I remember being on both sides of the Barney phenomenon: avidly watching it with my cousins on the one hand, and then witness and party to the hateful crusade against it on the other. It wasn’t that it was just cool to trash Barney, and as kids there seemed to be no perceptible reason for it. It was simply the way things were: the sky was blue, Bill Clinton was president, and Barney sucked. It was never up for debate.
Per its title, I Love You, You Hate Me, the new Peacock docuseries covering the meteoric rise and fall of the Purple Dinosaur, pursues this duality of love and hate in a manner that is both emotionally rich and thought-provoking. The drawback is that this massive world feels frustratingly condensed at only two hour-long episodes.
A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Barney Industrial Complex
Peacock
So many stories are competing for attention in I Love You, You Hate Me. The family story involves Sheryl Leach’s almost necessary invention of Barney as a way to keep her young son Patrick calm and engaged with the world around him. The behind-the-scenes story is also great, full of scandal and colorful, likable characters. We see, in part, the evolution of criticism of and engagement with Barney as a character and pop-culture figure. And then there is the rise of the anti-Barney hatred and insurgency, and the many tributaries that flow out from there.
There is no lack of interesting material here. If anything, the doc squanders a considerable portion of its two hours drumming up anticipation for a true-crime dénouement that is ultimately too exploitative to feel fair, and not lurid enough to feel morbidly satisfying. It’s ultimately the least interesting thing about the project.
Another flaw is that in its latter moments, I Love You, You Hate Me exceeds its grasp, making explicit comparisons between the hate directed at Barney and the widespread hate endemic to American culture. Of course, that director Tommy Avallone draws these comparisons is valid and not a problem in and of itself. But it feels preachy and unearned in the course of a comparatively insular story which succeeds entirely on its own merits. It also seems like Avallone and/or the Peacock suits don’t trust the audience to draw these comparisons themselves.
TV Documentaries Need Time
The biggest disappointment is not to do with the docuseries itself. Rather, it is to do with the fact of where attention and resources are given in the streaming landscape. For instance, Ryan Murphy is allowed ten hour-long episodes to exploit the told and re-told saga of Jeffrey Dahmer; meanwhile, this unusual, evocative, potentially global story of Barney and our relationship to the media we consume is given marginally less than two hours to cover all its bases.
Truth be told, when it comes to TV documentary, we were spoiled rotten by Ezra Edelman’s O.J.: Made In America, which proved that the true-crime docuseries genre could be given so much more room to flourish and expand. These movies and series can be about more than exploiting old yarns and spouting supposedly profound truths. They can take their time, get into the weeds, and really unravel the details. They can, as O.J. did, become massive texts which analyze and deconstruct American mythologies. But the story of Barney, so apparently tragicomic and complicated, is given very short shrift here.
I Love You, You Hate Me is Great but Short
I Love You, You Hate Me has enough material and fascinating interview subjects for at least six episodes of content. There’s the alcoholic parent who started the I Hate Barney Secret Society and the internet troll who got in on the first floor of The Jihad to Destroy Barney, a creatively obscene role-playing game. There’s David Joyner, the tantric sex guru and actor who played the body of Barney (and who, with more storytelling space, could benefit from a full hour of focus). And then there’s Steve Burns, the long-considered-deceased host of Blue’s Clues, who provides unexpected, compassionate analysis from his unique first-person perspective.
Avallone’s work is on par with the best that documentary television has to offer, and it is evocative and thoughtfully put together for what little time it has. It certainly offers more balance and nuance than sensationalistic works like Tiger King, while also being no less engaging. The problem here is a misallocation of resources, being that streaming services will throw a whole bunch of money at stories that are heavy on scandal and intrigue, but stories like this – human interest stories which are more grounded and potentially complicated – are often allowed only the feature-length treatment. (Not to mention: the story of Barney clearly offers more than its fair share of soap operatics.)
Thematically speaking, I Love You, You Hate Me is more complex than it initially seems, and what appears to be a simple showbiz documentary belies a thornier meditation on creativity, conspiracy, and mass hysteria. It is an embarrassment of riches stuffed into a tiny studio apartment. And while it is certainly worth your time, it could also benefit from a serious upgrade.
