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Full Moon
Do you ever feel uncomfortable or frustrated watching someone
get berated and punished for something he or she had nothing to do with? I personally never really like it because I
see no appealing entertainment to the setup and feel somewhat hurt over how unfair
the world is for that one character.
That’s what happens with Arnold in this cartoon.
He’s just minding his own business when he
finds Harold, Stinky, and Sid pull off a risky prank of mooning Principal
Wartz. The big thing about it is that we
actually see them do it with a full view of their bare butts even if it is for
about a second. Then again, maybe
because of that and the fact that butts are shown fully in other shows doesn’t
make this al that risqué. Anyway,
because Arnold was present when the mooning happened, he’s reported to
Principal Wartz’s office. Even though he
wasn’t a part of the prank, Principal Wartz is on his case as he pushes
Arnold to reveal who was responsible.
Because Arnold makes it clear that he’s not a snitch and the prank had
nothing to do with him, he’s punished with four weeks of detention.
After that, this is all this cartoon is
devoted to. Arnold suffers through
detention for an act he was not a part of.
It can be argued that he intends for this to happen because he won’t
call out the real mooners, but even if that’s so, there are still many factors that
make the setup unfair. For one, it’s
hard to believe that Principal Wartz would be unable to recognize the real
mooners on his own. It may have been
from the back, but the heads and clothes of Harold, Stinky, and Sid are hard to miss.
Also, while the mooning shouldn’t have been done, it’s one of those
wrong things that’s relatively harmless.
However, Principal Wartz keeps treating it like a heinous act and brings
the ridiculous outcome of putting an eye out.
It may be normal for him to make a big deal out of every little
wrongdoing, but given how it’s not very enjoyable, this trait really does not
make him a good character. Finally, he’s
inconsiderate about Arnold refusing to tell and that maybe there’s a personal
reason that he isn’t even trying to understand.
With all this said, the problem isn’t that Arnold is refusing to call
out the mooners, but that the world around him is overbearingly harsh for
making a big deal of it. If you factor
out the unfairness of Arnold’s treatment, the cartoon is pretty repetitive
which makes it mundane. Once Arnold is
in detention, the same events happen throughout the runtime. He has a session where he’s lectured how
mooning is bad, Harold makes sure he doesn’t tell on them, others convince him
to confess, and Arnold refuses. It’s hard
to stay invested with the same events occurring.
Thankfully, the conclusion makes all of this
somewhat better. Harold’s guilt over the
prank does grow over time leading up to a noble act. Just as Arnold’s about to get a mark on his
permanent record for not cooperating, Harold, Stinky, and Sid burst into
Principal Wartz’s office and confess that they’re the culprits. It’s an amusingly dramatic moment that’s
topped off by giving Arnold the respect he deserves. Granted it’s not completely noble since
Arnold had to endure all four weeks of detention, but their respect is still
plenty genuine. Still, the fact that
they waited to the last minute and there’s a lot of Arnold’s unfair suffering
make it one of the weaker entries. I
wouldn’t exactly moon this cartoon, but I wouldn’t keep coming back to it
either.
D
Student
Teacher
I feel like at this point, cartoons about Helga’s problems
with her older sister, Olga, are pretty repetitive. Olga comes home for some sort of break from
college and Helga’s rightfully annoyed that her parents value Olga more than
her, vowing to ruin her reputation somehow.
They don’t even follow up on positive developments like how Olga’s
perfection is an act she’s not proud of and Helga deciding that her sister’s safety is more important than her grudge.
This setup holds any cartoon on this subject back, including this
one. However, it’s not without a few
redeeming qualities.
For one thing, it
is nice that Olga points out that a big thing she wants to do now that she’s
home is get closer to her “baby sister.”
This can be looked at as her giving Helga the love and attention she
needs especially since you can see the parents look uninterested as Olga talks
about this. Helga is even somewhat open
to this which is nice. However, she gets
uncomfortable with Olga’s new direction when she learns that she’s becoming a student teacher in her class for the
semester.
In a nice turn of events,
Helga tells Olga the reasons for her discomfort. She fears Olga, who knows things about her
sister that others don’t, will ruin her reputation. Olga understands what Helga says and promises
not to. This makes what happens the next
day all the more frustrating when she tells the class a story about a girl with
a bedwetting problem and reveals her to be Helga at the end. You can argue that she did this to cheer up
Stinky who failed a test, but was that the best example she could come up
with? It really goes to show why Helga
has such a problem with her sister. Her
obliviously overly cheerful attitude makes her someone Helga really cannot
trust.
Even if her methods are extreme,
it’s hard not to fault Helga as she pulls off elaborate stunts to ruin Olga’s instantly
strong reputation as a student teacher.
Watching them all backfire though feels pretty mixed. Olga finding a way around each challenge
implies that Helga’s constantly at the mercy of embarrassment going off of that
one story. At the same time, it’s
amusingly interesting to see how Olga makes the most out of a bad
situation.
As for Helga, she finds a way
to end this thanks to Arnold, her love, taking an interest in her problem. He encourages her to open up how she really
feels about the matter to Olga. The
result is an ending with shockingly bittersweet tone. Helga admits that she doesn’t like Olga as a
student teacher and that they’re not getting any closer. The only thing that can make her happy is if
Olga leaves for another option as a student teacher…in Alaska, and she sends
her sister off Casablanca style. Even if Olga is more in the wrong in the
conflict and doesn’t own up to how she embarrassed Helga, she’s somewhat
sympathetic since she really did want to try and bond with Helga. For her sake, while she’s left sad, cold, and
confused, the last moment of Helga writing a postcard to her does show she has
some love for Olga despite all complexities.
The cartoon would have been stronger if it expanded upon previous
developments with this sisterly relationship instead of hitting the reset
button. For all its shortcomings, I
still value its effort for trying to get Helga and Olga closer in their own
unusual way, even if it falls flat in a couple areas.
C-
The Ranking
- Dinner for Four
- Stinky’s Pumpkin
- Phoebe Skips
- Eugene’s Birthday
- Student Teacher
- Full Moon
The next Hey Arnold review introduces a kid version of the Godfather named Big Gino, and we see what Gerald's relationship with his brother, Jamie O, is like.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is the Season 1 finale for DuckTales, "'Til Nephews Do Us Part."
If you would like to check out other Hey Arnold reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
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