Stinky Goes
Hollywood
While nearly all of the characters are likable and have good
development, some have much less likability than others. You can still enjoy them fine, but they’re
overall not that special. Take Stinky
for example. From what we’ve seen of him
in the show thus far, the only noteworthy thing about his character is that he
has country-like mannerisms with a Southern drawl to his voice and not being
very bright in school. These parts of
his character are enjoyable, but if that’s all there is to Stinky, then he’s
not all that interesting.
What he goes through in this cartoon does make a good attempt to make
something more of him though.
The kids
of the neighborhood get a chance to stardom when a director comes offering
auditions for one of them to be the next spokesman for his product, Yahoo
soda. Everyone is
excited to try out, but Stinky is in no hurry as a monologue on how he feels
like he’s not good at anything shows. At
the very least, Stinky starts out this cartoon with a relatable plight and
being pushed to go along with the Yahoo tryouts appears to get him over it. Out of all the different distinct auditions,
Stinky’s unenthused to-the-point delivery of the soda’s tagline is what
impresses the director the most.
It’s crazy to see how big Stinky becomes for simply advertising a soda in
such a quick time. That said, the many
commercial spots where Stinky advertises the soda are rather amusing to
see. They place Stinky in various
scenarios like a farm, a boxing ring, and a classy library, and they stand out
for the unique setup of having a simple country kid delivering the greatness of
such a popular product. Even better is
that unlike a common trope where a character acts like a total bigshot upon entering
stardom, Stinky is simply happy that he found something he’s good at
and is on good terms with his friends in spite of having commercial-filming
mostly on his mind. It’s a nice break
from the typical clichés which helps break the stereotype that people become
jerks just because they’re famous stars.
Seriously, you can’t say that for all people who make it to stardom, so
why strive to make celebrities look bad?
Everything changes when Stinky catches the director talking about him,
saying that he’s the stupidest kid he’s ever seen yet is so famous and making
him a lot of money. At this point, the
way to feel about this cartoon becomes conflicting. It’s easy to feel for Stinky when he finds
out the director thinks lowly of him despite being so famous and that he’s no
different from the dumb kid he started out as.
At the same time, it does feel like Stinky’s overreacting. He may be stupid, but that’s how he’s supposed
to act to tie into the product he’s meant to sell. Plus, no one’s even laughing at him for
acting stupid. If anything, people he
passes by react to him with admiration and clear love for what he does, so that
should be reassuring to his true self.
Instead, Stinky is too put down by the director’s comments towards him,
and choses to quit and turn down a contract that could get $1,000,000 for him
and his family. This decision could be
seen as good for Stinky choosing what’s good for him, but it’s not convincing
enough that being seen as stupid when advertising a product is a bad thing, so
it’s not all that satisfying that we go back to the status quo in the end in
spite of Stinky feeling better about finding his true purpose.
There’s still some good entertaining bits
from Stinky’s brief moments of fame and his relatable conflict and how it
subverts expected tropes, but it’s still pretty flawed in how it tells the
story. 7/10
Olga Gets
Engaged
A major cause of Helga’s mean exterior is her hard home life with
an authoritative dad, a dazed implied alcoholic mom, and an overachieving
sister named Olga. In fact, Olga’s great
success in practically everything is a huge cause for Helga’s neglect, which
makes it impossible for her to feel happy whenever Olga comes home. To give her some depth, Olga’s first appearance did indicate that she pushes herself to be so successful due to
pressure from her parents. While this aspect is hardly touched upon with Olga
flaunting her accomplishments with no hesitation, this and several cartoons to
follow feature some extension to it with her trying to bond with her baby
sister.
Olga’s story this time is that
she’s met a cute guy named Doug and, despite only knowing him for a few weeks,
she plans on marrying him. Big Bob and
Miriam are hesitant of this, in the process showing some problematic aspects of
their own marriage when Miriam warns Olga not to make the same mistake she
made. Helga sees this as a good opportunity to stop Olga from infringing on
her own life. In a way, Olga does get
time for sibling bonding with her and Helga working to get herself and Doug
together, even if Helga’s just using it to sabotage her, but as the cartoon
goes on, they actually bond in interesting ways.
While Helga sets things up for Olga to elope with Doug, she finds him conversing
with Big Bob and Miriam. While Doug wins
them over, Helga notices that each conversation has a completely different
story, set of interests, and life goal for Doug. In other words, Doug is a liar and a mooch
just making himself look amazing to get a good-looking young woman like Olga. The revealed truth about Doug brings an
important virtue of life for anyone regarding knowing what someone is like
before getting involved with said person.
That said, because of her frustrations of being upstaged by Olga, Helga keeps
what she saw to herself, setting up Olga to have her life ruined by only saying
that Doug won their parents over.
Although Helga is shown to mostly enjoy the idea of her sister getting
hitched to a total charlatan, complete with a twisted fantasy of perfect Olga
reduced to living in a small apartment while her parents belittle her and
praise Helga, the heart to her character buried within shines through in the
end. After Olga gives her emphatic gratitude
for her talent of judging people, Helga is so moved, her hidden love for
her sister leads her to save Olga from ending up with Doug, though an earlier
statement from Arnold about being there for your sibling was most likely a
stronger incentive. This scene
is followed up on with Helga confronting Doug, who’s in the middle of a phone
call with another woman he’s clearly intimate with, and awesomely threatens to
tell said woman about Olga unless he leaves.
The best part is that while Doug is dumbfounded that Helga’s doing this
for the older sister she’s jealous towards, Helga has no hesitation towards her
actions, proving that she knows that despite her problems with Olga, she’s
still family i.e. a part of her life, and taking care of that part is the right
thing to do. This is a major example why I
and most fans look at Helga as the most interesting and complex character in
the cast.
While Olga can be a little
much at times with her overbearing perfection and happiness, the strengths of
the story and character moments are strong enough to make this a very good
cartoon. 9/10
The Ranking
- Curly Snaps
- The Aptitude Test
- Pre-Teen Scream
- Olga Gets Engaged
- Oskar Gets a Job
- Stinky Goes Hollywood
The next Hey Arnold review covers an interesting story concept of Arnold discovering his favorite author is not the kind woman her works suggest her to be, and we're introduced to a rich kid named Lorenzo.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews, we'll look into the second episode of the second season of Voltron: Legendary Defender.
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