Hey Arnold! (1996)
First episode title: Downtown as Fruits / Eugene's Bike
How familiar with the show am I?: I watched some of it as a kid, including this specific episode (or at least the first segment), but I don't remember much of it.
Is this the first episode?: There was a separate pilot episode, but it was later remade as an episode of the actual show, which is a clear indication that the pilot doesn't count.
Arnold is a kind young boy with a very weirdly shaped head, nicknamed "football head" by those who like to insult him. He has a best friend called Gerald, and there's this girl called Helga who bullies Arnold but is secretly in love with him. Also this is one of those shows where all the children are voiced by actual children, which is nice.
The opening sequence is the most nostalgic part for me. Arnold and his male friends, and Helga and her female friends, both stride along the streets of the city like they own them, while she repeatedly calls out his name. Arnold's appearance really is bizarre - as well as the football-shaped head, he has a tiny hat in between his tufts of hair, and he's often mistaken for wearing a kilt because his shirt extends way past the bottom of his sweater.
This is one of those shows with two shorts per episode, so we start with the first half, "Downtown as Fruits", which is the part I remember watching as a kid. It starts with Arnold surfing, but we quickly see he's doing so on a beach that has various dinosaurs on it, revealing that we're in his imagination. The music sounds like an imitation of Miserlou, and the dinosaurs are nicely drawn considering how briefly they're seen.
But Arnold is just daydreaming, and as he resurfaces, we see he's ruining what is quickly revealed to be a rehearsal for a play about food. Helga is the play's director, and she seems to be enjoying bossing everyone around. To me, Helga sounds more like a little kid than everyone else. She's apparently 9 and was being played by an 11-year-old, but there are lines where she seems to be aiming younger.
Helga: But I don't wanna just hear your lines. I wanna hear what's in your souls!
She continues with the typical diva director talk, asking people their motivations and such, and threatens them with "old Betsy", aka her left fist. To me, Betsy is kind of an old lady name - I had expected her to come up with something more threatening!
We transition to late in the evening, when Arnold leaves his house. There is a running gag, seen even in the opening, where he opens his front door to leave and a whole bunch of animals dash out, accompanied by a cat squeal. But that's not the most important thing on screen at this time, because Arnold, if you didn't already know how this goes, is dressed as a banana. Big banana outfit on his body, and little banana shoes. Of course, he looks ridiculous. And he walks downstairs to the street, where best friend Gerald is in a similar strawberry costume.
After a rant from Gerald about how he'd rather be anything other than a fruit, suggesting he'd like to be a cream soda (mmm! cream soda!), the two boys get on a bus, where everyone stares at them. The characters in this show have an interesting mix of designs, but very few look as obviously strange as Arnold. As they grumble about how embarrassing this is, someone pulls a cord to stop the bus at another stop. The cord is a design I've never seen - it runs the length of the bus, presumably manually ringing a bell at the driver's end - but apparently this is common in some places. (Over here in London, England, you push a button to ask for the bus to stop.)
Something I noticed that much more clearly in the bus scene: Arnold's head obviously looks weird no matter what, but in that banana outfit it's like whichever side is farthest from us sticks out from the costume and the other doesn't. They managed to take a weird design and make it even weirder!
The two of them are worried about getting even more embarrassed when they have to go on stage in these silly outfits, when Gerald suggests just not pulling the cord for their stop and missing the play. Arnold is unsure, because it would mess up the play for everyone, but Gerald points out Helga hasn't been nice to them either, so why should they do this for her? Arnold, conflicted, reaches up to pull the cord anyway, and there is a tense moment where his hand is hovering close to it and Arnold is sweating and Gerald is biting his nails... and then Arnold sits back down and lets the bus go past the school.
Arnold: Well... maybe one more stop would be okay.
Back at the school, everyone is ready for the play - Helga is now a carton of milk, and there are also various beans, meats, and other foods around. There's a banner above the stage, titling the play "The Four Food Groups", although it seems to me like they describe more than four kinds of foods as cast members throughout the episode. Helga's lecturing everyone again on how their parts should be played - meats are apparently "lusty and powerful"! - when she notices that the fruits aren't there, and a girl dressed as cheese tells her they never showed up. Helga screams Arnold's name to the sky - looks like Gerald doesn't deserve a mention!
