A Helga on the Couch Essay

Plot Rundown – Part 1

The episode begins with Principal Wartz welcoming the school's new child psychologist, Dr. Bliss, to P.S. 118. Although she is meant to come after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, she says that she came to spend today observing the students. Wartz welcomes her to do so, but doesn't think she'll find anything interesting, saying that "unlike P.S. 117 and P.S. 119, P.S. 118 is the picture of mental health."

Ironically, the next scene cuts to Helga, who is walking down the halls and wearing her usual angry scowl. She walks by Wartz's office right as Dr. Bliss walks out. Dr. Bliss notices Helga roughly push a kid aside and speak rudely to another. It's clear that she has taken an immediate interest in Helga, and then follows her all the way to Mr. Simmons's class. Mr. Simmons introduces Dr. Bliss as the new school district (finger quoted) "psychologist," and that she has randomly chosen to observe their class. Helga sarcastically says, "Whoop de-doo, the school shrink. Bring it on, I've got nothing to hide."  (The irony here is that she is drawing a picture of Arnold with hearts around him when she says this! ) During the morning, Helga is acting like she usually does with Arnold (who is sitting in right front of Helga): throwing spitballs at him, causing him to turn around and glare at her while she just asks "What?!", staring at a mini shrine of him in her textbook and smiling at him, and hurling her usual insult of "football head" at him. Dr. Bliss notices all of this and writes a lot of it on her clipboard.

When the bells rings, Helga goes to her locker, sees Arnold walk by, then goes into one of her dramatic soliloquies about her love for him. As usual, Brainy appears behind her at the very end, wheezing and casually says, "Hi," then she punches his face, which breaks his glasses, and he falls to the floor. (If you look carefully at the end of Helga's monologue, before Brainy appears, there is a picture of Arnold in Helga's locker.) Dr. Bliss sees Brainy on the floor following this, and Helga gets sent to Wartz's office. Dr. Bliss is also there, and tells Helga she wants to meet with her for sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school. Wartz saying it's "To punish you soundly for your blatantly insouciant acts of juvenile delinquency!", but Dr. Bliss asks to handle the situation. Wartz tells her to go ahead, then he starts playing with a toy giraffe and alligator while he hums to himself. (As a side note, I wouldn't be caught playing with toy animals the way he does if an expert in therapy was in the same room with me! ) Dr. Bliss assures Helga that "the point isn't to punish you. The point is to discuss these antisocial tendencies and examine possible strategies for improvement." Then she adds, "I think your behavior may be covering up other more important issues, and I want to try to get to the root of the matter. Maybe uncover some emotions you may be hiding." Helga nervously glances at her textbook, where her mini figure of Arnold is hiding. (Since we Helga fans know what she is really like, Dr. Bliss is dead-on correct about everything she just said about Helga, which is, obviously, why she is so nervous!)

Helga starts panicking as she walks home, then crashes into a lemon stand and imagines the lemons as Arnold. She freaks out even more and starts running home. Once Helga gets home, her parents confront her because they have just received the news that Helga has been recommended for therapy. Bob complains that "this never would've happened to Olga!", and that "we didn't have therapy when I was a kid." He harshly tells Helga not to blab anything about them "to some school shrink," and Miriam has very little words of encouragement. As soon as Helga leaves the room, her parents both complain how this never would have happened with Olga (obviously because they know how much of a good thing their oldest daughter is: perfect in every way and has no flaws whatsoever, unlike Helga). As she prepares for bed and goes to see her Arnold shrine in her closet, Helga becomes determined not to reveal her secret love for Arnold to Dr. Bliss, no matter what. (I just thought I would mention here that, personally, I don't see how Helga thinks she could get past a professional like Dr. Bliss with her secret for Arnold. After seeing how Helga gives Arnold all that attention, albeit negative, it's very obvious that to her Helga has a special connection with him, and has probably even considered the possibility that she likes him. None of the other kids seem to get it, and think that Helga picks on Arnold just because she hates him. But what do they know about it? They're just kids, and most of them aren't that bright.)

