There are many impor­tant things going on in the world today — the Iraq war, hor­ren­dously high gas prices, a ramping-up pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and other stuff. But this may be the most earth-shattering event of all : Which was a bet­ter human side­kick for Blue of Blue’s Clues, Joe or Steve?

Steven Burns, [1. You can check out Steve’s web­site here. It’s rather strange, which prob­a­bly sums up Burns.] who played, inex­plic­a­bly, “Steve”, was on the show from 1996 to 2002. When Burns decided to move on (one rea­son given — male pat­tern bald­ness), “Steve” went off to col­lege and his younger brother Joe (played by Dono­van Pat­ton) moved in to take care of Blue. Joe was intro­duced over sev­eral episodes where he learned the ropes of play­ing the sig­na­ture game, “Blue’s Clues”. The human side­kick would ask Blue a ques­tion and rather than answer, Blue would demand that his token human must find 3 clues that would lead to what Blue would have said.

Just once I wanted the human, upon learn­ing that Blue wanted to play the game, to say, “No. I don’t want to play Blue’s Clues today.” Would have been a short show.

So which was a bet­ter human hench­man, Steve or Joe? Both are lik­able enough, and my son is glued to either of them when they’re on the screen, but each has a dif­fer­ent style, which, after repeated view­ing (as I’ve done) becomes apparent.

Patton’s act­ing is more sitcom-y, I think. He’s a ham when he’s onscreen, kind of like a silent screen actor. He has ter­ri­ble hair, but that’s only par­tially his fault, since he was born that way. The other half of it is his fault, because he should get a cooler haircut.

Hard to believe, but Dono­van Pat­ton is a cousin of Gen­eral George S. Pat­ton. [2. It comes from that repos­i­tory of old peo­ple infor­ma­tion, Parade mag­a­zine, where peo­ple fre­quently bet steak din­ners over ques­tions writ­ten into the mag­a­zine.] I think Patton’s act­ing is goofy and his char­ac­ter of Joe acts more stu­pid and clue­less than Steve did.

Steve just seemed to be played by a bet­ter actor. I actu­ally laugh at him, which isn’t say­ing much, but he had facial quirks, eye­brow move­ments, comic tim­ing. Joe seems like his mother drank while she was preg­nant with him.

So I award Steve the Ulti­mate Blue’s Clues Human Side­kick award. Con­grat­u­la­tions Mr. Burns. You earned it.