Hey Arnold: Lila

For much of the first season, Arnold had a huge crush on 6th grader Ruth McDougall. A couple of episodes involved him trying to get her attention and ultimately failing.
The end of this pursuit came in the Valentine's Day episode where he succeeds on getting her to go out with him, but finds out she wasn't anything like he thought she'd be.

Then the series introduced Lila.
At first, she was just the new girl who was smart, funny and oh so polite.
But in the ongoing story arc of Helga's crush on Arnold, she turned into an interesting complication. 

Ms. Perfect

When Lila is a new student in Mr. Simmons' class, she wins admirers everywhere she goes. But the other girls, including Helga, Rhonda and Phoebe, aren't fans.

In one scene, Rhonda is modeling her new ensemble for admirers, only to find out Lila is wearing the same thing and someone comments that the look "emphasizes the girl, but not the dress." 
Then in class, Phoebe raises her hand to answer a question, but Lila beats her to it... she didn't raise her hand, but Phoebe didnt like that she beat her to the punch.

A change of plans are now in order. The girls do various schemes trying to get back at Lila for outdoing them. Several go array and Helga's the one who winds up getting victimized in the process. 
They finally succeed with an elaborate contraption that lands a foul combination of food on her head. After that, Lila refuses to go back to school for "personal reasons."

Yeah... this isn't the best hour for any of these characters... 

Then the girls, who are hanging around outside her house, overhear Lila talking to her dad, saying she never wants to go to school again and only wanted everyone to like her. 
During this scene we also learn he has had trouble getting a new job since they moved to the neighborhood. And the two of them had been living on canned food for some time.
All of the girls are affected by this revelation. Helga especially. She becomes a complete nut case, tears streaming down her face, until Phoebe slaps some sense back into her.

So the girls go to Lila to apologize. Rhonda said it best: "Our actions were petty. And most likely motivated by deep-seated insecurities within ourselves." (I'm so glad I was able to find the actual quote on Google Images!)

Lila forgives them immediately and her dad gets a call that he'd finally gotten the job. 

The final scene is Lila telling another "whatever you do, don't sell that cow" joke to a crowd of people. Helga and the other girls are standing together on the side, saying how things are back to normal, but "you know the worst part? I like her."
To which the others chime in: "Yeah, me too..."

Throughout the series, Lila has always been a sweetheart. It's hard not to like her. Even after she ends up in a love triangle with Arnold and Helga... 

Arnold & Lila

If Helga were to create her own worst enemy, she couldn't have asked for a better person to have as a "nemesis."

This whole thing starts when Helga is fantasizing and writes "Arnold Loves Helga" on a brick wall in the neighborhood... but when she hears people approaching, she takes out her name and writes in Lila instead. 
Rhonda, Lila and (I think) Nadine come by and read it. Lila is pleasantly surprised and for several days, she fawns over Arnold and he's unsure of what to do.

In the end, he tells her the truth. That he didn't write the message on the wall, he doesn't feel the same way about her and they can still be friends.

But... after he has some time on his own to think, he realizes he really does like her like her. He tells her this and... to paraphase Taylor Swift, it was too late for him and his white horse to come around.
She also came to a realization that she only liked him because she thought he felt the same way and after he told her he didn't return her feelings, she no longer felt the same way. To rub salt in the wound a bit, she echoes what he said to her about how they can still be friends. 

Helga eavesdrops on all of this and after Lila leaves, she falls out of the tree she was hiding in. After joshing with Arnold for a bit about how Lila dumped him really good, she gets a little serious and asks if he'll be okay. She also reassures him that he'll bounce back and there are plenty of other fish in the sea.
...it sucks that I couldn't find this episode anywhere online to refresh my memory because bits and pieces came back later on...
He says how funny it is that it hurts when you like like someone and they don't like like you. And asks if she'd ever felt that way about anyone... she panics a bit and brushes it off with sarcasm, but adds that she can understand how he feels. 
Then he asks if she's heading home and if he could walk her back and says "whatever floats your boat, football head"... or something like that, but in her head, she does her signature sigh.

...I'm pretty sure that's how it went, if not something super similiar... man, my memory is insane...

It's also kinda interesting that this episode happened AFTER the Romeo & Juliet play... if it was before, Arnold would have been devestated if Lila wasn't playing Juliet and he was stuck with Helga. Makes me wonder if the showrunners knew they were going to create that ongoing storyline with Arnold being in love with Lila when they were writing about the play... 

