Tuesday, October 1, 2019

April Fool's Day (Hey Arnold Season 5 Episode 18)

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:
April Fool’s Day


There’s an interesting background to the last two episodes of Season 5, both of which consist of full-length cartoons.  They basically wouldn't exist if it wasn't decided to release a TV movie of the series to theaters, but I'll get to that when the time comes.  One of the episodes is a very welcome addition to the series building upon character backgrounds and paving the way for something even bigger.  The other one, this one, is just a random escapade suggesting how desperate the show is to make a story centered on a holiday. 

It seems that it’s a drawback that comes with doing holiday specials.  It’s easy to make some out of the big meaningful ones, but since there’s so few of them, shows often have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for other holidays to capitalize on.  The thing is that the usual result is utilizing holidays that don’t have much merit for existence other than childish fun or materialism.  April Fool’s Day is one of those lesser holidays without anything meaningful to its nature.  It’s set up as a day for everyone to mess around and pull pranks, but at least in my experience, no one is really into going all out with pranks and treats it as a normal day.  At best, people make stuff up on social media to intentionally drum up excitement over lies, but that’s still not special.  In other words, April Fool’s Day feels very pointless which does not work in this special’s favor. 

Arnold actually has the most believable mindset when it comes to this holiday, not being into its spirit of pranks. His grandpa and entire school, however, treat it like a major holiday, like one most people have to celebrate.  The efforts gone into the pranks even show with rampant animals in the school halls, fabricated deaths, punching gloves springing out of lockers, and more.  I’m honestly curious to know if there are people who go this far with pranking because everyone I’ve met in life has always known not to go too far with such a thing.  From an enjoyment standpoint, a lot of the pranks are honestly pretty funny, though a lot of them are also stupid and childish as well. 
This is especially true for the pranks Helga pulls on Arnold.  While this seems in line with her usual treatment of him, her pranks on Arnold feel wrong and hard to understand.  It becomes easy to side with Arnold when he gives in and hits Helga with a powerful prank from Grandpa.  Out of a simple gift box is a blinding light, emphasis on blinding as Helga actually goes blind because of it.  This proves my point of how pranking can get out of control, which is probably why I don’t really see that in real life. It is concerning that it only happen when straight man Arnold gets involved, but thankfully Helga’s vision restores quickly. 
In the spirit of April Fool’s Day, she keeps this a secret for the intent of guilt tripping Arnold into being her slave/seeing eye dog.  It’s a lot like how she got him to serve her in “Beaned” only without any sort of charm.  Because it’s made clear that she’s faking being blind, how Helga deliberately makes Arnold tending to her difficult feels very discomforting and wrong.  Their relationship is supposed to be much stronger than this.  Worst of all, she shows delight in torturing him when she’s all by herself.  It’s like the fact that she’s rude to him a lot means she’s a standard bully to him without regard to any sort of depth to her behavior the series has continuously shown.  Disregard for development is something I find very hard to accept, especially from a show as strong as this. 
For that, when an intimate moment is set up for Arnold and Helga, it’s hard to feel happy for them like it usually is. You just feel nothing because of how Helga’s doing all this for tortures sake instead of love. It’s much more satisfying when it’s discovered that Helga was faking blindness the whole time and Arnold prepares the ultimate retaliation.  Almost as if it’s a way to turn Helga’s infatuations against her, he holds her captive in an intense tango.  Then with the aid of Sid and Stinky’s April Fools prank gone wrong, the climax stands out a lot staging wise with a pool opening up for everyone to fall into.  It’s a mildly humorous end to a prank-fueled special, even if it is at the cost of many of the series strengths.

Despite a few solid comedic moments from the April Fools’ pranks, it feels off that a show as mature as this would make a huge deal out of a holiday like this.  Going against the depth of major characters only makes the experience worse and gives a desperate impression of looking for ideas.  Still, I’m not dense enough to overlook the few fun moments from the pranks, so this isn’t exactly one of the worst works of the show, but definitely one of the most mixed.
C-

