Hey Arnold: Phoebe

Phoebe Heyerdahl is Helga's best friend. When she isn't busy being her sidekick and keeping her secrets, she's the top student in Mr. Simmons' class. She's usually very soft-spoken, but the times that she isn't, she either has something really important to say or you need to watch out because there's no telling what to expect.

Another interesting thing about her that wasn't given a lot of attention: she's biracial. Her dad is Japanese and her mom is white, but a lot of what we see of her home life and her dedication to her studies, that's definitely from her dad. We never see him being strict or anything; you just get the impression from her constant desire to always be the best comes from high expectations being placed on her shoulders.

Again, she's another of those characters that was tertiary, but later got a lot more background and episodic focus as the series went on. 
It's also noteworthy that she's one of the few people that can take Helga to task and give her tough love about things and she'll listen to her without making a huge deal out of it. If it was anyone else, she'd rebuff them, put up a tough facade and shut them down completely. 

It's hard to know where to start because there are two major aspects of her character that warrant discussion... but I think I'll start with her constant desire to always be the best.

Phoebe Cheats

...yeah, never thought we'd see the day this would happen, but one time, it did.

There'd been a series of recent events where Phoebe came short of being at the top of the class in various academic endeavors. 
The next assignment on the horizon: a poetry contest. And the person with the best poem will read it at an evening assembly that will highlight the best and brightest.

Helga gets her poem from the usual source of inspiration. Most of it, I still remember to this day, but I'm not 100% positive.

Through all the hours of my week
I write the name I dare not speak
The boy with the corn-flour hair
My beloved and my despair

"...yeah, that's a keeper."

It boggles my mind how much I'd retained from that series.

Phoebe is completely at a loss about what to write. She reads through a book she has nearby, thinking she'll use one of the poems as a guide and maybe she'll be able to write something good.
Instead, she winds up copying a poem from the book and passes it off as her own.

I hear your name, like a bell, ringing ringing in my heart

...I get that she won the contest because the story had to have some major conflict in it. But if that's all there is to that poem, I don't think it was good enough to win any award. To borrow a quote from "New Teacher," "that's not a poem. It's a long sentence."
I tried to submit that as a goof/error on a TV site, but was denied because poetry is supposed to be subjective. 

I'm sorry: a poem needs to have at minimum 4 lines and there should be some rhyme or rhythm to it.

Anyway... Phoebe wins a statue with the likeness of Emily Dickinson. And she's inflicted with so much guilt that she imagines the statue talking to her. Calling her a cheater and every other negative thought in her head.
She tries everything to get rid it and it keeps coming back almost like it has a life of its own. The last straw comes when she tries to bury it in a sandbox in the park, but someone jumps into it after she leaves and it "washes up" onto the path Arnold and Gerald are walking. Thinking she'd lost it, Arnold insists they return it to her. 

On the night of the assembly, Phoebe comes clean with her parents behind her. She apologizes profusely, saying how badly she wanted to win and how she's used to being the best. Thankfully, Mr. Simmons isn't super harsh with her. He gives her a stern lecture and says he wants a new poem- about what she told him and what it feels like when she doesn't win.

She reads Helga's poem (signed Anonymous) at the assembly. Helga is present in the audience and she sinks into her chair, embarassed. Stinky notices this and he comments how she's acting like she wrote it. Then at the end she faints... "Poor Helga, she'd been shot through the heart by a purty poem."

Phoebe Skips

...don't worry, this isn't about Phoebe playing hookey. 
This is actually a good thing, but it becomes one of those "be careful what you wish for" type of deals. 

Phoebe's academic abilities are so advanced that she is given the opportunity to skip to the 6th grade. There, she meets Connie and Maria (who Arnold and Gerald met in season 1's "Sixth Grade Girls") and some of their other friends. They take her in immediately and she becomes a part of their scrunchie-wearing circle of friends. 
But things go south really quickly. They invite her to a study party, but it winds up being all of them hanging out and watching movies while Phoebe does all of their homework. 

Meanwhile, Helga is doing a class-wide search for a new sidekick. And this goes easily array. Either they refuse to do everything according to her standards or, in one case that involves pranking someone else, the person asks that person for permission... 
At one time, she even tries to recruit Nadine, who happens to be Rhonda's bestie.

"No way, Helga! Uh uh. Nadine belongs to me. She's my sidekick so hands off."

A few seconds later, Helga looks through her list and exclaims, "Criminy! I'm running out of stooges!"

Phoebe is ultimately freed from her "duties" when another new fish arrives in the 6th grade. Siobhan is from the 3rd grade and the cycle starts all over again, leaving Phoebe completely on her own. 

The two girls reunite in the girls' bathroom and tell each other how badly their time apart went. Phoebe decides to go back to the 4th grade and Helga pays a compliment, saying it was smart of her to try going to 6th grade and she was the dumb one for thinking she could replace her.
And judging from some dialogue in the end of the storyline, Helga is going to help Phoebe get her revenge on those girls for using her.

At least when Connie and Maria used Arnold and Gerald to get back at their boyfriends, they apologized to them. But they were so mean to Phoebe... I'm sorry, that just wasn't right. I wonder how many people they've done this too or if they're the type of girls who got by on their good looks without having to do any hard work.  

***
Helga and Phoebe's friendship has a lot of range to it. In hindsight, it's kinda fascinating to think about it. At the end of the day, they're always there to support one another, but the give and take of their dynamic isn't always 50-50. 

