I Love You, You Hate Me is a two-part documentary chronicling the success of Barney & Friends and its subsequent hatedom at its peak of The '90s.
It was directed by Tommy Avallone and produced by Scout Productions (who are also responsible for Queer Eye). It aired on Peacock as a binge drop on October 12, 2022.
The trailer can be seen here
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Interviewees:
- Steve Burns of Blue's Clues
- Voice of Barney, Bob West
- Body performer of Barney, David Joyner
- Bill Nye
- Al Roker
- Series writer, Stephen White
- Barney fan, collector, and historian, Andrew Olsen
- Barney musical director, Bob Singleton
This series provides examples of:
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: The struggles of children of famous entertainers who delighted many children across the nation are discussed, including Candice Bergen (the daughter of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen), Christopher Robin Milne (the son of A. A. Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh), the children of Fred Rogers, and Patrick Leach—the son of Sheryl Leach, Barney’s creator.Gavin Edwards, pop culture expert: When you have an adult who has given so much care to the children of the nation, and it’s not necessarily always focused on you, I think that’s, like, a hard and complicated situation.
- Creepy Doll: One of the original concepts for the show that would become Barney & Friends involved toys coming to life, including a clown doll that was rejected for being too creepy. The documentary punctuates it with a creepy musical sting over the footage of a child holding said clown doll.
- Drugs Are Bad: According to one urban legend, Barney hid drugs in his tail and would do coke when he wasn’t performing.
- Expy: Pat Reeder, the initial head writer for Barney, stated that his idea for the titular dinosaur was inspired by Bruce Willis in Moonlighting, as "kind of a fun, wisecracking kind of guy who lit up the room." This got him fired.
- Eye Scream: During a “Barney Bashing” event in 1993, a Barney doll gets its eyes ripped out and eaten.
- Ironic Nursery Tune: The trailer features a creepy instrumental rendition of the nursery song "This Old Man," which was famously used in the series as the melody to the Wrap-Up Song "I Love You."
- Kids Are Cruel: A news report is mentioned of three boys, 10, 11 and 12 years old, who beat up a man in a Barney costume.
- Kids Love Dinosaurs: In the planning stages, Barney was changed from a teddy bear to a dinosaur because Patrick and other children loved dinosaurs.
- Kill It with Fire: The documentary includes footage of Barney dolls being burned to a crisp.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The line "I don't think you could ever think somebody would go and shoot someone" is said in the trailer in a way that implies someone was shot over a Barney-related incident. It actually refers to Patrick Leach, the son of Barney creator Sheryl Leach, shooting his neighbor when he was an adult for reasons that had nothing to do with Barney.
- Off with His Head!: The trailer contains a shot of a Barney doll being beheaded with a pair of garden shears.
- Percussive Therapy: During the Barney craze of the 1990s, people who were driven crazy by him (including parents and college students) vented their anger by destroying Barney toys.
- Sibling Rivalry: Growing up, Patrick had something of a love-hate relationship with Barney, who was his mother's creation and sort of a sibling to him.
- Talking Heads: The documentary is composed of this along with archive footage from various sources (much of it having been filmed by series writer Stephen White and the voice of Barney, Bob West).
- Team Mom: On the set of Barney & Friends, Sheryl is said to have been “everybody’s mom, especially Barney’s mom.”
- Teens Are Monsters:
- Bob West, the voice of Barney, got violent emails from middle school kids when his email address was leaked, including one that said, “I’m gonna find you and I'm gonna kill you.”
- Some of the child actors, when they grew up, were bullied by their peers in high school for having been on Barney & Friends as children.
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They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Discussed in part 2 about the HiT era due to including conflict-based stories, a new character named Riff and replacing the purple guy's voice and body actor; with Olsen talking about how the era makes Barney a shadow of his former self, Wendt (the voice for Barney in that era) talking about how things got fixed even if it's not broken and Michelle Dietz (voice for Riff) ranting about how HiT wanted Riff to be cool and hip.
