloved home in Brisbane and moving across the country. A sudden, major move is about as traumatic as it gets for kids â and thatâs precisely how Bluey responds. She becomes fixated on the âFor Saleâ sign outside her house, reasoning with perfect kid logic that if the sign is removed, the house canât be sold. But life doesnât stop because of one kidâs crisis, whether in Bluey or in the real world. While Bluey struggles with the sign, her beloved babysitter tries to decide whether to go through with a wedding, while her mother Chili comes to grips with her own doubts about the move. Spoiler alert for all our 6-year-old [Today, Explained]( readers: The family does not, in the end, go through with the move. It was an [unusual decision]( for a show that generally hasnât shied away from the challenges of reality. At our house, at least, the ending was received by a great flow of what my son and my wife called âhappy tears.â But much of the angst that has greeted âThe Signâ has less to do with the episode itself than the [very real chance]( it could represent, if not a full-stop ending to Bluey, at the very least a significant change. [a screen grab from Bluey's episode The Sign] Ludo Studio The longest shortest time Bluey is the closest thing a multibillion-dollar media property can be to a truly artisan production. It has remained defiantly Australian, down to the accents and the lingo. Brumm writes or co-writes all the episodes. Heâs kept production at his studio in Brisbane, rather than subcontracting it out to cheaper countries. All that makes for greatness â and burnout, something that critics [have noticed sneaking into]( Brummâs characterization of his stand-in Bandit. He [told Bloomberg Businessweek]( earlier this month about his worries that he would repeat himself, that the quality couldnât possibly keep climbing. The slowness to announce what would be a fourth season, combined with the soft finale feeling of âThe Sign,â [has fans panicking](. As you can imagine, studios like Disney and the BBC that have a huge financial stake in the continued production of Bluey have no desire to see it end. The streaming ecosystem needs a constant supply of new content to keep subscribers hooked and bring on new ones (which is one reason why theyâre so excited about the dystopian [possibility of AI-generated content](). If the quality suffers, thatâs a small price to pay to keep the IP flowing. Itâs not clear what will happen with Bluey next, though producers involved in the show [have promised fans]( it will be returning in some form. But Brumm has spoken about his reluctance to replace the actors who voice Bluey and Bingo as they age out of the roles and the fact that, as his own daughters get older, he canât draw from their experiences as he once did. I can relate. My own son, the one who cried the âhappy tears,â is turning 7 soon, aging out of the Bluey zone. This is one of the fundamental facts of the [longest shortest time]( that is [parenting](. On top of the sleepless nights, the endless hours to fill, and, yes, all that joy, raising a kid is one long experience of loss. We lose the 1-year-old with his arms outstretched to be picked up, the 4-year-old bravely marching to his first day of preschool, the 6-year-old who just wants to snuggle on the couch and watch Bluey. Theyâre replaced by new people we canât wait to meet, but the ones they were, the ones we knew and loved, theyâre gone forever. Maybe thatâs why [I love Bluey so much]( â so much I almost hope it ends now, at its zenith. Watching it is a time capsule for a moment I would hold onto with all my strength, even as I know I canât. I suspect Brumm knows that too. â[Bryan Walsh, editorial director]( [Listen]( How car ownership got so expensive Drivers are increasingly paying sticker price or more for a new car. Then there are sky-high insurance rates and mortgage-level car payments. This is how we got here. [Listen now]( TECH - Do you use Discord and enjoy the way its disaggregated structure provides privacy?: So much for that: A spy site is mass scraping and selling data from the platform. Now third parties, âincluding stalkers or potentially police, can look up specific users and see what messages theyâve posted on various servers at once.â [[404 Media](]
- Calling BS on the AI hype machine: What an online tizzy over a bad review of a tech gadget reveals about the current state of many AI products â many of which âare less products and more promotional tools for the future.â [[Aftermath](] [Rapper, songwriter, and icon Drake is seen at a game between the Houston Rockets and the Cleveland Cavaliers] Carmen Mandato/Getty Images CULTURE - Drakeâs latest feud, explained: âAs anyone whoâs even slightly followed rap over the past decade and a half can attest, this isnât Drakeâs first time engaging in warfare with his peers.â Letâs dig into the tracks, and backstory, behind this new one. [[Vox](]
- Eyeing a music festival this summer?: Check out this guide to the most thrilling travel-worthy music events of the year. [[Thrillist](] AROUND THE WORLD - It can be hard to conceptualize the scale of the devastation wrought on Gaza: So Bloomberg took a look from the air â and shows how a million displaced people have packed into tents throughout the southern city of Rafah. [[Bloomberg](]
- A drought isnât just a drought: Persistent droughts in Latin America are forcing [Colombia to ration water in Bogotá](, and now Ecuador to ration energy as its hydroelectric plants struggle. [[Guardian](] Ad
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