Bluey is easily the best children's TV. I mean I'd barely class it as children's TV; it's good by adult standards.
It's a bit annoying really because there isn't anything else like it at all. I would say the closest things are Pixar films which manage to appeal to adults and children. I'm not aware of any TV like that though. Apart from Bluey we're stuck with trash like Paw Patrol, Bing, Blippi, etc.
There are a small number that are not extremely annoying, but you still wouldn't actually want to watch them: Gabby's Dollhouse, Puffin Island, maybe Hey Duggee.
I'm not sure there's ever been more options for good shows that a parent can watch and genuinely enjoy with their kids. Try Avatar the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, Hilda, Sarah & Duck, Adventure Time, Miraculous, The Dragon Prince, MLP Friendship is Magic, She-Ra and the Princess of Power, Samurai Jack, Gravity Falls, Ducktales (the new one, but the old one isn't bad either), Cleopatra in Space, Amphibia, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Owl House, Craig of the Creek, Steven Universe, LEGO Elves, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, Over the Garden Wall, Infinity Train, and the Disney Fairies movies.
I'd also recommend getting your hands on the cartoons you enjoyed as a kid. Odds are good your kids will like them for the same reasons you did, although you may find that they don't all hold up for you.
> I'd also recommend getting your hands on the cartoons you enjoyed as a kid.
I grew up with WB Loony Tunes (and Tex Avery and Superchicken and Wacky Racers and...), and that style of animation looks positively ancient in comparison to the modern animation style - whatever you call it - rendered as sort-of-3D. For example, Paw Patrol.
This actually worries me because I want my kid (currently 5yo) to have the benefit of the utter anarchy of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and Roadrunner.
Put on some Loony Toons! Don't worry that it's old. Kids that young don't have enough sense of the timeline to know just how ancient any animation style is, but Loony Toons will stand out for sure. 3D garbage-tier animation is everywhere in kids shows because it's fast and cheap. 3D animation is often much less expressive and dynamic though. The more variety in animation you expose a kid too, the sooner they'll be able to notice bad animation when they see it.
In my limited sample size, the new Roadrunner 3D cartoons get significantly fewer laughs than the hand drawn ones. The style is irrelevant to the humour, however there does seem to be a correlation between quantity of TNT and enjoyment - new ones have none.
Some are for sure, but a lot of those shows hold up well for all ages. I don't put much faith in marketers to decide which shows are for what demographics. Better to see what lands for yourself. It helps when you're watching and discussing the shows with your kids too.
Some of them, Adventure time being a great example, can appeal to very young kids but they'll find new meaning in those episodes as they get older.
I think shows like Infinity Train, Avatar the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, Steven Universe, and Samurai Jack will be better after a kid is old enough that Cocomelon wouldn't hold any appeal, but even at that age Sarah & Duck, Hilda, MLP, Craig of the Creek, etc could still be good. Just about anything that holds their attention and isn't Cocomelon is a huge win. If you'll enjoy it, all the better.
Phineas and Ferb was actually NOT written with kids directly in mind, and as a comfortable pop culture medium between the tame-over-time Simpsons and raunchier Family Guy and South Park. A mostly wholesome, wacky and chaotic series where the good guys always win and usually spectacularly. Phineas and Ferb never really learn anything but the other characters do.
I would say Gravity Falls much more so than Phineas and Ferb. The latter doesn't have much of a series-long story arc, whereas the former very much does have one.
Craig of the Creek was also pretty good, though I don't think it has a wider arc (I am not entirely certain though.)
PBS Kids has excellent shows for little kids and is free. There is a website, Apple TV app, etc. I’m surprised by how little it seems to be known compared to commercial options like Netflix or Nick Jr.
Old episodes of Blues Clues are also great for little kids.
Bluey is next-level. S-tier television. It’s wholesome, calm, and entertaining. Episodes like Camping, Baby Race, Cricket, and Onesies are all emotional sucker-punches to the adults watching. (My pet theory, which my wife first suggested: Camping is essentially the Star Trek TNG episode Darmok.)
I moved across country and left all my friends behind at the age of 9, The Sign was a hard watch. I was those kids. I can still remember my reaction to being told we were moving (I would have been about 8).
Bluey is a certified work of perfection. My kids have stopped watching it now. I'm tempted to watch them all from the start by myself.
So many little things for parents. Your list is good. I was also struck by "early baby", for example, for subtext children will only get when they re-watch in 20 years.
Bluey is much more wholesome than Miraculous. Not a judgement thing, my eldest watches Miraculous too and I don't really have a problem with it. It's just not on the same level as Bluey. A huge plus for parents is also that Bluey is WAY more engaging for adults. Far and away my favourite program to watch with my kids. Some episodes really pull at the heart strings.
Personally, I'm convinced Bluey is covertly a wholesome show for parents, dressed up as a kids' show, but ultimately still for the sake of children by way of 1) encouraging watching together, 2) improving parents' mental health and well-being, which has positive outcomes for their kids, 3) getting parents to be more engaged and imaginative.
It's truly, actually a family show, not just a show for kids that parents can tolerate enough to sit through.
Pretty much any episode that has the girls learning a lesson is also teaching a lesson to any of the parents watching. Or "adults," I should say -- I don't even have kids and I feel like a better person for having watched!
I feel no shame admitting that Sleepytime makes me cry without fail every time I see it.
I feel like most cartoon parents are either completely hapless morons (Papa Pig in Peppa Pig) or 100% perfect all the time robots (I love you Mr. and Mrs. Tiger but you're paragons, hard to relate to as parents). Bandit and Chili are incredible parents who also make mistakes and have real emotions and reactions to things. They absolutely make me want to be a better parent in a way that is actually achievable.
