As an English major, I analyze absolutely everything I read or watch.

Though I am twenty years old, I have always have been a lover of cartons. That being said, I do not like just any random cartoon. I’m actually quite critical and selective about the cartoons I study and watch.

There will never be cartoons like there were when I was younger. I grew up watching shows like Courage the Cowardly Dog and reruns of Space Ghost on Cartoon Network. Still to this day, I will re-watch the cartoons I enjoyed so much as a child, and I do so for a multitude of reasons. With my background of psychology and knowledge of writing, I now watch these cartoons while thinking as the writer or producer; in other words, I am looking at dialogue and rhetoric. I am looking for specific aspects of the cartoons to determine why we enjoyed them so much as kids. I have my own theories about each cartoon, but there is one in particular that I have been paying very close attention to. The show I’m talking about is Hey Arnold!

To this day, Hey Arnold! remains one of my all-time favorite cartoons. Luckily enough, Verizon Fios On Demand has a section (a free section!) under Nickelodeon called “Nick Rewind” where there are episodes of Hey Arnold! along with other cartoons that used to be on Nickelodeon way back in the day.

Hey Arnold! belongs to a category I have created and labeled “The Last of the Great Cartoons”. These cartoons are ones that started in the 90’s and ended sometime in the very early 2000’s; specifically before 2004 – a time I consider to be the beginning of the downfall of cartoons. It happened just a little bit after The Spongebob Squarepants Movie was released. The animation in some of my favorite shows started to seem a little strange and all the good cartoons started to end.

It may come across as a bit dramatic that I have constructed this imaginary historical timeline for cartoons, but they were a big part of my entertainment as a young girl.

So why, as an adult, do I still enjoy watching Hey Arnold? Well, the answer is actually quite simple. Think back to your elementary classroom in fourth grade. There were cliques, but it was significantly less intense than they were in middle school or high school. I like to believe that my generation is one of the last groups to really remember playing outside with your friends and getting into what we thought at the time were great adventures. I rarely see kids outside riding their bikes or wreaking innocent havoc on the neighborhood. There isn’t much of a community feel to a neighborhood anymore. Not like there used to be, anyway.

This brings me to my biggest point…

They just don’t make cartoons like they used to. And there will never be another cartoon like Hey Arnold! Here’s why:

The character development in Hey Arnold! is unlike anything I’ve seen before in a cartoon within the last ten years or so. Each character in the show had specific details about themselves that really showed who they were as people. For those who are not familiar with the show, I will explain a little more.

We had Arnold, an honest city kid who didn’t seem to have much money and came from a somewhat dysfunctional lifestyle. He lived in a boarding house owned by hi grandparents. His grandmother who was absolutely bonkers and his grandfather was a bit of an oddball himself. The boarding house had many interesting people in it as well, such as a few foreign friends. They each played important roles in Arnold’s life and Arnold has a loyal best friend named Gerald; the unofficial leader of the group. He was black, street-smart and he and Arnold always confided in each other and had a true friendship. He was known as the “keeper of the tale” in the group of neighborhood kids because he always told the urban legends to the group.

Harold was the overweight, stereotypical “bully” of the neighborhood kids who had a soft side and belonged to a Jewish family. In some episodes, we got to see Harold be in touch with his religion and we could see the clash of the cultural and social tendencies within him. Of course we can’t forget Helga, the tomboy of the neighborhood kids whose deep, dark secret was her infatuation with Arnold (which she hid very well by being mean to him). Helga came from a family who didn’t pay much attention to her and favored her older sister, Olga. To list a few more, we had Eugene – the clumsy dork, Rhonda – the rich, popular girl, and Phoebe – the nerd. Phoebe was also of Asian decent. Though stereotypical, these characteristics are how children see the world and the people around them. In each episode, the ideas and the predispositions the characters have are constantly challenged and they learn many important life lessons. I loved the cultural and ethnic diversity among the characters too. It made the show all that more realistic.

My family is from the North End, so many of the people I have come in contact throughout my life remind me a lot of the characters, both adult and child, in Hey Arnold!

