Hey Arnold!

Hey Arnold!
File:Hey Arnold title card.jpg
Genre	Comedy-drama
Created by	Craig Bartlett
Developed by	Craig Bartlett Joe Ansolabehere Steve Viksten
Voices of	Toran Caudell Phillip Van Dyke Spencer Klein Jamil W. Smith Francesca Marie Smith Justin Shenkarow Christopher P. Walberg Christopher Castile Jarrett Lennon Benjamin Diskin Sam Gifaldi Anndi McAfee Olivia Hack Dan Castellaneta Tress MacNeille Craig Bartlett Maurice LaMarche
Music by	Jim Lang
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	100 (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	22-23 minutes
Production companies	Snee-Oosh, Inc. Nickelodeon Animation Studios
Original release
Network	Nickelodeon (US) YTV (Canada) Canal J (France)
Release	October 7, 1996 (1996-10-07) – June 8, 2004 (2004-06-08)

Hey Arnold! is an American animated television series created by Craig Bartlett for Nickelodeon. The show's premise focuses on a fourth grader named Arnold who lives with his grandparents. Episodes center on his experiences navigating big city life while dealing with the problems he and his friends encounter, including urban legends. Certain episodes focus on the lives of supporting characters, such as the tenants of the boarding house that Arnold's grandparents own.

Bartlett's idea for the show is based on a minor character named Arnold whom he created while working on Pee-wee's Playhouse. The executives enjoyed the character, and Bartlett completed the cast by drawing inspiration from people he grew up with in Portland, Oregon. He created the pilot episode in his living room in 1993, and official production began in 1994. The animators worked to transform Arnold from clay animation to cel animation.

The series aired on Nickelodeon from October 7, 1996, until June 8, 2004. Hey Arnold! received generally positive reviews, with many critics praising its character development and the quality of its animation. Over the course of its eight-year run, the series aired 100 episodes. A feature film based on the series, Hey Arnold!: The Movie, was released in 2002 to generally negative reviews. After the show's run, Bartlett created Dinosaur Train for PBS. Hey Arnold! is currently being released on DVD and rerun on the TeenNick block "The '90s Are All That".

History

Animator Craig Bartlett graduated from Anacortes High School and obtained a degree in communications from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. During high school and college, he studied painting and sculpture at the Museum Art School in Portland, and his first job after college was at Will Vinton Productions, a claymation house. Originally, Bartlett intended to become a painter "in the 19th-century sense", but he became interested in animation during a trip to Italy. In 1987, while working on Pee-wee's Playhouse, he created claymation cutaways about a character named Penny and her friend Arnold. Six years later, Bartlett was teamed up with five writers from Rugrats to develop animation projects for Nickelodeon. These meetings were generally difficult and the writers became frustrated; Bartlett recalled: "Our ideas were OK, but such a large and motley group couldn't get far at pitch meetings. Network execs got migraines just counting us coming in the door." As a last resort, Bartlett played the "Penny" tapes, intending to highlight the Penny character. However, the executives were more impressed by Arnold, despite him being a minor character.

After the meeting, the group began developing Arnold, creating his personality and evolving him from claymation to cel animation. Bartlett stated: "We did a lot of talking about who Arnold is. We came up with a reluctant hero who keeps finding himself responsible for solving something, making the right choices, doing the right thing." After creating ideas for Arnold, Bartlett began work on the supporting characters, drawing influence from his childhood: "A lot of the characters are an amalgam of people I knew when I was a kid. The girls in Hey Arnold! are girls that either liked or didn't like me when I was in school." He created the first episode of Hey Arnold! in his living room, and showed it to producers at Nickelodeon. A year later, the network decided to begin work on the series. The character was previously featured in a trilogy of clay animation shorts from 1988 to 1991: Arnold Escapes from Church (1988), The Arnold Waltz (1990), and Arnold Rides a Chair (1991), the latter having been aired as a filler short on Sesame Street in 1991; as well as an eight-minute short, titled Arnold (1996), shown in theaters before Nickelodeon's first feature-length film, Harriet the Spy.

