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A Day in the
Life of a Classroom
No
matter how a cartoon of this show turns out, those with premises of things you
don’t see every day are the least bit interesting. This one about a documentary being filmed
about Mr. Simmons’ class is certainly that even if its execution is slightly
mundane.
Shortly after winning an award
for teacher of the year, Mr. Simmons learns of the documentary film crew coming
to film the class. Although he knows
that it’s not meant to be extravagant and only be filmed in real time,
everything he knows quickly becomes irrelevant.
Mentions of the glamor of being filmed and appearing on live TV invoke a
lot of pressures in Mr. Simmons, and push him to make his class the best it can
be for filming. It’s like he’s under the
impression that the documentary crew is coming to do an actual movie and not
capture regular life. He has a
completely fabricated script for all the students to memorize highlighted by
standard student dialog.
When seeing the
rehearsals in action, they are slightly amusing when it comes to believable
student reactions to things like hard equations sounding staged. Though this is technically part of the
motions with acting in films, the students are quick to see the phoniness of
this whole thing. They may have started
out seeing this production as an actual film, but soon understand that this is
meant to be different from the norm.
It
soon becomes glaringly obvious that Mr. Simmons is simply being ridiculous
about preparing the class for the film.
Never mind that he already knew beforehand that it’s just meant to film
a regular day in his classroom and not something rehearsed and fabricated. While his actions would be understandable if
his class was as unruly as it was in his first appearance, he’s known for being
a great teacher ever since then. Plus,
he won Teacher of the Year, so what reason does he possibly have to believe he
can’t pull it off?
Sure enough, Mr.
Simmons himself turns out to be the one who can’t pull the documentary off when
the day comes and the camera starts rolling.
As many of the students point out, Mr. Simmons trying to make everyone
stick to the script is a total disaster and he constantly ends up making scenes
on camera. It takes an expected talk
from Arnold to get Mr. Simmons to see the obvious issues with his plan and why
he had no need to pressure himself over the documentary. Also, I admire that the film crew is patient
enough with Mr. Simmons to reshoot whenever he feels they need to. However, it’s hard to believe that he’d get a
second chance this easy after breaking down so much during filming. In my mind if anyone where to blow up like he
did in real life, they probably wouldn’t be forgiven so easily.
With many obviously unnecessary worries and
pressures, the final product feels kind of lame and not as strong as it could
have been. Still, I can’t fault the
intrigue of something as unusual as a day in the life of a classroom being
filmed for the media.
B-
Big Bob’s
Crisis
When
it comes to life in the Pataki family, it’s less than ideal at best and
downright unhealthy at worst. Much of
that comes from the man of the family, Big Bob.
He’s known for being authoritative and neglectful, and the start of this
cartoon takes it to the fullest extent.
Not only does he continue to live it up as a king of the beeper empire,
but he’s downright cruel to customers and employees to the entire
emporium. It’s true that he’s never been
too nice or considerate. However denying an elderly customer a good phone,
refusing to give charity to a desperate orphanage, and firing employees for
minor offenses is going too far. I’d
like to think that Helga is right for later referring to her dad as ‘ruthless.’ That’s true, even for the likes of him.
At only a few minutes in, Big Bob finds
himself with a nasty attack, causing him to pass out. In doing so, he finds himself as a spirit,
watching all the cruel things he did to the people at the beeper emporium as
well as very possible after effects. It’s
a solid way of reflecting on life and seeing how harmful one’s actions can be
to the innocent. Above all, it’s very
meaningful that Big Bob feels bad over this and therefore has more of a heart
than he lets on. As for his attack, it turns out to be a minor offense over
eating too much greasy food.
Nevertheless, it can’t be taken lightly that he briefly became a spirit
over that attack, nor the horrible acts he saw.
Such a huge impact leads Big Bob to take drastic measures to change his
ways. While change is very necessary for
his character, the way he goes about it is very extreme. He obtains a guide on the Happy Sunshine way
of living from a traveling hippie.
