Bluey

Geek Punditry #128: The Dad Scale

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This weekend is Father’s Day, the one day a year in which people pretend to appreciate all the things that fathers do for their family. But I mean, it’s tough – after all, where are our role models in the world of pop culture? If you look in the annals of fiction, the number of truly good, successful fathers is completely overwhelmed by the gargantuan number who act like buffoons. There was a 20-year stretch from around 1990 through 2010 when it was federally mandated that at least 47 percent of all television comedies feature a father who was an absolute idiot married to a woman who treated him like he was an absolute idiot, but it was acceptable because she was hotter than he was.

But even though these lousy dads get the focus, is that really fair? There ARE good fathers in fiction, just like there are bad ones. Just like real life. So today, in Geek Punditry, I’m going to choose some fictional dads and rank them on a scale from the best to the worst. 

(In the interest of completion, I should mention that we here at Geek Punditry Global Headquarters and While-U-Wait Notary Services are, of course, aware of the exploits of one Theodore Huxtable. Had this column been written a decade ago, he most assuredly would have been ranked among the top dads in fiction. However, through no fault of the character, Cliff’s legacy has been tarnished by the actor who PLAYED him, so we’re going to pass on further comment.)

BEST: Bandit Heeler.

It’s been a minute since I talked about Bluey here in this column, but that’s mostly because it’s been a year since the last new episode, so I’ve had to content myself with reruns. But let’s make no mistake – of all the fathers in the annals of popular fiction, it’s hard to argue that anyone is more devoted than Bandit Heeler. Bandit’s daughters are two little balls of chaos, full of life and energy, and also constantly dragging their dad into their games. And Bandit steps up every time – he plays along, he expands the world of the game, and he occasionally uses it to teach a lesson.

But he makes mistakes, of course. He does – on rare occasions – show his exasperation with his kids. And his attempts at teaching a lesson can sometimes fall on deaf ears, such as in the episode “Magic Claw,” in which he persuades the girls to do chores to get money for a “claw machine,” played by Bandit himself. “They’re learning a valuable lesson, and we’re getting the house clean!” he says. His wife Chili, simply shakes her head and says “Neither of those things are happening.” But when the lesson fails, Bandit rolls with the punches, accepting that sometimes the lesson that needs to be learned is his own.

When he is offered a chance to move to another town for more money, in “The Sign,” he takes that job not because he wants to leave his home in Brisbane, but because he thinks it will make a better life for his wife and kids. And when he realizes that neither his wife nor his kids actually WANT to leave, that they are perfectly content with the good life they already have, Bandit wisely steps back from the transfer. He sees they don’t need money to chase happiness, as they already have it.

Bandit is the dad that every dad in the world wants to live up to. It’s not just a meme. It’s the truth.

WORST: Victor Frankenstein

He may not be a biological father, but every bit of tragedy that can be wrung out of the pages of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein can be boiled down to parental abandonment. In his thirst to conquer death, Victor creates a creature out of the corpses of the dead and uses an arcane process to infuse it with life. He brings a new, intelligent being into the world, and by any reasonable definition of the word, that makes him the creature’s father. So what’s the first thing Victor does upon achieving parenthood?

He abandons his son.

He is so horrified by seeing this collection of corpses come to life that he runs in terror, leaving it alone. And at this point, it should be noted, the creature is analogous to a baby – his mind is a blank slate. He knows nothing, understands nothing. He wanders into the woods where he spies on a family long enough to learn things like language, then when he tries to join them, he is rejected again. He grows understandably angry and bitter, and decides (less understandably) to take his rage out on the entire human race, but ESPECIALLY on dear ol’ dad. 

Had Victor taken half a second to stop, to THINK, it all may have been avoided – the death of his brother, the death of his fiancé, the deaths of all the other people who crossed the creature’s path at the wrong time. Had he actually attempted to RAISE his creature, as a father should, things may have been very, very different. But he was weak, he was foolish, and he ran, leaving an embryo to turn into an abomination. Short of direct abuse, abandonment is as low on the scale of parenthood as you can get. 

So there’s our rating scale, friends. At the top, Bandit Heeler at 100 percent. At the bottom is Victor Frankenstein with a big honkin’ zero. Let’s grab a few other dads from the world of fiction and see where they measure up. This isn’t a comprehensive list, mind you, just the first few fictional dads that occurred to me (and that I thought would be interesting to write about). 

Bob Belcher, Bob’s Burgers

Bob Belcher is the father of three children, plus his wife Linda, who can at times be the equivalent of two more. Plus his best friend (or best “customer” depending on when you ask him) Teddy, so that’s like eight. And while Bob is constantly worried, anxious, and long-suffering with a restaurant that barely seems to break even, there’s one thing that you can never say about Bob, and that’s that he doesn’t love his kids. Tina, Gene, and Louise would each be a handful on their own. They are, respectively, a neurotic boy-crazed preteen girl who seems to share his anxiety issues, a middle child who has taken the middle child hunger for attention to an absurd extreme, and a little demon more devoted to pandemonium than anything else. Any ONE of Bob’s kids could wear a parent to the nub.

But although Bob’s frustration is constant, he does his best to keep from taking it out on the kids. He supports them. He cares about them. No matter how bizarre or incomprehensible their latest obsession may be, Bob never once shames them or even tries to talk them out of it, unless it’s a situation where he feels they may be in actual danger (physical or emotional). When Tina is swindled out of a beloved Equestranauts toy, Bob not only spends days memorizing every tidbit of Equestranauts errata that he can get his hands on in an effort to con the con man, he goes to a convention in a horse costume and even subjects himself to GETTING A TATTOO to get it back. When a rock and roll laser show he loved as a child is about to close forever, he moves Heaven and Earth to bring Gene with him to see it one last time, because he wants to share it with his son. And no matter how many pranks she pulls or ulcers she may cause him, it is evident in every episode just how much Louise adores her father – even if she’d never admit it.

On the Good Dad Scale of Victor to Bandit, Bob Belcher is about a 90. 

