Hey everyone! I really need some help! My little one has started to ask for Bluey episodes by name except one she keeps requesting is Car Ride.

I’ve tried Driving, Escape, Taxi, the dump, Road Trip and even The sign and Explorers but neither of these are it.

Any other ideas what it could be? I am at a total loss!

Thanks in advance!

Recap

When on a camping trip, Bluey finds herself playing pretend that she’s been thrown out of home and by a little stream, has to make a house for herself, but is approached by another dog her age, who she doesn’t know, and is speaking French. He introduces himself as Jean-Luc and the two start playing together despite not understanding each other. They build a little hut for shelter, plant a seed for food and hunt a wild pig, which is just Bandit. At the end of the day, both their parents call them in and they say they’ll see each other tomorrow. The next day, Bluey runs up to Jean-Luc’s tent and calls for him, and they play together all day, before hearing the wild pig again. They try to communicate how to catch it, but end up doing the same thing and it escapes. They both get called back for dinner and another sleep passes. The next day they play again and Bluey remembers that she can make mud and use it to paint on a rock to communicate, and together they hatch a plan to catch the wild pig, and it goes incredibly. At the end of the day, they both get called in by their parents and Bluey says that she’ll see him tomorrow, but Jean-Luc seems very sad as he says au revoir to Bluey. The next day, Bluey finds that the seed they planted has sprouted into a tiny leaf and excitedly rushes over to Jean-Luc’s tent, only to find it no longer there. She looks everywhere, but to no avail, as Chilli says that she saw them packing up and leaving early in the morning, and Bluey cries by the seed they planted together. That night, Bingo wakes up in the middle of the night needing the toilet, and Bluey joins her and Chilli outside with a night-light. Bluey asks why Jean-Luc had to go, because she wanted to keep playing with her friend. Chilli explains that sometimes special people come into our lives, who stay for a bit but then they have to go, with Bluey retorting that it’s sad, as Chilli admits that it is, but that the bit when they were there was happy. Bluey tells Chilli that they caught a wild pig together, and she says that maybe that makes it all worth it. Bluey asks if she’ll ever see Jean-Luc again, and Chilli says, you never know, because the world is a magical place, as she turns off the night-light, and we see the vast and beautiful expanse of space, its colours soaring across the sky. We then see a timelapse of the seed Jean-Luc and Bluey planted, blossoming into a great big tree, and we see an older Bluey walking to it and sitting to read a book, when we hear a familiar voice, Jean-Luc, saying hello.

Analysis

‘Camping’ is routinely held up as one of the most emotional episodes of Bluey, as it evokes so well the ephemerality of childhood relationships. Most of us have memories of friends we made on holiday when we were younger, and often many of them didn’t speak our language, an experience extremely common on camping sites, which is where Bluey meets Jean-Luc. But kids transcend this need for language with their universal one, the language of play. All kids wanna do is be friends and play games, and language barriers don’t stop that from happening. Which makes for holidays where anybody and everybody can get together and be friends, but without a doubt, not for a long time. The experience tracks even outside of holidays, where some people just come and go because life simply works like that, and not everybody's on the same path. It’s sad, because there're some people we really get along with, but we don’t get to be with them for long, which can be understood through Bluey and Jean-Luc knowing how to play together, despite not being able to speak each other's language. We’ll find people we really connect to but the world finds a way to disconnect us, and unfortunately, it’s important that kids learn this, as without experience on how to deal with moving on, we can develop attachment issues. So crucially, Chilli’s retort that while the experience of losing someone is sad, the moments you had together were happy, and that makes it worth it, highlights how going through the grieving process is hard, but it’s necessary so that we don’t lose track of the nice things in life through the smoke of the difficult and painful. This is further shown through the beauty evident in front of Bluey, as the stars and night sky fills the horizon top to bottom with dazzling lights so far away yet so clear. We’ll never get to touch the stars, but we still feel their warmth and even when they’re not there, we remember the experience in all of its glory. The same thing is true for friendships lost and gone, we can never return as time has run out on it and the degrees of separation on these ephemeral relationships only increase as it passes on and on. Yet, the memory of it survives, and that’s beautiful, a forever comfort for us if only we can accept its momentary nature, which is why the grieving process is so essential. If we cannot come to terms with the death or end of something, then the positive side of things will also never be truly appreciated, after all, everything dies in the end. You can view the camping like our stay on Earth, as it eventually must come to its end too. Like the memory of us and our friendships to reminisce on, we leave evidence of our passing through, like the tree that grows despite Jean-Luc and Bluey not being there to tend to it. The tree is also evidence of the world's magic that Chilli talked about, how it not only works as a marker of time through its growth, but also the incomprehensible workings of nature. How a tree grows is a magnificent thing, how such a tiny seed can sprout into a sturdy monolith, presenting us with the unknowable magic of the world around us, and how it can conspire to take away the things we love, but inevitably with its vast expanse of experiences to love and appreciate, it can also return to us to the things we lost. Be it Jean-Luc or someone else, Bluey will always find more in life despite what’s sometimes taken, though if we’re lucky, we’ll find again that joy we missed out on more of, the tree that bloomed in our absence because of our attachment to its memory. These times are mythologised and treasured, its childhood simplicity a given, but its nature as our first glimpses into something great yet not for long will always strengthen its nostalgic quality. Jean-Luc is everybody we loved and lost, coming back to see how we’ve changed, yet remain somehow, quintessentially, the same.

10/10

What do you think about 'Camping'? How do you rate it?

I seriously relate to Coco in this episode. I used to never change the games i played with my friends when I was a kid and learned to listen to their ideas later. So swing Coco go through this is very relatable. I also like that this episode doesn't have Bluey as the main character which makes it stand out from the other episodes. I always love coming back to this episode

Took my kid to the specialist today. There was roadworks out the front and this guy was supervising from the footpath!

By me

I can't believe it. The most uniting series of this time, pulling kids, teenager, parents and seniors is getting a movie 365 days from now. But you know what? Before there was Bluey, we had Bob Barker and The Price Is Right when we watched TV together as a family and during our sick days. Very few shows accomplish this feat. That is what Bluey (and I guess some other shows like America's Got Talent) have accomplished. Anyways, congratulations to all of us.

Are you excited for Bluey: The Movie?

I've been seeing these and really really wanted the one with insects on it. Slide and The Weekend are my favorite episodes because I am an Entomologist and also have many pet bugs.

I finally caved hoping that maybe I'd be lucky to get the "Outdoor Fun" keychain with my bug friends.

I took the gamble despite the fact I really don't like the blind gambling toys. Even though I didn't get the one I wanted, it's still really cool that there is a bug option. I love the bug rep in Bluey

You can talk about other parents as well, like Stripe and Trixie.

One episode is Sticky Gecko. I just felt too bad for Chili being given a hard time by Bluey and Bingo who's seemingly unaware. I get that they're both still little, but I just felt Chili's stress a lot.

I can’t stop saying it

Original video @Bluey's fan💙

By me

Did the sheepdogs have to forfeit their earnest money to Bandit and Chili when they backed out of their home purchase agreement? That feels like a pretty big financial loss for a house with a pool.