Parents Day
Some people may wonder why there was so much demand for The Jungle
Movie to be made. One reason ties
into a huge mystery of what happened to Arnold’s parents. This special observes this mystery and the
emotional toll of their absence, so when the movie finally aired in 2017, it
would give a powerful sense of closure for longtime fans. The mystery’s reveal makes what we would get as
big as it is as well as serve as an amazing tribute to what makes this show so
great.
By now, Arnold has a good-hearted, optimistic kid.
However, with missing pieces of his family, even the most basic nice
characters have hidden depths as shown right at the beginning when he hears a story about one of his parents’ exciting jungle adventures from Grandpa. In addition to wanting to know what they were
like, the story also reveals the problems of being without parents for Arnold
when his class’ annual family-style field day event called Parents Tournament
Weekend arrives.
Arnold, who only has
grandparents, isn’t too keen on going knowing that everyone else has regular
parents. He’s both relatable to anyone
feeling left out for any reason, yet still greatly respects his grandparents
and the great things they can do for their ages. For the most part, this is apparent when
Arnold and his grandparents attend the first day of the tournament consisting
of a fun collection of scenes of families of many kids in the cast taking part
in various extracurricular activities. Then
during one of the games, Helga’s dad, Big Bob, who’s only in this for the
trophy, goes way too far by relentlessly calling Arnold an “orphan boy”. Through great characterization, Arnold
doesn’t flat out say that he’s hurt, but his sad expressions and lack of
motivation to do the next day of the tournament sell how lost he is without his
actual parents.
It even works on his
grandparents who put aside their eccentricities and show sincere concern. Grandpa tells him what he needs to hear, the
true story of how his parents met and what they were like. Through interactions, sharing interests, and
even saving each other, you easily get the appeal of Arnold’s parents as a
couple. The story ends with them giving
a heartfelt farewell to their infant son as they leave for another jungle
mission. The sad part is that they seem
so confident in returning, but as we know they never come back to him. The emotional weight doesn’t even stop there.
The story makes Arnold dream about how lost and scared he was as a baby without
his parents. However, the sadness is
lightened when he soon dreams about Grandpa and Grandma comforting him and
joining him for their own adventures. Even if he still feels left out without
his mom and dad, he truly is happy to have two grandparents who love him.
So the next day of the Parents Day tournament,
featuring even more exciting activities, goes a lot better for Arnold. As for Big Bob, his mean words to Arnold
grants him what he has coming for him when Grandpa ultimately beats him in the
final challenge, with the help of Helga too just to make things even more awesome and fun. The special ends with a
scene of Arnold dreaming of flying a plane like the one his parents flew which
combines his continuous optimism alongside his still apparent wonders
of if he’ll ever find his parents.
Right there that’s the shows greatest strengths. It shows just how complex even the most
seemingly basic characters are and the internal conflicts they face feel so
genuine. Yet, there’s also hope to find
true happiness which can inspire many things worth reaching the sky for. Along with fun moments during the tournament
and interesting and endearing new information on Arnold’s family, I call this
special one of the show’s absolute best works. 10/10
The Ranking
- Parents Day
- School Play
- Helga Blabs it All
- Harold the Butcher
- Cool Party
- Grandpa’s Birthday
- Crabby Author
- The Flood
- Mr. Hyunh Goes Country
- Road Trip
- Helga Vs. Big Patty
- Arnold’s Thanksgiving
- Hey Harold!
- Curly Snaps
- The Aptitude Test
- Pre-Teen Scream
- The Pig War
- Olga Gets Engaged
- Oskar Gets a Job
- Arnold and Lila
- Phoebe Takes the Fall
- Best Man
- Career Day
- Helga’s Show
- Gerald’s Tonsils
- Grand Prix
- Rich Kid
- Dangerous Lumber
- Casa Paradiso
- Arnold’s Room
- Helga and the Nanny
- Roller Coaster
- Stinky Goes Hollywood
- School Dance
- Sid’s Revenge
- Girl Trouble
- Arnold Betrays Iggy
Final Thoughts
As another look at a Hey
Arnold season comes to a close, I’m astounded by how many cartoons and
specials left such a huge impression.
It continues the show’s prominent strengths of telling stories with
mature themes designed for anyone to understand and offering lots of layers and
depth to nearly everyone in the huge cast, proving that the show has found its
niche and is on fire with proving just how great it can be. In fact, Season 3 demonstrates what this show
is good at so well, I’m inclined to call it my favorite one for this show.
One thing that sets Season 3 apart from the others is the
amount of particularly creative ideas for the stories. Rather than mostly focusing on the characters
doing a simple activity, much of what we get center on
unconventional ideas the crew has in mind and through the great
characterizations and storytelling, they all come together as highly
entertaining and impactful. There’s personality
changes from an aptitude test mix-up, Curly going mad while hitting everyone with kickballs, Arnold dealing with a crabby author, Mr. Hyunh astounding
everyone as a talented country singer, Grandpa spending his birthday week
preparing for his death, Helga stuck with her dead-beat mom in the middle of
nowhere, and more. This is the kind of
imaginative set-up that is totally tailored to the medium of animation in which
anything can happen, and the writing never has anything get too ridiculous to
not fit within the show’s world.
The
stories aren’t just creative idea-wise.
Some also provide an interesting behind-the-scenes basis such as a whole
cartoon based on Gerald getting his tonsils removed to tie into his voice actor
hitting puberty. This can also apply to
cartoons that teach messages about the truth of show business such as how our
idols aren’t always as great as their material, the importance of playing to
your strengths and avoiding selling out to stay relevant, and trying to
understand why a style of humor you don’t like can be considered funny. As it stands, the stories of this season are
some of the absolute best of the show filled with value, entertainment, and
especially great imagination.
