“What color is happier than purple? No color.” This sounds like an empirical fact because Bill Nye is saying it. He’s one of a number of talking heads in the trailer for I Love You, You Hate Me, a two-part documentary “chronicling the rise and fall of Barney the dinosaur’s furious backlash — and what it says about the human need to hate.” That’s … a pretty Hannah Arendt–ish choice for this subject matter. “Barney stands for inclusion, acceptance,” says Bob West, the voice of the big purple dinosaur, ergo, the “violent and explicit” plush-Barney-bashing imagery we see in the trailer must be against those values. And here I thought singing “I hate you, you hate me, let’s go out and kill Barney” was just a healthy way for 6-year-olds of the time to signal they were big kids now.
In the trailer, Al Roker recalls the sensation of anti-Barney furor, and one person remembers scandalous schoolyard rumors like “Barney hides drugs in his tail.” Words flash onscreen saying, “Why does the world love to HATE?” It all sounds a bit extreme, but then again — did you ever think a Barney trailer would have the words “death and dismemberment” in it? Did you think it would end in a shooting? I Love You, You Hate Me will premiere on Peacock on October 12 in all its big purple glory.