It's BLIPPI.

My daughter loves watching Blippi. She watches him without any distance or analysis and enjoys every minute of the show. She laughs when he laughs. She points at the screen and spells out his name when he starts spelling. She dances when he dances and in the motions you can see she is so happy she could literally burst. I am in the same living room with her watching him but I can't enjoy him like she is.

When I look at the screen, all I see is a man in an orange and blue outfit who decided to become someone children would love. It worked so well that at a point the line between him as a person and Blippi the character have become very blurry. I wonder if he answers by the name Blippi when he is at the store doing grocery shopping with his family and someone recognizes him. How does he feel when he walks into Walmart and sees his face on a lunch box? In the stores or parking lot or wherever he goes, does he just respond automatically when someone yells Blippi or does he get irritated that he cannot outrun the character? How about his kids? Does he go home and do voices? Does the Blippi voice just live in his throat now, always one level closer to the surface than anything else or does he come through the door and drop it completely the way women drop their bras the second they are home and give a sigh of relief that they are in their natural habitats and they can just be free to breathe? Does he have a place where he is just a tired man who got through the day?

I am not sure he does because he chose a field that can be really unforgiving. If he was a comedian and failed to make people laugh then that would be the worst thing that could happen. If he was a chef and he burnt the food, he could apologize, explain the circumstances and fix it with a perfect meal for next time. But he performs being great for children. His job is so public that everyone is watching him all the time. Both children and parents are watching him and the parents are the ones who make the headlines so he has to be the version of himself that a stranger's child will find safe to love. That is not a job. It's a condition to exist and it doesn't turn off when the camera does.

I wonder what happens when him and his crew go to film the show in those play places. Do the workers there stare? Because I would. His movements, voice and persona are so absurdly interesting that I wouldn't be able to help myself. At some point I would laugh too because what they would be doing is serious work done in the most unserious way. I think it takes a lot of discipline to build do this. He must have used that same intense energy, structure and consistency he displays in the videos to make Blippi the global brand that it is.

I wonder about his energy too. There are days when creators don't feel like creating anything so there must have been instances where he didn't feel like being Blippi. I get tired of smiling sometimes so smiling and giggling all the time must be so exhausting. There were times where the alarm would ring in the morning at 4am and I would cry because I had to go to work. I would give the tears a good twenty minutes and then get up and get ready and press on. When I got to work, I would smile and I would be dressed so elegantly that no one would ask about the gap between that person and the one who drove there. The difference is that I could call my brother or a friend and vent about how work was not doing it for me and how I barely held it together. No one's childhood was affected by my vents and crash outs.

Blippi doesn't get to do that. Or maybe he does and I am wrong. Maybe, just like I had my brother and friends, he has a person or a group of people who know the whole thing, the costume and the man and the distance between them, and they hold it with him when he needs to be held. I hope that's true.

My daughter keeps turning back to me in the middle of an episode and she says Mummy, it's Blippi and she is pointing at the tv like I might have missed him, making sure I am watching what she is watching. I am, but it's not the same for me. The man who is making her feel safe, happy and like the world is a place that has interesting things in it worth exploring is also the same person I think is largely unseen behind the character. I hope by the time the character ends and his real identity settles, there is enough of him left to call himself by his own name.