Phoebe Breaks a Leg

Prior to the titular event, there are numerous scenes where Phoebe does various favors for Helga... this isn't an irregular occurrence, but on this occasion, Helga might have pushed things a little too far. 
She'd piled so many trivial favors on Phoebe lately that she can't remember the last time Helga had done anything nice for her. All of this leads to her accidentally walking into the road because her view is obstructed by Helga's dry cleaning (and a dozen donuts) and she ends up with a broken leg.

Helga feels so bad about it that she falls over herself to do favors for Phoebe. All is well and good until Phoebe's leg heals. She's so afraid that things will go back to normal that she takes matters into her own hands.

She asks to keep the cast as a souvenir and she solders it back together with hinges. 

Predictably, Arnold finds out about her secret, gets the truth out of her and tells her that she needs to do the right thing. She resists at first, but guilt eventually gets the best of her. 

Helga finds herself in a similiar situation where she's unknowingly about to get run over and Phoebe rushes to save her.

Now Helga is the one with the broken leg and Phoebe comes clean. Helga realizes the error of her ways and says that things will be different from now... but as Phoebe wheels her out of the hospital and she takes down a laundry list of favors, that might not be the case.
But that's the last time Helga piles up an unreasonable list of demands on her bestie. 

Hall Monitor

For an unlisted span of time, Helga had been the classroom hall monitor and she takes her job very seriously.
But now it's time for her to hand over her badge and whistle to someone else. And she chooses Phoebe as her successor. Given how softspoken of a person she is, this seems to be a recipe for disaster. 

Helga decides to take Phoebe under her wing and give her a series of lessons on how to properly do her new job. 
If someone is running in the hall, you blow your whistle and say, "Yo, halt!"
If someone is taking too much time on the drinking fountain, you cut off the water flow ("that's enough, son. Save some for the fishes.")

After some trial and error, Phoebe gets the idea. But Helga realizes before long that she might have created a monster. By the third act of the episode, everyone in their class (including Helga) winds up in detention for various infractions. 

In a previous scene, Gerald rattles through a bunch he got just in the morning that seem to contradict each other: walking too fast/slow, turning a corner too sharply/wide, squeaky/suspicious quiet shoes. Then he throws them on the floor and she gives him another. "What's this for?"
"One for littering."
Afterwards he comments, "She used to be such a nice quiet girl." Considering how it'd been hinted throughout the series that Phoebe and Gerald like each other more than friends, all of this speaks volumes of how far Phoebe went off the deep end.

Helga's the one who tries to snap her out of it and admits she was wrong to make her like her. There's a freaky moment where Phoebe looks in the mirror and her hairstyle suddenly looks like Helga's.

And she decides to give up the hall monitor gig, saying that she doesn't need her badge or whistle to get respect. 

***

Finally, another particular memorable episode in the series. And also pretty relatable for anyone who grew up with posters of their favorite celebrity on their bedroom walls.

Pre-Teen Scream

Ronnie Matthews is a new singer who'd captured the neighborhood by storm.
As a bunch of the kids are listening to the radio, they hear about a contest where the grand prize was seeing him in concert and spending the rest of the evening with him. Everyone rushes home to write the perfect entry. Even Principal Wartz submits an entry. 

The winner winds up being the last person anyone suspected.
Despite her meek and reserved countenance, Phoebe is a huge Ronnie Matthews fangirl. She begs Helga to come with her. She's resistent at first, but agrees to play along when Phoebe tells her about all the free stuff they'll probably get.

After the concert where he performs his mega-hit "I saw your face and wow," Phoebe and Helga are ushered backstage to meet him.
They go with them to a local diner and Phoebe is eager to pick his brain about his music.

He winds up breaking her heart and losing all of her respect when he unveils an unsettling truth: 
"I don't write the lyrics, I don't write the music... I don't even know how to play the guitar. And keep this under your hats. That's not me singing. I just move these handsome lips and the voice comes over the speakers, but it's not mine."

So yeah, he's basically Milli Vanilli, but there's no record skip to out him. 
Helga winds up being enamored with the fact he'd pulled off "the perfect scam."
At the end of the night, Phoebe is completely honest, saying how she'd worshipped him and is very disappointed in the real him. 

"I thought you were so much more than a pretty face."
To which he says, completely oblivious, "oh thank you. I take very good care of my face." 

After he takes off, Phoebe takes some of that residual rage on Helga, annoyed that she now thinks that Ronnie is great because of the free food and other stuff they got to enjoy. She turns it back on her saying this was all her idea.
They exchange a few words and ultimately make up.

"Yeah, when you think about it, Ronnie was pretty dumb, wasn't he?"
"He kept calling me Pho-bee..."

I'm not sure how much more there is to Ronnie Matthews' big song, but it's still a catchy earworm I remember to this day:

I saw your face and Wow!
and then I took a bow.
And we'd be together, girl, just you and me.
That's the meaning of eternity.

I saw, I saw, your face, and wow!
I saw, I saw, your face, and wow!

Ronnie Matthews' speaking voice is by Bronson Pinchot, which would explain the outrageous accent. 
Christina Mena, who sang for him, was Benny in Rent on Broadway from 1997-2001. (The episode aired in 1998, so he was definitely doing the show during that time).

***

There'll be more of Phoebe to come in later posts. When it comes to Helga's various attempts to keep her crush on Arnold secret, Phoebe is the best wingman she could ever ask for.