User Reviews

She then quite literally chokes on her victory! This was the first in an arc of winning episodes that dealt with Helga's stormy relationship with her beautiful and overachieving older sister Olga, and this was always my favourite one. There are many touches to it that are so great and funny, and I always loved it a lot. Helga's so hysterically mean the way she relishes the moment after sabotaging her sister's grade and waits for her to discover the B+ with this creepy grin on her face as she's eating soup in a really gross way! And it makes me laugh how she keeps jumping in to steal the gifts that Big Bob buys to cheer Olga up, and how Bob keeps giving her this suspicious look every time she does it! And it's another awesomely mean-spirited moment of comedy when it appears that Helga may actually feel bad for a second about what she's done before she slams the door on her sister's tears! And Olga really was such a baby though, she may have been a genuinely sweet and nice person, but she definitely couldn't handle even the tiniest little hint of failure on her perfect record. And she even had to be depressed in an overdone way, appearing to suffer a mental breakdown over one slightly negative grade and lying in a pit of abject despair with the epic Mozart's Requiem in D Minor playing in the background! I always found it one of the funniest ever gags in the series how it seems that the music is simply going with the story until Helga unexpectedly switches off the stereo! And Helga's not so bad at heart, she eventually does the right thing when she sees how it's also having a negative impact on her parents, as well as a little gentle conscience-pressuring from Arnold at school as well as in one bizarre dream that features melting clocks! I like how they touch upon Olga's point of view when she tells Helga how it's not as easy being 'perfect' as she thinks it is, and how having to constantly live up to that image puts a lot of pressure on her, and the sisterly moment the two share as the story draws to a close is really nice and not overdone. I love how the colour scheme of the two characters changes to a most cool shade of blue for a second as they smile at each other. I always took that as a visual meaning for - you know that term? True blue! Both stories are great, but I love the first much more. Sally's Comet's good too though, I like the opening sequences where everyone's eating "Sugar-Chunk Cereal" to get enough tokens to send for a telescope, and Arnold and Gerald are then waiting forever for the package to arrive. I've send for stuff for years, the anticipation really is fun when you're a little kid! It's a really sweet and humbling tone how it shows Granpa's memories of the comet as a boy, and how they all do everything they can to get the city to turn out the lights so that the "Once in a lifetime event!" can be seen before it's too late! Great story in this one. However, comets do not go past that way! Thanks to this story, I always thought they did until I so one once. I think it may have been Hally Bop, which the comet that appears in this is an obvious take on. Anyway it sure didn't whizz past, in fact it didn't appear to move at all, it just looked like a bigger star with a glittery tail in the night sky that gradually faded after a few weeks. I wasn't impressed. What a classic show this is. "Twenty-three skedoo!"