Frasier Crane, Cheers & Frasier & Frasier (again)

Kelsey Grammar’s Frasier Crane started out as a pretty good dad. After his son, Fredrick, was born, in the last few seasons of Cheers we see several episodes that show him as a loving and devoted father, even (and especially) after his wife leaves the two of them in the final season. Remember, abandonment is an automatic failing grade. But when he got his own spinoff, the tailored Italian loafers were on the other foot – Fredrick stays with his ex-wife in Boston, while Frasier moves across the country to Seattle. It was a practical decision for the producers of the show – they wanted to get the character as far away from any elements of Cheers as they could to allow the show to stand on its own. But in doing so, they made Frasier come across as a very absent father. Once or twice a season we’d get an episode where Freddy comes to visit his dad or Frasier goes back to Boston to visit Freddy, and in those episodes we usually see a loving relationship, but for the most part Frasier isn’t there.

In fairness, the character eventually recognizes his mistake, and in the Frasier reboot that hit a couple of years ago, after the death of his own father, Frasier moves BACK to Boston to live with Freddy, hoping to forge the bond that he neglected for far too long. It wasn’t a case of “too little, too late,” as Freddy does, in fact, show that he loves his father. But the new dynamic demonstrates so clearly that Frasier and Freddy don’t really understand each other that he simply can’t get a high score. 

On the Good Dad Scale of Victor to Bandit, Frasier Crane is about a 40. Ironically, by the end of the first Frasier run, his dad Marty had climbed up to about 75.

Tim “The Toolman” Taylor, Home Improvement

Tim Allen’s character on Home Improvement didn’t INVENT the trope of a bumbling husband and long-suffering wife, but I would argue that the two decades of adherence to it are in large part to the popularity of his show. Tim plays Tim, the host of a TV home improvement show obsessed with juicing up every gadget he can get his hands on in the quest for “more power.” He’s also the father of three young boys (who, over the course of the show, become three teenage boys). His efforts at parenthood are the main plot of around half the episodes and a B-plot in most of the others. 

Tim can be oblivious at times, often getting so caught up in whatever his current project is that he misses the obvious cues that people around him aren’t enjoying his tomfoolery. But I think it’s important to recognize that Tim never deliberately sets out to harm anyone. And in fact, the only person who usually gets hurt by his antics is Tim himself. What’s more, he genuinely enjoys spending time with his sons, although he can get frustrated when they don’t necessarily share his own interests (these stories are usually played out with his middle son, played by Jonathan Taylor Thomas) and has trouble connecting with the things they want that he doesn’t. But there can never be any doubt that Tim loves his boys, something he tries to make clear as his own father died when he was a child and he’s felt a gaping void his entire life. And whenever Tim realizes his mistakes (usually thanks to the wisdom of Wilson, the Neighbor Behind the Fence) he tries his best to make amends.

On the Good Dad Scale of Victor to Bandit, Tim Taylor is about a 65. He passes, just not with flying colors.

Peter Griffin, Family Guy

In the early days of Family Guy, Peter Griffin was kind of a less-loveable Homer Simpson. He was a dolt, he screwed up all the time, and he often behaved selfishly. But while Homer usually came around and realized his mistakes, genuinely loving his wife and kids, over the years Peter has doubled down on his stupidity, selfishness, and mean-spiritedness. He ignores his youngest child, leaving him to spend all his time with the dog, and Peter and – frankly – the entire rest of the family are frequently cruel and even abusive to his daughter, Meg. It’s an awful, toxic relationship, and despite an occasional episode that tries to show a bond between the members of the Griffin family, the formula of the show always drifts back to the fact that these are people who pretty much hate each other and would have no reason to associate with one another were they not related. 

On the Good Dad Scale of Victor to Bandit, Peter Griffin is a 10, and that’s the ONLY time you’ll ever call Peter called a ten. 

Jeff Morales, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Jeff is the father of Miles Morales, a teenage boy who becomes the new Spider-Man after the original dies in battle. He’s also a cop, and he’s also kind of a dork. And that’s one of the things that makes him a great father. Jeff’s establishing character moment comes early in Into the Spider-Verse, where he drops Miles off at school. He tells Miles that he loves him, but when Miles starts to leave without reply, Jeff blares his police siren and tells him over his loudspeaker, “You’ve gotta say I love you back.”

At first, it seems like a typical parent trying to embarrass his kid, but I always thought this scene was more important, more indicative than that. If you just want to embarrass your child, there are thousands of different ways to do it, and every dad on this list (even the good ones) has found his own unique spin on that concept. Jeff is playing his dad card to embarrass Miles a little, yes, but more importantly, he wants his son to know two things.

  1. He loves him.
  2. It’s okay to SAY it.

There are SO MANY dads – not just in fiction, but sadly, in real life – who seem to think those words are something to shy away from. That it’s somehow unmanly to express that emotion, that a “real” dad would NEVER say such a thing to his child, especially his son. What utter nonsense. If Peter Griffin’s dad had told him he loved him once in a while, maybe his own family wouldn’t be the human equivalent of a cesspool. 

Jeff wants Miles to know that he loves him and that he’s not ashamed to express it, and that’s a lesson that more dads in the world need to know. For that, if nothing else, he gets a very high score. On the Good Dad Scale of Victor to Bandit, Jeff Morales is an 85. 

Heinz Doofenshmirtz, Phineas and Ferb

Yes, I’m bringing up Phineas and Ferb. Yes, AGAIN.

Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz is a supervillain. He spends his days working on one invention after another in an effort to conquer or bring humiliation to those who he believes have wronged him. He is funded by an absurdly generous alimony agreement with his ex-wife, Charlene. He gets beaten up by a platypus every single day. 

And he loves his daughter, Vanessa, with such total devotion that you can’t possibly hate him.

Doof usually has some sort of preposterous backstory to explain his scheme of the day, and a great many of them deal with just how awful his own parents were. They made him stand out in the yard because they couldn’t afford a garden gnome. His father named the dog “Only Son.” When his mother’s second child turned out to be a boy, they made Heinz wear the girl’s clothes she had mistakenly made for an entire year, while showing blatant favoritism to the new kid, Roger. They abandoned him to be raised by ocelots. And even before any of these other indignities, NEITHER of his parents bothered to show up for his birth. 

