I Saw "The Sign"

“This is, like, the episode of episodes!” my seven year old crowed towards the end of "The Sign," the newest episode of Bluey, what’s by now become pretty handily my favorite show on TV. Yes, it’s a cartoon primarily targeted at preschoolers, but as I’ve established by now both here and elsewhere, this show is something different. The first time I wrote about it, I used the term “emotional unified field” to describe the intergenerational appeal of Bluey, and this episode of episodes is maybe the greatest testament to the unusually potent wavelength this show has managed to ride for the past several years.

My seven year old’s comment referred to the extraordinary density of callbacks and catch-ups featured in "The Sign," the first episode of Bluey to run longer than seven minutes, instead stretching to nearly half an hour. Honestly, a lot of the Easter eggs blasted by too fast for me to even catch them, and my kids (admittedly the bigger devotees than I, having seen every episode numerous times over) had to shout them out. The gang dances to the theme from the season-two episode “Dance Mode.” Chattermax is dancing, too. We see Nana flossing (the dance, not the oral hygiene practice)—if you’re in the know, this is a big deal. Perhaps most significantly, the aunt previously seen grieving a seeming inability to conceive is now pregnant, yielding a rush of comprehension for my seven year old, who now understands what’s left unspoken in that first appearance. “She wanted something but couldn’t have it!” she’s been rushing around telling anyone who’ll listen. “It was a baby!” Congrats, kid—you just picked up your first implication.

There’s still plenty about Bluey left to implication—my kids are very curious about why I involuntarily said “Wait a minute” when Bluey’s mum referenced going to the hiking trails in her younger years “to…think”—and the themes of "The Sign" are relatively subtle. The titular sign is the one reading "For Sale" that's parked in front of Bluey’s house; the family is heading to a new city, where Dad has landed a better-paying job, which will apparently allow for an ambiguously better life for the Heeler family. Bluey struggles to believe what her teacher, Calypso, attempts to impart: that everything works out the way it’s supposed to. By way of illustrating the point, Calypso presents a pop-up book telling an apparently ancient folk tale concerning the unexpected twists of fate that keep a farmer on his toes, never content to accept that the end of his story has come, no matter how good or bad a new event may seem. Appropriately, there are twists of fate in "The Sign" that keep Bluey oscillating from joy to despair and back again, only for another twist to come. It's to the show's credit that we never have it spelled out that this is just like the pop-up book. Instead, subtly enough for kids to miss the "lesson," every time we reach what could be an end point, the extra-long Bluey keeps going.

Towards the beginning, Bluey asks Calypso why stories always have happy endings, and Calypso offers a surprisingly stark answer: because life provides enough sad ones. I admit, I was genuinely unsure whether this episode would come to a conventionally happy ending; maybe they were teaching kids a hard lesson. I wouldn’t put it past Bluey. But I leaned into denial: “They can’t move,” I assured my kids as the house was sold, as the movers arrived, as the family loaded into the car. “They are moving!” my kids said right back—all evidence indicated as much, and they clearly needed to help Dad cope. But no, Bandit gets out of the car, makes a phone call, and then rips out that infernal sign that was causing Bluey so much angst. This episode of Bluey has a happy ending after all; for any number of us watching, there will be some sad one or other on the horizon, and Bluey knows we really need the happy ones where we can get them.

And so I cried, and I cried pretty hard. The kids thought that was awfully funny, and they’re continuing to let me have it. Dad cried at Bluey! Can you believe it? But I’ve devoted a lot of my time and words the past couple of years to making sure you can believe it. This show is special—beyond special. I’m getting annoying about it by now, I’m sure, but if there’s anything worth endlessly celebrating, it’s a show that consistently tops its own extraordinary highs, a show that doesn’t just inhabit an emotional unified field, but epitomizes the very idea. It’s a show capable of producing an episode of episodes, and still leaving us wanting more. 

The future of Bluey is, at the moment, ambiguous (though I did just see the article suggesting "The Sign" could be a test run for a movie). I wouldn’t begrudge the creators—really, the mastermind, sole writer Joe Brumm—going out on an extremely high note. On the other hand, it feels like team Bluey is only just showing us what they’re really capable of. I’ll follow Bluey, Bingo, and all those other anthropomorphic dogs as far as Brumm will take them.

Besides, as my kids would tell you: Socks just learned to talk. This is huge. They can’t leave us now.