'Toon Reviews 1: Hey Arnold Season 1 Episode 2

The Little Pink Book

 



One of the most prominent aspects of this show features Helga secretly harboring a crush on Arnold.  While we first saw a bit of it in the first cartoon of this season, this cartoon is the first time it’s the major focus.  While Helga’s crush is mostly childlike puppy-love, I actually find this to be an interesting part of her character.  We see so much of her being a bully who enjoys enforcing her authority over the other kids, Arnold included, but this secret crush of hers shows off a different side to her that shows that she really isn’t as bad as she seems, and this is something that gets expanded upon for the rest of the series.  One part of this different side of Helga is that she’s really talented at poetry as this cartoon shows.  When no one’s looking, she writes love poems about Arnold in, as the title implies, a little pink book including one where she signs her name.  This quickly becomes a problem when she accidentally leaves the book on the bus and it ends up with Arnold and Gerald who proceed to spend much of the cartoon finding out who the book belongs to in hopes of determining the identity of Arnold’s “secret admirer.”  Since Helga is naturally not comfortable with letting anyone find out about her crush, she goes to great lengths to retrieve the book before the boys see her signature in one of the poems.  Now, considering that all she does is sneak into Arnold’s room and hide in his closet while he and Gerald do their investigation of the journal’s owner, these lengths are pretty tame in comparison to how Helga protects her secret in later cartoons.  Plus, it’s kind of contrived as to how Arnold and Gerald have such a hard time finding out who wrote the poems.  They do many complicated experiments and investigations when all they really need to do is go through all the poems and eventually find the one with Helga’s signature meaning that all their work is unnecessary and takes up so much time.  Plus, when they’re going through all the girls at their school, they just laugh at the possibility that Helga could be the one instead of considering all the possibilities.  I know they’re just kids, but that is just way dense.  I will say though that the way Helga protects her secret from getting out just as Arnold finally gets to the poem with her signature the next day is a pretty funny way to resolve the cartoon’s conflict.  In all, what we see of Helga keeping her crush on Arnold a secret here is nice and entertaining, but it’s more of a warm-up to what could really be done with this convention. 8/10

Field Trip

At its core, this cartoon may seem like your typical animal rights story.  This is the kind of environmentally-friendly plot that focuses on a certain animal living in poor conditions and everyone preaching why it’s wrong for the animals in question to live like this and that all humans should be ashamed for allowing this.  What makes this cartoon stand out is that it proves that a story of this kind doesn’t have to be preachy to make you feel for an animal and the poor conditions said animal is living in.  The cartoon features Arnold’s class going on a field trip to the aquarium, and everyone is excited to see its main attraction, a sea turtle named Lockjaw.  For Arnold, since he’s never seen Lockjaw before, the moment is set up to be something grand and exciting.  However, when it’s time to see Lockjaw in action, instead of a big, tough, cool-looking sea creature, he turns out to be an old mistreated turtle living in a small tank with graffiti and garbage all over his shell.  The big thing to take from this moment is that from here on, the focus is on how Arnold is personally affected by the mistreatment that Lockjaw is putting up with.  Fitting of his good nature and caring disposition, he feels really sorry for the old sea turtle down to the point of not even wanting to hear the word “turtle”.  With the focus being on how Arnold feels about Lockjaw’s mistreatment instead of every obvious reason why it’s wrong, I feel that this is the way to really succeed at sympathizing with the animal who deserves rights.  To resolve this issue though, we get an example of Arnold’s relationship with his grandparents, in this case his Grandma.  Grandma drags Arnold for a ride to break into the aquarium and release Lockjaw without security knowing which involves speeding down the road implicitly without a license, giving both of them code names, and just going about getting a huge sea turtle out of the aquarium, not worrying about getting caught once.  As you can see, Grandma has a fun and out of the ordinary way of approaching situations which makes her an interesting and very entertaining character, but the fact that she does all this for the sake of making her grandson happy adds some heart to her eccentric ways which makes her personality stronger.  So, when Grandma’s plan successfully leads to Lockjaw’s freedom, it really is a nice way to cap off such a fun sequence.  This cartoon is a nice early example of how the crew of this show know how to add their own charm and aesthetics to commonly used plots. 9/10

The Rankings

1.      Downtown as Fruits

2.      Field Trip

3.      The Little Pink Book

4.      Eugene’s Bike

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the third episode of Hey Arnold Season 1: "Arnold's Hat"/"Stoop Kid."