Doof will be damned if he EVER allows his daughter to feel anything less than complete adoration from him. 

This isn’t to say that he’s the PERFECT dad, of course. He wants Vanessa to follow him into the family business, which is “Evil.” He’s overprotective and occasionally intrusive, such as when he pretended to be a teenager to accompany her on a campout. He spends YEARS trying to hunt down a toy she wanted as a child, never considering that as a teenager she may not actually want it anymore. When some dude on a motorcycle catcalls his daughter, he zaps him into another dimension. (Okay, that one actually should go in the plus column.) But everything he does is done with sincere love and a desire to give his daughter the happy childhood he never had, even recruiting his arch-nemesis Perry the Platypus to help throw Vanessa a birthday party. 

On the Good Dad Scale of Victor to Bandit, Heinz Doofenshmirtz is about an 80. He’s the most inept supervillain on the planet, but he just may be the greatest dad in the ENTIRE TRI-STATE AREA!!!

We could do this much longer, friends – there are countless other fictional dads we could bring up and debate and find their place on the scale, but I think I’ve gone through enough to make my point. Have a great Father’s Day, and make sure your own dad knows you’d put him at the top of the list. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. On his best days as a dad, he knows he’s not at Bandit standards, but if he can hit Dr. D, he feels like he’s done all right. 

Geek Punditry #104: The 2024 Pundy Awards

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It’s the final Friday of the year, and that means it’s time once again to sit back and talk about all of my favorite things from this year. It’s time for the 2024 Pundy Awards!

Yes, just like I did in 2023, I’m going to wrap up the second year of my little column by talking about some of my favorite pieces of pop culture to come down the pipe this year. There is no rhyme or reason to this, the categories will be decided purely based on what I feel like talking about as I write this. I’m going to tell you my favorites in movies, TV, and comics from the past twelve months, and I’m gonna tell you why I dig them and why you should check them out if you haven’t already. Also in order to avoid repeating myself, I’m going to skip over shows and comic book series that I “awarded” last year. Please be aware that I’m still a fan of Abbott Elementary, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest, Fantastic Four, Skybound’s Energon Universe, and ESPECIALLY the final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks, and they’re all worth your time.

But today, I want to talk about things I haven’t talked about before. At least…stuff that I haven’t talked about as much. Let’s get on with it!

Not the only movie this year that made me feel seen.

Blake’s Favorite Animated Movie: Inside Out 2. 

Back in June, I wrote a piece about how the shine had fallen off the once-immaculate reputation of Pixar Animation studio. After a series of duds, I wondered if the sequel to Pixar’s Inside Out was going to have what it took to bring back some of the studio’s former glory. I was so, so happy to see that it did. The first Inside Out was a great look at how the mind of a child develops and learns to process emotions, anthropomorphizing the process but doing so in a way that was both entertaining and easy to understand. Inside Out 2 continued this trend, with the character of Riley getting a bit older and the emotions she experiences becoming more complicated. Adding in the likes of Envy, Ennui, Embarrassment, and especially Anxiety into the mix has changed the game, making for a movie that perfectly encapsulates the personal journey a person goes through when they grow up. The finale of the movie was absolutely remarkable, with a scene that so perfectly demonstrates the experience of an anxiety attack that I nearly broke down in the movie theater. My son, Eddie, has since declared Inside Out 2 his favorite movie, and I’m not about to argue with him.

“Another movie about hanging around outside a convenience store, Kev?”
“Nah, this time it’s a movie theater.”

Blake’s Favorite Comedy: The 4:30 Movie.

I’ve been a fan of Kevin Smith for a very long time, and I’ve found it fascinating how his films have changed over the years. His early movies like Clerks and Mallrats were a reflection of the aimless feeling of being a young adult and trying to figure out what life is actually supposed to be. His more recent films, particularly Jay and Silent Bob Reboot and Clerks III, demonstrate a growing maturity and a sense of grappling with a life that didn’t turn out to be what you expected. Although he hasn’t let go of the filthy humor and goofy characters that made his name, he’s a subtler, more sophisticated storyteller than he used to be, and I appreciate that. The 4:30 Movie doesn’t connect to his “View Askewniverse” at all, instead telling the story of a young man in the 80s trying to find the guts to make a play for the girl he’s in love with, all set around a day going to the movies. Are there dirty jokes? Absolutely. But the film is wonderfully heartfelt, and even though neither Kevin Smith nor his alter-ego Silent Bob make an appearance on screen, you can tell that this movie was intensely personal. The final scene hammers that in especially, giving you a feeling that Kevin Smith has, in a way, told his own origin story. It’s a great movie.

Tagline: “You will believe a grown man can cry.”

Blake’s Favorite Documentary: Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. 

This should not be a surprise to anybody, but the documentary about the actor who brought Superman to life for my generation was incredibly moving. Everybody knows the basics of Christopher Reeve’s story – how he played Superman, how a horseback riding accident left him paralyzed from the neck down, and how he became a crusader for the disabled in the years before his untimely death. This movie delves into his history in a deeper way, told mostly through the reflections of his now-adult children, as well as further commentary and anecdotes from other family and friends. The movie bounces back and forth between his life story prior to his accident and the way his life changed afterwards. Having his children tell the story, I think, is one of the things that really helps sell the tale. The film feels so much more intimate and personal, coming from the point of view of the people who knew and loved him the best. One thing I didn’t expect, though, was the heavy focus on Reeve’s friendship with the late Robin Williams. Again, this is something fans of the actor knew about, but the way they intertwined the tragedy of Williams’s own life with that of Christopher Reeve just made it all the more powerful. Have your tissues ready when you watch this one.

Okay, if I’m gonna be honest here, Super-Man is not the only thing in this list that made me cry.