Production

Apart from the animation style, Nick's Arnold wears a sweater, with his plaid shirt untucked (resembling a kilt). Only Arnold's cap remains unchanged from his original clay-animation wardrobe. Arnold comic strips also appeared in Simpsons Illustrated magazine. (Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, is Craig Bartlett's brother-in-law.) Hey Arnold! was pitched to Nickelodeon in the fall of 1993, a pilot was produced in the spring of 1994, and the series was greenlit in January 1995. Hey Arnold! was in production continuously from 1995 to 2000, culminating in a TV movie originally titled "Arnold Saves the Neighborhood", which ended up being released theatrically as Hey Arnold!: The Movie in June 2002. Production of the Hey Arnold! series wrapped in May 2001. Hey Arnold! (along with fellow Nicktoon Rugrats) aired their final episodes, unannounced, on June 8, 2004.

The show aired in reruns on "Nick on CBS" from 2002 until September 2004. In 2011, the Canadian Nickelodeon channel began airing episodes of Hey Arnold!. In September 2011, TeenNick brought Hey Arnold reruns to "The 90's Are All That" programming block.

Plot

The show stars fourth grader Arnold, a boy who lives with his paternal grandparents, Phil and Gertrude, proprietors of the Sunset Arms boarding house, in the fictional city of Hillwood. In each episode, Arnold often helps a schoolmate solve a personal problem, or encounters a predicament of his own. The show also frequently focuses on Arnold's classmate, Helga, who often treats Arnold cruelly and bullies him constantly. However, a recurring theme of the show is the fact that Helga only pretends to dislike Arnold to hide the fact that she has possessed a profound, Shakespearean-in-magnitude love for him for years.

Many episodes involve urban legends usually told by Arnold's best friend, Gerald. These episodes often feature over-the-top events such as those that involve superheroes or headless horsemen.

Characters and cast

Main articles: List of Hey Arnold! characters and List of Hey Arnold! cast members

File:Hey Arnold Characters.jpg

Clockwise from top left: Arnold, Gerald, Sid, Helga, Harold, Eugene, Stinky, Phoebe, Rhonda.

Hey Arnold! stars nine-year-old Arnold and his neighborhood friends. Bartlett drew inspiration from people he grew up with when creating the characters for the show. Arnold's best friend is Gerald, a street-smart character who generally serves as the leader of the group. Many episodes detail Arnold's relationship with Helga Pataki, a girl who acts cruelly towards Arnold in order to cover up her secret crush on him. He lives with his eccentric but loving grandparents, who own a boarding house called Sunset Arms; several storylines involve Arnold's interactions with the house's tenants. Other characters include teachers at P.S. 118, parents, and citizens of the town.

Main characters

• Arnold – The nine-year-old protagonist and title character of the series. Arnold's parents left him with his paternal grandparents before leaving on an expedition, never to be seen again. Arnold is a dreamer, optimist, and idealist. He often acts as his friends' moral compass, and tries to help others whenever he can.

• Helga G. Pataki – Helga is nine years old, the deuteragonist, in fourth grade. She is madly in love with Arnold because he was the first person to be nice to and notice her when they were very little, but she struggles to keep her affections a secret. In her spare time she writes poetry (mostly about Arnold) and collects Arnold's used gum so that she can add it to her Arnold shrine. She is neglected by her parents and calls them "Bob" and "Miriam" because she does not believe they are worthy of being called "Mom" and "Dad". On the surface she resents her older sister Olga, an overachieving perfectionist, but Helga will occasionally show warmth toward her. Helga is emotionally insecure and puts on a mean, tomboyish front as the school bully.

• Gerald Johanssen – Gerald is Arnold's best friend and is usually present when Arnold's latest escapade happens. Gerald is the occasional voice of reason when Arnold needs it and the storyteller for the schoolyard legends. He has a crush on Phoebe, who shares the same feelings for him.

• Phoebe Heyerdahl – Phoebe is Helga's best friend and sidekick. She is very intelligent and is the most academic of the children; she always tries to be the first one with an answer and does not appreciate when someone does better than her in school. Like Gerald does for Arnold, Phoebe often acts as Helga's voice of reason and helps her out of various scrapes. She also has a crush on Gerald.

