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Helga’s
Parrot
The things Helga puts herself through to keep her love for
Arnold secret are some of the funniest and most imaginative moments of the
entire series. They often tend to put
her in out-of-the-ordinary places just to spy on people which lead to crazy unusual outcomes. This cartoon features some of the most
out-there moments of Helga fighting to keep her love secret, even working in a
touch of dark comedy.
She comes home to
find that Big Bob has brought home a parrot he’s training to promote his beeper
store. However, the parrot is too
annoying as he repeats every little thing Big Bob says as parrots typically do. In typical neglectful fashion, Big Bob dumps
the parrot in Helga’s room where things quickly get interesting. Helga gets a
great idea for an Arnold poem, and thinking she’s alone, she writes it down
while saying it out loud. The parrot
hears it all, and Helga is horrified to find that it keeps saying the poem
without any hesitation. In fact, it
almost feels like the parrot is trying to make her crazy deliberately from how
he looks at her as he says the poem no matter how she demands it to stop.
The parrot is later let loose when Big Bob
has enough of him too, but since he’s still saying the poem, Helga has to keep
it from revealing her secret by chasing it down and killing it. The main character of the cartoon is
responding to her problem with murder.
That’s an almost surreal setup, especially from a family show which you
wouldn’t think would go to these lengths.
Normally resorting to murder would not be a good move for likability.
However, considering that this is a pesky animal who can’t be reasoned with
Helga’s dealing with, it’s more acceptable than normal.
Anyway, the parrot happens to end up at
Arnold’s boarding house who takes it in and showers it with kindness. It should be noted that at one point, Helga
ends up face to face with Arnold and has the perfect opportunity to say that
she’s looking for her parrot, but for some reason doesn’t. I honestly don’t get why she wouldn’t say the
truth. Her love would still be a secret
if she did. Thankfully, that head
scratching direction leads to a collection of imaginative scenarios and comedic
moments.
Helga goes undercover to almost
stalker levels to watch over the parrot.
She ends up buying, of all things, a monitor lizard to cover why she’s
followed Arnold to the pet store.
There’s awkwardness she causes for Arnold and Lila that actually works
given the tone of the story. She has to spend
the night spying from behind Arnold’s couch which includes eating bird seed for
dinner and a risqué moment of watching Arnold undress. It’s a sequence of funny moments all in the
name of what Helga has to do to hide her crush.
It all results in a surprising end at show and tell which Arnold brings
the parrot to. It also makes use of the
lizard from earlier who settles Helga’s problem once and for all…by eating the
parrot whole. Once again, this is the
kind of dark humor that’s surprising to find in a family show. True, bigger animals tend to eat smaller
animals in real life, but we hardly ever see that onscreen. This makes the fact that this cartoon goes
that extra mile all the more impressive.
It’s always a fun time watching Helga’s extreme lengths to protect her
true feelings of Arnold from getting out to the public. Her ordeal with that parrot is no different.
A+
Chocolate
Turtles
Once again, we have very imaginative and out-of-the-ordinary
ways of telling a story. On the surface,
it’s a fairly simple one of Arnold and Gerald selling candy to make money to
benefit themselves, but it’s executed with interesting moments all throughout. They’re mostly found in the challenges that
stand in their way and how they attempt to get around them. However, it does come with a few unfortunate
implications.
When Arnold and Gerald
invest in selling the candy, chocolate turtles, it also comes with paying to
join the scout troop responsible for them, the Campfire Lass. Since they show no interest in joining a
Scottish scout troop, their plan is to say that they’re not going to join after getting their money. It’s a pretty shady move, but I
can picture a lot of kids their age pulling crazy stunts like that to get rich
quick. Then again, it doesn’t make them
look too clever for not considering how the Campfire Lass may feel when they
say they paid the membership fee for nothing.
Speaking of not looking so clever, Arnold and Gerald carelessly leave
the innumerable boxes of chocolate turtles alone just so they can watch a TV
show. Now, this normally would be
harmless. Given how the cartoon is structured with moments leading to
interesting outcomes though, there’s a direction that gets them to act fast
after leaving their supplies unattended.
Gerald’s little sister Timberly comes and takes interest in the
chocolate turtles, and Gerald’s too distracted by the show to firmly state
she’s not supposed to have any. Getting
the impression that it is ok to have some, Timberly ends up eating all the
chocolate turtles, depriving Arnold and Gerald of what could’ve made them rich
quick.
Because of Timberly, Arnold and
Gerald find the only way to still be able to sell the candy is to make homemade
chocolate turtles themselves. It’s an
unusual approach to solve the problem and that they even have all the means to
do it, but that just adds to the cartoon’s appeal. It also fits the usual determined spirit that
usually comes from problems Arnold has a hand in solving. There’s a lot of labor to it and it’s an
unprecedented practice, but it’s inspirational in showing that if your heart is
in what you set out to do, it can be done.
However, even when they do replace all the chocolate turtles, they taste
bad because Timberly added a “secret ingredient,” salt. It’s at this point where Timberly is a true
detriment for causing all this trouble, and Arnold and Gerald are too conceited
to keep an eye on her. That said, this
challenge does bring another interesting direction where Arnold and Gerald have
to tell their customers they won’t be getting chocolate turtles. The catch is that they have Timberly tell
them since it’s her fault the supply is ruined. It turns out that everyone is so moved by
Timberly telling the sad story that they pay up anyway. Even for this show, it’s very far-fetched
that everyone would be touched by a little girl telling a sob story. Surely some people would be mad that they’re
not getting what they paid for. Plus,
it’s kind of messed up that Gerald would just use his genuinely sad little
sister for his own gain down to the point of dressing her in rags for a
crowd. That’s got to leave some mental
scars. At least it’s not too damaging
since Timberly is pretty cheerful afterwards and Arnold and Gerald lose all the
money they made when they tell the Campfire Lass they're not joining.
Ultimately, this is a cute cartoon with
interesting challenges making it up if you can get past the instances of
scamming and child manipulation.
A-
The Ranking
- Headless Cabbie
- Helga’s Parrot
- Oskar Can’t Read?
- Dinner for Four
- The Beeper Queen
- Stinky’s Pumpkin
- Big Gino
- Chocolate Turtles
- Friday the 13th
- Phoebe Skips
- Eugene’s Birthday
- Student Teacher
- Jamie O in Love
- Full Moon
The next Hey Arnold review returns to the cheese festival where Arnold tries to win over Lila this time, and Harold gets self-conscious about his weight.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is the third part of the "Time is Money" arc from DuckTales.
If you would like to check out other Hey Arnold reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
