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Description
Show: Hey Arnold!
Episode: 24B (aired as Season 2 episode 18B or 38)
Year: 1997

Writer(s): Rachel Lipman & Joseph Purdy
Director(s): Kelly James & Steve Socki

Hindsight is... funny. What can appear to be an exaggeration or a cartoonish hyperbole in one time period can be all too true to life not even half a century later. As time marches forward it feels as if life and the world of fiction intermingle at a greater capacity and what has been seen in media such as comic books or cartoons to be impossibilities or outright ridiculous notions have become true to life... and coming from a series that is supposed to come closer to our reality that can be... frightening to say the least...

Hey Arnold! is a cartoon that, beyond the exaggerated character models to give a greater sense of uniqueness to this world to show kids of all walks of life, physique and even race? Could easily have been done in live action. This is to a point that real children voiced a majority of the kids in PS 118; while not a first for animation, after all Disney's Pinocchio was done by a real 13 year old boy... the children in Hey Arnold! being voiced by children gives them a greater sense of realism. That you could meet any of these kids if you lived in the urban jungles similar to Hillwood. And when you have that level of connection, where the characters feel truly real, some plots they find themselves immersed in, when watched as a child vs as an adult many years later can easily illicit different responses.

To get the the meat of this: PS 118 is undergoing budget cuts that would, to the unanniciated make the staff of Springfield Elementary green with envy in cost-cutting higgeldy-piggledy. Teachers for example being issues a single stick of chalk to last an entire week; children being forced to share desks, chairs and books... and soon after electricity having its plug pulled... Principal Rur Wartz is a fat, pompous and uncouth man. Episodes such as "Suspended" and the infamous "Full Moon" show that he clutches to the schools bylaws like his Bible concealing a weapon. And he doesn't take kindly to any sass... I mean suspending a kid for calling you names is just... who is the child in this scenario? Well we'll see...

When the teachers on strike Wartz attempts to teach an ENTIRE SCHOOL himself akin to the "one room classrooms of yore". It is just pathetic... but it makes me laugh. So? With no alternatives Arnold and his fellow classmates are set free, told not to come back to school until the strike ends. To a child that sounds like absolute paradise don't it? Especially if you're of the kind in cartoons allowed to roam the city streets, go fishing, play baseball, hit the arcade... but if you're at all familiar with the devil, his deals always have a catch... and this one goes deeper the older you get...

Everywhere Arnold and his chums go, they find a respective teacher working at their hangout, doing what they can to earn a living wage and in a way? Still trying to impart knowledge to the children... now to a child? At least one of the 90s like I was? This would be a living nightmare! Teachers everywhere ya go, you can't escape em; they've descended upon Hillwood hangouts like locusts! But as an adult I see these teachers desperate to try and earn their daily bread, making change at the arcade, resettng bowling pins, but this is never elaborated upon due in part to the perspective being on children.

Rather than the actual cause of the strike being seen as the conflict, it's the TEACHERS and their impedance in the lives of Arnold and his pals seemingly cost-free freedom that is the issue. Made even moreso when free days off ain't free... for every day of the strike, a day is stricken from summer vacation! This demonizes the teachers and the lack of their place within a corrupt system as a massive inconvenience to the children. That the actual cause for concern, Wartz and the school board being corrupt and cutthroat is never seen as the true villain in all this.

If you've been keeping up with the news over the last... 4 years or so? Maybe you know the harshness of the world of teaching and the school system. This sort of cartoonish villainy and stubbornness Wartz has the school under cutting power and reducing the supplies to a dust bowl... almost seems quaint compared to the real world steel heel on the necks of the working man. The BRIEF manner in which the strike is depicted makes both sides seem equally petty and childish about the budget slippage of the school. How DARE Ms. Slovak complain about dwindling supplies and cost-cutting measures making her and the students miserable! Unions and protective laws exist for this very reason; I'm not the most educated regarding this sort of thing but I reccomend You watch Popular C/C's Labor in American Media YouTube series regarding how this sort of thing has been depicted over the last century in film which I'll link at the end.

The main point of the episode is that this strike is going to cut into the children's summer vacation time. Ergo, both sides of this conundrum are seen as the badguy. As an adult in 2023 watching this now? Given everything I've seen on the news regarding labor issues? ESPECIALLY regarding the education system? This is SOME OL BULLSHIT! I won't pretend that teachers and school faculty the world over are all innocent, in fact the children tend to suffer on the same level as the teachers. But the teachers in this episode don't seem very impeded by the strike in spite of their minimum wage temp Jobs. Was the economy THAT good in 1997 where you could live off being an aquarium tour guide?