The thing that makes the stories as great as they are is the
cast of characters.
It’s true that we’ve seen a lot of them and their personalities for two
seasons now, but as the storytelling grows accustomed to playing to the show’s
strengths, the characters stand out better than they ever did before each one
bringing a special flare to different cartoons.
There’s Curly showing how far the absolute lengths his psychotic mindset
can go, Rhonda’s judgmental habits giving her appropriate consequences to her
social life, Grandpa feeling the stress of housing eccentric boarders while
also remaining positive and caring of his grandson, Mr. Simmons striving to
stay positive when teaching even in difficult times, the list goes on.
Even minor characters have brief, yet
memorable escapades that develop their characters throughout the season. They include Coach Wittenberg learning to
choose his wife over trying to be the best, the Jolly Olly Man struggling to be
friendly with his customers while being prone to disturbing outbursts, and the
boarders like Mr. Hyunh and his aforementioned singing talents and Oskar
learning the burdens of a job, as well as the family dynamic of them
together. There are also many cartoons with
some of the most solid portrayals of bully characters that show that they
aren’t mean for the sake of it and are more complex than they let on which is a
more believable scenario. There are several plays on Harold’s soft side whether
he goes along with a test erroneously saying he’s a genius, discovering a possible career path after stealing a non-kosher ham out of mindless hunger, and forming
a strong bond with Big Patty. Speaking
of her, it’s astounding that two of the strongest cartoons go to great lengths
to show her social awkwardness and anxieties that believably fuel her not so
pleasing demeanor around others.
Of
course, Helga is the bully character who simply shines throughout the season,
further showcasing herself as the most complex member of the cast. Her usual shtick of acting mean around Arnold
only to dramatically express her huge crush on him in private continues this
season. In fact, it makes for some very
memorable cartoons such as hiding in the boarding house walls to get a tape with her confession on it, and unintentionally starting a trend of Arnold
crushing on perfect little Lila out of panic.
However, many strong entries in the season show her as the prime example
of bullies not being as mean as they seem with her bonding with Arnold over bad
Thanksgivings, going to great lengths to be by his side, even if it is in a play, and even finding the strength to help him and his family over winning
something for her blowhard dad. In a
way, Helga’s monumental moments of Season 3 also have the benefit of strengthening
a central element of the series, her relationship with Arnold with him even
suggesting that she’s not as bad as she seems at one point, which make them
stand out even more. Helga’s good side
is even strong enough to go beyond her crush with her finding the strength to
be helpful towards her mother and sister despite the burdens they have on her,
and several moments of being a very good friend to Phoebe. With the ingenious story ideas brought to
life combined with characters major and minor being fleshed out better than
ever, it’s no wonder I’ve ended up loving this season as much as I do.
With all these strengths though, there are a couple of weak
points. While
practically all the characters are fleshed out, that doesn’t mean that all the
characters turn out good. What I mean is
that some characters are fleshed out to be major hindrances on the show’s
entertainment, so when there’s a cartoon focusing on them, it’s not
particularly strong. For example, Sid
and Stinky were never that strong before, but through expanding on the very
minimal interesting traits they have, they don’t come off as very likable. Sid has lots of hyperactivity that can be
funny, but many of his starring roles make him so crazy and irrational for how
much he jumps to conclusions that it’s hard to really enjoy them. Stinky, on the other hand, tries to show some
interesting traits in his starring roles such as trying to find something he’s good at, but as usual, nothing much stands out from him apart from his dialect,
so while he’s not bad, he’s not too interesting either. However, both he and Sid tend to get some
pretty despicable moments when they’re together starring alongside another
character through threatening the appeal of Harold’s new friendship with Big Patty and initiating the frustrating conflict of the notorious “Arnold Betrays Iggy.” I’m sure the crew sees some
appeal in these characters and they’re far from the worst characters I’ve seen,
but on the whole, this season proves that cartoons with major focus on Stinky
and/or Sid are not ones to look forward to at least to me.
Other characters that prove problematic in
their appearances are Eugene, especially when he’s blind to how honestly bad certain situations are, and Lila who gets particularly cloying as an
overly-nice character devoid of the depth of her debut appearance and only
existing to be Arnold’s crush for the rest of the show’s run. These weak points could ruin the experience,
but I only bring them up for the purposes of dissecting the season as a whole,
and they’re only a few weak characters in a cast of predominantly strong and
interesting ones, and any weak cartoons are grossly outnumbered by an abundance
of strong ones. In fact, the cartoons
that are strong are so strong that they pretty much rule out any weak
ones. After all, a great show isn’t one
without flaws, but one that can still largely impress regardless of any
flaws. As a result, while I acknowledge
that there are some rough patches in the long line of cartoons, because so much
of it ranges from very good to amazing, I can forgive those patches.
Whenever I think of Hey
Arnold, the works of Season 3 stand out the most with creative story ideas and the characters being
more fleshed out than ever before. This
is all I need to say to entice you to look into this season too, so check it
out on your preferred form of media be it physical, digital, or on the air, and
see what greatness you get out of it, Football Heads.
Highly Recommended
Now that all three of the originally scheduled review sets are completed, here's the schedule for three newly planned ones appearing on this blog for the time being:
- Rocko's Modern Life Season 1: Saturdays and Sundays
- OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes Season 1: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays
- Star vs the Forces of Evil Season 2: Wednesdays and Fridays
So tomorrow, stay tuned for the next Rocko's Modern Life review. Until then:
Stay Animated Folks!
