Between its iconic jazzy saxophone intro music, the wacky personalities at P.S. 118 and Football Head’s teenage dream of a bedroom, “Hey Arnold!” has charmed millennials for decades, uniting 90s kids of all backgrounds.
But ask anyone for the most memorable part of the Nickelodeon program and they’ll likely point to the show’s depth — the episodes that bore into loss, the struggle to fit in and the undeniable complexity of childhood.
As fans wrap their minds around the show’s 30th anniversary in October, creator Craig Bartlett is reflecting on the enduring love for “Hey Arnold!,” particularly for the cartoon’s refusal to shy away from the raw and real. Bartlett tells TODAY.com that it’s all been rewarding as that’s exactly what the show set out to do.
“You know, everyone was trying to figure out how to make their cartoon have its own unique corner, where it was different from everything else,” Bartlett says. “And for me, it was emotional authenticity.”
Anchored around friendly fourth-grader Arnold Shortman, the show, which premiered on October 7, 1996, ran for five seasons across nearly eight years. While the program had no shortage of laughs, it was the cartoon’s handling of issues like depression, addiction, poverty and more that, many viewers say, made it stand out.
Episode “Arnold’s Christmas” from Season 1, for example, looks into the backstory of character Mr. Hyunh, who, it’s revealed, is a refugee who was tragically separated from his infant daughter amid the Fall of Saigon, the historic event that marked the end of the Vietnam War.
In another episode later on in the series, character Chocolate Boy attempts to get over his addiction to chocolate. As Arnold helps him throughout his journey, Chocolate Boy reveals that his attachment to the candy stems from a beloved nanny he had when he was young, who gave him a bag of chocolate upon her departure from the family.
And who could forget the episode in which the gruff and tough Helga sits down with a school psychologist. It’s through the therapy sessions that it’s revealed that under her hard exterior is a girl from a dysfunctional household who’s felt largely forgotten by her parents. Helga’s obsession with Arnold, the episode shows, goes back to a moment on her first day of preschool. While her parents paid her no mind, leaving her to walk alone in the rain, Arnold, it turns out, is the first to notice Helga that day and display any semblance of kindness to her.
The showrunner explains that the franchise actually started off as claymation shorts that appeared on “Sesame Street.” In those shorts, Arnold was five years old. But Bartlett “grew him up” for Nickelodeon, he says.
“He was meant to be like me when I was little, and I was kind of bored with everything, and a daydreamer that was not present in some ways,” Bartlett says. “By the time we got him into growing him up into ‘Hey Arnold!’ he was a fourth grader who did things with friends, but he still was a dreamer — you’d imagine he had a real kind of freeform imagination, and that was how it started.”
Bartlett says that much of his inspiration was drawn from the 1965 animated classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” In it, main character Charlie Brown fails to feel the holiday cheer, despite the warmth and celebration of the season. Bartlett says that the film’s acknowledgement of its main character’s melancholy was deeply comforting to him as a kid.
“I was so affected by ‘Charlie Brown Christmas’ — that he was bummed and he knew he was supposed to love Christmas and be happy, but it wasn’t there,” Bartlett explains.
It’s reflective, he adds, of the sense of “yearning” often felt in those younger years.
“That describes childhood to me. You’re … hoping for cool things, and not necessarily having it,” he says “That, I think, was really key. It was what I was trying to convey.”
Bartlett says that as he created the show, he aimed to reflect some of those heavier emotions that children naturally feel. While many of the topics that were told through the eyes of the show’s characters were often serious in nature, Bartlett explains that he and his staff weren’t worried about whether kids would get it.
“We trusted that kids were living lives like that,” Bartlett says, raising Helga’s story as an example. “Some were living lives like they felt unseen like Helga.”
The show was also one of the first cartoons to feature kids voicing kids. And the young, tween actors at the time who provided the oh-so-memorable voices of the cast, from Lane Toran as Arnold to Francesca Marie Smith as Helga, also inspired much of the writing and injected personality into the characters, Bartlett says.
The storylines weren’t the only aspect that gave the show its authentic feel. Bartlett says that the music from composer Jim Lang was essential to conveying the show’s raw emotions.
“The music went hand in hand. Jim took all those ideas and turned them into really good, bummed-out music,” Bartlett says. “It’s about being bummed. And I just thought Jim, he really intensified that feeling. I can’t picture those episodes without the music.”
Bartlett adds that the freedom that the crew had to experiment with themes and storylines played a big part in bringing those meaningful lessons on screen. At the time, Bartlett says, Nickelodeon essentially gave the group free-reign to play.
“It’s hard to believe that the network let us operate that way, but they did. They just left us alone, mostly to do our thing,” he says.
The moment, he says, was perfect.
“You really got the vibe it was time for us to do our own thing, and that they were really going to let us do it,” he says. “It was just such good times for everybody. Nick was making tons of money, and so they were like, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix.’”
While the show ended in 2004, it got one final curtain call with the 2017 television flick, “Hey Arnold: The Jungle Movie.” Since then, there’s been no shortage of love for the show. Lang has even taken the music back on the road with project PS 118 All Stars, in which the band behind the iconic songs plays the tracks live for audiences across the U.S. Bartlett is a special guest for many of the dates.
Though fans have long called for a “Hey Arnold!” revival, Bartlett says he isn’t certain whether there will be anymore Arnold Shortman stories on our future screens.
For now, he says he’s happy to be joining shows as part of the PS 118 All Stars, comparing the tour experience to that of Mr. Hyunh in the episode “Mr. Hyunh Goes Country.”
“I’m super grateful I got to do 100 half-hours and two movies eventually,” Bartlett says. “If there’s no more Arnold TV or movies, I’m glad that it ended so, so nicely.”
