Arnold and
Lila
It’s hard to believe how long a time has passed between
Lila’s major appearances. She first appeared as a seemingly perfect, but troubled character given her poor
lifestyle. Starting with this cartoon,
her lifestyle, her most interesting trait, is no longer discussed, and she acts
perfect and overly kind with no trouble at all.
Not only that, she molds into a role of a potential love interest for
literally all her other appearances which not just keeps her from being as
interesting as she could’ve been, but more annoying than ever for a severe lack
of relatable flaws. To be fair, the way
she fits into such a role is well-executed.
It happens when Helga, while privately expressing her love for Arnold, is
led to do capitalize on her feelings by writing “Arnold loves Helga” on a nearby
wall. However, since other people can
clearly see the wall, she erases her name and just happens to replace it with
Lila’s before anyone comes by. Everyone
believes Arnold like-likes Lila and push for the apparent romance of the sight
despite Arnold only liking Lila as a friend.
From here, Arnold finds himself spending a lot of time with Lila, and
she just can’t get enough of him all while Helga is forced to deal with the
fact that the boy she loves getting attached to someone else was brought on
by herself. The latter point is especially
interesting for Helga dwelling on her own faults instead of blaming someone
else which makes it easy to take the conflict seriously.
As for Arnold, it becomes difficult for him
to keep living the misunderstanding, though I don’t get why he’s also teased
for being together with Lila, especially by kids who liked the idea of getting
together with her earlier. It would make
more sense for them to be jealous of Arnold.
Arnold finally ends the whole thing through honesty by telling Lila that
he never wrote the message while admirably being gentle with letting her down, and
Lila seems to take it well despite apparent disappointment. Still, even with him explaining the truth,
everyone calls him a “fickle” through saying he loved Lila (which he never did)
and now denying it. The strangest thing
is, Arnold actually grows to like-like Lila after all through thinking hard
about their time together which appears to be a
combination of admiring the appearance of a cute girl and the peer pressure of
everyone witnessing him live a lie.
From
here, this starts a reoccurring trend of plots in which Arnold expresses to
Lila that he like-likes her and she keeps telling him that she only likes him
as a friend since she only like-liked him because she thought he felt the same
about her . It’s not
exactly the best route for the series to take for making Arnold look very
closed-minded and making it seem like Lila is only good for being a love
interest. At least Arnold’s come a long
way with expressing his true feelings to crushes. Also, we end with a nice moment on a couple
worth supporting when Helga appears and actually lets up on bullying Arnold,
shows concern for his feelings, and is touched when Arnold talks about the pains of
unrequited love. This brief ending scene lays the foundation
of truly healthy couples to get behind, and shows that it could work if Arnold
was aware of the true Helga.
In the end,
while it does rob Lila of anything potentially interesting for the rest of the
series and Arnold is put down for something he didn’t even say, this cartoon
shines for the great way it handles the subject of what makes a healthy
romance. 9/10
Grand Prix
So far, this season has prided itself on giving strong
development to side characters and interesting story ideas, but there’s still
room for cartoons on Arnold and the gang doing basic activities popular with
kids, the activity here being about go-cart racing. As a result, it’s not one of the more
interesting cartoons, but it’s no doubt charming and fun thanks to the
strengths of the characters.
The main racing teams are Arnold, Stinky, and
Sid with their cart called the Dark Avenger, and Eugene with his cart called
the Mauve Storm. Now, at this point in
the series, it’s a given that if Eugene is involved, there’s going to be some
major obstacle to work through. Sure
enough, his known status as a jinx and overconfidence of his cart during the
first race causes both the Mauve Storm and the Dark Avenger to crash, yet they
somehow qualify to be well enough to compete in the grand prix if the teams can
get the carts fixed. It’s at least good
that the crews of both carts have a chance to keep on fighting especially since
this race features a one-dimensional bully like Wolfgang never allowing them to
live it down.
Also, as basic as the
following story is with the crews combining forces to fix the carts by
putting whatever isn’t broken from each of them into one new cart, it’s still
thoroughly entertaining with a few funny moments throughout the repair process
as well as some of the better moments from problematic
characters. The season has not been very
kind to Sid and Stinky as characters with their major roles making them come
off as annoying and stupid, uninteresting, and at times unlikable. This cartoon puts aside their negative traits
and utilizes them for more entertaining and funny moments through putting the
cart together and expressing worry if it stands a chance against the
competition. As for Eugene, there’s a
lot more believable behavior from him than in most of his appearances including
his previous one. Unlike in moments from those cartoons, he’s able to see how bad the situation is with his prized go-cart
destroyed, and rather than being all happy, he’s firm with saying that he wants
to take part in the construction and driving of the cart, and it’s always nice
to see normally friendly characters show a bit of a backbone. It shows that there’s more to them
than their basic character traits.
Everything leads up to the titular grand prix where the broken carts are
fully repurposed as the Mauve Avenger which I have no idea why they think it’s
a bad name. The race works as an
exciting payoff filled with many great character moments. Some of them offer different character
perspectives on running the race either racing furiously, statistically, or
even nonchalantly. They come off as
cathartic when all of Wolfgang’s bullying for the cartoon is met with humility when he wipes out, Eugene desperately trying to drive safely
as the Mauve Avenger falls apart, and of all characters, Phoebe races the
roughest of all taking first place. Even
one-shot characters of a French racer and an Italian racer have a few humorous
moments as they take off to race, let their minds wander, and wipe out, though
they may cause discomfort to some through sounding stereotypical. It all ends well with the truly bad
characters losing what they deserve, and the cartoon’s main players being happy
with their position even if they lost their cart and didn’t win first place
which is as good an ending you can ask for.
Again, it’s not the most interesting or thought-provoking, but if you’re
into racing, you’re in for a lot of fun with this cartoon. 9/10
The Ranking
- Helga Blabs it All
- Harold the Butcher
- Cool Party
- Grandpa’s Birthday
- Crabby Author
- Mr. Hyunh Goes Country
- Road Trip
- Helga Vs. Big Patty
- Hey Harold!
- Curly Snaps
- The Aptitude Test
- Pre-Teen Scream
- The Pig War
- Olga Gets Engaged
- Oskar Gets a Job
- Arnold and Lila
- Phoebe Takes the Fall
- Best Man
- Career Day
- Gerald’s Tonsils
- Grand Prix
- Rich Kid
- Dangerous Lumber
- Casa Paradiso
- Arnold’s Room
- Helga and the Nanny
- Roller Coaster
- Stinky Goes Hollywood
- Sid’s Revenge
- Arnold Betrays Iggy
The next Hey Arnold review will be on its Thanksgiving special, but it will be uploaded on the holiday Arnold's Grandma constantly mistakes for Thanksgiving.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews will be the penultimate episode of Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 2, "Best Laid Plans."
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