He eventually appeared on The Rosie O’Donnell Show to dispel the rumors.īlue’s Clues continued on, with the character of Steve’s younger brother Joe, played by Donovan Patton, taking over. When he was spotted in public again, people thought he was still dead but then replaced by a lookalike to cover it up. Darker whispers followed that he was addicted to heroin and had actually died of an overdose. There was talk that Steve embodied the White Guy cliché: that he left to pursue a career in music. Amidst all that success, Burns abruptly left the show, setting off, in addition to a global audience of abandonment issues, a vicious rumor mill about his eventual doom and demise that metastasized in the age of the internet and online gossip. Steve would lead the audience through his discovery of the clues, typically involving educational puzzles, and then sing a little bit and wave goodbye.īy 2002, Blue’s Clues was attracting about 13.7 million viewers a week, which, for context, is about what The Big Bang Theory was getting in its final season. His animated dog, Blue, would leave clues throughout his house about what adventures she (Blue is a girl, and the controversy over that may be the best argument against gendering colors) was getting into that day. The only human character was a man named Steve, played by Steve Burns, who was boyishly handsome and wore a green-striped long-sleeved polo (the kind it would take more than a decade for me to realize I could not pull off). Blue’s Clues is a children’s show that launched on Nickelodeon in 1996 and became one of those insane hits where buying toys themed to it sparked fistfights at Wal-Mart over the holidays. Here’s the CliffsNotes for the uninitiated. That is why everyone absolutely lost their damn minds over Blue’s Clues this week… and why it kind of irritated me. In that way, they almost transform into religious text. They are unbreakably tethered to formative experiences either they had or watched someone close to them-a child, a sibling, a niece or nephew-have. The funny thing about shows like these is that people don’t just have recognition or memories associated with them, but a fierce sense of ownership. Over the years, phenomena like SpongeBob Squarepants, Franklin, Bob the Builder, and, lately, Paw Patrol or Bluey puncture the zeitgeist outside of their intended pre-school audience.
Mention Teletubbies, Arthur, Wishbone, The Big Comfy Couch, or Zoboomafoo, and brace for a millennial’s monologue of nostalgia. Kids’ shows have a way of permeating mainstream culture.
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