The next day, Helga gets off a bus at the Hillwood Medical Center (making this one of the few episodes with buildings or other locations that hint at the city's name), wearing a disguise consisting of a trenchcoat and hat, obviously trying to hide the fact that she is undergoing therapy. (I wanted to mention something about this particular moment that I found interesting. Although the movie came later, this seems to be the very same getup she wears for her "Deep Voice" disguise. I'm not sure if it would be considered a hint of foreshadowing, but who knows…) Once in Dr. Bliss's office, Helga is still acting hostile and denying that she is angry (even though she is grabbing a magazine and twisting it in a choking-like manner! ). She starts asking Dr. Bliss lots of questions, including if she read all of the books on her shelves, how many you have to read to be a shrink, and if Dr. Bliss is an "actual" doctor. Helga also recognizes that the paintings hanging on the walls in Dr. Bliss's office are done by Edward Hopper. Dr. Bliss seems impressed with what Helga knows, calling her recognition and critical analysis as "pretty astute for a fourth grader."

I would like to point a few things here since they were brought up in this scene. A psychologist, which is Dr. Bliss's profession, is trained in behavioral and mental health, but not medicine, so they are not medical doctors. On the other hand, a psychiatrist is a med doctor first, then receives additional training in mental health. A psychiatrist has the title of "doctor" by means of an M.D., while a psychologist would have that same title through a Ph.D or a Psy.D. (The title for a clinical psychologist is typically a Psy.D., while a research psychologist is usually a Ph.D.) Because psychiatrists have training in medicine, they can prescribe medications while psychologists cannot. Additionally, I first learned about the American painter Edward Hopper from this episode. (Yes, it's true!) A lot of his works tended to have careful placement of human figures in proper balance with their environment, and his methods often included the effective use of light and shadow to create mood. The painting that Helga first notices is Summertime (1943). When the next scene cuts to Helga sitting in the chair, while Dr. Bliss is on the couch, you can see Hopper's most famous piece, Nighthawks (1942), located right above Helga.

Helga starts to share with Dr. Bliss about the dysfunction in her household, mentioning that her sister Olga is perfect because "she gets straight A's at Bennington College, all the boys wanna go out with her, but she's gotta stay home and practice the piano for the Brandenberg Concerto she's giving at the orphanage this weekend! And Mom and Dad can't get enough of her. Last time she was home, I was going out of my mind." (When Helga is telling this to Dr. Bliss, she is throwing darts at a dartboard on the office door and hits a bulls-eye on the last one. I don't know if I'm the only one to notice this, but it's actually not a great idea to have a dartboard on a door. What if someone was throwing darts at the board at the moment that another person came into the room without knocking first? Hmmm…)

The next scene shows the last time Olga came home. She serves Bob and Miriam some coffee she made, and they shower love and attention on her like they always do. Then Helga comes into the room and Miriam admits that she forgot to pick up her winter coat from the cleaners, but says not to worry "because the weatherman said it should stay above freezing for most of the day." Helga just scowls and growls and goes to pack her lunch, then stomps out while her parents only keep their eyes and ears on Olga, who's telling them all about Alaska. She opens the door to find it actually cold and snowy outside, then announces she's going to school, but Olga and their parents don't even hear Helga. She then leaves and walks off alone in the streets without any coat or hat to keep her warm. Poor baby! (When this scene first begins, you'll notice that it is in black-and-white film and has applause-and-laugh tracks, making it a parody of the "picture perfect family" shows of the 1950s and 60s, which includes I Love Lucy, Leave It to Beaver, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Then as soon as Helga walks into the room, the color returns. We know that Olga is a seemingly perfect child and brings happiness to her parents, and, while it's sad to say, they might be a "picture perfect family" if Helga didn't exist. So this was done as a little joke and for irony, given the dysfunction in the household, to show that a picture perfect family is just what the Patakis aren't.)

Back to the present, Helga complains about how "nobody in my house even knows I exist. They never listen to me. I think I'd go crazy if it wasn't for Arno-…" She stops abruptly, catching the interest of Dr. Bliss. Realizing she was just about to say "Arnold," Helga immediately tries to change the subject, saying it's hot in the building. She refuses to say anything more and starts to walk out. But Dr. Bliss says that there's still a lot of time in the session and says they can talk about other things besides her family…including Arnold. Helga starts to walk out, but immediately halts when she hears that word.


