Full Moon (Hey Arnold!)

Full Moon is an episode from the Nickelodeon show mh:besttvshows:Hey Arnold!. It was written by Steve Viksten, directed by Frank Weiss, and first aired on March 10, 1999.

Plot
Harold, Sid, and Stinky moon Principal Wartz, but Arnold are punished instead because he witnessed the mooning and would not tell Principal Wartz who did it.

Why It Was Caught Mooning

 * 1) This episode is very mean-spirited, as Arnold is blamed for what Harold, Sid, and Stinky did to Principal Wartz, even though Arnold was just an innocent bystander.
 * 2) It also has gross-out humor that is uncommon throughout most of the run of Hey Arnold! in the scene where Harold, Sid, and Stinky show their butts to Principal Wartz.
 * 3) Harold, Sid, and Stinky are very unlikeable in this episode, as they prank Principal Wartz by mooning him, and then leave poor innocent Arnold in the dust as he ended up getting punished by Principal Wartz who assigned him 4 weeks detention for nothing he did.
 * 4) Principal Wartz, while not as bad as Harold, Sid, and Stinky, is also unlikable because he is very rude to Arnold and does not even try to politely ask him who did the prank. Instead, he demanded Arnold to tell him who did the prank.
 * 5) Arnold had to go through 4 weeks of detention when he didn’t do anything wrong, and almost got marked on his permanent record with Principal Wartz threatening to fail him for refusing to report a prank by getting a black mark next to "FAILURE TO COOPERATE" on his permanent record preventing him from reaching junior high if it wasn't for Harold, Sid, and Stinky confessing the truth on the last day of his unfair punishment.
 * 6) Harold, Sid, and Stinky also act like jerks to Arnold, as if he told Principal Wartz what happened, even though Arnold never tells him the truth.
 * 7) It has a horrible moral, saying that Arnold did the right thing by not telling Principal Wartz who mooned him even when it would lead to dire consequences for his permanent record, when in the real world, these incidents rarely work themselves out the way the one in this episode does, as perpetrators of pranks or even actual crimes often do not come to clean the way Harold, Sid, and Stinky eventually do and exploit others' sense of loyalty to avoid being caught.
 * 8) The pointless running gag of Gerald feeling sorry for Arnold is unnecessary filler.
 * 9) Mooning does not put someone's eye out!
 * 10) After Harold, Sid and Stinky confess to Principal Wartz for what they did and he realizes Arnold had nothing to do with it (once again as mentioned above in WIS #5) they managed to prevent Arnold from getting a black mark on his permanent record, but to add insult to injury Principal Wartz never apologizes to Arnold for getting him falsely accused or unfairly punished for nothing he did. However, when Harold realizes that mooning got put on his permanent record he decides to do another prank with a sign that says "KICK ME" taped on Mr. Simmons' back, even though he wasn't in the rest of the episode.
 * 11) Plot Hole: Principal Wartz could have easily deduced that the mooners were Sid, Stinky, and Harold as when he put on his glasses we could see the scene through his vision, revealing that he could easily see the clothes of Sid, Stinky, and Harold and deduce they were the mooners from that as they wear these clothes all the time in the show.  Even more glaring is that Wartz could see Sid’s face easily in that scene too, meaning that he had enough evidence to convince him that Sid was one of the three mooners but never even thought of accusing Sid judging from what he saw.
 * 12) This episode along with "Student Teacher" was not a good start for Season 4.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Arnold is still likable because although he is misguided in keeping his lips sealed, he does not join Harold, Sid, and Stinky in their prank.
 * 2) Fortunately, Harold, Sid, and Stinky started to feel guilty for not helping Arnold and leaving him in the dust, which prevented a bad situation for him from getting much worse.
 * 3) The ending was good as Harold, Sid, and Stinky finally told Principal Wartz the truth that they were the ones who showed their butts to him, so he spared Arnold and his permanent record, while also putting the other boys’ prank in their permanent records and getting their deserved comeuppance. The boys then walk with Arnold and make up for him for being jerks and not confessing earlier.

Reception
"Full Moon" has a relatively low by Hey Arnold! standards 6.9/10 on IMDb. Additionally, it is on Melissa A. Smith from Reel Rundown's list of episodes surprisingly containing poor morals, and received a D grade from Mike Clemente on his blog McToon Reviews.

Trivia

 * This is the first episode to use digital ink and paint animation.
 * This was the first episode to feature Spencer Klein as Arnold.