![]() ![]() He never intended to be a career children’s entertainer. ![]() It isn’t-and was never-his own.īurns gave many interviews over the years explaining why he left Blue’s Clues. This video was him in character as Steve, explaining Steve’s story. But the thing is: Burns was never silent, and he didn’t leave to go to college. Major publications started to report the video as fact, that Burns had returned from decades of silence to clear up the mystery of what happened by explaining that he went to college. “But the strange part was how quickly it escalated from “this very nice internet thing” to a hysterical news story.” ![]() But the strange part was how quickly it escalated from “this very nice internet thing” to a hysterical news story. The whole thing was so sweet, and of course people felt emotional and validated by it. “I mean, we started out with clues and now, it’s what? Student loans and jobs and families? And some of it has been kind of hard, you know? I know you know.” Burns was dressed as Steve, and explained in character that he had gone off to college, commiserating with the viewers over what grown-up life was like. It was like an absentee father apologizing after decades of neglect. Because I realize that was kind of abrupt.” Here’s my brother Joe, he’s your new best friend,’ and then I got on a bus and I left and we didn’t see each other for like a really long time? Can we just talk about that? Great. “And then one day, I was like, ‘Oh hey, guess what? Big news, I’m leaving. Salt and freak out about the mail and do all the fun stuff?” he said. “You remember how when we were younger, we used to run around and hang out with Blue and find clues and talk to Mr. As it is when something detonates a grenade in the sweet spot of millennial nostalgia, the internet lost its damn mind. Not the current audience, but the audience of all those years ago, the people who are now all grown up and wondered-even if maliciously-what had happened to him. In a video posted to Nick Jr.’s Twitter account for the show’s 25th anniversary, Burns returned as Steve to address the audience. ( You’re welcome.) All of this backstory matters because the original Steve himself returned this week. A 2019 revival, called Blue’s Clues & You! stars Filipino-American entertainer and model Joshua Dela Cruz, who is extremely charming and an absolute snack. 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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