Being a dad I have to watch lots of tele­vi­sion that I wouldn’t nor­mally want to. I’ve sat through or heard in the back­ground hours upon hours of children’s pro­grams, some awful and some good. I can watch the “Won­der­pets” or “Oswald” or “Kip­per” [1. Kip­per is awe­some. A small British dog that causes my 4-year old speak in a British accent fol­low­ing each view­ing.] but when it comes to “Blue’s Clues” there are 2 camps: those that like Steve and those that like Joe. I pre­fer Steve but my youngest child prefers Joe. He is almost 2 years old though, so I won’t hold it against him.

Joe, to the untrained eye, appears to be Joe-like, but he acts far more juve­nile than Steve Burns ever did. Watch­ing him you get the feel­ing, and it’s prob­a­bly not Dono­van Patton’s [2. The guy that plays Joe] fault. Steve, towards the end of his tenure on the show, seemed to be get­ting more and more cere­bral. He would lift an eye­brow for effect here, a slight double-take there. He even used the word ‘jejune’ on the show.

Then Steve’s brother Joe showed up right as Steve was going away to college.

The pro­duc­ers prob­a­bly wanted to go back to the more kid-friendly for­mat of the early years of the show but after watch­ing Burns Patton’s deliv­ery seemed so pre-preschoolish.

When singing the sig­na­ture song he looks long­ingly at the screen like he hon­estly doesn’t remem­ber from pro­gram to pro­gram that he needs to use his note­book or find a clue. For god’s sake, in one episode he didn’t know where his nose was. Or his ear. Who in their right mind doesn’t know where his nose is? If you’re Joe, then you don’t, obviously.

The whole “Steve goes to col­lege” angle was alright, since Burns wanted to leave the show, and, from his own web­site “we have male pat­tern bald­ness.” Steve was look­ing a lit­tle long in the tooth. But how could “Steve” get into col­lege? He couldn’t find clues (as far as I know he only found one and that was in the “Blue’s Big Musi­cal” episode) so how did he get into col­lege? And what col­lege is it? Stu­pid U?

But at least Steve got into col­lege. Joe, the stu­pid brother, has been stuck at home for years now, liv­ing out his pre-preschoolish exis­tence with a talk­ing mail­box, some talk­ing salt and pep­per shak­ers, and a bar of soap that wants to be a ship cap­tain. Maybe Joe is crazy and the “Blue’s Clues” show is all in his head, or maybe Steve was crazy and, liv­ing in the Blue­si­verse, made up a brother out of thin air so he could escape his own insan­ity. Think about it. I could hap­pen. Sorta Being John Malkovich–esque. Or like the end­ing of “Saint Else­where”. Maybe Joe is dream­ing up the whole thing. Wouldn’t sur­prise me if he did.