There are a few other attempts on Arnold's part to change Lila's mind about him... one was at the annual cheese festival. (The previous year, he'd tried to get Ruth's attention and failed every time). All of his attempts to woo her go array because of Helga's interference in the background. 

Arnold Visits Arnie

Adding further insult to injury...
Arnold's country cousin Arnie visited the city in "Weird Cousin," during which Lila developed a crush on him, but Arnie had a crush on Helga.

When Arnold goes to visit his cousin in this episode, things get even stranger.
Arnie's hometown is like bizarroville... there's a doppleganger for several of the main characters, but their personalities are switched. Like Rhonda and Harold- hers is a complete slob and his is more proper. 

But where it gets interesting is Arnie's girlfriend Lulu... she's completely over the moon for Arnold, to the point it becomes overbearing, and he doesn't want Arnie to find out she's hitting on him. Then he meets Hilda, Helga's doppleganger, and it's love after a quick conversation about looking at the moon.
...all this leads to the most insane love rectangle ever...

Arnie likes Lulu, Lulu likes Arnold, Arnold likes Hilda and Hilda prefers Arnie...
and when the truth comes out, everyone goes savage and runs Arnold out of town...

Then he wakes up and it's all a dream. 
He runs over to the vacant lot to see his friends and he's still in his pajamas. Helga states the obvious and he's so thrilled it's really her and he's not dreaming anymore, he hugs her. After she snaps herself out of it, she asks what his problem is. He also asks Lila if she still just likes him and he's relieved to find out she just likes him.

...yeah, that episode was very strange... 

A theory popped into my head about what this could have meant for Arnold's crush on Lila... I did a little digging and I was on the right track. 

One more episode before that, though.

Helga's Masquerade

Noticing how Arnold fawns over Lila because she's funny and thoughtful, Helga asks Lila to teach her to be more like her. Lila is more than happy to help. There's a lot of trial and error involved and some of it is kinda hilarious.

Eventually, Helga gets it right. Just in time for Rhonda's costume party where she actually cosplays as Lila. Arnold is impressed with the costume and proceeds to spend a lot of the party with her. Gerald takes him aside at one point and asks what the heck he's doing. And says he's only spending time with Helga because she's dressed like Lila.

But then Arnold calls her by the wrong name and she's so disheartened that she disappears to change out of her costume. 
Instead of making a joke or laying on the sarcasm, she dejectedly says, "I took it off, Arnold. I was feeling uncomfortable." It starts to get cold outside so he leaves her to head inside.

Helga does a little soliloquy on the balcony in the backyard, saying she should probably give up. "Arnold's never going to like me like me and that's the way it is. I was a fool for thinking I could ever change that."

Then she overhears a conversation between Arnold and Lila that restores her confidence. He says how on nights like tonight when she's ok, he kinda likes Helga.

Helga embraces her locket and takes the W. Saying "he doesn't like me like me, but he does like me, so I'm halfway there."

...

As for my revelation... supposedly Arnold does fall out of love with Lila in one of the later episodes. Gerald's sister Timberly develops a crush on him because of an instance he was super nice to her. He's ready to break things off when Lila sees them together and says how sweet it is that he's hanging out with her.
So he ultimately uses Timberly to try to get Lila to like him like him again and fails in more ways than one.

Timberly takes the "break up" a lot better than you'd think, but she moves on quickly to Sid. 
Lila finds out about the whole scheme and she's proud of him for coming clean, but says he should've done so sooner. And she still just likes him...

The wiki says that this episode is the end of Arnold's crush on Lila to make way for Helga's ultimate confession in the Jungle movie...
I just found a quote of Arnold saying it's over with Timberly and with Lila... it's very subtle, but that's probably where they got the idea. 

I just remember there not being a lot of "Arnold loves Lila" vibes in the air after the second Arnie episode... like he realized after the nightmare that he was ok with Lila not being all over him and he's good with how they are.
The wiki also suggests Arnold's attraction to "Hilda" in the dream is a reflection of him liking Helga when she isn't being mean to him. And possibly he'd overheard some of her soliloquies and knows how she feels. 

...

Yeah, I'm clearly chomping at the bit to dive into all of the Arnold and Helga moments, but I'm gonna postpone it for a bit longer.

I think I have one more miscellaneous entry to do first. A series of episodes I don't know what else to do with, but I still want to bring them up in some capacity.

After that, though, it's gonna be all Helga, all the time. There's so much to her character and how she interacts with the people in her life.