I remember being on both sides of the Barney phenomenon: eagerly watching with my cousins on the one hand and witnessing and participating in the hateful crusade against it on the other. It wasn’t that it was just cool to destroy Barney, and as kids there seemed to be no discernible reason for it. It was just the way things were: the sky was blue, Bill Clinton was president, and Barney was bad. It was never up for debate.
According to the title, I love you, you hate me, the new Peacock docuseries about the purple dinosaur’s meteoric rise and fall, pursues this duality of love and hate in a way that is both emotionally rich and thought-provoking. The downside is that this massive world feels frustratingly condensed with only two-hour episodes.
A look behind the scenes at the Barney Industrial Complex
So many stories vying for attention in I love you, you hate me. The family story centers on Sheryl Leach’s almost necessary invention of Barney as a way to keep her young son Patrick calm and involved in the world around him. The behind-the-scenes story is also great, full of scandal and colorful, lovable characters. We see, in part, the evolution of criticism and engagement with Barney as a character and pop culture figure. And then there’s the rise of the hatred and rebellion against Barney, and the many tributaries that come from there.
No shortage of interesting material. If anything, the doc wastes a significant portion of his two hours anticipating a true crime denouement that ends up being too exploitative to feel honest, and not lurid enough to feel morbidly satisfying. It is ultimately the least interesting part of the project.
Another shortcoming is that at the last moments, I love you, you hate me beyond her grasp and makes explicit comparisons between the hatred of Barney and the widespread hatred endemic to American culture. That director Tommy Avallone draws these comparisons is of course justified and in itself no problem. But it feels preachy and undeserved in the course of a relatively insular story that succeeds entirely on its own merits. It also seems that Avallone and/or the Peacock suits don’t trust the public to make these comparisons themselves.
TV documentaries take time
The biggest disappointment has nothing to do with the docuseries itself. Rather, it has to do with where attention and resources are given in the streaming landscape. Ryan Murphy, for example, is allowed to use ten-hour episodes to exploit Jeffrey Dahmer’s told and retold saga; meanwhile, this unusual, evocative, potentially global story of Barney and our relationship with the media we consume takes just under two hours to cover all of its bases.
Honestly, when it comes to TV documentaries, we were spoiled by Ezra Edelman’s PB: Made in America, showing that the true-crime docuseries genre could be given so much more room to flourish and expand. These films and series may be about more than exploiting old threads and spewing supposedly deep truths. They can take their time, get into the weeds and really unravel the details. They can, like OJ did, became huge texts analyzing and deconstructing American mythologies. But Barney’s story, so ostensibly tragicomic and convoluted, gets very succinct here.
I love you, you hate me is great but short
.jpg)
I love you, you hate me has enough material and engaging interview topics 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 walked 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 Barney’s body (and who, with more narration, could benefit from a full hour of focus). And then there’s Steve Burns, the long-dead host of Blue’s Cluesthat offers unexpected, compassionate analysis from its unique first-person perspective.
Avallone’s work is comparable to the best documentary television has to offer, and it is evocatively and thoughtfully composed for the short time it has. It certainly offers more balance and nuance than sensational works like tiger kingwhile it is no less exciting. The problem here is a misallocation of resources, as streaming services will waste tons of money on stories that contain heavy scandal and intrigue, but stories like this – human interest stories that are more grounded and potentially complicated – are often only allowed on the feature- length treatment. (Not to mention, Barney’s story clearly offers more than his fair share of soap operas.)
Thematically speaking, I love you, you hate me is more complex than it first appears, and what appears to be a simple showbiz documentary belies a more thorny meditation on creativity, conspiracy and mass hysteria. It’s a shame of wealth put into a small studio apartment. And while it’s definitely worth it, it could also benefit from a serious upgrade.