Through following, Big Bob becomes one with nature, stripping himself of
materialistic technology and future, and wears animal skin instead of actual
clothes.
The other Patakis, including
Olga who’s suddenly brought home on short notice by the way, are quick to see
the extremes he’s going to. It’s
honestly interesting to see them all work together to get Big Bob out of this
mindset, especially for Helga’s sake.
Sadly this potential team dynamic doesn’t last long as Miriam and Olga
are somehow easily won over by Big Bob’s new extreme naturalist life style and
Helga’s all alone. She soon has to
resort to drastic measures like bringing down Big Bob’s prized yurt or
reminding him of his favorite foods and shows, but they don’t work. Not to mention, the family plans on going to
the ultimate extreme with a huge walk to Oregon, forcing her to leave her life
behind.
Through confiding her problems
to Arnold, who as usual lately takes interest in her problems on his own
accord, Helga finds a way to get things back to a reasonable norm. All she does is place Big Bob in his old
beeper store, and admits that she doesn’t like the new Happy Sunshine-reformed
him. He’s therefore left to meditate
over this in front of a portrait of him as the beeper king. After that, the conclusion he comes to is
honestly reasonable. He gets all his
technology and old clothes back, but still has some improvements to his
character keeping things like the yurt and being more connected to his
family. Best of all, there are no last
minute retcons, and with little to no huge starring roles left for
Big Bob, you can probably argue that this cartoon helps him really change for the better. At least one can hope that.
With solid exploration of one of the show’s
most problematic characters and a compromise of life changes, this cartoon
really impresses.
A-
The Ranking
1. Arnold Visits Arnie
2. Chocolate Boy
3. Beaned
4. Helga’s Locket
5. The Racing Mule
6. On the Lam
7. Ghost Bride
8. Grandpa’s Packard
9. Ernie in Love
10. Rhonda Goes Broke
11. Big Bob’s Crisis
12. Sid and Germs
13. Family Man
14. Phoebe Breaks a Leg
15. Rich Guy
16. Principal Simmons
17. Harold vs Patty
18. Fishing Trip
19. Sid the Vampire Slayer
20. Old Iron Man
21. Gerald’s Game
22. A Day in the Life of a Classroom
23. Suspended
24. Stuck in a Tree
25. Big Sis
26. Gerald vs Jamie O
27. New Bully on the Block
28. Phoebe’s Little Problem
29. Curly’s Girl
30. Bag of Money
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode that sees what it would be like if Arnold and Helga got married.
If you would like to check out other Hey Arnold reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
I'm a sucker for any episode that peels back the layers of Big Bob and shows that he really does have a heart, since the most tragic part about Helga is that she essentially is her father in a lot of ways. She's just generally more self-aware and desperate to change her ways than her father. Bob's more human moments are much fewer and far between, but whenever he's given some dose of self-awareness he's usually disgusted with himself and tries to make amends.
ReplyDeleteThat moment Helga tells him that she still loves him in spite of his bad qualities and even appreciates him for them is surprisingly effective, and yeah I never really noticed that unlike most episodes where a character makes a significant change there is no reset button at the end... just sort of a distillation with him vowing to be a better person without completely changing who he is.
...
Oh, then the movie happens... and dude is just fine with destroying the neighborhood to make a fortune... but then Helga's on board with that for a bit, too... ah well, good change comes slowly I guess.
There's also the fact he actually remembered her name at the end too. LOL!
ReplyDeleteA B-? What a shame. I actually like the first episode with the documentary, especially when I was part of a video production crew filming documentaries before, and I knew from that experience how patient the real professional documentarians can be, even when the filmed participants "blow up," as you put it.
ReplyDeleteAnd Mr. Simmons' anxiety was understandable. I don't get what's so bizarre about his very human reaction of being nervous about being on camera for the world to see. That's a strange complaint if I've ever seen one, not to mention nitpicky.
Finally, while being on a documentary isn't an everyday occurrence, I still think it's mundane enough, especially for America, where PBS is a thing. The odds of you being on camera in America was probably quite high to be honest, even back in the 2000s.