What A Cartoon! - Hey Arnold! "Spelling Bee/Pigeon Man"
Added 2019-02-11 06:00:01 +0000 UTCOur artist friend Maddie is back, and this time she's taking us on a journey to the late '90s with Hey Arnold! This classic Nicktoon was more emotional and empathetic than most kids shows, and it has a surprisingly long history (with several interesting connections to The Simpsons). Learn all about it, as well as our personal histories with spelling bees and city pigeons in this week's podcast!
Comments
Slight correction (though you probably realized it these 2 months later): Dan did use that grandpa voice on The Simpsons. It was in Season 10's "Sunday Cruddy Sunday." "I'm 53-years-young."
Bennett Billard
2019-04-16 22:50:32 +0000 UTCI lived in the Pacific Northwest for four years, and several of my best friends went to The Evergreen State College, and despite knowing that Matt Groening went there, I never got the Evergreen Terrace connection until this very moment and have never felt more dumb (also great episode).
Kat Heagberg
2019-02-28 05:37:56 +0000 UTCI love Hey Arnold! I still need to watch the Jungle Movie. A correction: Jamil Walker Smith is not Tia and Tamera Mowery's brother it is Taj Mowery. Walker Smith is best known outside of Hey Arnold for Stargate Universe but he did appear in a small role on Sister Sister for 4 episodes.
Angel
2019-02-18 20:34:54 +0000 UTCI went to French school in Canada. I don't think spelling bees are really a thing in French schools, but written "dictées" are huge in the Francophone world: someone reads a passage, a bit at a time, and you have to write it down, and then whoever made the least mistakes wins. The ones that are televised are for adults, though, not kids. I think there are two main reasons dictées are more popular that spelling bees in French: first of all, the French love literature/philosophy and if they can combine a spelling contest with someone reading an essay at a lectern, they will; secondly, compared to English, French has easier spelling but much trickier grammar, so it makes sense to focus on whole texts rather than single words.
Nina C.
2019-02-17 14:57:30 +0000 UTCEh heh heh heh, you keepa da money!
Djinn and Tonic
2019-02-14 21:24:59 +0000 UTCI'm like Henry and Bob in that I was a bit old for Hey Arnold when it debuted. I had a little sister though so I saw some of this show through her and thought it was mostly fine, just not geared for what my brain wanted back then (gross and loud, baby!). I did always wonder if they moved away from Arnold's day-dreaming gimmick because it was too similar to Doug. And Hey Arnold felt like a spiritual successor to Doug since it's basically the network's only other earnest cartoon program as opposed to just being a straight comedy vehicle, at the time.
Joe Hodgson
2019-02-14 17:43:12 +0000 UTCI haven't watched any Hey Arnold in over a decade at this point and revisiting it here reminded me that it's a great show and, like Bob, I appreciate it much more now that I'm older
Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag
2019-02-13 20:20:59 +0000 UTCI've never actually seen Hey Arnold but this was great! I love getting a tour of animation through What a Cartoon. As a bird guy, I'm so glad Pigeon Guy was just misunderstood and Chester made it through okay. And since I'm a bird guy, some annoying bird pedantry. Passenger pigeons were hunted to extinction around the turn of the century because they were abundant and reportedly, delicious. There were flocks of 6 billion birds and their general survival strategy was to just fuck more than they were eaten but humans were too good at killing. Homing pigeons on the other hand are human domesticated city pigeons and are alive and well. You can still have a message delivered this way. Such pigeons were even used in WWII!
Abrahm Simons
2019-02-13 00:27:43 +0000 UTCAlso, I wanted to add that she's in the 6th grade and used to have them in prior grades.
littleterr0r
2019-02-13 00:13:23 +0000 UTCI asked my daughter and she said that luckily they don't have spelling tests or spelling bees. Speaking of spelling bees, my own memory involves me being onstage and getting out on the first word due to a combination of nervousness and not wanting to be up there on stage. I too almost cried because I just remembered my mom telling me good luck at home and feeling like I failed her when I missed the very first word.
littleterr0r
2019-02-12 23:50:12 +0000 UTCHey Arnold was much more exciting than the very bland Doug. It had a great cast that people could relate to. My friend Andy is Russian and when he was watching the show as a kid his parents were worried about the name of certain tenant which translated into Mister Shit. Didn't mind that certain episodes had tertiary characters like Mr Green, kinda wish there was more episodes with Harold who seemed to grow the most throughout the series. Did you guys see the promotional art and concepts for the Patakis that supposedly was being pitched to MTV. I think a lot of us can relate to at least one character in Hey Arnold and it holds up to this day.
Matt Fish
2019-02-12 17:39:39 +0000 UTCAlways loved the soundtrack to Hey Arnold. Wish they released an album of the show's musical cues
Frank Grimes
2019-02-12 14:48:39 +0000 UTC