Cut to Arnold thinking he heard something (heh), before asking Gerald where they're going, but Gerald says it doesn't matter because they can just get the bus right back and "the journey is the destination", which is something he heard in a movie. But then the bus stops - and they're at the depot. Apparently this means they can't just get the bus back, which I had to have explained to me - if I got to the end of the line on the buses I take, I'd be at a "bus station" and there'd be other buses waiting to go the other way, but here it indicates there are no more buses for the night, so I guess it would have turned straight around otherwise. But why is a school play staged so late that there are no more buses before it's even over? And if this is the last bus, how were they planning to get home in the first place, even before they changed their plans?
Arnold: Does this mean...?
Gerald: Yeah. We're stuck.
Arnold: Downtown.
Gerald: As fruits.
They said the thing! Gerald's first idea is to call his parents. For the average kid, we are pre-mobile phone era, so he needs to use the nearest payphone... which is broken.
Arnold mentions they should take their fruit costumes off, and Gerald says he can't because he's not wearing anything underneath - that was the one joke in particular that I remembered seeing as a kid, which is why I know I at least saw this episode. Gerald starts panicking that they're stuck downtown in these costumes without any money, which is weird - how was he going to use the payphone? And did the bus not require a fare?
Anyway, just after Gerald screams that they have no money, a guy passing in a car tosses them a bag full of cash, telling them to just take it, and Arnold remarks that people downtown are friendly - after they leave, two adult guys dressed as a banana and a strawberry show up, saying that "he's two minutes late". Obviously the cash was for them, although I'm not sure how they can say the other guy is two minutes late when they've only just got there themselves!
Arnold and Gerald go to "Roscoe's Funky Rags" to get some cool new clothes and throw the fruit outfits in a nearby skip - Arnold keeps the shoes from the banana outfit as they go with his new outfit - and then the two of them stop to get food from "Gino's Souvlaki Shack". That looks like just the sort of place I'd like to get food from. Mmm! Falafel! This is making me hungry.
The two of them joke about whether souvlaki covers all the food groups, which triggers a cut to how the play is going - the meats are singing about what they are like. The steak is played by Harold, a stereotypical bully-type character who isn't otherwise relevant in either segment of this episode. The ham is played by Eugene, who we'll be seeing much more of in the second half!
We must be at the stage where the fruits are supposed to show up, because Helga signals for the two meats to stretch out their act, which is a disaster. Helga starts ranting about how hard she prepared for her role as milk (nothing but dairy products for two weeks!) and how much she hates Arnold - until she's sure no-one is in earshot, at which point she gets out her love-heart-shaped picture of Arnold and starts talking about how much she loves him. It's seriously over the top and a very memorable part of her character.
Then we encounter another memorable, but weird, running joke. This character called Brainy (I had to look up his name as it's not mentioned here), who wears glasses and has a Bart Simpson haircut, shows up just to breathe heavily behind Helga, like he's some kind of stalker. Helga punches him out, and that's how the scene ends, no other joke involved. It seemed weird as a kid and it seems weird now.
Arnold and Gerald's next stop is Ernie's Pool Hall, where the two of them dance around on the pool table, play pool by having Gerald hold Arnold up to the table (they're too short to play properly), and then Arnold makes everyone in the place cheer by ordering sodas for everyone. You'd think most of the people here would be drinking alcohol, but I suppose a free drink is a free drink!
But guess who else is in the bar? It's the other two guys dressed as fruits - yeah, it wasn't just a random gag! - along with the guy who was supposed to give them the money, who has now learned he gave it to the wrong banana and strawberry. He spots Arnold's banana shoes - yeah, that wasn't a random gag either! - and Arnold and Gerald quickly have to run out of the bar. Luckily, the other fruits and their accomplice crash into the bartender who's carrying the sodas, hindering their pursuit.
The two boys flee into "Zamboni Jones' Psychic Palace", where they encounter a very large man in a stereotypical fortune teller outfit, eating a Cheetos-like snack food. Like Helga and Harold, Zamboni has a monobrow - I do wonder why that's such a common facial feature in this show. Perhaps they are all descendants of some monobrowed equivalent of Genghis Khan.
