Bill plays favorites with his kids, makes it obvious to them, and his favor towards Tilly direct impacts Cricket
Yeah I’m over- analyzing Big City Greens again.
Look, I like Bill. He’s a silly guy just trying to parent his unique kids after his wife going to jail, his divorce, losing his farm, and having to move back in with his mother. I empathize with him.
But his parenting? Dear lord do I have notes.
First things first, Bill’s favoritism. It’s a running gag in a lot of shows that depict siblings with personalities as differing as Cricket and Tilly that the parents favor the more docile and well-behaved child, but it only works as a funny gag when it’s actually a joke and not a genuine character flaw. Bill has shown clear favoritism towards Tilly to the point I believe it influences a lot of Cricket’s behavior.
The episode where Tilly gets mud all over the house is a decent example of this. Now, of course, when you have a kid known for causing a mess and a kid known for being clean and tidy, it’s fair to find a large mess and assume the kid you know to be messy has made it. Where the problem arises is how Bill clearly doesn’t want to punish Tilly, whereas he’s completely fine punishing Cricket. He makes it this giant spectacle which plays a role in Tilly’s actions later in the episode. When Cricket starts behaving better, Bill is… unhappy??
When something goes wrong with Tilly, Bill is immediately inconsolable, but if somethings wrong with Cricket it takes him much longer to show genuine worry.
He also doesn’t punish Tilly for general poor behavior yet is quick to scold Cricket for very minor things??
I want to use “Short Wait” as an example. Tilly is quite literally at the point where she’s rearranging restaurant chairs into a giant stack, wrapped herself in toilet paper from the bathroom, and is yelling at and harassing customers… but Bill just picks her up and baby talks her?? Effectively enabling her bad behavior by doing nothing to even slightly imply that what she’s doing is inappropriate. It also irks me how, in that episode, Bill’s lack of awareness with his youngest comes into play. How does one of his age and anxiety not notice his ten year old has bolted out of a restaurant and is running down the street bursting into multiple different establishments. Brother, put him on a leash at the LEAST. Then he has a quick compilation of him looking for Cricket?? YOU DIDN’T KNOW HE LEFT?? 😭
It’s really strange to me how quickly Bill flip-flops from “my baby boy!” to basically “that wretched child of mine.” I get Cricket is a trouble-maker, but the writers seem to, more often than not, completely confuse exhaustion and exasperation as a parent with genuine hatred for your child.
It’s proven based off of psychological study that children who are awarded archetypes will adhere to those archetypes. If you tell a child that they’re a “bad kid,” they’re likely to accept that and continue behaving poorly. You aren’t giving them an incentive to better their behavior by labeling them as perpetually bad. Bill isn’t giving Cricket an incentive to behave any better when all he does is scold him. If Cricket was given more positive attention and praise for better behavior, he’d likely behave better. This is literally proven when we see Cricket trying to assume Tilly’s role as “the good kid” when Tilly was going through her “bad girl” phase. He’s literally elated to be given the positive reinforcement of physical affection and verbal praise. Sure he later uses his short-lived reputation as a good kid to try and get away with his mud slide, but Tilly consistently has her wrongs ignored because of her good kid reputation, so why not Cricket??
Moving on, “Unplanned,” while being a very heartwarming episode overall, has one glaring issue to me. Bill’s complete and utter lack of damage-control. Cricket is shown a scene of Bill fawning over Tilly, followed up by one of him literally tearing his hair out upon hearing the news that Nancy is pregnant again (Dude, YOU fucked her without protection so idk why ur mad). Rather than showing Cricket any of the videos of him being beloved that we’d shown at the end of the episode, Bill just lazily goes “you’re here, and you’re fine, and all that, right?” HELLO?? Not even an “I love you”???? And then he immediately moves on… TO A VIDEO OF TILLY. And nobody checks on him apart from Nancy, but only for like a minute before she leaves??? This should not have gotten to the point of him literally running away and joining the fucking circus 😭😭 And then Bill doesn’t want to look for him?? God Almighty the hate in this man’s heart
Also, okay, “Fast Foodie.” I fucking hate this episode, but it’s for more reasons than just Bill. To get the first reason out of the way, it strikes me as “that one fetish episode” every kid’s animated show seems to have. It just feels like poorly disguised inflation. Also, the lesson is nonsensical and bad. It’s just “don’t eat fast food every day for a week or you’ll be obese and sweaty.” First off, it’s obvious that nobody puts on that much weight in such a short amount of time, and it makes no sense that Tilly didn’t when she ate just as much as Cricket did. Secondly, rather than teaching about how a poor diet effects your heart health, mood, sleep, literally ANYTHING else, it was just a “don’t get fat” lesson which is shallow at best and downright harmful at worst. Anyways, onto my issue with Bill in this episode. God almighty, put your fucking foot down. He just lets Cricket eat there as much as he wants despite not wanting him to, why?? To teach him a lesson? In what world do the ends justify the means here?? And when it gets to the point Cricket was having Remy sneak him food, rather than being rightfully concerned he’s just angry?? He’s only sympathetic at the END of the episode, and it’s only after Cricket is thoroughly humiliated. A+ parenting, dad of the century 😭😭
It don’t know, maybe I’m overthinking it, but the gag of “parent who prefers quiet kid over rowdy kid” is only funny when it isn’t just a true statement. Like the Bluey episode where Bingo and Bluey pretend to be each other and it’s emphasized that while, yes, Bandit and Chili enjoy when the kids behave themselves like and play quietly like Bingo does, they still love Bluey equally and adore her energy and creative spirit. With Bill it’s just “I love my daughter and lowkey fucking hate my son but like only sometimes but I still make it obvious that I favor my daughter.”
I just wish it was more of a joke and less of an uncomfortable reality that’s clear in some episodes.
I need to shut my ass up woah
