Kiss the Boy
We Hey Arnold! fans remember that Arnold and Helga have their first kiss in “School Play,” in which they play Romeo and Juliet, respectively, and it was a scripted kiss. The second time they kiss is in “Summer Love,” in which they film a TV episode of Babewatch and Helga was playing a lifeguard giving Arnold mouth-to-mouth. Although they also kiss each other in their own dreams in “Married,” they were dreams, so they don’t officially count. The third and final time the two kiss is during the movie, when Arnold discovers that Helga was Deep Voice and she confesses that her being in love with him was why she was secretly helping him save their neighborhood.
As a kid, one thing I noticed about the first two kisses, along with their kiss in Arnold’s married dream, is that we never see his and Helga’s lips touching. We don’t see that happen until the movie, although Helga’s lips are clearly overlapping Arnold’s lips and he’s not reciprocating the kiss. I always wondered why we never saw their lips making contact with the previous kisses, but after I talked with ultra-dancergirl recently, we came up with a good psychological reason as to why this happens.
When Helga kisses Arnold during the play and TV episode filming, he does not yet know the truth about Helga’s feelings for him. Therefore, hiding the contact of their lips touching when they kiss symbolically represents the fact that Helga is (still) hiding her secret from Arnold and the rest of the world. The same thing goes for Arnold’s dream, after she tricks him into marrying her. Like in real life, his dream self doesn’t know about Helga’s true feelings, so again, we don’t see their lips touch when she kisses him.
However, in Helga’s dream, since she’s marrying Arnold, he obviously knows the truth, so it’s an entirely different story. Although we don’t see the actual contact of lips after they exchange vows, we do see it happen at the very end, when they eat the pastrami sandwich together, then kiss after finishing it. Although it’s just a dream, some fans regard this moment as the first time we actually see their lips touch when they kiss.
Then by the time of the movie, Helga finally admits the entire truth to Arnold about how much she loves him and helped him because of this. Due to the fact that she lets her secret out in the open at last, it offers a good explanation as to why their lips are finally visible during this spontaneous, but forceful and passionate kiss.