To prove his psychic credentials, the man proves himself able to tell what Arnold and Gerald's names are, after they've already told him their names. Still, they tell him they're in trouble, and he tells them it's their karma, and to think about whether they've wronged anyone - we see them imagine how upset Helga is, and then Gerald says he can't think of anyone. I'm on his side - Helga is mean! Arnold is too nice, though, and insists they have to go back to her to fix their problems, and they rush off, not hearing Zamboni call out to them:
Zamboni: Hey! Where's my 3.50? I should have foreseen this.
I paused on the next shot and happened to see a couple of posters in the background on the street, advertising a circus on June the 14th. Every time I see a not strictly necessary detail in the background of a cartoon, I'm reminded of how much work goes into the art on these things. Someone was asked to draw a city street, and they sat down and populated that background with all the details that a city street might have, even though that background is visible for no longer than two seconds. Making a quality cartoon must be tough.
They hail a taxi using a wad of the cash, get it to stop at the clothes shop so they can retrieve their fruit outfits, and speed away just as the other banana and strawberry get arrested. I wonder what the charge is going to be, if they don't have the (presumably dirty) money on them?
They also stop by a family with a broken down car to hand them most of the rest of the cash, resulting in the mother repeating Arnold's line from earlier about how people downtown are friendly. I love when a seemingly one-off joke comes back like that, and this episode keeps on giving in that respect. They arrive at the school and chuck the rest of the money into the taxi as they run inside.
Things aren't going well with the play - Helga and her cheese friend are in tears, and the crowd are throwing vegetables at the stage. At a school play! Those look like adults in the audience, presumably parents and teachers!
Then, just as Helga takes the stage to explain why they can't continue the play, Arnold and Gerald shove her out of the way and begin their song! The unseen pianist for the play is good at keeping up with all these unexpected events, as they're always able to match the action even when something is going wrong! The fruits and all the other food groups sing about how great fruits are, as Helga grumbles and admires Arnold all at once, and the song ends on the rather vacuous line "This is the end of our play!"
The second and final segment of the episode is "Eugene's Bike". We get another sequence of Arnold daydreaming, which makes me wonder if every half-episode starts that way - he even gets snapped out of it by the phrase "Hey Arnold" each time, which would explain the show's title.
Arnold is in an explorer outfit, in a jungle, surrounded by scary creatures as he tries to catch a butterfly. There's a particularly cool shot of one animal morphing into others:
But in real life, Arnold and Gerald are at a pedestrian crossing, the green man is showing, and they need to cross right now! Come on Arnold, spacing out is what your lessons are for. Speaking of which, they arrive at school, and encounter what Gerald calls the "dork parade" - a kid called Billy shows them his albino worms, a girl called Sheena has grown a scab that looks like Texas, and Brainy offers them "nougat" that looks like a ball of fluff with marshmallows sticking out of it.
Then Eugene (the ham from earlier), who's implied to also be one of the dorky kids, shows up on a really cool bike:
The only thing majorly dorky about Eugene's design is that, whenever you see him from behind, he always has a visible wedgie. Regardless, everyone is very impressed by the bike, and Eugene has an enthusiastic little gush about how much he's always wanted a bike like this. Like how I like to enthusiastically gush about cartoons! I would be considered a dork at this school but I don't care. He also clips a baseball card to the wheel - remember this for later.
Gerald: I guess every dork has his day.
As the bell for class rings, Eugene padlocks his bike to the bike rack, but the lock immediately comes off again after he leaves. Then Arnold stops by the bikes to tie his shoelace back up. I could already tell something was going to happen with the bike here (the episode title was a big clue!), but for some reason my first thought was that Arnold would be tempted to steal it or something. Nope! Arnold balances his books on the nearest bike, it tips over, and all the other bikes get knocked down like dominoes. They all stay on the rack, except Eugene's, which goes flying into the air, lands in the road, and immediately gets run over by a street sweeper!
The other students hadn't finished pouring into the school yet, and Eugene pushes past them all to get to his bike, incredibly upset, as Arnold can only apologise. It looks for a second as if Eugene is about to attack or yell at Arnold, but he just shouts up into the sky instead. I get the feeling that Eugene is just too nice to get angry at anyone.
A man I assume is the school janitor takes the bike to the trash - why would he do that? Surely Eugene would at least take the bike home to see if it could get fixed? Then Arnold and Gerald discuss how this sort of thing always happens to Eugene and the other geeky kids, while Billy is looking for one of his worms, not knowing that Helga has just stepped on it. That's basically the only thing Helga does in this segment.
