Blue's Clues (seasons 5 & 6)
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| Blue's Clues (seasons 5 & 6) | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Not really as bad as other Nickelodeon shows that went through Seasonal Rot, but still these seasons wouldn't really figure it out overall.
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Blue's Clues is an American children's television series that premiered on Nickelodeon in 1996. Producers Angela Santomero, Todd Kessler, and Traci Paige Johnson combined concepts from child development and early-childhood education with innovative animation and production techniques that helped their viewers learn.
Following the departure of Steve Burns, things have changed and the show hadn't shown signs of full recovery, until the reboot. This article will mainly focus on seasons 5-6.
Clueless Qualities
NOTE: This only applies to the final two seasons of Blue's Clues as the first four seasons, along with Blue's Clues & You were great. Any attempts to add bad qualities about seasons 1-4 of the show and Blue's Clues & You will be reverted immediately.
Overall
- Quantity over quality: Blue's Clues ran for 10 years like Friends, LazyTown, Ed, Edd n Eddy and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. While the seasonal rot is only mild unlike some Nickelodeon shows such as The Fairly OddParents, SpongeBob SquarePants, and The Loud House, this show became one of Nick Jr.'s cash cows along with Dora the Explorer because it lacks the charm on what made the first four seasons (Steve era), and the reboot great.
- Nickelodeon decided to milk the series for all its worth during these seasons by keeping it going after Steve Burns left because he was going bald and decided to pursue a musical career. Oddly enough, the very first clue in the series was actually "milk".
- While replacing the host is not bad at all, Joe himself is not as good as Steve, for the following reasons below.
- Some plots are rehashed from older episodes. For instance, "Animals in Our House?" is basically Joe's version of "Animal Behavior!".
- These seasons have several mediocre and/or bad episodes, such as:
- "Can You Help?" (which started the downfall of the whole series)
- "The Snack Chart"
- "Joe's Surprise Party"
- "Bedtime Business"
- "Blue Goes to the Doctor"
- "Blue's Big Band"
- "Our Neighborhood Festival" (introduced the talking clues)
- "Blue Takes You to School"
- "Meet Polka Dots!"
- "Body Language"
- "Look Carefully..."
- "Blue's Big Car Trip"
- "I Did That!"
- "Animals In Our House?"
- "Morning Music"
- "The Legend of the Blue Puppy" (which started season 6 on a terrible note, and furthered the show’s downfall even more)
- "Love Day" (possibly the worst episode of the show)
- "Blue's Wishes"
- "Joe's Clues" (which is an interesting subversion that had wasted potential)
- "Playdates"
- "The Fairy-Tale Ball"
- "Soccer Practice"
- "Meet Blue's Baby Brother" (which ended the series on a sour note)
- Several annoying new characters:
- Roary the Dinosaur, also called Roar E. Saurus, has no personality aside from roaring really loudly. His roars also sound like Tarzan yells and his voice is extremely annoying.
- Polka Dots, Blue's celadon plush dog toy who creates puzzles for others to solve, is overly talkative and obnoxiously loud.
- Frederica "Fred", a princess doll, has a tendency to pretend that it's her birthday, which gets annoying and repetitive. She also has a whiny, scratchy, and overall very irritating voice.
- Silly Seat, a chair who tells silly jokes and crazy riddles, is a stupid sofa who does nothing but tell "knock-knock" and "what do you call (whatever)?" jokes to make others laugh.
- Joe, Blue's caretaker in these seasons and Steve's brother, while not terrible, is pretty much a more hyperactive and goofier version of Steve and he's basically the inspiration for Elvis Cridlington from the CGI era of Fireman Sam, even sometimes more of a comic relief than a host, even though he was tolerable in his debut episodes from Season 4 and Blue's Clues & You!.
- He fed Blue and Magenta chocolate in three episodes: "The Snack Chart", "Scavenger Hunt", and "Soccer Practice", despite the fact that chocolate is poisonous to dogs in real life because it contains theobromine, though Blue might be immune due to her origins, and she and Magenta are cartoon dogs (or semi-anthropomorphic), but still...
- He and Steve are almost the exact same character, with only a few differences between them. Both hosts even do the same things, such as telling the viewers that they need their help playing Blue's Clues.
