Bag of Money / Principal Simmons (Hey Arnold Season 5 Episode 3) - 'Toon Reviews 34

If you like this review and want to stay updated for what else I have in store, become a follower of this blog, click here to like the official Facebook page, and click here to follow me on Twitter. Now on with today's review:

Bag of Money

If “Arnold Betrays Iggy” wasn’t bad enough to be my pick for this show at its worst, one cartoon would come along later to take that title.  Sadly, we’ve finally come to it, and in terms of how bad I consider it, it’s all about how unpleasant, hypocritical, and irrational the story turns out to be. 

The premise doesn’t even sound so bad or even starts out with anything too offending.  Arnold, Gerald, and Sid are just minding their own business when by chance, they find a bag full or a lot of money lying around in the alley.  They have half a mind to just take all the affluence and split it, but decide to start by doing the responsible thing and turn it into the police in case it belongs to someone.  Arnold is easily the most trustworthy person to take the bag to the police and considering his main role in the series, you don’t need to question Sid’s claim.  On his way there though, Arnold comes across an old woman with a peg leg, pink hair, and one eyebrow carrying identical bags.  By mistake, Arnold mixes the bag of money with one of the old woman’s bags, and doesn’t realize he lost it until he gets to the police station. 

This is where the cartoon not only goes down in terms of appeal, but pretty much crashes and burns.  Upon noticing the money is lost, Sid shows no hesitation in making the bold accusation that Arnold stole the money for himself and betrayed everyone.  This is the first sign of hypocrisy after so many claims at the start of the cartoon of Arnold being so true blue and trustworthy which Sid himself made.  He doesn’t even believe Arnold’s claim of who he ran into when he mixed the bag up.  Yes, under normal circumstances, Arnold’s story would be hard to believe, but out-of-the-ordinary characters are a norm for this show’s universe.  Some of them like Stoop Kid, Pigeon Man, and Monkeyman have even had their own cartoons.  That’s not even mentioning the plethora of eccentric supporting characters seen on a regular basis.  Even if Arnold’s trustworthy reputation was nonexistent, Sid not believing this claim just doesn’t make sense by the nature of this particular series.  The only way it could possibly work is if the audience didn’t see Arnold run into that old woman, but that’s obviously not the case. 

The story’s ignorance of these points wouldn’t mean much if it was for this one scene, but things get worse as the ignorance lasts much longer than that.  Sid spends the rest of the cartoon telling everyone about Arnold ‘stealing’ the money, and popping up to berate Arnold for every nice thing he has and every bit of money he spends.  The worst thing about is that everyone believes Sid and turns their back on Arnold.  It’s like they conveniently forget about Arnold’s helpful track record and that Sid is normally a paranoid nut just to make the story meaner than it already is.  Even Gerald shows signs of buying into Sid’s rumors by making excuses to back out of hanging out with Arnold, albeit not as malicious. 

You’d think things would pick up with Arnold calling Gerald out for not trusting him and a mildly amusing talk with Grandpa about the issue. Sadly these scenes do nothing to make things better as everyone is still against Arnold and it’s just as painful.  The final straw is when Sid rallies everyone to angrily grab Arnold and tie him to the tetherball pole…in a public school yard…and no adult authorities stop them.  This is a legitimately harmful move that shouldn’t be allowed to happen, even if the rumor is true. 

Sid’s malicious look on the face only makes the scene more messed up. This goes for the fact that everyone continues with this act even after Gerald coming to his senses and gives good reason to trust Arnold. 

At least at the last minute, the old woman comes, completely confirming the validity of Arnold’s recount.  Arnold is proven innocent and all ends well for him which is nice.  However, this one good moment really doesn’t feel like enough to make up for the several bad ones.

The biggest points of detractors for this cartoon is how set it seems on going against many of the main elements of the show’s nature.  There’s no good reason for the conflict to exist, everyone forgets about all the good Arnold shows to the world around him regularly, and it’s devoid of good entertainment.  I could never believe that this show could get this mean and unpleasant way back when I saw it in youth, and I still can’t all these years later.  It may have a good payoff with everyone realizing Arnold was telling the truth, but how far the world was willing to go to hurt him before realizing this just can’t be easily forgotten.  This is easily the lowest point for the series, and while there are worse animated works out there, this cartoon is one I cannot recommend, not even for all the money in the world.

F+

Principal Simmons

In a manner of exploring conflicts from alternate perspectives, this cartoon goes in an interesting direction of looking into school principals. 

At PS118, its principal, Principal Wartz, is very unenjoyable.  His gimmick is giving very harsh punishments to the most inconsequential deviant acts, and the beginning presents extreme instances of these flaws.  Not only does he give very harsh punishments to things like kicking shrubs and getting a little paint on the floor, but he insults the students for these miniscule mess-ups too.  No one should ever grow to feel terrible for mistakes as much as Principal Wartz is implying.  Thankfully, the cartoon agrees with this notion as Mr. Simmons points out how hard and grueling Principal Wartz is being with the students.  He ultimately calls in the superintendent about the matter who shares Mr. Simmons’ concerns.  If being overbearing with rules wasn’t enough, Wartz reacts very poorly to the criticisms.  Instead of using them to improve, he resigns from being principal out of spite. 

Out of this move is where the matter of perspectives becomes very interesting.  With PS118 needing a new principal, Mr. Simmons is chosen out of his great reputation.  As he’s Wartz’s polar opposite, it’s clear to see that Mr. Simmons has a much less strict plan for the school.  He promotes no rules, boundaries, or pressures in having the best academic performance, and allows the kids to give suggestions on making the school experience better.  This sounds like a good plan and the ideal plan for any aspiring principals. 

As for Wartz, he seems better off being his own man especially when it brings the cartoon’s highlight.  Open for extracurricular activities, he’s the center of an exciting sequence where he joins an open mic night performing a musically powerful ballad in a cheesy disco getup.  It’s one of the show’s most out-there moments and it comes together to ridiculously entertaining effect. 

Then comes the catches to the new setup.  Though Wartz greatly enjoys being a free man, he does have some sympathy as he somberly looks back at the school he used to rule.  As he models a room in his house after his old office he hints regret over his brash actions in just throwing it all away. This scene also suggests that maybe this wouldn’t have happened if his attitude was better. 

As for Mr. Simmons, his failure to show discipline causes PS118 to descend into total chaos.  I, for one, blame the weak portrayal of the kids.  Just because they’re tired of Wartz’s rules doesn’t mean they’d deliberately break them because of the new laid-back principal.  Very few of their prior appearances even suggested that they’d even want to be out of control, at least not all of them.  Their behavior just feels like a contrivance to get things back to the status quo. 

At least when Mr. Simmons does ask Wartz to come back, there’s more of a balance of principal approaches for the conclusion rather than saying only one way’s right.  Plus, once he’s back in power and the chaos is settled, Wartz does show good effort in keeping the kids under control without insulting anyone.  If only these improvements to his attitude continued showing themselves in Wartz’s other starring roles this season as his next one pretty much puts him back at square one.  For now, at least we go out with another awesome Wartz karaoke session with Mr. Simmons joining him. 

The story doesn’t have the best way of executing the conflict, but it works as a solid showing of entertainment and character growth (for the time anyway).

A-

The Ranking

1.      Principal Simmons

2.      Fishing Trip

3.      Sid the Vampire Slayer

4.      Gerald’s Game

5.      Big Sis

6.      Bag of Money

 

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where the one-dimentional fifth graders make life difficult for the fourth graders and get away with it, and there's another look into Helga and Phoebe's friendship when the latter breaks a leg doing the former's bidding.

If you would like to check out other Hey Arnold reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.