New Documentary Aims To Make You Feel Guilty For Hating Barney

PBS’s Barney and Friends was introduced in 1992 and became instantly famous, not just for its popularity with toddlers but it’s ANTI-popularity with their parents. Most people above the age of five couldn’t stand the giant guffawing dinosaur, the dopey look on his face, the lack of any effort to make him look like he was talking (his toothy jaw just hung there open the entire time), the overall mind-numbing brainlessness of the whole thing in contrast to deliberately educational shows like Sesame Street…there were plenty of valid reasons for the show and the character to receive the negative response they did. But according to a two-part documentary coming to streaming next month, the reason you hated Barney is because you hate love.

A poipular pasttime in this new-ish decade is the Reassessment, examining something that was either beloved or despised by the public 20 to 30 years ago and deciding if it deserved that judgment. Usually this comes in the form of a dead-serious documentary that changes long-standing public opinion overnight, turning the subject’s biggest supporters or detractors into Twitter pariahs. Barney’s turn through this manufactured outrage factory was inevitable, it’s now coming and I am dreading it.

I suppose the 90s Barney Backlash might look over-the-top to modern eyes, now that worse characters for preschoolers like Calliou have been invented. But to turn the script around and accuse everyone even slightly unnerved by the purple beast that they are radical hatemongers is…kind of unfair.

My only source of solace is that the doc is a Peacock original, which might mean no one would actually see it. It’s our best hope right now. To anyone who ever hung a Barney doll in effigy in 1994, you’d best burn those photos now before they come back to ruin your career.