- His shirt changes color in every episode for no apparent reason, although it makes sense in some episodes like “Colors Everywhere”, and his debut appearances have him in a green shirt, same color as Steve. The seasons 5 and 6 intro feature him in an orange shirt which begs the question, should he kept his orange shirt thoughout these seasons?
- Basically, like how Sammy Hagar ruined Van Halen, Phil Collins ruined Genesis, and Randy Marsh ruined South Park, Joe ruined the entire series because of his flaws.
- Like his Blue's Room self and Blue, when she talks in Blue's Room, Joe also treats the audience like how Barney the Dinosaur, Bear from Bear in the Big Blue House, Elmo from the Sesame Street segment Elmo's World and when he is given more screen time on Sesame Street, Bert and Ernie, Grover, and Prairie Dawn along with Zoe and Cookie Monster in Sesame Street's spin-off Play with Me Sesame, Emily Elizabeth from Clifford the Big Red Dog, Dora the Explorer, Diego from Go, Diego, Go!, Kai-Lan from Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, the Teletubbies, the narrators and puppets from Baby Einstein, the Little Einsteins, JoJo from JoJo's Circus, Special Agent Oso in Season 1, the Sensational Six from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Darby from My Friends Tigger & Pooh, Milli, Geo, and Bot from Team Umizoomi, the Bubble Guppies, Pinky Dinky Doo, and other kid show characters do.
- Blue is shown going to the bathroom in "Morning Music", which is a bit inappropriate for the show's target demographic of preschoolers.
- However, this is probably because Joe and Blue want to teach kids how to use the bathroom.
- The song in the scene was redone 33 times due to Joe laughing so hard about how funny a song about toilets would be. Yes, really.
- The talking clues introduced in late season 5 were unnecessary. They can defeat the purpose of showing children, or even teens and adults, how to draw, but also can be annoying to listen to.
- Most of the inanimate-sentient object character designs are unfitting for a children's cartoon as they fit more into Battle for Dream Island or Inanimate Insanity instead. Coincidentally, the show was animated by most of the animators of those shows.
- Some of the animated characters may look a bit like adults, but it's weird that they still tend to have child voices.
- Extremely hammy acting for Donovan Patton as Joe. Though he would improve his acting in his next TV series appearance, Blue's Clues & You!.
- These seasons of Blue's Clues, along with Blue's Room, focus less on older, more mature, classic, and reboot characters like Steve, Josh, Sidetable Drawer, Mailbox, Mr. Salt, Mrs. Pepper, Paprika, Cinnamon, Sage, and Ginger, Shovel, Pail, Slippery Soap, Tickety Tock, Rainbow Puppy, Magenta, Green Puppy, Periwinkle, Orange Kitten, Green Kitten, Purple Kangaroo, and The Felt Friends (Fifi, Freddy, Phaderus, etc.), and more on younger characters, who relate to children in the 0-4 age range, along with Blue's Clues season 5-6, and Blue's Room characters such as Fred, Polka Dots, Sprinkles, Roary, Silly Seat, Doodle Board, Boogie Woogie, Sprinkles, Joe, and Blue, especially her Blue's Room counterpart.
- Ended the series on a sour note, and these seasons, along with Blue's Room, nearly killed the Blue's Clues franchise as it went dormant after the latter's cancellation in 2007, until the announcement of Blue's Clues & You!, 11 years later.
Season 6 (2004-2006)
- The show experienced several unnecessary changes:
- Several attempts were made to save time, due to the Blue's Room segments. Most notably, "Play Blue's Clues", was shortened considerably and the, "So Long Song", was dropped, before Blue's Clues & You!. Even Sesame Street had the similar problem with including Elmo's World at the end.
- The talking clues became permanent.
- Joe becomes even goofier than he was, in the fifth season.
- A mediocre ending song called "The Goodbye Song" is used in every episode.
- The show completely jumped the shark in this season as a new segment called Blue's Room started taking up the last few minutes of each episode.
- Blue is now a talkative Mary Sue, despite already being understood by those who watched the series.
- None of the characters from the original series appear, except in the episode "Meet Blue's Baby Brother".
Good Qualities That Can Figure It Out
Overall
- There are still a few people who still like these seasons.