Blake’s Favorite Family TV Series: Bluey

I know, this is another one of those “no duh” moments. I have written extensively about my love for Bluey before, in particular this spring’s season finale episode, “The Sign.” But there was simply no other TV show this year that had as deep and profound an impact on me. In the final episode of this season, we saw the Heelers preparing both for a family wedding and a move to another city, two life-changing events that the titular Bluey was having a tough time dealing with. Bandit, the dad that every father on the planet is striving to become, is trying to do the best thing for his family, even as it becomes increasingly clear to the viewer that the rest of the family doesn’t actually want to leave. It’s a beautiful story and still amazingly funny, and the final song (by cast member Meg Washington) is absolutely sublime. It comes across as a meditation on being a parent and having a child, and it’s the kind of thing that absolutely overwhelms your heart if you’ve got children of your own. I couldn’t be happier with the news that the long-talked about Bluey movie has been officially announced, and I only wish we weren’t going to have to wait until 2027 for it to hit theaters. 

Remember when science fiction was SMART? It’s finally back.

Blake’s Favorite Science Fiction Series (That Isn’t Star Trek: Lower Decks): The Three-Body Problem

This Netflix series, based on the globally popular trilogy by Cixin Liu, launched this year and grabbed me immediately. Like the novel, the first season of this show focuses on several groups of people around the world trying to uncover a mystery. The show follows scientists, police, and people from other walks of life as they slowly uncover evidence of an impending alien invasion. The novels are amazing – an incredible portrait of this sort of singular event and how it would completely reshape the entire world. So far, the first season of the show is doing the same thing, but in different ways than the book. The novels, by a Chinese author, have a cast that is mostly Chinese as well, while the TV series is more international. Characters are omitted, others are combined with one another, new characters are added – the TV show uses the framework of the novel, but takes the story in different directions to reflect the difference in cast and the different cultures of the characters. As a result, while fans of the book can still enjoy it, there’s still room to be surprised. I loved the novels, and I loved the show too, but for different reasons and in different ways. That’s one of the best things you can hope for in an adaptation.

This is the best an ongoing Spider-Man comic has been in 20 years, and it’s not even close.

Blake’s Favorite Ongoing Marvel Comic (That Isn’t Fantastic Four): Ultimate Spider-Man

Last year, Marvel announced a relaunch of its once-prominent “Ultimate” brand, which reimagined the Marvel heroes as new characters in the modern day. That version of the Ultimate Universe eventually gave birth to Miles Morales, but other than him, the rest of the line has been mostly jettisoned. The only other survivor is the Maker, an evil version of the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards, who has created a NEW Ultimate Universe, and it’s the flagship book of THAT line that has captured my heart this year. In the new Ultimate Universe, the Maker deliberately prevented most of the world’s superheroes from having their respective origin incidents, until their Tony Stark uncovered the truth and decided to put things right. (This is a HIGHLY condensed version of the Ultimate Invasion miniseries, by the way, which is also worth reading.) In the new Ultimate Spider-Man, we open with an adult Peter Parker who is powerless, married to Mary Jane Watson, and the father of two children when he is approached with the news that he’s supposed to be one of the world’s greatest heroes, and there’s a way to make it happen. For years, Marvel Comics has turned the mainstream Peter Parker into a punching bag, submitting him to one mindless torture and humiliation after another, to the point where stretches of his comics are unbearably depressing. Ultimate Spider-Man is the antidote to that, proving that you can tell stories about a married couple, about parents, that are entertaining and emotionally engaging without sacrificing the superheroes. This Ultimate Universe is even further removed from the main Marvel U than the original Ultimate Universe was, but this comic has been fantastic so far.

“So EVERYBODY is in the Justice League now? Ghost-Maker? Robotman? Clownhunter?”
“Okay, let’s not get carried away.”

Blake’s Favorite Ongoing DC Comic: Justice League Unlimited.

This may be a tiny bit of a cheat, as there’s only been one issue of JSU so far, but it was preceded by the excellent Absolute Power miniseries, which set the story up and was by the same magnificent writer/artist team of Mark Waid and Dan Mora, so I’m counting that towards the series. After an absence of the Justice League from the DCU for a few years, it’s time for a most triumphant return in a way that has never been done in comics before. Rather than a team of seven to ten heroes protecting the whole dang world, Waid is embracing the “Unlimited” part of the title. The Justice League – as in the classic animated series of the same name – is now a massive force, with virtually every hero on the planet Earth recruited as a member. Everyone who has ever been in the League, every Titan, everyone who wears the S-shield, Bat-symbol, or bracelets of an Amazon, is now part of the League. Waid kicks things off with a first issue showing a longtime – but fairly obscure – hero called Air Wave being taken up to the Watchtower and joining in on his first mission as a member of the Justice League. The story was great, with an engaging and entertaining point of view that is set to save Air Wave from the ranks of the D-listers, and a twist that promises great things for the series. What’s more – I’m gonna sound like a broken record here – Dan Mora is probably the best superhero artist working in American comic books right now. His characters are bold, powerful, but still wonderfully human. This book hit every box for me in the first issue and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

“What if we replace the spinach with boba?”
“No.”

Surprise of the Year: Eye Lie Popeye

It’s been a good year for reboots of old-school characters, including Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, Thundercats, and the Universal Monsters. But the one that surprised me the most, in a delightful way, is Massive Publishing’s new series Eye Lie Popeye, by writer/artist Marcus Williams. When the series was announced, I didn’t think it would be my thing – a new version of Popeye is fine, but the artwork showed a distinct Manga flavor to it. I’ve got no issue with people who enjoy Manga, it’s just not usually the sort of thing I’m interested in, and I planned to pass on the series. Then came Free Comic Book Day, and they released a preview of the first issue. Guys, this is why Free Comic Book Day works, because it did exactly what it is intended to do: show me a glimpse of something that I hadn’t planned on reading, but that I found incredibly entertaining. Williams shows a deep knowledge of Popeye and his enormous cast of characters, and while the book DOES have that Manga influence, I was startled by just how well all of it managed to fit together. The style works for the characters, the storyline feels like the kind of thing that used to be done in the classic comic strips (which are quite different from the seven-minute slugfests that people who only know Popeye from his animated shorts might expect). Overall, I never would have thought it, but this was one of my favorite comic book finds of the year.