Plot Rundown – Part 2

Dr. Bliss asks if Arnold is special to Helga, though she immediately denies it. She remembers everything that Helga did to Arnold in school yesterday, with the spitballs, the rude insult, and staring at him, saying, "That's a lot of attention to pay to someone, even if it is negative." Helga says she is not angry at Arnold, and claims that she did all that "because it was Arnold Day on my calendar. Today was Gerald Day, I shot rubber bands at Gerald." Dr. Bliss then decides to move on (though I think she knows that Helga is lying, given how nervous she acts whenever they mention Arnold) and do some tests with Helga, including ink blots and word association. Helga tries not to think about Arnold, but she ends up seeing all of the blots as Arnold and associating every word Dr. Bliss says with something that relates to Arnold. (e.g., "Monday." "Night football.") After the tests, Dr. Bliss brings up how Helga said that "no one at home notices that you exist," saying, "I think that's very sad, Helga. Everybody needs to be noticed, otherwise life would be terribly lonely." Helga admits that "my mom wouldn't notice me if I was an alien pod person chanting Hare Krishna and spitting nickels." (For those of you who don't know, Hare Krishna is a Hindu, and more specifically a Vaishnava, mantra.)

The next scene cuts to Helga in her kitchen from the other morning, searching for her lunch and she is already late for school. She yells for her mother, who is asleep on the couch. Miriam admits that she did make Helga's lunch, but can't remember where she put it. Helga facepalms her head in frustration as Miriam wanders aimlessly in the kitchen before finding Helga's lunch in the oven. Helga is unimpressed with it: "Moist towelettes, an individual packet of crackers, and a can of shaving cream?" Miriam realizes that if the shaving cream is in the lunchbox, she must have put the cheese fizz meant for Helga's lunch in Bob's medicine cabinet. Sure enough, Bob is up the bathroom, getting ready to shave, and now has cheese all over his face, yelling, "How am I supposed to run a beeper empire with my face smelling like hickory smoked cheddar, Miriam?!" Helga tells Dr. Bliss that she did get to school and during lunch, she traded the shaving cream with Harold for a Mr. Fudgie Bar, as "he thought it was some kind of whipped topping. What an idiot!" She also admits how much worse her father is in not noticing her, since "all he cares about is Olga, 'cause she's so perfect. She's got him completely buffaloed, always has. As far back as I can remember…"

Then we are taken back into Helga's past, to the day of her first day of preschool. (Craig Bartlett's daughter Katie voices Helga in this flashback.) Miriam and Bob are standing over Olga as she plays the piano and praise her being so bright and talented ("concert pianist at fifteen, class valedictorian," according to Miriam) and having won every spelling bee in the city. Helga demands to know who's taking her to preschool, but Bob just tells her to go play outside (and even when she was this age, he still absent-mindedly called her Olga) while Miriam and Olga pay no attention to her, either. Helga decides to go to school, even if she has to go alone, announcing, "I'm going to pweschool." (This is much like the earlier scene in which Helga explained what happened the last time Olga came home.) So Helga walks to school alone; it starts to rain (and she has no coat or umbrella), there are scary-looking people in the streets, she gets splashed with mud by a passing car, then a big and vicious stray dog steals her lunch box. After listening to Helga's recap, Dr. Bliss says, "So nobody's ever noticed you." Helga answers, "There was someone…"

In the following scene (again in the past), Helga arrives at the school, then sees an umbrella being held over her head. Its owner is a little boy with a football-shaped head, none other than Arnold! They were the very people to meet each on their first day of preschool, and had the following conversation:

Arnold: Hi, nice bow.
Helga: Huh?
Arnold: I like your bow 'cause it's pink like your pants.

This shows that Arnold was really the first person to actually notice Helga or show her any sort of kindness. His compliment about her bow shows it was the first thing he ever noticed about her, and her bewildered phrase implies that no one has ever complimented her before, or even done or said something so kind to her. Helga reaches up to her bow and smiles, then gazes lovingly at him after he goes inside. It's this very moment where we learn the true reason why Helga loves Arnold and how she fell in love with him in the first place. As a fun note, we also learn the origin of Helga's omnipresent pink bow in this scene: Arnold said he liked it when they first met (giving it a sentimental value) and all because of her love for him, she has worn it ever since that day.

Later that day, she is still watching him from afar, and when she is distracted, Harold steals her snack of graham crackers and laughs at her as he quickly devours them. (I wanted to mention something here that seems to confuse most fans. We know Harold mentioned in "Hey Harold!" that he was held back a few years, and he is presumed to be thirteen years old, according to "Harold's Bar Mitzvah." But since we see him here in the same preschool with Arnold, Helga, and the other kids, does this mean he was held back since preschool? What would he have failed in preschool to have been held back that long?!) Helga's lip starts trembling and her eyes fill with tears, but then Arnold comes to the rescue and offers her his own crackers. She takes them, and obviously seems very surprised that someone would be so kind to her (as it is apparent that her family does not treat her with very much kindness or a lot of good attention). As he walks away and waves to her, she waves back, then sighs and swoons.