- Blue's Clues & You! is great and a huge improvement over these seasons and Blue's Room, as it stays faithful to the original Blue's Clues and the characters become more tolerable.
- The animation styles, including Flash and CGI, are still simplistic, but well done. In addition, the mix of live action and animation still turned out to be pretty well done.
- The voice acting is still great.
- There's also decent acting from some of the Blue's Room cast, such as Victoria Pontecorvo, Jared Goldsmith, Christiana Anbri, and Alex Hoffman.
- The new show intro and song are great and catchy, giving Blue's Clues a singing theme song.
- This also includes the Season 6 intro, where despite Blue's puppet counterpart being used, she, thankfully, doesn’t speak, and it’s only for a few seconds, before Moona turns Blue back to her original animated self, and the rest of the intro plays normal, as usual.
- There are still some likable characters in these seasons, especially the cute and lovable animated characters, such as:
- Blue herself (excluding her Blue's Room counterpart)
- Steve (who guest appeared in "100th Episode Celebration" and "Blue's First Holiday", the latter in a flashback as a child, and we hear him via a call in the present)
- Sidetable Drawer
- Mailbox
- Mr. Salt
- Mrs. Pepper
- Paprika
- Cinnamon
- Shovel
- Pail
- Slippery Soap
- Tickety Tock
- Magenta
- Green Puppy
- Periwinkle
- Orange Kitten
- Green Kitten
- Purple Kangaroo
- Duck (the one at Blue's school)
- Giraffe (also at Blue's school)
- The Felt Friends (Fifi, Freddy, Phaderus, etc.)
- Snail
- Baby Bear
- Cinderella
- Gingerbread Boy
- Billy Chicken
- Felix
- The Wind-up Drum Toy
- Gopher
- Marlee
- Magenta's Mailbox
- Post Office Mailbox
- Marky
- Shoehorn
- Blue Bird
- The Three Little Pigs
- Moona (one of the only good new characters)
- Key (another good new character)
- Handy Dandy Journal (another good new character)
- There are also cameos of some other likable characters, such as Rabbit, Skinny Pig, G-Clef, Sarah Scientist, The Sun, and Steve's and Joe's grandmother.
- Some of the songs are decent and/or good. For example, the Mailtime song, and the So Long song are still great and catchy.
- The songs can still be pretty catchy to listen to, aside from some of the songs having bad lyrics.
- Shoehorn’s song is pretty good, thanks to his voice actor Randy Travis.
- “Colors everywhere”, “I’ll never forget my alphabet” and “I’m so happy” are other examples of good songs.
- The occasional celebrity appearances, by the likes of They Might Be Giants, Randy Travis, and Toni Braxton, are still quite clever and fun.
- Blue's barks are still cute. The fact that everyone can understand what she is saying is also still very deep and touching.
- There are still plenty of good and/or decent episodes from these seasons, like:
- “Colors Everywhere”
- “The Big Book About Us!”
- "100th Episode Celebration!" (a great way to celebrate the show, since it’s the show's 100th episode)
- “Playing Store”
- ”Patience”
- “I’m So Happy!”
- ”The Boat Float”
- ”Shape Searchers”
- ”Contraptions”
- ”A Brand New Game”
- “The Surprise Guest”
- “Dress Up Day”
- ”Up, Down, All Around!”
- ”The Story Wall”
- ”The Alphabet Train”
- ”Numbers Everywhere!”
- ”Blue’s Predictions”
- ”The Scavenger Hunt”
- ”Let’s Write!”
- ”Magenta’s Messages”
- "Blue's First Holiday" (which ended the fifth season on a high note, and would have been a good series finale, if the show didn't get a sixth season)
- ”Skidoo Adventure”
- "Bluestock" (mainly for the guest appearances and the lack of talking clues)
- "Behind the Clues: 10 Years of Blue" (a nice documentary about the show) It is understandable why Steve wanted to leave the show because he never wanted to be on the show at all. He even described himself as the happiest depressed man on earth.
Season 6 (Blue's Room segments)
- The puppet designs are cute, and the puppetry is well done.
- They encourage kids to use their imagination.
Reception
The first four seasons were well-received, while the last two seasons received mixed reviews.
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