Blue's Clues (seasons 5 & 6)

Blue's Clues is an American children's television series that premiered on Nickelodeon in 1996. Producers Angela Santomero, Todd Kessler, and Traci Paige Johnson combined concepts from child development and early-childhood education with innovative animation and production techniques that helped their viewers learn.

Unfortunately, the show went downhill in Seasons 5 and 6.

Overall

 * 1) Nickelodeon decided to milk the series for all its worth during these seasons by keeping it going after Steve Burns left because he was going bald.
 * 2) *While replacing the host is not bad at all, Joe himself is not as good as Steve, see reasons below.
 * 3) Some plots are rehashed from older episodes. For instance, "Animals in Our House?" is basically Joe's version of "Animal Behavior!".
 * 4) These seasons are filled with mediocre/bad episodes, such as:
 * 5) *"Can You Help?" (which started the downfall of the whole series)
 * 6) *"Blue Takes You to School"
 * 7) *"Morning Music"
 * 8) *"Legend of the Blue Puppy" (which started season 6 on a sour note)
 * 9) *"Meet Blue's Baby Brother" (which ended the series on a sour note)
 * 10) *"Soccer Practice"
 * 11) *"The Scavenger Hunt"
 * 12) *"Love Day" (arguably the worst episode of the show)
 * 13) *"Bluestock"
 * 14) *"Blue's Wishes"
 * 15) *"Our Neighborhood Festival"
 * 16) *"Blue's Big Band"
 * 17) *"Bedtime Business"
 * 18) *"Joe's Clues"
 * 19) *"Blue Goes to the Doctor"
 * 20) *"Playdates"
 * 21) *"Joe's Surprise Party"
 * 22) *"Animals In Our House?"
 * 23) *"The Snack Chart"
 * 24) *"Meet Polka Dots!"
 * 25) Several awful/bad/mediocre/annoying new characters:
 * 26) *Roary the Dinosaur only has one trait, which is roaring really loudly. His roars also sound like Tarzan yells and his voice is annoying.
 * 27) *Polka Dots (a sea-green plush toy who creates puzzles for others to solve) is overly talkative and obnoxiously loud.
 * 28) *Fred/Frederica (a princess doll) has a tendency to pretend that it's her birthday, which gets annoying and tiresome fast.
 * 29) *Silly Seat (a chair who tells silly jokes and crazy riddles) is a laughable sofa who does nothing but tell "knock-knock" and "what do you call?" jokes to make others laugh.
 * 30) *Joe (Blue's caretaker in these seasons and Steve's brother) was flanderized throughout these seasons to become a hyperactive and goofy host, even though he was tolerable in "Blue's First Holiday", "100th Episode Celebration", and his debut episodes from Season 4. He has also become a Gary Stu.
 * 31) **He fed Blue and Magenta chocolate in three episodes ("The Snack Chart", "Scavenger Hunt", and "Soccer Practice"), despite the fact that chocolate is poisonous to dogs in real life because it contains theobromine (though Blue might be immune due to her origins, and she and Magenta are cartoon dogs, but still).
 * 32) **He and Steve are almost the exact same character with only a few differences between them. Both hosts even do the same things, such as telling the audience that they need their help playing Blue's Clues.
 * 33) **His shirt changes color in every episode for no apparent reason.
 * 34) **Basically, like how Sammy Hagar ruined Van Halen and Phil Collins ruined Genesis, Joe ruined the entire series because of his flaws.
 * 35) Blue is shown going to the bathroom in "Morning Music", which is a bit inappropriate for the show's target demographic of preschoolers.
 * 36) * However, this is probably because Joe and Blue want to teach kids how to use the bathroom.
 * 37) The talking clues, introduced in late season 5, were unnecessary. They can defeat the purpose of showing children (or even teens and adults) how to draw, but also can be annoying to listen to.
 * 38) Most of the inanimate/sentient object character designs are unfitting for a children's cartoon, as they fit more into Battle for Dream Island or Inanimate Insanity instead. Coincidentally the show was animated by most of the animators of those shows.
 * 39) Some of the animated characters may look a bit like adults, but it's weird that they still tend to have child voices.
 * 40) Quantity Over Quality: It ran for 10 years like Ed, Edd n Eddy and mh:besttvshows:Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. The show jumped the shark a few times because of this.
 * 41) Ended the series on a sour note, and these seasons, along with Blue's Room, nearly killed the Blue's Clues franchise, as it went dormant after the latter's cancellation in 2007 until the announcement of mh:besttvshows:Blue's Clues & You! eleven years later.
 * 42) Extremely hammy acting for Donovan Patton as Joe.