This in no way devalues the plight of the children. Yes, the children are still victims of the system. After all nobody wants to go to school in the summer, especially without air conducting as Wartz says... when the children go tot talk to the teachers about the issue, we see.. NOTHING. We are told they were told offscreen it's "too complicated to explain"... BULLSHIT. We SEE with our own eyes the reaping that Wartz attempted at the start of the Episode to save money on a ghoulish level, down to boarding windows with cheap plywood after he cuts the power! As Mr. Packinham says to Arnold and Gerald, the free coffee was the ONLY perk the teacher had left; being forced to make their own coffee is seen as the ONLY crux for the teachers, a single teacher mind you.

Now, given they are only 9, I think it's adorable Arnold and Gerald think getting more coffee will solve this. But also really stupid at the same time. As Ms Slovak rants and raves like a madwoman, there's still the matter of their vacations, the supplies, bathroom breaks which... yeah... looking at this almost 30 years later, what is implied here isn't any different from the shit we have witnessed pre AND post-pandemic. Media makes jokes all the time about the low salary and benefits teachers have... but the harsh reality is these are human beings who, and this is a generalization now not factoring in the absolute shit shows I've heard tell of: are human beings like any other person out there who should be treated as such with the benefits and fair pay they rightfully deserve.

Watching Ms. Slovak and Wartz snap at each other is designed to make theme both look petty is wrong. The real villains here, in my eyes? Go further than Wartz. I'm talking city hall! Hey Arnold! may have been a smart children's show that, for the most part didn't talk down to children, but it was still a show written by adults for a corporation that... even at the time was dealing in really shady business practices. And I don't think Nickelodeon would have taken kindly even back then to a pro-union thinkpiece from a cartoon about a kid with a football-shaped head. After all that's the entire reason they made Nickelodeon studios in Florida... ok that isn't entirely fair, they did understand and compromise with unions from time to time, but you get what I mean, yes?

Again, watching Wartz and Slovak bicker paints a bigger picture of what's really the issue here with dialogue like: "Typical faculty attitude; blame all your troubles on the administration. How am I supposed to run a school when you teachers put me over budget?" Yes. Everyone knows the "slippage" scene; it's very funny, but watching these two middle aged/senior educators bicker like toddlers is... disturbing. Especially when while Wartz is a factor in this problem? Their real enemy goes beyond the fat toad sitting in his office.

The children's "simple solution" of a sit-in to simply... do their schooling to avoid taking up their summer... this is one of those episode DEMANDING a rewrite to be 22-minutes. To have Arnold and the teachers come upon city hall and demand better budgeting and benefits for the school staff. The apparent SnapBack to the status quo as Wartz and Slovak attempt to compromise for the children? Were they... were they gonna be a thing? They were flirting... how I would fix this episode... it's... again I am not educated in the workings of the labor let ALONE the school system but... what the hell? I'll give it a shot!

The basic structure is kept the same, but I'd place a greater emphasis on how this would cut the kids vacation time into sashimi. How being so young, they feel powerless to the iron grip of the system. Arnold is after all a child who has gotten the attention of the mayor of Hillwood like in "The Old Building" in fact, I'd bring back that sort of thing with Ernie Potts, the local wrecking baller at the Sunset Arms Boarding House. While he ain't a teacher, Ernie being in the demolition business is bound to know a thing or two about unionization or the like as a way to compromise alongside Wartz who, as shown in "The Big Scoop" later on they APPEAR to be union brothers... between the donations of the local coffee house and a generous contract and budget renegotiation courtesy of Ernie and his buddies as mediators in City Hall, alongside the efforts of the children? The teachers and Wartz reach a new deal; saving their jobs and Summer vacation.

These sort of "save the rec center" type episodes were Arnold's bread and butter to the point they did a whole MOVIE about saving the neighborhood. Comparing his episode to The Simpsons "The PTA Disbands" is like comparing a succulent apple to a sour dried out plum. To call this episode terrible would be a misnomer. It just doesn't fully comprehend the gravitas of these sorts of disputes, which, again, given "The PTA Disbands" came out 2 years prior? I don't think making a tale of the struggling working man and the teachers unions understandable for children without cutting any muscle would be hard. You need to show how this affects BOTH the working side of the conflict and the student body in greater detail without demonizing those wishing for better conditions. This is not in the upper eschelon of Hey Arnold! episodes, is it as bad as "Arnold Betrays Iggy" and the like? I couldn't really say for a gauge. All I know is I wanted to explore this episode and hammer it out because I wanted to.

Labor in American Media: youtube.com/playlist?list=PL86…

Hey Arnold is owned by Nickelodeon and Paramount.

