Wednesday, July 11, 2018

'Toon Reviews 16: Hey Arnold Season 3 Episode 18: Helga's Show/The Flood


Helga’s Show

Everyone has different tastes in entertainment.  Certain things that are hilarious to some people may do nothing good for others, but to me, the right thing to do is try and understand why a style of entertainment can be funny even if you don’t always agree with it.  For that, I admire that this cartoon portrays this very theme. 
There’s an after-school lounge called the Coco Hut in which the students of PS 118 gather to perform comedy acts for all the attendees, and Helga has her own style of comedy by doing impressions of various people she knows.  As someone who enjoys hearing, as well as doing, impressions of real-life people and TV characters, I personally enjoy Helga’s act.  However, while some enjoy their own impressions or don’t get that they’re the ones being impersonated, the rest of the kids Helga impersonates take offense for how her act capitalizes on their primary habits like Harold’s cries for his mommy, Rhonda’s sense of fashion, and Stinky’s newly revealed love for lemon pudding.  They proceed to ignore Helga, feeling hurt by her act and see no appeal in her style of comedy at all which seems believable to anyone who doesn’t agree with certain entertainment styles. 
In a pleasing turn of events, Helga, who normally would use brute force to get others to see her point of view, feels bad that some of her friends don’t get her style of entertainment so much so that she’s led to confide these feelings to her best friend.  Through doing so, she discusses her own reasons for why her comedy came out as it did, claiming that if the kids can laugh at the impressions of others, they can laugh at their own which makes sense and shows how she felt it could work.  However, Helga’s flexible enough to see how her style of comedy wouldn’t work when the kids she wronged deal with their hurt feelings by doing impressions of Helga, and she sees their point. 
What follows is a rare moment where she shows consideration for kids other than Arnold by attempting to do another act to celebrate what’s good about her friends through a poem even if she doesn’t see the comedic appeal.  That said, her feelings about how unfunny the whole thing is are justified when she goes on stage, performs the poem, and while no one’s hurt from the act, no one is moved by it either.  It’s at this moment where the kids, and to an extent Helga herself, discover the humor of watching someone impersonate their quirks after hearing an unenthused poem about how great they are.  Right then and there is the appeal of forms of entertainment they might not always agree with. 
Ultimately, the cartoon closes with Helga bouncing back from the funk and returns to her old impressions, including people she originally didn’t impersonate in full force giving the kids something truly funny especially since they can now laugh at themselves like Helga felt they would.  It does make you wonder if Helga truly learned anything through all this since she simply goes back to doing what she did in the beginning while everyone else has a change of heart, but other than that, this is highly enjoyable, especially for those who always feel the need for solid entertainment. 9/10

The Flood
Some of the best stories in my opinion are those that bring different people together during a bad situation which make for different ways of dealing with what happens.  This cartoon features one of those stories and the use of characters and moments that come from the situation make it as great as it is. 
The situation presented is one that’s hard to imagine happening everyday (depending on where you live of course), which makes what happens interesting.  Mr. Simmons’ class ends up stranded at PS 118 for the night due to a flood roaring outside all because he felt the need to keep them longer to teach them.  This is particularly concerning to the kids who just want to leave for spring break. 
From here, the cartoon shows everyone living through the flood providing a variety of experiences.  Most of the students act up for much of the ordeal with constant fighting and annoying each other.  This could make the kids unenjoyable, but since they were on the verge a whole week off from school and they probably would’ve beaten the flood if Mr. Simmons didn’t keep them longer, it’s at least believable that they’d be so stressed that they’d let it out the way they do. 
Also Mr. Simmons shows a great display of his strengths of trying to stay positive in a bad situation, but his positivity is his downfall against the angry students.  Even his attempts at being firm have no effect because he’s simply not good at acting in such a way, so when the flood gets worse with water flowing into the building, the tensions rise significantly enhanced by believable angst from the kids and desperation from the teacher. 
In the process, the intensity of the entire flood is lightened a bit by a few laughs.  The bickering from the kids has a fair share of humor, but strong laughs are also found elsewhere.  They include brief breaks from the fighting and annoying such as when Helga attempts to break out of school running into Principal Wartz in a strange dance getup which works for how random it is.  There’s also a subplot of Grandpa making a raft to rescue Arnold and his friends while Oskar schemes to make a quick buck out of the flood by charging rescues which includes many funny interactions with clashing personalities and senses of morality made more exciting as the flood gets worse. 
These many moments from the flood build up to an exciting climax when the kids, for all their rowdiness, show that they do have hearts when after breaking from Mr. Simmons, they fear for his safety when he’s gone for a long time.  They find him dangling on a broken ladder above the raging floodwaters while he was trying to signal for help.  It’s the sense of danger that gets the kids to work together to save their teacher.  The speed of them tossing him a weight to reel him in, the strain as they pull, and the basic intensity is perfectly felt and tie into the music and visuals of the moment especially when Helga falls in and needs to be rescued too.  Then everything in the scene ties into a relieving finish with both Helga and Mr. Simmons dragged to safety and everyone finally able to leave the school on Grandpa’s raft. 
As it stands, the whole flood experience is easily one of the best entries for the season with a wide range of moments being funny, relatable, and especially intense stemming from a natural disaster. 10/10

The Ranking
  1. Helga Blabs it All
  2. Harold the Butcher
  3. Cool Party
  4. Grandpa’s Birthday
  5. Crabby Author
  6. The Flood
  7. Mr. Hyunh Goes Country
  8. Road Trip
  9. Helga Vs. Big Patty
  10. Arnold’s Thanksgiving
  11. Hey Harold!
  12. Curly Snaps
  13. The Aptitude Test
  14. Pre-Teen Scream
  15. The Pig War
  16. Olga Gets Engaged
  17. Oskar Gets a Job
  18. Arnold and Lila
  19. Phoebe Takes the Fall
  20. Best Man
  21. Career Day
  22. Helga’s Show
  23. Gerald’s Tonsils
  24. Grand Prix
  25. Rich Kid
  26. Dangerous Lumber
  27. Casa Paradiso
  28. Arnold’s Room
  29. Helga and the Nanny
  30. Roller Coaster
  31. Stinky Goes Hollywood
  32. School Dance
  33. Sid’s Revenge
  34. Girl Trouble
  35. Arnold Betrays Iggy

The next Hey Arnold review is on a full-length special covering the kids performing a school play of Romeo and Juliet.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is the Steven Universe Season 2 finale "Log Date 7 15 2."
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