I also wrote this Character analysis on Helga Geraldine Pataki for my blog that I thought I should post here to make sense of that poem I wrote.
When I was younger, I thought that Helga was funny and tough and part of me wished that I could be as tough as she was, the Queen of the Playground. She ruled with an iron fist but inside her lay one of the biggest hearts I had been shown on a character at that point in my life. I understood the plight of hiding her strong feelings from the person that she loved, and I totally understood the methods behind her using her bullying as a form to hide that part of her. I was young, I was innocent, and I thought it was the way to go. Be tough and no one would run you over. I strove to be Helga G. Pataki in black, brown, and purple.
As I grew older, I realized that there was so much more to her than even those few details. I truly watched 'Helga on the Couch' for the first time as a preteen and it was then that I realized that she was deeper than a scared little girl that was obsessed with a little boy. She was someone that was neglected by her parents from the age of three, or even earlier, with a sister that got all the attention just because she happened to be a 'protégé'. She was someone that found a light in the middle of a gloomy situation, a little boy under a blue umbrella, and that when she showed just the slightest inclination of appreciation for that little hero in her mind, she was laughed at. She feared the rejection of the her classmates, of that one little boy, so she tried to protect her in the way that she knew best, something she probably learned from Bob, she lashed out and she attacked, and she took the brunt of her attack on Arnold so that no one would guess that it was he that was special. It was that fear that at that moment shaped her life. But underneath all that she had this huge heart and it was filled with affection and love for this little boy and it grew and Grew and GREW as she learned more and more about the boy. At that moment, I thought it was a tad bit obsessive, but I still liked the character, I related to the unrequited love and fear of rejection that she felt.
As I watched the entire series from beginning to the end I learned even more about this girl, more layers about this girl that I had been so fascinated by since I was eight. At first I had thought that her feelings for Arnold were obsessive, the hero worship of a little girl to someone who had been kind to her for the first time. But as I watched all the episodes, I realized that maybe it was a little more than 'hero worship', it could very well be love. She did admire all the good things about him, his kindness and his goodie-two-shoes manner, but she also acknowledged all the things that weren't all that great about his personality, the fact that he was shallow at times and dense, for instance. And she accepted him as he was. I also discovered that she was more than just a delusional little girl. She's so self-aware of all the things that she does, and how strange her feelings are, and about how love works and all of those things and it's actually very astute for a nine year old. She's also extremely smart, I mean, I know that she was talking to Bliss about Hopper's paintings and all that in 'HotC' but considering that Phoebe talks to her in Japanese in what it looked like to be conversationally, and the fact that the aptitude test that she took was as high as Olga's (and her results leading to 'Elizabethan Poetry' to name a few). It just confirmed to me that the girl was absolutely intelligent (something that her parents never gave the time of day to find out about her). And, of course, she's terribly creative and talented. Beyond her poetry, that is beautiful and inspired for a nine year old, there's also her shrines, that while a little obsessive and over the top, but the things she comes up with, the things that she creates comes with an immense amount of creativity.
I also saw so much more about her relationship with her family. As we see in 'Arnold's Thanksgiving', she wants to be with her family and spend time with them and wants their attention and it just doesn't work because her parents are always 'busy' with something else. With Miriam, she always realized that her mother was distraught, that she wasn't happy, and that she wanted her mother to be happy (Beeper Queen). She loves her mother, truly she does, but she resents her for not paying her any attention. And even at the end of that episode where we have Miriam say that she's going to try harder and for a moment you're duped into believing that she might change, but we all know that she goes right back to being the same alcoholic Miriam as always.
As for Bob, it's a bit of a different story. Sure she does care for her father, and he cares about her, too. But if it came down to it, her loyalty to him comes from the namesake…and money as is the gag in all the episodes in which she has to choose between him and Arnold. If it were up to her, she'd choose Arnold every time, and almost always she does despite the fact that she chooses her father initially. But their relationship of strained, she calls him a blowhard and an ogre, so I feel like there's more to the Pataki family dynamics than we're allowed to see on 'Hey Arnold', I feel like if 'The Pataki's' had ever been allowed to be made, we'd be able to see more of the dynamics that we got to see in "Helga and the Nanny", where we see Bob yelling at Miriam at the end.
And with Olga: there's resentment, of course, for all the attentions that her sister got that she didn't and of course for having to live under her shadow. Not only that but, Olga's also very conceded after all those years of being coddled by everyone and doesn't realize the repercussions her bragging has on her sister. She's also so overdramatic and she doesn't listen to her sister that she claims to love, sure we get the whole, 'Love Helga' at the end of Student Teacher which means that their relationship might be improving, because Olga's trying at least, which is more than Bob and Miriam do, for sure.
And as for Helga's bullying, I saw something very different this time around. Sure, she was tough and threatening, but then there was so much underneath all that. Her friendship with Phoebe, for one, was deeper than that of her 'reputation' as a bully. Sure it seems like her relationship with Phoebe is that of master and servant just as Phoebe felt like it was in 'Phoebe Breaks a Leg', but then there we see Helga monologue about hurting her friend and all the remorse that follows it and then is a loyal servant to her friend, she gets a kick out of finding out Ronnie's a phony, but when it comes down to it, she stands by Phoebe and tries to make her feel better, and when the sixth graders treated her badly and dropped her like yesterday's news, she's the first to try and get revenge. Not only that, but the fact that the only reason Phoebe even admitted anything was because she heard Helga, once again, monologue about how bad she felt. I think that sometimes the lines that Helga herself has between friend and bully get blurred, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't care about and appreciate her friend. Not only that, but I thought about it and Helga, despite her many threats, doesn't ever hit Arnold. Sure she threatens and teases, and there are spitballs and all that, but there's no actual hitting from him and I think that that's because that would be crossing the line, her hitting him would be the catalyst of her turning into that which she says she is.
I could go deeper, I could talk about her and Arnold, but that's something completely different and something that would be for a later moment, but I can assure you that I look forward to finding different layers to the character of Helga Pataki. And I bid kudos to Craig Bartlett for making a character complex enough to find layers upon layers every time I look into it.