Regulas314

Description
Show: Hey Arnold!
Episode: 24B (aired as Season 2 episode 18B or 38)
Year: 1997

Writer(s): Rachel Lipman & Joseph Purdy
Director(s): Kelly James & Steve Socki

Hindsight is... funny. What can appear to be an exaggeration or a cartoonish hyperbole in one time period can be all too true to life not even half a century later. As time marches forward it feels as if life and the world of fiction intermingle at a greater capacity and what has been seen in media such as comic books or cartoons to be impossibilities or outright ridiculous notions have become true to life... and coming from a series that is supposed to come closer to our reality that can be... frightening to say the least...

Hey Arnold! is a cartoon that, beyond the exaggerated character models to give a greater sense of uniqueness to this world to show kids of all walks of life, physique and even race? Could easily have been done in live action. This is to a point that real children voiced a majority of the kids in PS 118; while not a first for animation, after all Disney's Pinocchio was done by a real 13 year old boy... the children in Hey Arnold! being voiced by children gives them a greater sense of realism. That you could meet any of these kids if you lived in the urban jungles similar to Hillwood. And when you have that level of connection, where the characters feel truly real, some plots they find themselves immersed in, when watched as a child vs as an adult many years later can easily illicit different responses.

To get the the meat of this: PS 118 is undergoing budget cuts that would, to the unanniciated make the staff of Springfield Elementary green with envy in cost-cutting higgeldy-piggledy. Teachers for example being issues a single stick of chalk to last an entire week; children being forced to share desks, chairs and books... and soon after electricity having its plug pulled... Principal Rur Wartz is a fat, pompous and uncouth man. Episodes such as "Suspended" and the infamous "Full Moon" show that he clutches to the schools bylaws like his Bible concealing a weapon. And he doesn't take kindly to any sass... I mean suspending a kid for calling you names is just... who is the child in this scenario? Well we'll see...

When the teachers on strike Wartz attempts to teach an ENTIRE SCHOOL himself akin to the "one room classrooms of yore". It is just pathetic... but it makes me laugh. So? With no alternatives Arnold and his fellow classmates are set free, told not to come back to school until the strike ends. To a child that sounds like absolute paradise don't it? Especially if you're of the kind in cartoons allowed to roam the city streets, go fishing, play baseball, hit the arcade... but if you're at all familiar with the devil, his deals always have a catch... and this one goes deeper the older you get...

Everywhere Arnold and his chums go, they find a respective teacher working at their hangout, doing what they can to earn a living wage and in a way? Still trying to impart knowledge to the children... now to a child? At least one of the 90s like I was? This would be a living nightmare! Teachers everywhere ya go, you can't escape em; they've descended upon Hillwood hangouts like locusts! But as an adult I see these teachers desperate to try and earn their daily bread, making change at the arcade, resettng bowling pins, but this is never elaborated upon due in part to the perspective being on children.

Rather than the actual cause of the strike being seen as the conflict, it's the TEACHERS and their impedance in the lives of Arnold and his pals seemingly cost-free freedom that is the issue. Made even moreso when free days off ain't free... for every day of the strike, a day is stricken from summer vacation! This demonizes the teachers and the lack of their place within a corrupt system as a massive inconvenience to the children. That the actual cause for concern, Wartz and the school board being corrupt and cutthroat is never seen as the true villain in all this.

If you've been keeping up with the news over the last... 4 years or so? Maybe you know the harshness of the world of teaching and the school system. This sort of cartoonish villainy and stubbornness Wartz has the school under cutting power and reducing the supplies to a dust bowl... almost seems quaint compared to the real world steel heel on the necks of the working man. The BRIEF manner in which the strike is depicted makes both sides seem equally petty and childish about the budget slippage of the school. How DARE Ms. Slovak complain about dwindling supplies and cost-cutting measures making her and the students miserable! Unions and protective laws exist for this very reason; I'm not the most educated regarding this sort of thing but I reccomend You watch Popular C/C's Labor in American Media YouTube series regarding how this sort of thing has been depicted over the last century in film which I'll link at the end.

The main point of the episode is that this strike is going to cut into the children's summer vacation time. Ergo, both sides of this conundrum are seen as the badguy. As an adult in 2023 watching this now? Given everything I've seen on the news regarding labor issues? ESPECIALLY regarding the education system? This is SOME OL BULLSHIT! I won't pretend that teachers and school faculty the world over are all innocent, in fact the children tend to suffer on the same level as the teachers. But the teachers in this episode don't seem very impeded by the strike in spite of their minimum wage temp Jobs. Was the economy THAT good in 1997 where you could live off being an aquarium tour guide?