And that’s it for this year, friends – some, but not all, of my favorite movies, TV shows, and comics of 2024. Feel free to share your own favorites in the comments, and here’s to coming back here in a short 52 weeks to do it all over again!

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. And yeah, he barely mentioned it, but Lower Decks was amazing. Go read it. Go read it now. 

Geek Punditry #68: The Importance of Being Bandit (or) Yes, I Am Taking Advice From a Cartoon Dog

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A few weeks ago I had one of the scariest nights of my life. My son was briefly hospitalized, and my wife and I were told he would probably have to have his appendix taken out. The idea of someone cutting open my little guy terrified me, not the least because I knew he wouldn’t really understand what was happening, and I got very little sleep sitting in that hospital chair. The story had a happy ending, fortunately. In the morning the doctors reexamined him and determined that the discomfort he was feeling was not caused by his appendix after all and was most likely a particularly nasty viral infection, and we were sent home later that day. But the night before was horrifying. I want to tell you, though, about the bright spot. That actually came early on in the process: Eddie had been sick all day and in the afternoon began throwing up with alarming frequency, prompting me to take him to urgent care. There, the doctor on call examined Eddie and advised me to take him to the emergency room.

For a parent, this is way scarier than any haunted house.

Those two words, “emergency room,” sent me into a total PANIC. I started to tremble. My hands were shaking as I texted my wife, who was at work, to meet us at the hospital. I was shaking harder when I searched for the hospital with the Pediatric ER on Google Maps – this despite the fact that I myself was a patient at that same hospital some years ago, and I knew perfectly well where it was. At that moment, though, I didn’t know much of anything and I could feel myself babbling, with questions spilling out of my mouth as frequently as Eddie gives them to me on a good day. At that moment the doctor seemed to realize that – right then and there – his primary patient wasn’t the one in the most need of immediate care. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Hey, I have kids too. He’s going to be okay. Nobody knows the pressure on a dad, do they?”

I could have cried right then and there. If I didn’t have to get Eddie into the car to take him to the ER I probably would have. But that moment of strength and compassion from this doctor meant more to me than I could have possibly told him, because he’s absolutely right. Society has bizarre and, frankly, contradictory expectations of fathers. On the one hand, we are often seen as the “disposable” parent. Mothers are considered primary caregivers, stores and restaurants frequently neglect to put diaper changing stations in the men’s restrooms, in custody battles the final decisions overwhelmingly favor the mother, and never once has anyone seen my wife with our son and asked if SHE was “babysitting.” On the other hand, fathers are expected to be the provider, to give the family everything that is needed, to push their own needs aside up to and including their mental health, and to never, EVER allow a crack in the armor to show lest it be revealed that they are anything less than a demigod who always has it together and can do anything all by themselves and make everything turn out in the end. It’s a cocktail of unreasonable expectations and toxic disrespect.

This is not to say that it’s easy to be a mother, of course – nothing could be further from the truth. Moms are looked upon as the nurturers and the caregivers, the emotional core of a family, and there is an immense amount of pressure associated with that role. The difference, to me, is that mothers are usually (justly) celebrated for their contributions and sacrifices, whereas fathers are made the butt of jokes. Think about the difference in our respective holidays. On Mother’s Day, flower shops are emptied, restaurants are packed, and everyone reminds you to celebrate Mom. On Father’s Day, the punchline is about which crappy tie Dad will be given this year.

My wife is wonderful. My wife couldn’t be more supportive. That’s not where this pressure comes from: it’s all about the pressure that we’ve been told all of our lives to bring on ourselves. 

All of this is to say that Bandit Heeler is the best father on television.

Pictured: What I want to be when I grow up.

I shall try to keep my statements in praise of Ludo’s cartoon Bluey brief, but in case you don’t know, Bluey is an Australian cartoon about a family in Brisbane, Australia: six-year-old Bluey Heeler (seven after a birthday episode), her little sister Bingo, their mother Chilli, and their dad, Bandit. Creator Joe Brumm based the show on his own daughters and the way they used to play when they were little, and the majority of episodes focus on the games the children play and the way their parents (and, often, other assorted grownups) get sucked into the amazing fantasy worlds they create. The fact that the Heelers and the rest of the sentient inhabitants of this universe are all dogs is of utter irrelevance. 

Over the course of three seasons and over 150 seven-minute episodes, Bluey has become that rarest of phenomenon: a show that is loved by children, but absolutely adored by parents. Bandit and Chilli love their children completely, and what’s more, love each other just as much, and none of the Heelers are shy about showing it. In an era where so many TV families are made up of characters who seemingly can’t stand each other and remain together only because of a vague description of “family” that the thesis of the show often works to destroy, the Heelers are, to put it bluntly, Squad Goals. And Bandit in particular is the father that every father who watches it wants to grow up to be.

…usually.

TV dads, historically speaking, have largely fallen into one of two categories. In the early days of TV they were bland, plastic paragons of virtue like Ward Cleaver or Ozzie Nelson. Even by the 70s, when shows were beginning to allow a bit more of an edge, Howard Cunningham from Happy Days was a faultless (if loving) font of strength. Then a switch flipped and dads went from being carved out of marble to sculpted out of mud. TV dads in the 90s and 00s were buffoons. Either they were obnoxiously indifferent to the needs of their children like Al Bundy, or they were so stupid and vapid that they should probably, legally, not be allowed to have a child in their custody without adult supervision. Even the best dads of this era, like Home Improvement’s Tim Taylor, may have genuinely loved their kids, but were also often dangerously negligent in their actions and did incredibly boneheaded things in the name of comedy. It was good for a laugh, sure, but awful for the portraiture of dads in pop culture.

There HAS to be some sort of middle ground between these two.