Miraculous changes a lot in the later seasons. I'm saying this because while our kids were very much into the first 2 seasons, it was me and my wife who got hooked for the other 3 seasons.
The first 2 seasons are also full of fillers if you want, I don't shy away from skipping them when I'm alone, but we did watch it all with our kids.
We had a good time with it. Not sure if you watched it all, I'm looking forward the next season to see how the plot unravels.
But I'll definitely check Bluey :)
That being said, I wish there was a genre tagged as "engaging for adults, fun for kids": there are a bunch of movies and shows along these lines, but they aren't tagged in any other way.
Another genre that exists but I can't find is "boring for kids but child-friendly", basically any tv show that says stuff they can't properly follow, doesn't have action scenes, but has a convoluted plot for adults. On the top of my mind I can think of Shrinking (my kids still don't understand cursing in english, only italian, so this is great), but I remember there was an even better one that I can't think of right now.
Usually creative work and the arts are judged by their ability to move something inside of us to which you can say that crying is a proxy for that. It's effectively saying it's good art.
All emotional reactions are "manipulated" - we choose to expose ourselves to situations wherein we might feel emotional reactions of various sorts. Why is art, "negative" reactions or not, any different?
As another commenter points out, it's a good way of learning - about yourself, how you feel, about other perspectives. It's also, hopefully, a chance to grow - reflect on your past, your mistakes, how you've treated others.
I lost my mom some years ago. It definitely just hit me, and I was kind of in an odd place in life at the time. I don't think I really processed it all well at the time.
Years later, when I watch a good movie that results in someone losing a parent figure, I'll often have quite a deep emotional reaction to it. But in the end I like these experiences. They help me look into those situations again and help me analyze the connection to losing my mom. Being in that state of emotion again helps me process it now that I'm in a very different stage in life.
I didn't believe "ugly crying" is about negativity. Rather, the "ugly" bit is about the abandonment with which one cries. One is so invested in the emotions (whatever those may be--it's not even a continuum of good/bad but rather a huge, high dimension vector space) that one abandons propriety and self-respect and just cries. It's about investment due to the exceedingly high emotional resonance with the subject matter.
This is my understanding. Caveat: I am not a person who cries much, if at all.
I understand your question, and it is hard to describe. Our brains are pattern generators, and it "feels good" to resonate with patterns we've already experienced. Neural circuits create patterns by strengthening connections upon our experience. This is particularly true as we get older and our brains become less plastic. Lesser used patterns become harder to access as they are no longer reinforced as frequently. However, this feels less good for our brains, and we value novelty.
So in the same way that riding a bike after a long time is much harder than it is to ride one when you use it every day, you can generalize this to something like emotions. It is bad to only experience one type of feeling all the time, and variety is good. Having a controlled, relatable medium lead you to experience a less commonly-felt emotion feels good. I don't know if I can explain why--maybe we have mechanisms in our brain for encouraging this novelty--but this is likely why we seek out these emotional experiences.
Because art can be seen as manipulation, or it can be seen as tapping on the deeply fundamental hooks that make us human. Feeling affects from an artistic representation tells us something about the human experience that goes beyond our intellect. Its closer to something spiritual rather than something analytic.
I understand it's very ingrained in our culture at this point that this is a thing people do. But, if I decontextualize enough mentally, it starts to feel quite strange: manipulating one's brain into having a negative emotional reaction.
You’re not being well understood here, but I do this too, and have done — with everything — all my life.
The answer is ultimately that if you deconstruct and logically analyse any particular human activity it either ruins the fun and/or makes you realise how primitive and dark most forms of entertainment are. People like being emotional, for whatever reason.
I like the explanation that says it’s about learning, though. Learning somehow feels intrinsically good.
It's not negative to be moved to tears. And it's not manipulative to watch a tv show. I don't think you're decontextualizing as much as you're trying to adopt some alien contrarian viewpoint.
It might help to compare it with going to the gym or for a run. In some sense this produces an immediate negative reaction: our muscles get sore and stiff, and we get out of breath. But we still do it perhaps because we feel better afterwards, or because it helps our long term physical health.
Likewise, deliberately experiencing sad (or otherwise) emotional states has both short term and long term positive outcomes. In the short term we feel a sense of catharsis, and perhaps reassured that our feelings are relatable. In the long term we feel more in touch and less overwhelmed by our emotions.
Plus, it's not JUST about the crying. I'm order to get to the point where the tears are actually falling, you have to go through all the build up that makes you care very deeply about the characters and situation. When that works well enough to get you to cry over a cartoon? It's fucking MAGICAL. =)
It just means that you cry so hard your face is all twisted up and you go red and and your mouth is hanging open and there's snot dripping out of your nose, as opposed to simply shedding a couple tears. It's not really disparaging.
I’d say Miraculous is very French, in a good way. In that it doesn’t try to shield children from difficult adult subjects like death and grief and difficult parental relationships. We only do an hour or two of screen time a week right now (including for me and my wife), but Miraculous was a request for last week’s “movie night”.
Then we watch Severance when the kids go to bed and that’s it. Just like there’s junk shows for kids we’ve got junk shows for adults, and it’s hard to deny it to children when we don’t deny it for ourselves. The kids complain way less too when we’re like “well we’re all giving this stuff up”, because they have an innate sense of fairness.
I need to check Bluey, we watched Miraculous, tales of Ladybug with our kids and enjoyed it (the plot is for adults).
There is a whole bunch of "junk food" in both tv and videogames (those were you win no matter what). I'm hoping things get better.