Monday, February 25, 2019

Full Moon / Student Teacher (Hey Arnold Season 4 Episode 3) - 'Toon Reviews 28


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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
  1. Dinner for Four
  2. Stinky’s Pumpkin
  3. Phoebe Skips
  4. Eugene’s Birthday
  5. Student Teacher
  6. 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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