• Harold Berman – Harold is the bully of the group, although his bark is usually worse than his bite. Harold is assumed to be 13, based on the traditional age one receives a Bar Mitzvah (his Hebrew name is Chaim), although the students seem to disregard his age while they point out Torvald being a fourth grader even though he is the same age. Harold was in preschool at the same time as Arnold ("Eugene's Bike", "Helga On The Couch"), although he says in "Cool Party" that he was "held back". He is friends with Stinky, Sid, and Patty.

• Stinky Peterson – Stinky is best known for his Southern drawl. He is the class "ladies' man" and has claimed to be in love with Helga, Gloria (both in "Helga's Boyfriend"), and Lila ("Ms. Perfect"). He lives with his father in a dilapidated shack with a country-like appearance. He once turned down the opportunity to make a million dollars as the Yahoo Soda "spokeskid" because he realized they only wanted him because people gawked at his "hick" ways. In addition to growing large pumpkins, he can play the Alpenhorn ("School Dance").

• Sidney (Sid) – Sid is often seen as Gerald's "lead-in" man; when Gerald is about to tell another urban legend, Sid introduces him, usually mentioning how the story has been passed "from kid generation to kid generation". He is best recognized for his green baseball cap that he wears backward and his long nose.

• Rhonda Wellington Lloyd – Rhonda is the self-proclaimed fashion queen of the school, despite the fact that she wears the same ensemble each day with few exceptions. Rhonda's greatest interest is fashion design and trends. She criticizes her classmates and friends regularly for not matching colors or rotating their daily choice of clothing, as parodied by Helga in "Helga's Show". She is quick to show off new fashion accessories or shoes she gets to her peers. She is also snooty, vain, and a bit of a queen bee.

• Eugene Horowitz – Eugene is a good friend of Arnold and is known for being a jinx. His appearances usually involve him being the cause of or the effect of accidents, such as causing a parade to crash, dodgeballs hitting him in the face, etc. In the episodes starring Eugene, Arnold seems to actually cause most of Eugene's problems, such as killing his goldfish, ruining his birthday, and destroying his bike.

• Grandpa/"Steely Phil"/Phil – Arnold's good-natured and cheery grandfather (and Miles's father), Phil runs the Sunset Arms boarding house. Arnold often looks to his grandfather for advice. In the movie, he is shown to play the drums. Though he tends to respond frivolously to Arnold's problems, he does on occasion provide Arnold much-needed wisdom.

• Big Bob Pataki-Helga's father and a main villain of the show. He runs the local electronics emporium and enjoys watching TV and being lazy like most cartoon dads. He hates Arnold because he's an orphan. He never listens to Helga. Bob is a selfish jerk and only thinks about himself, his business, and meat.

• Miriam Pataki- As Olga and Helga's mother, she pretty much just mopes around the house all day, probably as a hint for having depression. In Olga Comes Home, there's a huge hint of Miriam having depression, when Bob said that Olga can't mope around, being depressed, in her bed and Miriam said "Sure she can, I do". It is also obvious that she is an alcoholic, she passes out all the time, slurs her words and said "I need a smoothie." Miriam often is seen making smoothies, which probably is a hint at her alcoholism, and seems to be emotionally attached to her blender. Another hint to Miriam's alcoholism is that she oftens passes out on the couch and is sometimes seen waking up while on the couch, and makes up excuses like she's "looking for her keys".

• Grandma Gertie/Pookie – Arnold's fun-loving and eccentric grandmother. She is often seen performing various nonsensical tasks around the boarding house. Like Arnold's grandpa, his grandma tends to be too silly to be of much help to him when he asks for it, but she does come through for him in other ways.

Recurring

• Nadine Lowenthal – Nadine is the fourth grade nature expert. Nadine and Rhonda have been best friends since they were at least four years old.

• Brainy – A silent, bespectacled boy who usually appears, breathing heavily, right behind Helga when she privately soliloquizes about her love for Arnold. As a running gag on the show, these encounters almost always end with Helga punching Brainy in the face and breaking his glasses.

• Ernie – A short man living in the boarding house who runs a construction crew and demolishes buildings. In the movie, he is part of the main cast just like the other boarders.