The Ranking

1.      Arnold Visits Arnie

2.      Married

3.      Chocolate Boy

4.      Beaned

5.      Helga’s Locket

6.      The Racing Mule

7.      Eugene, Eugene!

8.      On the Lam

9.      Ghost Bride

10.  Grandpa’s Packard

11.  Ernie in Love

12.  Rhonda Goes Broke

13.  Big Bob’s Crisis

14.  Timberly Loves Arnold

15.  Sid and Germs

16.  Family Man

17.  Phoebe Breaks a Leg

18.  Rich Guy

19.  Principal Simmons

20.  Harold vs Patty

21.  Fishing Trip

22.  Sid the Vampire Slayer

23.  Old Iron Man

24.  Gerald’s Game

25.  A Day in the Life of a Classroom

26.  Suspended

27.  Stuck in a Tree

28.  Big Sis

29.  April Fool’s Day

30.  Gerald vs Jamie O

31.  New Bully on the Block

32.  Phoebe’s Little Problem

33.  Curly’s Girl

34.  Bag of Money

 

 
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the last episode of Season 5, a major episode looking into the full background of Arnold's parents, their marriage, their birth of Arnold, and exactly why they left him.


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

11 comments:

  1. Whoa... harsh! Not what I expected.
    And yet, your points are all well argued and yeah, I would agree with a lot of them even if they don't take away from my overall enjoyment of the episode. It does indeed feel like one of the more... nihilistic HA! stories, if that's the right word? Structure wise it's a retread of 'Beaned' but with one big difference... no one really learns anything this time. And after no one learns anything, the ending of the episode doesn't really feel like a proper ending, and it all just abruptly comes to a sudden stop. You would think there would be some consensus at the end about April Fools Day pranks, and where the line should be drawn between fun and mean spiritedness... but no. Arnold throws Helga into a pool, she pulls him in, everyone else pushes each other in and then the episode just trails off from there.
    I will say that for whatever else it's lacking, this episode does get a lot of laughs out of me. Everything from Grandpa and Grandma's antics, and especially Helga's treatment of Arnold even if it's overtly mean and childish has a lot of well executed gags.
    And on the note of Helga's treatment of Arnold... while the episode may be lacking in terms of its overall structure and delivery of its (nonexistent) morals, the subtext of the whole story is the most interesting part. Helga has told Arnold the truth by this point, and since he basically pretended that it never happened I get why she's ramping up her abuse towards him, and similarly why he finally snaps in that tango scene.
    I suppose more interesting than the episode itself is the story behind it... similarly to 'The Journal' this episode came about when the series was basically on hold, and it felt like the end was nigh... and as Craig Bartlett described the making of the last two episodes the overall vibe in them is akin to 'gallows humor,' since the team was basically facing the death of the series and were coping with it by being extra smartassy with their humor. That same kind of humor comes through in 'The Journal' too, which is just one of several reasons that episode is kind of a miracle with how great it managed to be... I would assume I'm not jumping the gun in presuming that one may just dethrone 'Arnold Visits Arnie' this season. Either way, I look forward to your analysis.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well I'm glad you have fun with it. Personally, I could probably take Helga's treatment of Arnold better if there wasn't emphasis on her enjoying making him suffer when she's all alone. Even if she has a believable reason for ramping up her abuse towards him, I don't see why she still can't fawn over him from afar.

      Delete
    2. A little more context would've helped, but I think the idea is at this point in the series she's trying to convince everyone, herself included, that she really DOES hate him. She confessed everything, laid a big wet sloppy kiss on his lips, and then he weaseled out of reciprocating so I get her motivation because by this point she probably doesn't think he feels the same. But yes, they could have underlined her ongoing struggle to convince herself that she hates him just a little better.

      Delete
    3. You pretty much nailed it. Just add even the least bit context that Helga's trying to convince even herself she still hates Arnold and everything will be better.

      Delete
    4. I can think of maybe two instances in the entire series however where they actually reference something that happened in a previous episode... Gerald once made a few callbacks to some 'miraculous' things Arnold did in the past and Helga told Dr. Bliss about her gum shrine... that's about all I can think of. The unwritten rule of the HA! universe for the most part seems to be that you don't make callbacks.

      Delete
  2. You gonna review the movies this week too

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a SIGNIFICANT step down from the other holiday specials this was.

    ReplyDelete
  4. On a side note, I loved the reference homage to It's A Wonderful Life when the gym floor opened up to reveal the pool and everyone jumped in it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Boy, you either grew up in an uptight neighborhood or you never had the chance to be a kid if your April's Fools were as dull as you described. Even in Singapore, kids around here were pranking each other, albeit not to the exaggerated extent in the cartoon.

    ReplyDelete
  6. In regards to Helga's behavior though, I agree with you there in that she was abusive and a bully. But then again, I've never liked Helga and always found her to be a bully even if she had a supposedly justifiable reason for acting that way (a reason I never found to be justifiable at all despite the fans' claiming otherwise).

    ReplyDelete