Friday, May 11, 2018

'Toon Reviews 16: Hey Arnold Season 3 Episode 3: Stinky Goes Hollywood/Olga Gets Engaged


Stinky Goes Hollywood









While nearly all of the characters are likable and have good development, some have much less likability than others.  You can still enjoy them fine, but they’re overall not that special.  Take Stinky for example.  From what we’ve seen of him in the show thus far, the only noteworthy thing about his character is that he has country-like mannerisms with a Southern drawl to his voice and not being very bright in school.  These parts of his character are enjoyable, but if that’s all there is to Stinky, then he’s not all that interesting.  What he goes through in this cartoon does make a good attempt to make something more of him though. 
The kids of the neighborhood get a chance to stardom when a director comes offering auditions for one of them to be the next spokesman for his product, Yahoo soda.  Everyone is excited to try out, but Stinky is in no hurry as a monologue on how he feels like he’s not good at anything shows.  At the very least, Stinky starts out this cartoon with a relatable plight and being pushed to go along with the Yahoo tryouts appears to get him over it.  Out of all the different distinct auditions, Stinky’s unenthused to-the-point delivery of the soda’s tagline is what impresses the director the most. 
It’s crazy to see how big Stinky becomes for simply advertising a soda in such a quick time.  That said, the many commercial spots where Stinky advertises the soda are rather amusing to see.  They place Stinky in various scenarios like a farm, a boxing ring, and a classy library, and they stand out for the unique setup of having a simple country kid delivering the greatness of such a popular product.  Even better is that unlike a common trope where a character acts like a total bigshot upon entering stardom, Stinky is simply happy that he found something he’s good at and is on good terms with his friends in spite of having commercial-filming mostly on his mind.  It’s a nice break from the typical clichés which helps break the stereotype that people become jerks just because they’re famous stars.  Seriously, you can’t say that for all people who make it to stardom, so why strive to make celebrities look bad? 
Everything changes when Stinky catches the director talking about him, saying that he’s the stupidest kid he’s ever seen yet is so famous and making him a lot of money.  At this point, the way to feel about this cartoon becomes conflicting.  It’s easy to feel for Stinky when he finds out the director thinks lowly of him despite being so famous and that he’s no different from the dumb kid he started out as.  At the same time, it does feel like Stinky’s overreacting.  He may be stupid, but that’s how he’s supposed to act to tie into the product he’s meant to sell.  Plus, no one’s even laughing at him for acting stupid.  If anything, people he passes by react to him with admiration and clear love for what he does, so that should be reassuring to his true self.  Instead, Stinky is too put down by the director’s comments towards him, and choses to quit and turn down a contract that could get $1,000,000 for him and his family.  This decision could be seen as good for Stinky choosing what’s good for him, but it’s not convincing enough that being seen as stupid when advertising a product is a bad thing, so it’s not all that satisfying that we go back to the status quo in the end in spite of Stinky feeling better about finding his true purpose. 
There’s still some good entertaining bits from Stinky’s brief moments of fame and his relatable conflict and how it subverts expected tropes, but it’s still pretty flawed in how it tells the story. 7/10

Olga Gets Engaged










A major cause of Helga’s mean exterior is her hard home life with an authoritative dad, a dazed implied alcoholic mom, and an overachieving sister named Olga.  In fact, Olga’s great success in practically everything is a huge cause for Helga’s neglect, which makes it impossible for her to feel happy whenever Olga comes home.  To give her some depth, Olga’s first appearance did indicate that she pushes herself to be so successful due to pressure from her parents. While this aspect is hardly touched upon with Olga flaunting her accomplishments with no hesitation, this and several cartoons to follow feature some extension to it with her trying to bond with her baby sister. 
Olga’s story this time is that she’s met a cute guy named Doug and, despite only knowing him for a few weeks, she plans on marrying him.  Big Bob and Miriam are hesitant of this, in the process showing some problematic aspects of their own marriage when Miriam warns Olga not to make the same mistake she made.  Helga sees this as a good opportunity to stop Olga from infringing on her own life.  In a way, Olga does get time for sibling bonding with her and Helga working to get herself and Doug together, even if Helga’s just using it to sabotage her, but as the cartoon goes on, they actually bond in interesting ways. 
While Helga sets things up for Olga to elope with Doug, she finds him conversing with Big Bob and Miriam.  While Doug wins them over, Helga notices that each conversation has a completely different story, set of interests, and life goal for Doug.  In other words, Doug is a liar and a mooch just making himself look amazing to get a good-looking young woman like Olga.  The revealed truth about Doug brings an important virtue of life for anyone regarding knowing what someone is like before getting involved with said person. 
That said, because of her frustrations of being upstaged by Olga, Helga keeps what she saw to herself, setting up Olga to have her life ruined by only saying that Doug won their parents over.  Although Helga is shown to mostly enjoy the idea of her sister getting hitched to a total charlatan, complete with a twisted fantasy of perfect Olga reduced to living in a small apartment while her parents belittle her and praise Helga, the heart to her character buried within shines through in the end.  After Olga gives her emphatic gratitude for her talent of judging people, Helga is so moved, her hidden love for her sister leads her to save Olga from ending up with Doug, though an earlier statement from Arnold about being there for your sibling was most likely a stronger incentive.  This scene is followed up on with Helga confronting Doug, who’s in the middle of a phone call with another woman he’s clearly intimate with, and awesomely threatens to tell said woman about Olga unless he leaves.  The best part is that while Doug is dumbfounded that Helga’s doing this for the older sister she’s jealous towards, Helga has no hesitation towards her actions, proving that she knows that despite her problems with Olga, she’s still family i.e. a part of her life, and taking care of that part is the right thing to do.  This is a major example why I and most fans look at Helga as the most interesting and complex character in the cast. 
While Olga can be a little much at times with her overbearing perfection and happiness, the strengths of the story and character moments are strong enough to make this a very good cartoon. 9/10

The Ranking
  1. Curly Snaps
  2. The Aptitude Test
  3. Pre-Teen Scream
  4. Olga Gets Engaged
  5. Oskar Gets a Job
  6. Stinky Goes Hollywood
The next Hey Arnold review covers an interesting story concept of Arnold discovering his favorite author is not the kind woman her works suggest her to be, and we're introduced to a rich kid named Lorenzo.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews, we'll look into the second episode of the second season of Voltron: Legendary Defender.

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