Later, it's dark, it's raining, and it must be the end of school for the day. Arnold dives into the rubbish to retrieve the bike, and then, at home, goes about attempting to repair it. He seems to cut through a lot of things you wouldn't cut through when fixing a bike, and looks quite crazy while doing it!
Then he and Eugene are outside, the sky is bright and there's a rainbow, and the bike looks good as new! Eugene sets off on it, and then a pig named Abner - I suppose one of the flood of animals that comes out of Arnold's house when he opens the door - shows up with the brake cable. Arnold, you fucked up. Eugene goes speeding towards a car door, tries to stop, the handlebars come off, and the next thing we know, Eugene is in hospital. You know, normally the stereotype of accidents happening to dorky kids is because of their own clumsiness, but for Eugene it seems he just as often falls victim to something Arnold has accidentally done!
Case in point, Arnold shows up to the hospital, and in the process of trying to give Eugene a box of chocolates he accidentally hits a lever that lifts Eugene up into the air by his damaged limbs! Even then, Eugene doesn't get angry with him, although he does seem to want Arnold to stay at a distance after that last incident.
Arnold says he'll make everything up to Eugene, and this next accident is something neither he nor Eugene even becomes aware is his fault - he rushes out, slamming the door, and this makes a digit on Eugene's room number rotate, turning 339 into 336. Which means, when two doctors show up to perform a tonsillectomy in room 336...
Later, Arnold is in his room, thinking about all the times in their younger years that Arnold has caused misfortune for Eugene: in kindergarten, they're on a see-saw and Arnold gets off, causing Eugene to fall off; a young Helga tries to get Arnold to touch a crab and he bats it away, and it lands on Eugene and pinches him:
And in some other class, Arnold is making macaroni art while Eugene makes a small cake, and Eugene goes to eat a bit of the icing from the cup and accidentally eats some of Arnold's glue instead. What sort of class, even for little kids, has some kids making macaroni art and some making apparently edible cake? Anyway, all this makes Arnold declare he will "give that dork his day".
So Arnold shows up at Eugene's house, Eugene tells Arnold about the hospital accidentally removing his tonsils, and this next exchange made me burst out laughing:
Arnold: That's terrible.
Eugene: No, not really. You don't need them anyway. I kind of wish they would've left my spleen, though.
Arnold apologises for all the stuff from the flashback, none of which Eugene remembers, and then Arnold says he'll give Eugene a full day of fun where nothing bad happens, starting first thing tomorrow morning. Given that it seems like bad things happen to Eugene even if Arnold isn't there, it seems like quite a hard promise to keep!
The next day is shown in the form of a montage. First they go to a baseball game, where Spuds McGee, the player from Eugene's baseball card. Is that name a reference to anyone? Predictably, Eugene tries to catch a ball that flies into the crowd, and gets hit on the head by it:
He gains another bandage out of that. They have some fun in a park, chase some birds and stuff - most of what they're doing does just seem fun! Then they buy hot dogs from a stand and Eugene chokes on his. I love that the hot dog guy just already has a Heimlich manoeuvre reference booklet around, like this happens constantly, so Arnold is able to save Eugene this time! Although after the hot dog comes out of his mouth, it rebounds off a sign and hits him in the eye. Still, he didn't die!
Then it's night-time, and Eugene is throwing up off a bridge because they took a ferry ride and he gets motion sickness. He says it's not Arnold's fault because he wouldn't have known that - but Eugene would have known that, so he shouldn't have got on!
Arnold tries to apologise for everything that's gone wrong today, but Eugene says he loved it, and starts listing all the wonderful things they've done! He mentions the baseball game, and he definitely pronounces the baseball player's name "Studs" McGee instead of Spuds (which was displayed on-screen at the game, so we know the spelling). He gets on a bus, telling Arnold this is one of the best days he's ever had, just as the door of the bus closes on his already bandaged arm...
As the bus departs (and we continue to hear Eugene's voice, asking the driver to open the door), the baseball card floats down in front of Arnold. It visibly says Spuds in this shot too. Arnold is about to go racing after him... but by now he's learned what sort of thing happens, and says he'll give it to Eugene tomorrow, as the credits start to play.
A funny show! I can see why it was so popular. It's also funny how Arnold and Gerald stranded and dressed as fruits is one of the images that stands out from the episode, given how short that part ends up being.