You know, it’s pretty clear that Barney is supposed to be this avant-garde thing that I’m not getting so I think it’s best if I try going back to the beginning to see if I can follow this thing easier. Let’s look at the very first Barney video ever created: The Backyard Show.
This being the first Barney thing ever created, there are bound to be oddities that many don’t know about, of course. Let’s check this thing out and see how things have changed. One thing you don’t see very often is that here we start out on an actual family with a father and mother, instead of just a group of kids. That comes later. Anyways, one thing that’s interesting about the very first episode is the amount of parent interaction. The acting is still very terrible, but at least you get some sort of insight into their parents’ lives. Sandy Duncan is the mom who gets complimented for catching a piece of toast and gets compared to being a T-Ball player and the dad has to go to a golf game. To be fair, the amount of parent interaction almost makes this intro kinda bearable. Yeah, cheesy, but still bearable. But then, before he leaves, the kids sing the “I Love You” song to him. Yes, folks, this is the very first recorded instance of the song itself. This is where it comes from. Not from the purple dino itself, but from the group of kids singing it to their father. It’s kind of sad that parents didn’t apparently go over well for the test audience they were getting, apparently. Perhaps if they were kept in and had actual character development, then it might actually be bearable, but then again, that’s assuming Barney even had internal logic. Turns out that Dad had actually forgot it was his own birthday, so the kids and Sandy think (for an extended period) about it and come up with a birthday show for Dad, using the old clothes sitting around the treehouse for them to use as costumes. After an establishing shot that lasts for 10 seconds just to pound that song into our skulls, they arrive at the clubhouse. The sister finds her first costume (read:headpiece) while the brother scares her with a lion mask. Soon after, the rest of the gang arrive (I guess they phoned them or something or used telekinetic powers or something, they don’t specify), they tell them about what they’re doing, they all say their specific talents then perform together a song together. though it’s short. They all try to find things to use for the show, and one of them finds the purple dino himself. She mistakenly puts it out for everyone to see, and summon him by saying words that might summon him, like you know, and we know he’s just gonna come out to solve everything, and what do you know, he comes out, a wind machine blows their hair back and once again, they sing the I Love You song again, as if we weren’t already annoyed by how many times they were playing it as incidental music. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for how much Barney ends up overtaking the parents in terms of caregivers, that everything they care about now turns into Barney. And goddamn, he sounds as deep as fuck, but with no real accent. Gotta wonder how that would’ve played out for the rest of the series. He somehow manages to guess all their talents and they tell him about their problem then suggests he wishes REAL HARD to imagine things work the way they want them to, like an old wagon becoming new, then what do you know, it happens but the other kids notice it as well. Clearly they’re tripping on things I don’t have if they’re able to see things that can only be seen through the power of imagination like that. Once again, another song. After, they find an old umbrella, and decide to use it for the song “Six Little Ducks”. They all pull out umbrellas and Barney “magically” turns them into duck umbrellas. Ok, apart from this kind of bullshit conundrum, I think it’s bad luck to open umbrellas indoors. After, they decide to resort to Halloween costumes, like a bumblebee and Humpty Dumpty. “But bumblebees hurt people!” Barney replies. I always find this a double-edged sword. For one, it disproves the theory that Barney is unsafe for children, but it’s also the stereotypical coddling of the generation we see today. So they do the Bumblebee song and Humpty Dumpty. I always like to point out that with “all the king’s horses”, uh, hooves and eggshells don’t go together very well. The other kid playing Humpty Dumpty climbs up a ladder and gets warned that he might fall. The more twisted side of me wishes fiction reflects reality and he actually DID crack his head…Anyways, they do Hickory Dickory Dock, which Barney turns into a clock with actual animated mice. Not necessarily Disney animation, but I imagine having to animate onto an actual live-action background like Roger Rabbit isn’t necessarily the easiest task easier, so yay for them, I guess? Then they do This Little Piggy (the anthem for foot fetishists everywhere) except they use a picture frame to imagine a blank slate with actual pigs, so it can’t even please the pedophilic side of that crowd. I guess that’s …good. The less pedophiles in this world, the better. Then they actually ask him if he could help put on the show for them……so that whole thing of him showing off his IMAGINATION skills was just PADDING. Jesus Christ, the songs were already bad enough, but having to devote this much time to showing off your imagination skills is just fucking offensive. But then, oh no, mommy’s coming! Hide Barney! Except that Barney has been known to actually talk to adults in the show with no trouble at all. I could say this is part of it being the very first episode, so it’s not set in stone, but it makes you wonder why he couldn’t grow and shrink more than once in the actual show. Might’ve made for some interesting dynamics. But what the fuck am I doing calling this show interesting? Anyways, Sandy talks to them about how the show’s going, and they burst into “If You’re Happy and You Know It”. Jesus, I know you’re just checking up on them, but they’re trying to work on something. Anyways, in that time, she put out balloons, decorations and a stage for them to use, which they could’ve done better with had she not fucking sang with them to begin with. Anyways, they get Barney out of hiding and urges them to get their shit together and get on the stage. He watches them from behind like the pedophile he is, Dad comes back, he sits down and gets them to the actual show. They sing a few nursery rhymes with costumes and routines, nothing particularly remarkable. Soon, Mom comes out with the birthday cake to “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow”, which Barney also ends up singing from behind. And no, this part doesn’t bear any particular relevance. He just ends up getting away with it…because he can. Fuck logic. And then they get Dad to do the Hokey Pokey against his own wishes. Because fuck the system as well. Then the two siblings thank Barney in his doll form for all the help he did…which was just materializing ideas they had themselves. Yeah, he didn’t really do much.
And that was The Backyard Show. Pretty fucking cringeworthy, but it might have been salvageable had it just been a video series and not the jumping point for one the biggest selling childrens’ franchises of all time. Fuck this piece of shit show.


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