(In the interest of painting a comprehensive picture I should mention that there WAS at least one great TV dad of this era, Heathcliff Huxtable, but real world circumstances have sadly made it virtually impossible to look upon him as a role model anymore.)

Bandit isn’t an idiot. He’s often a step ahead of his kids, playing their games but also using them to teach. In the episode “Bikes,” for example, he has Bluey observe the kids around them to learn perseverance, whereas in “Hotel” he teaches her how to compromise with her sister. Bandit is willing to become whatever is needed to keep the kids happy, and not even just his own kids. In “See-Saw,” he realizes that Bluey’s friend Pom Pom is feeling excluded because she’s so tiny (she’s a Pomeranian, you see, a small but hearty breed), so he sets himself up as the villain, sitting on the titular see-saw and refusing to budge until Pom Pom gets a chance to “save the day.” 

This is actually what I look like any time my wife says, “We may as well finish this pizza, it would be silly to just have them box up two slices.”

He’s a fantastic dad, but…and this is the most important part…he is not flawless. “Magic Claw” is about trying to teach his girls the value of hard work, only to have his efforts hilariously collapse around him as all they’re really interested in is playing the game. (There’s a great line in this episode where he says that the girls are learning a lesson AND cleaning the house at the same time, only for Chilli to snarkily reply, “Neither of those things are happening.”) In “Ice Cream” the girls each want a lick of the others’ dessert but spend so much time prevaricating over how big a lick they’re allowed to take that their ice cream melts away. Bandit hopes they’ll learn a lesson from this but, like a dad, he feels bad for them and winds up giving them his own ice cream instead.

Every Bluey parent can quote this scene with absolutely no help from my captions.

And sometimes, the world gets to Bandit. In “Stickbird,” as the family plays on the beach, Bandit is completely preoccupied. Something is quite clearly bothering him and he’s struggling so badly that he’s not entirely present for the childrens’ game. Although the show never tells us what, exactly, is eating at him, every father who watched that cartoon saw themselves that day. We don’t know why Bandit is struggling, but we DO know that he’s trying to contain himself for the sake of his family, and I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so seen by a TV show. 

The moment when every dad in the world saw themselves.

Many fans feel like the “Stickbird” mystery, the question of what was bothering Bandit, was solved in the most recent episode, the quadruple-length “The Sign.” I’m going to spoil “The Sign” now, so stop reading if you’re trying to avoid it, but I feel like pretty much everybody who cares has already seen it. And those who have seen it know that in this 28-minute blockbuster, Bandit Dadded the hardest he has ever Dadded. 

In “The Sign,” the Heelers are planning to sell their house and move because Bandit has found a new, higher-paying job in another city, which he says multiple times throughout the episode will allow him to give his children a better life. Already, every dad in the audience is nodding in understanding. The trouble is that none of the Heeler women want to move. Chilli puts on a brave face, but you can tell that she’s upset, Bluey openly campaigns against the move, and Bingo is perfectly happy with the whole thing until Chilli realizes that she doesn’t actually understand what “selling our house” means, after which she is devastated. Bandit struggles through the whole episode with this decision, believing that moving will mean a better life even though the message is clear that the rest of the family is happy with the life they have and they don’t want to chase some abstract idea of “better.”

What are you gonna do, Bandit?

In the final moments of the episode, the family that was planning to buy the house cancels the deal after finding a home they like more (it has a pool, you see). Bandit, taking this as “A” sign, rips “THE” for sale sign out of his yard and tosses it aside just before he’s tackled by his wife, who is sobbing with joy and adoration.

THIS IS A SHOW THAT IS OSTENSIBLY FOR PRESCHOOLERS.

Bluey is the most heartfelt show on television, and although there are several episodes that have left me in tears, there has never been one that left me unsatisfied. And for me, at least, it’s because in Bandit Heeler I see someone who I wish I could be, somebody I can be on my best days and someone I can turn to for strength on my worst days. And I’m not alone. Fathers all over the world have taken up Bandit as the role model we need – someone who loves his family unconditionally, is not afraid to express those emotions, and shows us that sometimes it’s okay to not be okay. We don’t have that. The world has told us for decades that we’re not allowed to be human, that feet of clay must be hidden, that we are to have no Kryptonite. Bandit tells us that’s BS, and because of that, there are a lot of dads reaching out to talk to other dads who understand that pressure the doctor told me about.

Um…not this doctor.

When Eddie was in the hospital, after the doctors told us that it wasn’t his appendix after all and that he was going to be okay, I felt awash with relief. I texted my own father and the rest of the family to let them know the news. I sent messages to concerned friends, to those English Teacher Friends I mentioned last week, and called my grandmother to let them all know that the cause for fear was over. 

And then, because I’d been holding the emotion in for nearly 24 hours at that point, I got on Facebook and went to a group I’m in called “Bandits.” And I started to type. “Fellas, everything is okay now, but it’s been a rough night…”

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, now complete on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform, and hitting print on May 4th! He could write a dozen columns about how great Bluey is, but right now, he’s in a Bandit place. 

Geek Punditry #18: The Animation Hole

blakemp Geek Punditry , , , , , , , , ,

J. Michael Straczynsi is an accomplished storyteller, a phenomenal writer, and a little bit of a troll when it comes to teasing his fans with the promise of upcoming content. Among his other achievements, Straczynski is the creator of Babylon 5, which a lot of people consider one of the finest science fiction shows ever made, and which is in many ways a precursor to the current model of long-form storytelling that we enjoy on television. But while B5 is acclaimed, it’s obviously not as well known as the likes of Star Wars and Star Trek. Aside from the series itself, the universe has only enjoyed a few TV or direct-to-DVD movies, a spinoff series that lasted a single season, and a relative handful of novels, comic books, and short stories which are all long out of print and not even available digitally. Last week I told you guys how fans always want “more.” By that metric, Babylon 5 fans have been starving for a long time.

