Bluey is very upset by the prospect of moving, and it’s clear her parents are not sure if they are making the right decision in uprooting their lives so Bandit can make, as he says, more money. Later in the episode, Bluey’s mom, Chilli, even admits to her that she doesn’t want to move either. At the very end, Bandit changes his mind and the family decides to stay in their home. Yay.
According to parent fans, the episode was so powerful because it demonstrated how emotionally fraught parenting can be. As journalist Sophie Gilbert wrote in The Atlantic, the decision Bandit and Chilli face is ultimately “inextricable from the existential questions of parenting.”
“What does a better life for your family look like?” she wrote. “What does money mean in value compared with all the things you can’t buy—connections, security, a sense of home? When do parental needs get to override those of kids? There are no answers in the episode, and no answers in life—just the assurance that what happens will happen, and that events might be influenced occasionally by the trickery of the universe.”
There’s also the way the episode was constructed, with callbacks to old episodes throughout and a sense of finality and change at the end. This led many fans to wonder if “The Sign” was actually serving as some sort of finale on the series, either for good or for some sort of extended hiatus, which Gilbert also speculated about in her piece.
That doesn’t seem to be the case, with producer Sam Moor telling the BBC the show has “more in store and we are thinking what would be next.” Still, Moor didn’t flat out confirm when or how the show will return, and the apparent question mark about the show’s future made the special episode even more poignant for fans. (Let me just say that there’s no way Bluey will not come back in some fashion, the brand is worth $2 billion.)
Despite understanding all of this on an intellectual level, the outpouring of sobbing parents and emotional tributes to the show on social media this week left me scratching my head. My toddler is still a little too young to truly follow Bluey, and even if she was into it, I can’t really picture myself sitting down next to her and being sucked into it to the point where I’d be crying over it (then again, I also never got into This is Us or Grey’s Anatomy).
As I saw video after video after post after post online, I wanted to ask other parents, hey, you guys okay? Why are you all this invested?
When I polled Bluey fans in my life, the overriding sentiment was yes, it’s really just that good. My colleague, Glamour executive editor Natasha Pearlman, says the show is “appointment viewing” for her family, and that it is “not just kids funny, but adult funny.”