Unfortunately, her classmates at the table, which consists of Rhonda, Sid, Stinky, and Harold, all saw what she did and start laughing at her and mocking her. Helga becomes angry from the teasing and immediately stops it by violence; she pushes Harold down and threatens him with her fists: Old Betsy (the left one) and the Five Avengers (the right one). After she stomps on his stomach, she marches around the preschool, threatening the other kids if they dare tease her or stand in her way. ("That's right, I'm walkin' here! Helga G. Pataki!" It seems even as a three-year-old, she addressed her name with her middle initial!) But when she sees Arnold, her face brightens and she smiles lovingly at him. She ducks behind a trash can and pulls out a pink paper heart with Arnold's picture on it (a sort of precursor to her locket), saying, "I love you, Arnold, and I wanna marry you!" And we also see the first time that Brainy stalked her after saying something about her love for Arnold, and when she punched him!

Back in the present, Helga has been telling Dr. Bliss everything about her past and ends with saying how Brainy appeared behind her for the first time. Helga acts hostile when Dr. Bliss asks her why she wanted the moment alone, and admits that she does get angry because of her "lame mom, blowhard dad, and perfect sister." She repeats her claim that she is not angry at Arnold, even though Dr. Bliss says she's seen Helga direct more of her anger at Arnold than anyone else (which, again, makes it clear that she believes Helga has a connection with Arnold). Thinking that Helga may be hiding something big about Arnold, she tells her that now is a good time to get it out of her system, but what she says will be kept in confidence and that Dr. Bliss will not speak of it. Helga asks her several times if she's sworn not to tell, even going as far as saying, "You mean, so, like, if someone stuck your head in a cage with a starved, rabid rat, you still wouldn't tell?" (It is here that Helga makes a reference to George Orwell's novel 1984, because there is a scene where this very thing happens to the lead character, Winston Smith.) Dr. Bliss assures her yes, and after a moment of hesitation, Helga breaks down and confesses that she loves Arnold. Here's how her confession scene goes:

Helga: I…I love Arnold! There, I said it! I love him! I love him! Arnold, Arnold, Arnold! I'm absotively, posilutely in love with the boy! I wanna grow up and have a fabulous life, traveling around the world with him: coffee in Paris, roses, sailboats, the whole nine yards! I wanna have a perfume named after us: Arnold and Helga! I LOVE ARNOLD!!! Satisfied?!
Dr. Bliss: Now we're getting somewhere!
Helga: And if you ever tell anyone, I'll rip your tongue out and wrap it around your neck!
Dr. Bliss: Don't worry, you can trust me.

This aftermath makes Dr. Bliss understand that Helga is afraid to tell Arnold the truth about her feelings because doesn't want him to reject her, as he is the one she truly loves and wants more than anything. She tells Helga that she doesn't know how Arnold will truly feel unless and until she tells him, but assures her it's okay to wait until she's ready. We also get confirmation here (which is important to learn from a professional) that while Helga's poetry and shrines dedicated to Arnold are a little weird, they're just ways of expressing her creativity, and Dr. Bliss says it's okay to do it this way as long as she doesn't hurt anyone. She tells her not to sock Brainy, though, as "that's why you're here in the first place." She then announces that the session's over, and Helga is disappointed since "we were just starting to make some progress," but Dr. Bliss assures her that they can talk again. Helga happily runs out, then comes back and gives Dr. Bliss a quick hug before running off again.

The final scene shows Helga getting off a bus, and she feels great after having confessed, saying that "confession is good for the soul." She happily walks down the street, then crashes into Arnold at a corner (not unlike many of the other times that they have crashed into each other). He apologizes and offers his hand to her, then she (as always) rudely tells him to "watch where you're going, football head!" She runs behind a nearby alley and laughs at him as he walks away, seeing at how dense he is that he can't tell how she truly feels. Once she finishes this little monologue, Brainy appears behind her (again!), wearing a white bow tie and buttoned shirt and gives her a plastic ring (with the Wedding March playing in the background! ). Helga just chucks the ring and questions him as to how he is standing behind her again. Of course, he doesn't answer, but she calmly says, "Okay, I'm not gonna hit you this time. This one's for free. Today I'm feeling generous. But tomorrow, look out." Then she pats his cheek and he smiles as he puts his hand there. As she starts walking again, she passes the same lemon stand, and the lemons, again, morph into Arnolds and say, "Hey Helga. How you doin'? Lookin' good!" Then she turns around and winks and points at them as she continues walking home.


