Peacock’s Barney Docuseries ‘I Love You, You Hate Me’ Attempted to Expose the Darker Side of the Children’s Show.
Ouch – this docuseries will hit you right in childhood.
If you’re a product of the 90s, chances are you grew up watching Barney & Friends – a show about a bubbly purple dinosaur who taught the importance of love and acceptance through songs and stories.
But a new Peacock docuseries called I Love You, You Hate Me, hoped to reveal the darkness underneath the show’s happy surface. And while there definitely were horrifying events surrounding the children’s show, they weren’t connected in how the trailer presented them.
The docuseries primarily focused on how Barney, and the show’s cast, became a target of hate by young adults. The friendly dinosaur was the subject of graphically violent video games, gatherings were held where people would destroy Barney merchandise, and some of the show’s cast even received threatening letters.
I Love You, You Hate Me did a good job of showing the contrast between the children show’s message of kindness against the hate it was getting.
Where it fell flat, was when it tried to connect the disturbing actions of Barney creator Sheryl Leach’s son to the show. Throughout the docuseries, we learned that Barney was created with Leach’s son Patrick in mind. But over time, the success of the show drove a wedge into the Leach family, which led to Patrick going down the wrong path and some truly tragic events.
As a viewer, it felt uncomfortable to watch the show reach to connect the dots between the Leach family tragedies to Barney, especially knowing Sheryl Leach declined to be involved. Such personal family trauma is hers to share, not anyone else’s.
I also didn’t like how the docuseries tried to scandalize David Joyner, the man inside the Barney suit from 1991-2001’s, a new career as a tantra healer. Per Web MD, A tantra healer uses meditation to increase sexual energy. The docuseries presented it in a judgmental way when in reality Joyner is sharing breathing and healing techniques with clients. It’s nothing to turn your nose up at.
A bright spot of the docuseries was seeing many of the former Barney cast members we grew up watching, and hearing how the children’s show impacted their lives. Many of them faced bullying from other peers because of their role on Barney and turned to negative outlets like drugs to cope. The docuseries would have been more compelling if it spent more time on this, instead of making the horrible actions of Patrick Leach their main focus.
I also enjoyed the commentary from other children’s show icons like Blues Clues’ Steve Burns, and Bill Nye the Science Guy. It was interesting to hear their take on why Barney & Friends received backlash, and their shows did not.
It was enjoyable getting to “meet” these people who helped shape our childhood in so many ways.
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All in all, I’d recommend giving this 2 episode docuseries a watch. It’s interesting to revisit Barney & Friends as an adult. As a child, you have no idea what goes on behind the scenes of a show and don’t realize that there is a huge team of people who come together to make it happen.
I Love You, You Hate Me is available to stream on Peacock.
Written by: Diana Gebbia