• Oskar Kokoshka – A lazy, immature man from a nondescript Eastern European country. He lives in the boarding house house with his wife, Suzie, his nephew, Baby Oskar, and his sister-in-law. In the movie, he has a fairly large role.

• Mr. Huynh – a Vietnamese immigrant who moved to America in search of his daughter who was lost in the Vietnam War. He lives in Arnold's boarding house and plays music. In the movie, he has a fairly large role.

• Lila Saywer – Lila is new to P.S. 118, having recently moved with her father from Pleasantville, a farming community. Helga describes Lila as "Little Miss Perfect". Lila is as smart as Phoebe, as stylish as Rhonda, and is the most popular girl with the boys. At first, the other girls are jealous of Lila, but they all grow to like her, except for Helga. Arnold has a crush on Lila, but she states that she only "likes" Arnold and does not "like-like" him.

• Patty – A student at P.S. 118 and Harold's best friend and definite love interest. She is known to be short-tempered and have a half-man exterior, although she is shown to be polite, quiet, and friendly until she is picked on by the other students. She appears to have very few friends, with the exception of Harold.

• Wolfgang – A burly, lowlife fifth grader who, along with his fifth grade "cronies," can usually be seen picking on younger skinny kids, most notably Arnold.

• Thaddeus Curly Gammelthorpe – A student at P.S. 118 who has an insistent crush on his classmate Rhonda, despite Rhonda often being disgusted by his attempts to attract her.

Setting

Hey Arnold! takes place in the fictional American city of Hillwood. Craig Bartlett stated in an interview that the city on the show is based on large northern cities, which includes Seattle (his hometown), Portland, Oregon (where he went to art school) and New York City (from which many landmarks were borrowed), also with references to Nashville, TN Grand Ole Opry; as well as Hawk Mountain near Allentown, PA, as mentioned in the Sally's Comet Episode. Bartlett, having grown up in Seattle, bases many of the show's events on his own experience growing up in the city. The Pig War mentioned in the episode with the same title took place on the boundary between what is now the State of Washington and British Columbia. Evan Levine of the Houston Chronicle commented "With its backdrop of dark streets, nighttime adventures and run-down buildings, all seen from a child's point of view, the series combines a street-smart attitude with a dark comic edge."

Feature film

Main article: Hey Arnold!: The Movie

In this 2002 theatrical feature film, Arnold, Helga, and Gerald set out on a quest to save their old neighborhood from a greedy developer who plans on converting it into a huge shopping mall. This film was directed by Tuck Tucker, and features the voice talents of Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Sorvino, and Christopher Lloyd.

DVD and digital releases

Amazon.com released the first two seasons on DVD through its CreateSpace program in August 2008. The CreateSpace DVDs are now out of print and not sold anymore. The remaining seasons were released in later months. The DVDs are sold as "burn on demand" items. The episodes are arranged in production order, rather than the order in which the episodes aired. Episodes have also been released on iTunes as well as the entire series on Netflix instant streaming.

Production of the CreateSpace sets ended following the announcement of Shout! Factory's DVD sets. They released Season 1 in a 4 disc set on August 9, 2011. Season 2: Part 1 was released in a 2 disc set on March 20, 2012. Season 2: Part 2 was released on July 24, 2012.

Shout! Factory Releases	Release Date	Discs	Episodes
Season 1	August 9, 2011	4	20
Season 2: Part 1	March 20, 2012	2	10
Season 2: Part 2	July 24, 2012	2	10
Season 3: Part 1	TBA 2013	2	13
Season 3: Part 2	TBA 2013	2	13
Season 4: Part 1	TBA	2	10
Season 4: Part 2	TBA	2	10
Season 5	TBA	2	14

CreateSpace Releases	Release Date	Discs	Episodes
Season 1 (1996–97)	August 21, 2008	4	20
Season 2 (1997)	August 21, 2008	4	19
Season 3 (1998–99)	December 7, 2009	6	27
Season 4 (1999–2000)	November 27, 2009	4	19
Season 5 (2001–2004)	December 4, 2009	4	15

External links

• Hey Arnold! at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com show
• Hey Arnold! at The Big Cartoon DataBase