This week's news that Babylon 5 is going to return with a new movie should be met with joy -- but some fans are put off because the film will be animated. Why, in 2023, are we still looking down on animation?
But lunchtime is coming…

This week, though, we were finally promised a meal when JMS announced an upcoming Babylon 5 animated movie. Although we don’t yet know the plot, the title, or the release date, Straczynski told us the following: the film includes the voices of most of the surviving members of the original cast, the movie is already finished and will be released “very soon,” and it is – in his opinion – the best thing they’ve done with Babylon 5 since the original series ended. And as with most news announced to a group of starving genre fans, the reaction had two phases:

1: YES! New Babylon 5 content! FINALLY! The prophecy has been fulfilled!

Followed shortly thereafter by…

2: Pfft. 

Any time a popular franchise makes an announcement, there is a “Pfft” contingent, and while that contingent is usually small, it is extraordinarily vocal. One “Pfft” is capable of raising his voice on the internet above approximately 5,000 fans who are genuinely happy and excited about the project, and he does so in such a manner to indicate that the news is nothing to get excited about, and anyone who is excited is beneath him. These people have existed since the dawn of  civilization, the first recorded practitioner expressing their displeasure with a cave painting of a pack of wildebeest made by Hector “Ugg” Gutierrez, but which was clearly inferior to the one made by his arch-rival, Andy Warhol.

But back to the Babylon 5 announcement, specifically. The “Pfft” people usually latch on to a few key elements to fuel their derision, such as the cast or writing. In this case, though, since it’s almost all the original people involved in the new project, they have focused their spite on the medium: animation.

“Pfft. It’s a cartoon?”

“Pfft. I’ll wait for the real show to come back.”

“Pfft. Look at what happened to Star Wars.”

(That last one is the most perplexing to me, actually, since many of the Star Wars animated projects have been widely acclaimed, but it does demonstrate the phenomenon of cross-fandom “Pffting,” an activity that has always existed but which has become much more prevalent in this age of the internet.)

Look, I’m not here to tell anybody what to like. I’m not telling anyone they have to enjoy something, and I’m not telling anyone their opinions are invalid. I am, however, going to say that if your argument against a project is based solely on the fact that it’s animated, an opinion formed before even a single frame of the project has been seen by the public, then you’re kind of a dink.

“Come on, you don’t think anyone actually liked this, do you?”

The idea that animation is strictly a medium for children is a stupid one, and one that’s never made much sense to me. It certainly wasn’t the intention when it was invented. Early cartoons were made for a mass audience, with references to popular culture that would often go over the heads of children and plenty of double entendre that definitely wasn’t intended for the little’uns. It’s hard to watch classic Looney Tunes shorts with a discerning eye and think that bits like Bugs Bunny’s Clark Gable imitation were intended for kids even in the 1940s, or that the leggy girls the male toons would often chase after weren’t there for a little bit of grown-up fanservice. The people who made those cartoons were really trying to entertain themselves, and the fact that their work also entertained everybody else just showed how talented they were.

After my standard “I am not a historian” disclaimer, I’m going to say that I think the (largely American) perception of animation being strictly a medium for children probably is due to television. Once TV became more prolific and turned into a fixture in most American homes, content for every member of the family became a requirement, and cartoons became the preferred delivery system for the kids. Saturday morning cartoons blossomed, and they were glorious. They eventually migrated to weekday afternoons so kids had something to watch after school. And then, even older works (like the aforementioned Looney Tunes) were repackaged and shown during these children’s blocks, cementing them as kid stuff in the tightly-closed mind of the public. It’s a stigma that was set firmly, and while I think the last few decades have started to chip away at that mindset, things like the reaction to the Babylon 5 announcement prove that it’s still real for a lot of people. 

The thing is, none of the arguments for animation being only for kids hold up to even minimal scrutiny. Let’s break them down, shall we?

“Animation is childish.”

Sure, it can be. It can be a realm of crude humor and slapstick comedy and lowbrow jokes and goofy gags, just like the Three Stooges – who (although they did have a cartoon in their later years) were decidedly human. The things that people call “childish” are elements of the way the story is written or presented, not the medium. Animation can be mature and serious, and I’m not just talking about raunchy humor like South Park. I’m talking about things like the razor-sharp satire of early seasons of The Simpsons. I mean experimental films like Batman: Death in the Family. How about Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies, a story about two Japanese children surviving an American firebombing during World War II? It’s a transcendent film, but most definitely not something that any reasonable parent would show a small child.  

To call something “childish” derisively seems to mean that the content is not worthy for consumption by adults. And to be certain, there are kids’ shows that fall under that category. But even shows that are aimed at kids don’t necessarily lock out parents altogether. Bluey is the most current example of this – this Australian show ostensibly for preschoolers is a favorite among kids, but has been embraced by parents all over the world for portraying a loving mother and father (sure, they’re dogs, but so what?) who do their best with their children, fall short sometimes, but keep on going. The characters have become inspirational, role models even. Animated dads have far too often been cast in the mold of Peter Griffin. The truth is, every dad should aim to be a Bandit Heeler. 

Bluey is an instructional video on parenting disguised as a show for preschoolers.

And there are far more examples. The original Animaniacs series came out when I was in middle school, and it was a show my father actually enjoyed as well. It was part of the Fox Kids lineup, but like the Looney Tunes shorts that were their true parents, it had layers of satire and entendre that kids never would have understood. I was in college before I realized the episode “King Yakko” (which you may just know as “the Anvilania episode”) was a full-plot reference to the 1933 Marx Brothers’ movie Duck Soup. Yeah, that was a joke for kids in the 90s. 

How you make something does not determine the proper audience. What you make does. 

If you’re anywhere close to my age you know EXACTLY which joke this is.

“It’s just a cartoon, I can’t feel anything like I do for human actors.”

That’s a failure of the viewer, not the film. Animation can be deep, powerful, meaningful, and personal, and it all depends on the story you’re telling. If somebody came up to me and said that the saddest 60 seconds of television ever made came at the end of the Futurama episode “Jurassic Bark,” I would be utterly incapable of arguing against it. After a full episode about Fry, trapped 1000 years in the future, coming to terms with losing the dog he left behind but finding comfort in the fact that he had a full life without him, the viewer learns that Seymour, the dog in question, literally spent the rest of his life waiting for his master to return before quietly passing away in front of the pizza parlor where Fry worked. Even somebody who hates dogs has to feel something for that.

