Review of Hey Arnold!

I always loved this show, it could be so heartfelt and funny, sometimes both at the same time, and it balanced between the two very easily. It could always make me smile or laugh, watching it nowadays always gets the nice kind of nostalgia going with me. It was deeper than your average animated series and had a sense of humour and wit that could appeal to either kids or adults, and it was never preachy about its morals or talked down to its young target audience. I first ever watched it when I was still in little school and I could instantly relate to Hey Arnold a lot more because it was mostly a show just about kids. Arnold was one such kid living in the big city with his kooky storytelling grandpa and his lively, adventure-loving and slightly nutty grandma, and it all centred on the everyday crazy adventures big and small and crisis that he and his friends very often stumbled into in their everyday lives. Arnold was the type of person that would do almost anything to help out anybody and who tries to see the best in seemingly the worst people and will always try to fix a situation peacefully. In fact in one cynical episode the kids all sat down with Arnold and tried to psycho-analyse why he was so nice all the time. Didn't like that one. My favourite episode is "Snow" Besides Arnold, the other character that you learn the most about and who gets the most development is Helga Pataki, a perpetually scowling tough-talking little girl with a huge chip on her shoulder who's always deliberately annoying and embarrassing Arnold, but who secretly loves and dotes on him a little too much and even once had a scary gross shrine in his image hidden in her closet for a while until her mother threw it out! She may act nasty but on the inside she's really a sweet poetic person and I think that Arnold could tell that sometimes. A lot of the best episodes are the ones that focus on Arnold and Helga forced together and having to learn to get along better, or when Helga is forced to go through heck in order to prevent Arnold discovering her secret. I also love all the episodes that have Helga's overachieving older sister Olga in them. "Helga on the Couch" is a brilliant episode because it explains why Helga became such an angry person and why she obsesses over Arnold so much. I've rarely seen another series that had characters that you could grow so emotionally attached to. I love the look that the show had, especially the backgrounds, which always looked so beautifully bright and rich. The great urban visual style that the show had gave it an authentic atmosphere of being set in a big very New York-like city. The first season is my favourite because it had most of the magical episodes that made me really love the show and take it to heart. Comedy, drama, adventure and a slice of life, it was a show that reflected on our childhoods and that tried to teach us life lessons in little ways, and it was a show that really stuck with you, you could really warm yourself by it. It's timelessly classic and precious to me and I feel richer for having known and loved it back when I was a kid.