This in no way devalues the plight of the children. Yes, the children are still victims of the system. After all nobody wants to go to school in the summer, especially without air conducting as Wartz says... when the children go tot talk to the teachers about the issue, we see.. NOTHING. We are told they were told offscreen it's "too complicated to explain"... BULLSHIT. We SEE with our own eyes the reaping that Wartz attempted at the start of the Episode to save money on a ghoulish level, down to boarding windows with cheap plywood after he cuts the power! As Mr. Packinham says to Arnold and Gerald, the free coffee was the ONLY perk the teacher had left; being forced to make their own coffee is seen as the ONLY crux for the teachers, a single teacher mind you.

Now, given they are only 9, I think it's adorable Arnold and Gerald think getting more coffee will solve this. But also really stupid at the same time. As Ms Slovak rants and raves like a madwoman, there's still the matter of their vacations, the supplies, bathroom breaks which... yeah... looking at this almost 30 years later, what is implied here isn't any different from the shit we have witnessed pre AND post-pandemic. Media makes jokes all the time about the low salary and benefits teachers have... but the harsh reality is these are human beings who, and this is a generalization now not factoring in the absolute shit shows I've heard tell of: are human beings like any other person out there who should be treated as such with the benefits and fair pay they rightfully deserve.

Watching Ms. Slovak and Wartz snap at each other is designed to make theme both look petty is wrong. The real villains here, in my eyes? Go further than Wartz. I'm talking city hall! Hey Arnold! may have been a smart children's show that, for the most part didn't talk down to children, but it was still a show written by adults for a corporation that... even at the time was dealing in really shady business practices. And I don't think Nickelodeon would have taken kindly even back then to a pro-union thinkpiece from a cartoon about a kid with a football-shaped head. After all that's the entire reason they made Nickelodeon studios in Florida... ok that isn't entirely fair, they did understand and compromise with unions from time to time, but you get what I mean, yes?

Again, watching Wartz and Slovak bicker paints a bigger picture of what's really the issue here with dialogue like: "Typical faculty attitude; blame all your troubles on the administration. How am I supposed to run a school when you teachers put me over budget?" Yes. Everyone knows the "slippage" scene; it's very funny, but watching these two middle aged/senior educators bicker like toddlers is... disturbing. Especially when while Wartz is a factor in this problem? Their real enemy goes beyond the fat toad sitting in his office.

The children's "simple solution" of a sit-in to simply... do their schooling to avoid taking up their summer... this is one of those episode DEMANDING a rewrite to be 22-minutes. To have Arnold and the teachers come upon city hall and demand better budgeting and benefits for the school staff. The apparent SnapBack to the status quo as Wartz and Slovak attempt to compromise for the children? Were they... were they gonna be a thing? They were flirting... how I would fix this episode... it's... again I am not educated in the workings of the labor let ALONE the school system but... what the hell? I'll give it a shot!

The basic structure is kept the same, but I'd place a greater emphasis on how this would cut the kids vacation time into sashimi. How being so young, they feel powerless to the iron grip of the system. Arnold is after all a child who has gotten the attention of the mayor of Hillwood like in "The Old Building" in fact, I'd bring back that sort of thing with Ernie Potts, the local wrecking baller at the Sunset Arms Boarding House. While he ain't a teacher, Ernie being in the demolition business is bound to know a thing or two about unionization or the like as a way to compromise alongside Wartz who, as shown in "The Big Scoop" later on they APPEAR to be union brothers... between the donations of the local coffee house and a generous contract and budget renegotiation courtesy of Ernie and his buddies as mediators in City Hall, alongside the efforts of the children? The teachers and Wartz reach a new deal; saving their jobs and Summer vacation.

These sort of "save the rec center" type episodes were Arnold's bread and butter to the point they did a whole MOVIE about saving the neighborhood. Comparing his episode to The Simpsons "The PTA Disbands" is like comparing a succulent apple to a sour dried out plum. To call this episode terrible would be a misnomer. It just doesn't fully comprehend the gravitas of these sorts of disputes, which, again, given "The PTA Disbands" came out 2 years prior? I don't think making a tale of the struggling working man and the teachers unions understandable for children without cutting any muscle would be hard. You need to show how this affects BOTH the working side of the conflict and the student body in greater detail without demonizing those wishing for better conditions. This is not in the upper eschelon of Hey Arnold! episodes, is it as bad as "Arnold Betrays Iggy" and the like? I couldn't really say for a gauge. All I know is I wanted to explore this episode and hammer it out because I wanted to.

Labor in American Media: youtube.com/playlist?list=PL86…

Hey Arnold is owned by Nickelodeon and Paramount.

Regulas314