97 percent of you got a lump in your throat when you saw this picture. The other three percent are assholes.

“But Futurama is adult animation,” you say. “Not all animation is like that.” I’m going to ignore the fact that you just utterly shattered your own argument that animation is all for kids and move on to examples that are for children, but which are still deeply moving for adults. How about the Pixar film Up? As a teacher, there are occasionally days where we show films because of reasons, such as having a room full of standardized testers who have finished early and I need to kill time before we return to our normal classes. On days like that I have a strict rule to never show the movie Up, because I may have to teach some of these 9th graders when they become seniors and I don’t need them remembering that time I sobbed like an infant in front of them. The beginning of Up tells the story of a boy and girl who grow up, fall in love, marry, discover they cannot have children, and grow old together before the woman, Ellie, leaves her husband Carl as a widower, and utterly alone. It’s a powerful story and it’s told, after their initial meeting as children is over, completely without words. It’s entirely visual, requiring the viewer to infer what has happened to them at each stage, and causing their souls to crumble as the reality sets in. I admit, I’m a softie. I cry at movies. At TV shows. Whenever I heard the John Williams anthem from Superman. But this was the only time in my life a movie made me cry in the first ten minutes.

I’m gonna make you people cry before the end of this column.

Emotion is an intended byproduct of art, all art. Whether it’s a film, a poem, a painting, or a concerto, art is created for the express purpose of evoking an emotional response from the audience. And great animation can nail it just as much as live action.

“Animation is just a cheap way to tell the story.”

First off, buy a calculator. The price tag on rendering animation can be pretty staggering. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here – maybe you mean that animation looks cheap. Sure. Sometimes. It’s hard to imagine that anyone involved in the 2012 magnum opus Foodfight! is particularly proud of what they have loosed onto an unsuspecting world. But that’s bad animation. Bad live action sucks too. So does bad writing, bad acting, bad special effects. If your argument is that “animation is bad,” you’re choosing to ignore the mountains of good animation that exist or the mountains of bad everything else you had to wade through to get there.

If Futurama and Up didn’t get a tear out of you, the existence of this abomination should do the trick.

Let’s go back to Babylon 5 for a second. Although very few details have been released, and everything I am about to say is speculation, the fact that Warner Bros. owns the property makes it reasonable to assume that the animated film is the work of the Warner Bros. Animation studio, the company whose history goes back to those magnificent Looney Tunes I keep bringing up. For a more recent example, and one that is thematically much closer to what the B5 movie will likely be, this is also the studio that has made the collection of DC Comics animated films that have come out over the last several years, movies like All-Star Superman, Batman: Under the Red Hood, Superman Vs. the Elite and Justice League Vs. the Fatal Five. The current unit is also responsible for many films featuring the likes of Scooby Doo and other Hanna-Barbera properties, Tom and Jerry, and…you guessed it! The Looney Tunes. And while people may debate the relative quality of any of those productions – they may dislike the story, the casting, the character design – one thing they rarely complain about is the quality of the animation itself. WBA knows what it’s doing.

And frankly, the notion of using animation for science fiction just plain makes sense. When you’re telling a story in a world beyond our own – be it sci-fi, fantasy, horror, or superheroes – the special effects are often make-or-break. The filmmakers have to convincingly create something that does not exist in the world and put it in front of an audience in a way that it appears real. Some people are great at this. Some people are not. Animation removes that requirement. Star Trek is often derided for its reliance on “rubber forehead aliens” – in other words, alien species that are created by slapping some prosthetics on human actors. Well what else were you supposed to do, especially with the budget and technological limitations of television in the 1960s? When the Star Trek animated series was created, for the first time, there were recurring alien creatures who were not wholly humanoid, such as the tripedal Edosian officer Arex. Even in modern times, where improved effects make it easier to show things that are less human, we still see a much wider variety of alien species on the animated series Lower Decks and Prodigy than we do on any of the live-action Treks, and you never hear anyone say that they look “fake”.

I mean, in live action this guy might look silly.

What about superhero movies? Since Marvel Studios changed the way blockbusters are made, the “Pfft” crowd has come out in force to complain about the overabundance of special effects that are used. “Did you see the new Ant-Man movie?” they say, ignorantly forgetting that the Wasp receives equal billing with her partner. “It’s just a couple of people in CGI suits in front of a green screen for two and a half hours.”

You know what movie they never say that about? The Incredibles.

In fact, after The Incredibles and the largely-forgotten but highly-enjoyable TMNT (an animated feature starring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that you likely didn’t know existed) I came to the opinion that animation is the perfect medium for superhero movies. I’m not saying that animating a huge action sequence is easy, but when literally the entirety of the universe is created digitally or on a drawing board, there are fewer limitations. The live action Marvel movies recognize this, which is the reason they’re so heavily reliant on CGI these days. And while their live action features have been a mixed bag, DC’s animated superhero projects have been a hallmark of quality ever since Batman: The Animated Series. Even non-superhero, non-science fiction movies do this these days. I’ll never forget the hilarious moment when Disney’s “live action” remake of The Lion King had so little live action that the Golden Globes nominated it for Best Animated Feature. I still laugh about that.

Superheroes and animation go together like ham and eggs, peanut butter and jelly, sauteed sea bass and rum raisin ice cream…

Animation is a medium. It’s a method of telling a story, and dismissing an entire medium because of what you perceive it to be is a kind of ignorance. If the Babylon 5 animated film comes out and underwhelms…well, that would suck. I love B5 and I want more stories in that universe, and I think that the success or failure of this film will impact the odds of that happening in the near future. But if it turns out to be a dud, there’s one thing I’m sure about: it won’t be because it was “just a cartoon.”

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. Thanks to his wife, Erin, for reminding him to include the Futurama example when he told her what this week’s column would be about.