4 Somehow Uncomfortable Facts About Bluey
This show may look positively adorable, but don’t be fooled: it’ll make a grown uncle cry.
Stuff Gets Real in the Heeler Household
Even if you’re not familiar with the show, you probably know that a huge part of its popularity stems from taking on some pretty tough subjects that its predecessors in children’s programming rarely could. Sure, Sesame Street shot an episode about Snuffleupagus’ parents getting divorced, but they never put it on the air.
But Bluey? They don’t seem to be afraid of anything. Elderly family members losing their edge, childhood trauma, the afterlife — nothing is off limits. In one episode, “Early Baby,” a kid playing doctor decides to address her own trauma of almost losing a younger sibling who was born premature. She puts a doll in a makeshift incubator, then witnesses a friend steal the baby to use as a prop in a LARPing fantasy sword game. Those are some pretty big emotions for a recent toddler.
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The show doesn’t shy away from adult trauma, either. In one episode, Bluey pretends to be pregnant by putting a balloon in her shirt. The balloon pops, and in a subtle gesture that probably flew over kids’ heads, they show her mother, Chilli, welling up with tears, indicating that she likely endured a miscarriage. There’s also an entire episode dedicated to Chilli’s sister’s infertility, revealing that her infrequent visits with the kids are due to the agony of witnessing the growing, loving family she’ll never have.
But the Heelers Still Have Plot Armor
The god of the Bluey universe didn’t see fit to allow Chilli Heeler to have a third kid, but the family’s much lower stakes prayers were answered in the episode “The Sign.” The series’ penultimate episode saw the family preparing to move out of their beloved home because the dad, Bandit, got a job in a different city. Moving is annoying, sure, but to the two little girls it was a full-on existential crisis. Through apparent divine intervention, the buyers of the home spot a better house for sale in the same neighborhood and renege on the deal. While that could be grounds for a lawsuit, the Heelers decided it was a sign that they should stay in their home.
What’s the lesson here, exactly? That if you hope, meddle and cry enough, things will work out the way you want them? In our human world, when a family is moving for work, they most likely don’t have the option to pull an “aw shucks, nevermind” and let everything revert back to normal. The fact that the show does tend to handle hard topics with honesty and pragmatism makes this little deus ex machina moment stick in some parents’ craw.
What’s Up With Chilli?
We need to talk about Chilli, the mom of the family. First of all, she hums the show’s theme song a lot, and the implications are rattling. Is the whole series going on inside her head? Does she know she’s on a TV show? If so, she’s fine with airing all that dirty laundry? To children?
All that aside, there’s one odd detail about her life that’s worth further investigation: She works for airport security. Is she one of those people dispassionately yelling at travelers to take their shoes off, or to leave their shoes on, or whatever the new rule of the day happens to be? Is she one of those drug-sniffing dogs? If so, is she being walked around on a leash and a muzzle by her coworkers?
No matter what her precise role is, the uncomfortable implication is that there was a Dog 9/11. Of course airport security existed pre-9/11, but it wasn’t such a prevalent occupation that the majority of little kids would be familiar with it until after that catastrophic failure of national security. Knowing that the show isn’t shy about confronting trauma, we’re left to assume that in this universe, dog terrorists hijacked dog airplanes and crashed them into dog towers.
While We’re at It: What About Chilli’s Parents?
Chillis’ mom died at some point before the series takes place, so she only shows up in photos and flashbacks. But her name, canonically, is just “Chilli’s Mum.” This opens up the same can of worms that Snuffleupagus’ geneology does — his mom’s name is Mommy Snuffleupagus, his dad’s name is Daddy Snuffle, his cousin’s name is Señor Esnofelopago. When a character’s family is named after that character’s first name, the family tree becomes a bewildering Mobius strip.
Bluey’s grandfather makes a few appearances in the show, where it appears his dark past comes back to haunt him. Mort Cattle is a war veteran. If we accept that there was a Dog 9/11, we must also conclude that there was a Dog Vietnam, and that Mort was one of the 60,000 Australians who fought in that war. In his later years, he’s become a bit forgetful — it slipped his mind that he had a second grandchild the first Christmas after Bingo was born, and he brought a single gift that the two kids had to share. This memory lapse may account for the episode he spent dragging Bluey and Bingo around the neighborhood, hiding from Chilli like she was the Viet Cong.