Hey Arnold! demonstrated what city life was like for a kid. There were neighborhood people who had nicknames and everyone seemed to take care of each other. This is similar to what my grandmother told me regarding her upbringing in the North End of Boston; everyone knew who each other was and the neighborhood took care of each other. There were urban legends among the neighborhood and stories attached to them. Some of the people who lived in the city acquired nicknames specific to their personality. This can be said of most city life. We see this in movies all the time. My grandmother’s stories often demonstrated the exact point I speak of. For example, one of her friends growing up was called “tatoes” (short for potatoes) due to the fact that whenever the kid spoke, he stuttered. For whatever reason, the connection was made between that and potatoes, earning her friend the nickname. In Hey Arnold!, we see a lot of this. Many of us may remember “Stoop Kid” – he was afraid to leave his stoop. Or “Big Patty” – the sixth grade bully. And there are urban tales that belong to the city the show takes place in too, such as the story of the “Ghost Bride”. The gang even takes to investigating that story when they go looking in the cemetery she supposedly haunts. These are aspects of city life that the creator of the show, Craig Bartlett, wrote from his childhood as he grew up in Seattle. He wrote from experience of his own city life, giving the show a very realistic point of view from a child.

One of my favorite episodes is called “Ms. Perfect”. The episode focuses on the new girl, Lila, who is neatly dressed and speaks in an unusually proper manner for a fourth grader. All the classmates adore her, except for Helga and some of the girls from the main group the show focuses on. The girls plan pranks to play on Lila to bully her and it becomes so bad that Lila does not want to go to school anymore and ends up staying home for a few days. The episode then transitions to Lila’s apartment, where she lives with just her unemployed father. The apartment has cracks in the wall and is completely falling apart. Her father has been searching for a job but has had no luck. It even shows he and Lila crying together at one point. When the teacher asks someone to take Lila’s work home to her, Helga and the girls volunteer with the intention of getting joy out of seeing Lila in misery. When they get there, however, they see the other side of Lila that no one knew about and end up feeling extremely guilty. Though the episode takes a somewhat comical approach to the girls realizing what they have done (Helga cries hysterically outside in a dramatic way) this is actually a dark aspect of real-life where kids begin to realize what living in poverty is. The girls end up apologizing to Lila and the episode ends on a positive note.

The reason I bring up this episode is because I want to show that Hey Arnold! touched on some real-world issues that children face as they start to get older and mold into who they will be in later years to come. This is something I don’t see in cartoons today. I have a younger brother who watches a lot of cartoons on both Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network and all I can see in these cartoons is a whole lot of toilet humor and obnoxious, fast-paced animation. I do not see a consistent plot line and there is barely any character development. There is not much depth to many of the cartoons on television these days.

Something else I really enjoy in the show is that throughout the episodes, there is smooth elevator-like music playing in the background. It gives the show an easy feel and helps it to flow naturally and matches the mood of the show. Because of this, I often feel nostalgic while watching.

The humor in the show is simple and not forced. The jokes and comic relief are relatable and witty. Ultimately, the show is about kids being kids and really having a childhood. They play ball, they go to school and they learn valuable lessons along the way.

In retrospect, this is not a big deal. I am just someone who is passionate in the field of the arts, especially in television, film and literature. I believe that those three things have the power to influence, if not change, the world.

I have taken every opportunity to show my younger brother the cartoons I used to watch as a little kid and he has demonstrated great interest in them. Oh, and he loves Hey Arnold! and will occasionally quote it to me. As a girl born in 1996, I feel relieved that there is still hope for the future of cartoons.

As a writer, one of my long-term (and perhaps unrealistic) goals is to create the next greatest cartoon that could have the same effect on kids as Hey Arnold! did for me when I was younger.

Seriously, though. If you find yourself very bored on of these days, go watch an episode of Hey Arnold! On Demand. Watch it with the point of view I just shared and you’ll be in amazed at some of the stuff you can pull out of the show. Or, maybe you won’t be. If you aren’t, it’s probably because you were watching The O.C when you were 7 and not cartoons…