Additional Comments and Conclusion

So there you have it in terms of the plot of "Helga on the Couch" and some interesting facts about this episode that I wanted to include. But I thought I would conclude here with the important information fans learn in this episode.

To me, "Helga on the Couch" is made to answer questions by fans on why Helga is the way she is: with her grouchy exterior and romantic interior, how she became a bully, the truth about her family, and why she fell in love with Arnold in the first place. Helga is a very complex character, and by having an expert in the field of psychology appear in this episode, we get a greater in-depth on Helga's behavior, as I said earlier. I have heard that whenever a kid acts a certain way, a big reason of it usually starts at home. Well, I think it's safe to say that Helga's home life is a big cause as to why she acts the way she does. We can truly see that ever since Helga was a little girl, her family seldom paid attention to her or even gave her a lot of positive attention. We fans and viewers can't help but feel sorry for Helga because she has such a crappy home life; it's that crappy "my family doesn't notice me or hardly notices me" home environment that makes Helga feel so lonely, and that loneliness is why Helga resents her family more than she loves them.

Since Helga's family barely notices her, she puts a great deal of emotional energy into Arnold. This is an example of transference, or displacement, which occurs by transferring unacceptable desires/feelings to another, less threatening object. In Helga's case, her unacceptable feelings are love towards her family. These feelings are seen as unacceptable because they are often unrequited and, therefore, painful. As a result, she transfers these feelings of affection towards something less threatening: Arnold. (I wanted to mention here that "Helga Blabs It All" actually reveals how long Helga has been in love with Arnold: she says, "He has been on my mind, morning, noon, and night for the past six years," and she then says, "I am currently nine years old." That means that she has loved Arnold since she was three years old, and we saw the beginning of it in this episode on their first day of preschool. I quoted Miriam earlier because Olga was mentioned as being fifteen at that time, which confirms that the age difference between the two siblings is twelve years.)

We learn in this episode that Helga is scared to tell Arnold the truth because she fears he will reject her, but her other motive was fear of humiliation from others. She stated in "Monkey Business" that she hopes that she will not have to confess her love in the near future, as that would be "embarrassing and humiliating." Her fear of humiliation came from the flashback in this episode, which was when the kids laughed at her when she showed public signs of liking Arnold. So she became a bully and threatened them if they teased her or got in her way. She also wants them to leave her alone because she feels that they won't notice or accept her for who she really is, and because she feels she can't trust them after having put up with their past teasing and her own unhappiness at home. It is because of her reputation as a tough school bully that makes it even harder for Helga to fully accept her true feelings for Arnold, and she is still terribly afraid that she would die of embarrassment if they discovered she still liked Arnold.

But the fact that Helga loves Arnold and has never stopped loving him helps her to have good feelings and to get though a miserable day at school and/or at home. Sadly, she has picked on him the most since preschool, which does test his patience and make him angry sometimes, but he does care about her and doesn't hate her, believing that she is a good person while others don't, which, I think, strengthens her feelings for him even more.

This is my favorite episode because it helped me to see Helga in a whole new light when I saw it for the first time. I learned to understand her better by seeing just how terrible her life really is, especially at home, and that she created up an aggressive front to protect herself from being teased and emotionally hurt. Since her family barely pays attention to her, Helga's had to grow up and mature a little fast for her age and learn to take care of herself. But despite all of that, she doesn't let her home life stop her from being the passionate, creative, and intelligent girl she truly is. And one day (yes, I mean The Jungle Movie), Helga will be happier than ever when Arnold finally reciprocates her feelings and they become the true pair they are meant to become. Being the good person that he is, Arnold can encourage Helga to overcome her shyness and nervousness, and teach her that it's not important what the other kids think. And he can probably even help her to patch things up with her family. Not 100%, but enough to make things better for her as she gets older.

This concludes the entire essay of my analysis on "Helga on the Couch." I hope you enjoyed it: the plot overview, the trivial facts, the important points of this episode, and the reason why this is my favorite episode of Hey Arnold! So thank you all for reading it and have a terrific day.