Season 6 (2004-2006)

 * 1) The show experienced several unnecessary changes:
 * 2) *Several attempts were made to save time due to the Blue's Room segments. Most notably, "Play Blue's Clues" was shortened considerably and the "So Long Song" disappeared before mh:besttvshows:Blue's Clues & You!.
 * 3) The talking clues (introduced in late Season 5) became permanent.
 * 4) Joe becomes even goofier than he was in the fifth season.
 * 5) A horrible ending song called "The Goodbye Song" is used in every episode.
 * 6) Unlike the first five seasons of Blue's Clues, this season doesn't have a single good episode (except for the documentary episode).
 * 7) The show completely jumped the shark in this season, as a new segment called Blue's Room started taking up the last few minutes of each episode.
 * 8) *Blue can now talk, despite already being understood by those who watched the series. Not only that, but she also never stops talking.
 * 9) *None of the characters from the original series appear except in the episode "Meet Blue's Baby Brother".

Overall

 * 1) mh:besttvshows:Blue's Clues & You! is great and a huge improvement over these seasons, as it stays faithful to the original Blue's Clues and the characters become more tolerable.
 * 2) The animation styles, including Flash and CGI, are still simplistic, but well done. In addition, the mix of live action and animation still turned out to be pretty well done.
 * 3) The voice acting is still great.
 * 4) *There's also decent acting from some of the Blue's Room cast, such as Victoria Pontecorvo, Jared Goldsmith, Christiana Anbri and Alex Hoffman.
 * 5) The new show intro and song are great and catchy, giving Blue's Clues a singing theme song.
 * 6) *This also includes the season 6 intro, where despite Blue's puppet counterpart being used, she thankfully doesn’t speak, and it’s only for a few seconds before Moona turns Blue back to her original animated self and the rest of the intro plays normal as usual.
 * 7) There are still some likable characters in these seasons, especially the cute and lovable animated characters, such as:
 * 8) * Blue herself (excluding her Blue's Room counterpart)
 * 9) * Steve (who guest appeared in "100th Episode Celebration" and "Blue's First Holiday" (the latter in a flashback as a child, and we hear him via a call in the present))
 * 10) * Sidetable Drawer
 * 11) * Mailbox
 * 12) * Mr. Salt
 * 13) * Mrs. Pepper
 * 14) * Paprika
 * 15) * Cinnamon
 * 16) * Shovel
 * 17) * Pail
 * 18) * Slippery Soap
 * 19) * Tickety Tock
 * 20) * Magenta
 * 21) * Green Puppy
 * 22) * Periwinkle
 * 23) * Orange Kitten
 * 24) * Green Kitten
 * 25) * Purple Kangaroo
 * 26) * Duck (the one at Blue's school)
 * 27) * Giraffe (also at Blue's school)
 * 28) * The Felt Friends (Fifi, Freddy, Phaderus, etc.)
 * 29) * Snail
 * 30) * Baby Bear
 * 31) * Cinderella
 * 32) * Gingerbread Boy
 * 33) * Billy Chicken
 * 34) * Felix
 * 35) * The Wind-up Drum Toy
 * 36) * Gopher
 * 37) * Marlee
 * 38) * Magenta's Mailbox
 * 39) * Post Office Mailbox
 * 40) * Marky
 * 41) * Blue Bird
 * 42) * The Three Little Pigs
 * 43) * Moona (one of the only good new characters)
 * 44) * Key (another good new character)
 * 45) * Handy Dandy Journal (another good new character)
 * 46) * There are also cameos of some other likable characters, such as Rabbit, Skinny Pig, G-Clef, Sarah Scientist, the Sun, and Steve's and Joe's Grandmother.
 * 47) Some of the songs are decent/good. For example, the Mailtime song and the So Long song are still great and catchy.
 * 48) *The songs can still be pretty catchy to listen too, aside from some of the songs having bad lyrics.
 * 49) The occasional celebrity appearances by the likes of They Might Be Giants, and Toni Braxton, are still quite clever and fun (even if they unfortunately guessed started in bad/mediocre/average episodes).
 * 50) Blue's barks are still cute. The fact that everyone can understand what she is saying is also still very deep and touching.
 * 51) The only good/decent episodes from these seasons are:
 * 52) * "100th Episode Celebration!" (a great way to celebrate the show since it’s the show's 100th episode)
 * 53) * "Blue's First Holiday" (which ended the fifth season on a high note and would have been a good series finale if the show didn't get a sixth season)
 * 54) * "Behind the Clues: 10 Years of Blue" (a nice documentary about the show)

Season 6 (Blue's Room segments)

 * 1) Cute puppet designs.
 * 2) Good puppetry.
 * 3) They encourage kids to use their imagination.
 * 4) Blue's puppet counterpart is still cute, despite being flanderized.

Reception
TBA.

Comments
This show went completely jumped the shark in those seasons.

-- XanManYT (talk) 12:12, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Blues Clues is my favorite PBS Kids show

-- 22:10, 31 July 2022 (UTC)